BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
IN the creed of most story-tellers marriage is equal to translation. The mortal pair whose fortunes are traced to the foot of the altar forthwith ascend, and a cloud receives them out of our sight as the curtain falls. Faith supposes them rapt away to some unseen paradise, and every-day toil girds up its loins and with a sigh prepares to return to its delving and grubbing.
But our story must follow the fortunes of our heroine beyond the prescribed limits.
It had been arranged that the wedding pair, after a sunny afternoon’s drive through some of the most picturesque scenery in the neighborhood of Boston, should return at eventide to their country home, where they were to spend a short time preparatory to sailing for Europe. Even in those early days the rocky glories of Nahant and its dashing waves were known and resorted to by Bostonians, and the first part of the drive was thitherward, and Tina climbed round among the rocks, exulting like a sea-bird with Ellery Davenport ever at her side, laughing, admiring, but holding back her bold, excited footsteps, lest she should plunge over by some unguarded movement, and become a vanished dream.
So near lies the ever possible tragedy at the hour of our greatest exultation; it is but a false step, an inadvertent movement, and all that was joy can become a cruel mockery! We all know this to be so. We sometimes start and shriek when we see it to be so in the case of others, but who is the less triumphant in his hour of possession for this gloomy shadow of possibility that forever dogs his steps?
Ellery Davenport was now in the high tide of victory. The pursuit of the hour was a success; he had captured the butterfly. In his eagerness he had trodden down and disregarded many teachings and impulses of his better nature that should have made him hesitate; but now he felt that he had her; she was his, – his alone and forever.
But already dark thoughts from the past were beginning to flutter out like ill-omened bats, and dip down on gloomy wing between him and the innocent, bright, confiding face. Tina he could see had idealized him entirely. She had invested him with all her conceptions of knighthood, honor, purity, religion, and made a creation of her own of him; and sometimes he smiled to himself, half amused and half annoyed at the very young and innocent simplicity of the matter. Nobody knew better than himself that what she dreamed he was he neither was nor meant to be, – that in fact there could not be a bitterer satire on his real self than her conceptions; but just now, with her brilliant beauty, her piquant earnestness, her perfect freshness, there was an indescribable charm about her that bewitched him.
Would it all pass away and get down to the jog-trot dustiness of ordinary married life, he wondered, and then, ought he not to have been a little more fair with her in exchange for the perfect transparence with which she threw open the whole of her past life to him? Had he not played with her as some villain might with a little child, and got away a priceless diamond for a bit of painted glass? He did not allow himself to think in that direction.
“Come, my little sea-gull,” he said to her, after they had wandered and rambled over the rocks for a while, “you must come down from that perch, and we must drive on, if we mean to be at home before midnight.”
“O Ellery, how glorious it is!”
“Yes, but we cannot build here three tabernacles, and so we must say, Au revoir. I will bring you here again “; – and Ellery half led, half carried her in his arms back to the carriage.
“How beautiful it is!” said Tina, as they were glancing along a turfy road through the woods. The white pines were just putting out their long fingers, the new leaves of the silvery birches were twinkling in the light, the road was fringed on both sides with great patches of the blue violet, and sweet-fern, and bayberry and growing green tips of young spruce and fir were exhaling a spicy perfume. “It seems as if we two alone were flying through fairy-land.” His arm was around her, tightening its clasp of possession as he looked down on her.
“Yes,” he said, “we two are alone in our world now; none can enter it; none can see into it; none can come between us.”
Suddenly the words recalled to Tina her bad dream of the night before. She was on the point of speaking of it, but hesitated to introduce it; she felt a strange shyness in mentioning that subject.
Ellery Davenport turned the conversation upon things in foreign lands, which he would soon show her. He pictured to her the bay of Naples, the rocks of Sorrento, where the blue Mediterranean is overhung with groves of oranges, where they should have a villa some day, and live in a dream of beauty. All things fair and bright and beautiful in foreign lands were evoked, and made to come as a sort of airy pageant around them while they wound through the still, spicy pine-woods.
