“Well, Harry,” I said, “you see the fates have ordered it just as I feared.”
“It is almost as much of a disappointment to me as it can be to you,” said Harry. “And it is the more so because I cannot quite trust this man.”
“I never trusted him,” said I. “I always had an instinctive doubt of him.”
“My doubts are not instinct,” said Harry, “they are founded on things I have heard him say myself. It seems to me that he has formed the habit of trifling with all truth, and that nothing is sacred in his eyes.”
“And yet Tina loves him,” said I. “I can see that she has gone to him heart and soul, and she believes in him with all her heart, and so we can only pray that he may be true to her. As for me, I can never love another. It only remains to live worthily of my love.”
CHAPTER XLIV.
MARRIAGE PREPARATIONS.
AND now for a time there was nothing thought of or talked of but marriage preparations and arrangements. Letters of congratulation came pouring in to Miss Mehitable from her Boston friends and acquaintances.
When Harry and I returned to college, we spent one day with our friends the Kitterys, and found it the one engrossing subject there, as everywhere.
Dear old Madam Kittery was dissolved in tenderness, and whenever the subject was mentioned reiterated all her good opinions of Ellery, and her delight in the engagement, and her sanguine hopes of its good influence on his spiritual prospects.
Miss Debby took the subject up energetically. Ellery Davenport was a near family connection, and it became the Kitterys to make all suitable and proper advances. She insisted upon addressing Harry by his title, notwithstanding his blushes and disclaimers.
“My dear sir,” she said to him, “it appears that you are an Englishman and a subject of his Majesty; and I should not be surprised, at some future day, to hear of you in the House of Commons; and it becomes you to reflect upon your position and what is proper in relation to yourself; and, at least under this roof, you must allow me to observe these proprieties, however much they may be disregarded elsewhere. I have already informed the servants that they are always to address you as Sir Harry, and I hope that you will not interfere with my instructions.”
“O certainly not,” said Harry. “It will make very little difference with me.”
“Now, in regard to this marriage,” said Miss Debby, “as there is no church in Oldtown, and no clergyman, I have felt that it would be proper in me, as a near kinswoman to Mr. Davenport, to place the Kittery mansion at Miss Mehitable Rossiter’s disposal, for the wedding.”
“Well, I confess,” said Harry, blushing, “I never thought but that the ceremony would be performed at home, by Parson Lothrop.”
“My dear Sir Harry!” said Miss Debby, laying her hand on his arm with solemnity, “consider that your excellent parents, Harry and Lady Percival, were both members of the Established Church of England, the only true Apostolic Protestant Church, – and can you imagine that their spirits, looking down from heaven, would be pleased and satisfied that their daughter should consummate the most solemn union of her life out of the Church? and in fact at the hands of a man who has never received ordination?”
It was with great difficulty that Harry kept his countenance during this solemn address. His blue eyes actually laughed, though he exercised a rigid control over the muscles of his face.
“I really had not thought about it at all, Miss Debby,” he said. “I think you are exceedingly kind.”
“And I ‘m sure,” said she, “that you must see the propriety of it now that it is suggested to you. Of course, a marriage performed by Mr. Lothrop would be a legal one, so far as the civil law is concerned; but I confess I always have regarded marriage as a religious ordinance, and it would be a disagreeable thing to me to have any connections of mine united merely by a civil tie. These Congregational marriages,” said Miss Debby, in a contemptuous voice, “I should think would lead to immorality. How can people feel as if they were married that don’t utter any vows themselves, and don’t have any wedding-ring put on their finger? In my view, it ‘s not respectable; and, as Mrs. Ellery Davenport will probably be presented in the first circles of England, I desire that she should appear there with her wedding-ring on, like an honest woman. I have therefore despatched an invitation to Miss Mehitable to bring your sister and spend the month preceding the wedding with us in Boston. It will be desirable for other reasons, as all the shopping and dressmaking and millinery work must be done in Boston. Oldtown is a highly respectable little village, but, of course, affords no advantages for the outfit of a person of quality, such as your sister is and is to be. I have had a letter from Lady Widgery this morning. She is much delighted, and sends congratulations. She always, she said, believed that you had distinguished blood in your veins when she first saw you at our house.”
There was something in Miss Debby’s satisfied, confiding faith in everything English and aristocratic that was vastly amusing to us. The perfect confidence she seemed to have that Harry Percival, after all the sins of his youth, had entered heaven ex officio as a repentant and glorified baronet, a member of the only True Church, was really naïve and affecting. What would a church be good for that allowed people of quality to go to hell, like the commonalty? Sir Harry, of course, repented, and made his will in a proper manner, doubtless received the sacrament and absolution, and left all human infirmities, with his gouty toes, under the family monument, where his body reposed in sure and certain hope of a blessed and glorious resurrection. The finding of his children under such fortunate circumstances was another evidence of the good Providence who watches over the fortunes of the better classes, and does not suffer the steps of good Churchmen to slide beyond recovery.