It was past sunset, and the moon was looking white and sober through the flush of the evening sky, when they entered the grounds of their own future home.
“How different everything looks here from what it did when I was here years ago!” said Tina, – “the paths are all cleared, and then it was one wild, dripping tangle. I remember how long we knocked at the door, and could n’t make any one hear, and the old black knocker frightened me, – it was a black serpent with his tail in his mouth. I wonder if it is there yet.”
“O, to be sure it is,” said Ellery; “that is quite a fine bit of old bronze, after something in Herculaneum, I think; you know serpents were quite in vogue among the ancients.”
“I should think that symbol meant eternal evil,” said Tina, – “a circle is eternity, and a serpent is evil.”
“You are evidently prejudiced against serpents, my love,” said Ellery. “The ancients thought better of them; they were emblems of wisdom, and the ladies very appropriately wore them for bracelets and necklaces.”
“I would n’t have one for the world,” said Tina. “I always hated them, they are so bright, and still, and sly.”
“Mere prejudice,” said Ellery, laughing. “I must cure it by giving you, one of these days, an emerald-green serpent for a bracelet, with ruby crest and diamond eyes; you ‘ve no idea what pretty fellows they are. But here, you see, we are coming to the house; you can smell the roses.”
“How lovely and how changed!” said Tina. “O, what a world of white roses over that portico, – roses everywhere, and white lilacs. It is a perfect paradise!”
“May you find it so, my little Eve,” said Ellery Davenport, as the carriage stopped at the door. Ellery sprang out lightly, and, turning, took Tina in his arms and set her down in the porch.
They stood there a moment in the moonlight, and listened to the fainter patter of the horses’ feet as they went down the drive.
“Come in, my little wife,” said Ellery, opening the door; “and may the black serpent bring you good luck.”
The house was brilliantly lighted by wax candles in massive silver candlesticks.
“O, how strangely altered!” said Tina, running about, and looking into the rooms with the delight of a child. “How beautiful everything is!”
The housekeeper, a respectable female, now appeared and offered her services to conduct her young mistress to her rooms. Ellery went with her, almost carrying her up the staircase on his arm. Above, as below, all was light and bright. “This room is ours,” said Ellery, drawing her into that chamber which Tina remembered years before as so weirdly desolate. Now it was all radiant with hangings and furniture of blue and silver; the open windows let in branches of climbing white roses, the vases were full of lilies. The housekeeper paused a moment at the door.
“There is a lady in the little parlor below that has been waiting more than an hour to see you and madam,” she said.
“A lady!” said both Tina and Ellery, in tones of surprise. “Did she give her name?” said Ellery.
“She gave no name; but she said that you, sir, would know her.”
“I can’t imagine who it should be,” said Ellery. “Perhaps, Tina, I had better go down and see while you are dressing,” said Ellery.
“Indeed, that would be a pretty way to do! No, sir, I a
llow no private interviews,” said Tina, with authority, – “no, I am all ready and quite dressed enough to go down.
“Well, then, little positive,” said Ellery, “be it as you will; let ‘s go together.”
“Well, I must confess,” said Tina, “I did n’t look for wedding callers out here to-night; but never mind, it ‘s a nice little mystery to see what she wants.”
They went down the staircase together, passed across the hall, and entered the little boudoir, where Tina and Harry had spent their first night together. The door of the writing cabinet stood open, and a lady all in black, in a bonnet and cloak, stood in the doorway.
As she came forward, Tina exclaimed, “O Ellery, it is she, – the lady in the closet!” and sank down pale and half fainting.
Ellery Davenport turned pale too; his cheeks, his very lips were blanched like marble; he looked utterly thunderstruck and appalled.
“Emily!” he said. “Great God!”
“Yes, Emily!” she said, coming forward slowly and with dignity. “You did not expect to meet ME here and now, Ellery Davenport!”