There were so many reasons of convenience for accepting Madam Kittery’s hospitable invitation, it was urged with such warmth and affectionate zeal by Madam Kittery and Miss Debby, and seconded so energetically by Ellery Davenport, to whom this arrangement would secure easy access to Tina’s society during the intervening time, that it was accepted.
Harry and I were glad of it, as we should thus have more frequent opportunities of seeing her. Ellery Davenport was refurbishing and refurnishing the old country house, where Harry and Tina had spent those days of their childhood which it was now an amusement to recall, and Tina was as gladly, joyously beautiful as young womanhood can be in which, as in a transparent vase, the light of pure love and young hope has been lighted.
“You like him, Horace, don’t you?” she had said to me, coaxingly, the first opportunity after the evening we had spent together. What was I to do? I did not like him, that was certain; but have you never, dear reader, been over-persuaded to think and say you liked where you did not? Have you not scolded and hushed down your own instinctive distrusts and heart-risings, blamed and schooled yourself for them, and taken yourself sharply to task, and made yourself acquiesce in somebody that was dear and necessary to some friend? So did I. I called myself selfish, unreasonable, foolish. I determined to be generous to my successful rival, and to like him. I took his frankly offered friendship, and I forced myself to be even enthusiastic in his praise. It was a sure way of making Tina’s cheeks glow and her eyes look kindly on me, and she told me so often that there no person in the world whose good opinion she had such a value for, and she was so glad I liked him. Would it not be perfectly abominable after this to let sneaking suspicions harbor in my breast?
Besides, if a man cannot have love, shall he therefore throw away friendship? and may I not love with the love of chivalry, – the love that knights dedicated to queens and princesses, the love that Tasso gave to Leonora D’Este, the love that Dante gave to Beatrice, love that hopes little and asks nothing?
I was frequently in at the Kittery house in leisure hours, and when, as often happened, Tina was closeted with Ellery Davenport, I took sweet counsel with Miss Mehitable.
“We all stand outside now, Horace,” she said. “I remember when I had the h
earing of all these thousand pretty little important secrets of the hour that now must all be told in another direction. Such is life. What we want always comes to us with pain. I wanted Tina to be well married. I would not for the world she should marry without just this sort of love; but of course it leaves me out in the cold. I would n’t say this to her for the world, – poor little thing, it would break her heart.”
One morning, however, I went down and found Miss Mehitable in a very excited state. She complained of a bad headache, but she had all the appearance of a person who is constantly struggling with something which she is doubtful of the expediency of uttering.
At last, just as I was going, she called me into the library. “Come here, Horace,” she said; “I want to speak to you.”
I went in, and she made a turn or two across the room in an agitated way, then sat down at a table, and motioned me to sit down. “Horace, my dear boy,” she said, “I have never spoken to you of the deepest sorrow of my life, and yet it often seems to me as if you knew it.”
“My dear Aunty,” said I, for we had from childhood called her thus, “I think I do know it, – somewhat vaguely. I know about your sister.”
“You know how strangely, how unaccountably she left us, and that nothing satisfactory has ever been heard from her. I told Mr. Davenport all about her, and he promised to try to learn something of her in Europe. He was so successful in relation to Tina and Harry, I hoped he might learn something as to her; but he never seemed to. Two or three times within the last four or five years I have received letters from her, but without date, or any mark by which her position could be identified. They told me, in the vaguest and most general way, that she was well, and still loved me, but begged me to make no inquiries. They were always postmarked at Havre; but the utmost research gives no clew to her residence there.”
“Well?” said I.
“Well,” said Miss Mehitable, trembling in every limb, “yesterday, when Mr. Davenport and Tina had been sitting together in this room for a long time, they went out to ride. They had been playing at verse-making, or something of the kind, and there were some scattered papers on the floor, and I thought I would remove them, as they were rather untidy, and among them I found – “ she stopped, and panted for breath – “I found THIS!”
She handed me an envelope that had evidently been around a package of papers. It was postmarked Geneva, Switzerland, and directed to Ellery Davenport.
“Horace,” said Miss Mehitable, “that is Emily Rossiter’s handwriting; and look, the date is only two months back! What shall we do?”
There are moments when whole trains of thought go through the brain like lightning. My first emotion was, I confess, a perfectly fierce feeling of joy. Here was a clew! My suspicions had not then been unjust; the man was what Miss Debby had said, – deep, artful, and to be unmasked. In a moment I sternly rebuked myself, and thought what a wretch I was for my suspicions. The very selfish stake that I held in any such discovery imposed upon me, in my view, a double obligation to defend the character of my rival. I so dreaded that I should be carried away that I pleaded strongly and resolutely with myself for him. Besides, what would Tina think of me if I impugned Ellery Davenport’s honor for what might be, after all, an accidental resemblance in handwriting.
All these things came in one blinding flash of thought as I held the paper in my hands. Miss Mehitable sat, white and trembling, looking at me piteously.
“My dear Aunty,” I said, “in a case like this we cannot take one single step without being perfectly sure. This handwriting may accidentally resemble your sister’s. Are you perfectly sure that it is hers? It is a very small scrap of paper to determine by.”