There was for a moment a silence that was perfectly awful. Tina looked on without power to speak, as in a dreadful dream. The ticking of the little French mantel clock seemed like a voice of doom to her.
The lady walked close up to Ellery Davenport, drew forth a letter, and spoke in that fearfully calm way that comes from the very white-heat of passion.
“Ellery,” she said, “here is your letter. You did not know me – you could not know me – if you thought, after that letter, I would accept anything from you! I live on your bounty! I would sooner work as a servant!”
“Ellery, Ellery!” said Tina, springing up and clasping his arm, “O, tell me who she is! What is she to you? Is she – is she –”
“Be quiet, my poor child,” said the woman, turning to her with an air of authority. “I have no claims; I come to make none. Such as this man is, he is your husband, not mine. You believe in him; so did I, – love him; so did I. I gave up all for him, – country, home, friends, name, reputation, – for I thought him such a man that a woman might well sacrifice her whole life to him! He is the father of my child! But fear not. The world, of course, will approve him and condemn me. They will say he did well to give up his mistress and take a wife; it ‘s the world’s morality. What woman will think the less of him, or smile the less on him, when she hears it? What woman will not feel herself too good even to touch my hand?”
“Emily,” said Ellery Davenport, bitterly, “if you thought I deserved this, you might, at least, have spared this poor child.”
“The truth is the best foundation in married life, Ellery,” she said, “and the truth you have small faculty for speaking. I do her a favor in telling it. Let her start fair from the commencement, and then there will be no more to be told. Besides,” she added, “I shall not trouble you long. There,” she said, putting down a jewel-case, – “ there are your gifts to me, – there are your letters.” Then she threw on the table a miniature set in diamonds, “There is your picture. And now God help me! Farewell.”
She turned and glided swiftly from the room.
* * * * *
Readers who remember the former part of this narrative will see at once that it was, after all, Ellery Davenport with whom, years before, Emily Rossiter had fled to France. They had resided there, and subsequently in Switzerland, and she had devoted herself to him, and to his interests, with all the single-hearted fervor of a true wife.
On her part, there was a full and conscientious belief that the choice of the individuals alone constituted a true marriage, and that the laws of human society upon this subject were an oppression which needed to be protested against.
On his part, however, the affair was a simple gratification of passion, and the principles, such as they were, were used by him as he used all principles, – simply as convenient machinery for carrying out his own purposes. Ellery Davenport spoke his own convictions when he said that there was no subject which had not its right and its wrong side, each of them capable of being unanswerably sustained. He had played with his own mind in this manner until he had entirely obliterated conscience. He could at any time dazzle and confound his own moral sense with his own reasonings; and it was sometimes amusing, but, in the long run, tedious and vexatious to him, to find that what he maintained merely for convenience and for theory should be regarded by Emily so seriously, and with such an earnest eye to logical consequences. In short, the two came, in the course of their intimacy, precisely to the spot to which many people come who are united by an indissoluble legal tie. Slowly, and through an experience of many incidents, they had come to perceive an entire and irrepressible conflict of natures between them.
Notwithstanding that Emily had taken a course diametrically opposed to the principles of her country and her fathers, she retained largely the Puritan nature. Instances have often been seen in New England of men and women who had renounced every particle of the Puritan theology, and yet retained in their fibre and composition all the moral traits of the Puritans – their uncompromising conscientiousness, their inflexible truthfulness, and their severe logic in following the convictions of their understandings. And the fact was, that while Emily had sacrificed for Ellery Davenport her position in society, – while she had exposed herself to the very coarsest misconstructions of the commonest minds, and made herself liable to be ranked by her friends in New England among abandoned outcasts, – she was really a woman standing on too high a moral plane for Ellery Davenport to consort with her in comfort. He was ambitious, intriguing, unscrupulous, and it was an annoyance to him to be obliged to give an account of himself to her. He was tired of playing the moral hero, the part that he assumed and acted with great success during the time of their early attachment. It annoyed him to be held to any consistency in principles. The very devotion to him which she felt, regarding him, as she always did, in his higher and nobler nature, vexed and annoyed him.