“Well, I can’t really say,” said Miss Mehitable, hesitating. “It may be that I have dwelt on this subject until I have grown nervous and my very senses deceive me. I really cannot say, Horace; that was the reason I came to you to ask what I should do.”
“Let us look the matter over calmly, Aunty.”
“Now,” she said, nervously drawing from her pocket two or three letters and opening them before me, “here are those letters, and your head is cool and steady. I wish you would compare the writing, and tell me what to think of it.”
Now the letters and the directions were in that sharp, decided English hand which so many well-educated women write, and in which personal peculiarities are lost, to a great degree, in a general style. I could not help seeing that there was a resemblance which might strike a person, – especially a person so deeply interested, and dwelling with such intentness upon a subject, as Miss Mehitable evidently was.
“My dear Aunty,” said I, “I see a resemblance; but have you not known a great many ladies who wrote hands like this?”
“Yes, I must say I have,” said Miss Mehitable, still hesitating, – “only, somehow, this impressed me very strongly.”
“Well,” said I, “supposing that your sister has written to Ellery Davenport, may she not have intrusted him with communications under his promise of secrecy, which he was bound in honor not to reveal?”
“That may be possible,” said Miss Mehitable, sighing deeply, “but O, why should she not make a confidante of me?”
“It may be, Aunty,” said I, hesitatingly, “that she is living in relations that she feels could not be justified to you.”
“O Horace!” said Miss Mehitable.
“You know,” I went on, “that there has been a very great shaking of old established opinions in Europe. A great many things are looked upon there as open questions, in regard to morality, which we here in New England never think of discussing. Ellery Davenport is a man of the European world, and I can easily see that there may be circumstances in which your sister would more readily resort to the friendship of such a man than to yours.”
“May God help me!” said Miss Mehitable.
“My dear Aunty, suppose you find that your sister has adopted a false theory of life, sincerely and conscientiously, and under the influence of it gone astray from what we in New England think to be right. Should we not make a discrimination between errors that come from a wrong belief and the mere weakness that blindly yields to passion? Your sister’s letters show great decision and strength of mind. It appears to me that she is exactly the woman to be misled by those dazzling, unsettling theories with regard to social life which now bear such sway, and are especially propagated by French literature. She may really and courageously deem herself doing right in a course that she knows she cannot defend to you and Mr. Rossiter.”
“Horace, you speak out and make plain what has been the secret and dreadful fear of my life. I never have believed that Emily could have gone from us all, and stayed away so long, without the support of some attachment. And while you have been talking I have become perfectly certain that it is so; but the thought is like death to me.”
“My dear Aunty,” I said, “our Father above, who sees all the history of our minds, and how they work, must have a toleration and a patience that we have not with each other. He says that he will bring the blind by a way they knew not, and ‘make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight’; and he adds, ‘These things will I do unto them, and will not forsake them.’ That has always seemed to me the most godlike passage in the Bible.”
Miss Mehitable sat for a long time, leaning her head upon her hand.
“Then, Horace, you would n’t advise me,” she said, after a pause, “to say anything to Ellery Davenport about it?”
“Supposing,” said I, “that there are communications that he is bound in honor not to reveal, of what use could be your inquiries? It can only create unpleasantness; it may make Tina feel unhappy, who is so very happy now, and probably, at best, you cannot learn anything that would satisfy you.”
“Probably not,” said she, sighing.
“I can hand this envelope to him,” I said after a moment’s thought, “this evening, if you think best, and you can see how he looks on receiving it.”
“
I don’t know as it will be of any use,” said Miss Mehitable, ‘but you may do it.”
Accordingly, that evening, as we were all gathered in a circle around the open fire, and Tina and Ellery, seated side by side, were carrying on that sort of bantering warfare of wit in which they delighted, I drew this envelope from my pocket and said, carelessly, “Mr. Davenport, here is a letter of yours that you dropped in the library this morning.”
He was at that moment playing with a silk tassel which fluttered from Tina’s wrist. He let it go, and took the envelope and looked at it carelessly.
“A letter!” said Tina, snatching it out of his hand with saucy freedom, – “dated at Geneva, and a lady’s handwriting! I think I have a right to open it!”
“Do so by all means,” said Ellery.
“O pshaw! there ‘s nothing in it,” said Tina.
“Not an uncommon circumstance in a lady’s letter,” said Ellery.
“You saucy fellow!” said Tina.
“Why,” said Ellery, “is it not the very province and privilege of the fair sex to make nothing more valuable and more agreeable than something? that ‘s the true secret of witchcraft.”
“But I sha’ n’t like it,” said Tina, half pouting, “if you call my letters nothing.”
“Your letters, I doubt not, will be an exception to those of all the sex,” said Ellery. “I really tremble, when I think how profound they will be!”
“You are making fun of me!” said she, coloring.
“I making fun of you? And what have you been doing with all your hapless lovers up to this time? Behold Nemesis arrayed in my form.”
“But seriously, Ellery, I want to know whom this letter was from?”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 296