Of late years he had taken long vacations from her society, in excursions to England and America. When the prospect of being ambassador to England dawned upon him, he began seriously to consider the inconvenience of being connected with a woman unpresentable in society. He dared not risk introducing her into those high circles as his wife. Moreover, he knew that it was a falsehood to which he never should gain her consent; and running along in the line of his thoughts came his recollections of Tina. When he returned to America, with the fact in his mind that she would be the acknowledged daughter of a respectable old English family, all her charms and fascinations had a double power over him. He delivered himself up to them without scruple.
He wrote immediately to a confidential friend in Switzerland, enclosing money, with authority to settle upon Emily a villa near Geneva, and a suitable income. He trusted to her pride for the rest.
Never had the thought come into his head that she would return to her native country, and brave all the reproach and humiliation of such a step, rather than accept this settlement at his hands.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
TINA’S SOLUTION.
HARRY and I had gone back to our college room after the wedding. There we received an earnest letter from Miss Mehitable, begging us to come to her at once. It was brought by Sam Lawson, who told us that he had got up at three o’clock in the morning to start away with it.
“There ‘s trouble of some sort or other in that ‘ere house,” said Sam. “Last night I was in ter the Deacon’s, and we was a talkin’ over the weddin’, when Polly came in all sort o’ flustered, and said Miss Rossiter wanted to see Mis’ Badger; and your granny she went over, and did n’t come home all night. She sot up with somebody, and I ‘m certain ‘t wa’ n’t Miss Rossiter, ‘cause I see her up tol’able spry in the mornin’; but, lordy massy, somethin’ or other’s ben a usin’ on her up, for she was all wore out, and looked sort o’ limpsy, as if there wa’ n’t no starch left in her. She sent for me last night. ‘Sam,’ says she, ‘I wan
t to send a note to the boys just as quick as I can, and I don’t want to wait for the mail; can’t you carry it? ‘ ‘Lordy massy, yes,’ says I. ‘I hope there ain’t nothin’ happened,’ says I; and ye see she did n’t answer me; and puttin’ that with Mis’ Badger’s settin’ there all night, it ‘peared to me there was suthin’, I can ‘t make out quite what.”
Harry and I lost no time in going to the stage-house, and found ourselves by noon at Miss Mehitable’s door.
When we went in, we found Miss Mehitable seated in close counsel with Mr. Jonathan Rossiter. His face looked sharp, and grave, and hard; his large gray eyes had in them a fiery, excited gleam. Spread out on the table before them were files of letters, in the handwriting of which I had before had a glimpse. The brother and sister had evidently been engaged in reading them, as some of them lay open under their hands.
When we came into the room, both looked up. Miss Mehitable rose, and offered her hands to us in an eager, excited way, as if she were asking something of us. The color flashed into Mr. Rossiter’s cheeks, and he suddenly leaned forward over the papers and covered his face with his hands. It was a gesture of shame and humiliation infinitely touching to me.
“Horace,” said Miss Mehitable, “the thing we feared has come upon us. O Horace, Horace! why could we not have known it in time?”
I divined at once. My memory, like an electric chain, flashed back over sayings and incidents of years.
“The villain!” I said.
Mr. Rossiter ground his foot on the floor with a hard, impatient movement, as if he were crushing some poisonous reptile.
“It ‘s well for him that I ‘m not God,” he said through his closed teeth.
Harry looked from one to the other of us in dazed and inquiring surprise. He had known in a vague way of Emily’s disappearance, and of Miss Mehitable’s anxieties, but it never had occurred to his mind to connect the two. In fact, our whole education had been in such a wholesome and innocent state of society, that neither of us had the foundation, in our experience or habits of thought, for the conception of anything like villany. We were far enough from any comprehension of the melodramatic possibilities suggested in our days by that heaving and tumbling modern literature, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 299
