Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER III.

  MOTHER AND DAUGHTER--LOVE, HATE, AND DISOBEDIENCE--JUDGE OWEN IN ASTORM--AUNT MARTHA AND HER RECORD OF UNLOVING MARRIAGE AND WEDDEDOUTRAGE.

  It was a very pleasant picture upon which Mrs. Maria Owen, wife of JudgeOwen of the ----th District Court, was looking just at twilight of aJune evening; but something in that picture, or its surroundings, didnot seem to please her; for her comely though matronly face was drawninto an expression of displeasure, and the little mice about thewainscot, if any there were, might occasionally have heard her footpatting the floor with impatience and vexation.

  The time has been already indicated. The place was the back parlor ofJudge Owen's house, on a street not far from the Harlem River--thewindow open and the parlor opening into a neat little yard, half gardenand half conservatory, with glimpses over the unoccupied lots beyond, ofthe junction of Harlem River with the Sound, up which the Boston boatshad only a little while before disappeared on their way eastward, andwhere a few white sails of trading-schooners and pleasure-boats couldyet be seen through the gathering twilight.

  But this did not comprise all the picture upon which Mrs. Maria Owenlooked; for in the window, with the last rays of the dying daylightfalling upon face and figure, sat her daughter Emily, listlessly toyingwith the leaves of a book that she had been reading until the light grewtoo indistinct, and with a slight pout on her lip and an expression ofdissatisfaction generally distributed over her pretty face, which showedthat her own vexation and that of her mother had some kind of connectionmore or less mysterious. The face was not only pretty, as every onecould see,--but softly rounded, womanly and most loveable while yetgirlish, as only those could fully realize who had known something ofthe comparative characters of women. The eyes (in a better light) werehazel, with a depth and transparency which made the very thought of amean action in her presence apparently impossible; the cheek that showedagainst the fading light had been rounded to perfection in the softatmosphere floating about eighteen, as a peach is rounded and colored bythe genial air and sunshine of late summer: the heavy masses of hairthat had partially fallen out of their confinement and swept down to hershoulders, were scarcely darker than nut-brown; and the hand toying withthe book would have shown, even without a better glimpse of the halfrecumbent figure, that that figure was of medium height, fully roundedand delicately voluptuous. It is not to be supposed that Emily Owen knewquite all this of herself. Some others realized all her perfections,however, as will more fully and at large appear (to use theconveyancers' phraseology); and for the purposes of this narrative it isnecessary to have the lady distinctly before us.

  And now what had caused the shadow on the matronly face of Mrs. Owen,and the pout on the red lip of Emily? The old--old story: told over atsome period or other in almost every household on earth. Old eyes andyoung eyes, seeing very differently; old hearts and young hearts,beating to very different tunes, and informing the whole being with verydifferent aspirations. There was a love--there was a dislike--and therewas a certain amount of parental solicitude and determination--excellentmaterials from which to construct a serious disagreement and an eventualfamily row. Not Hecate, when she threw "eye of newt and tail of frog"into the infernal brew on the blasted heath, could have been morecertain of the final nature of her compound, than may the presidinggenius of any "well regulated family" be of the eventual result when thetwo acids of love and hate are brought chemically together in the heartof budding womanhood.

  There was a certain John Boadley Bancker, a man of a family exceedinglyrespectable, though decayed, who had himself been a speculator in landsand stocks and amassed more or less money, and who was popularlyunderstood to have been intrusted by Major General Governor Morgan withthe authority of Colonel and the permission to raise a regiment for thewar. There was a certain Frank Wallace, a young man of no particularfamily that any one had ever heard mentioned, a fellow of infinite jestand agreeableness, but very little money and no commission at all exceptto make love when necessary and extract as much comfort as possible fromthe passing hour,--who carried on a small printing business which justmade him a comfortable livelihood, in a narrow street within a stone'sthrow of the Museum. It was the bounden duty of Miss Emily Owen, seeingthat the portly Judge, her father, and the pleasant matron, her mother,had formed the very highest opinion of one of these gentlemen, to fallin love with him as quickly as possible. Of course she had contractedfor him a most unconquerable aversion! It was her bounden duty to ignorethe other, even if she did not hate and despise him--seeing that hefound no other friend in her family: could there have been a strongerguaranty for her going madly in love with the scapegrace?

  A moment after the period when we saw them sitting in silence and mutualdiscomfort, mother and daughter resumed the conversation which hadbrought about that state of feeling.

  "You will be sorry for what you have said, Emily!" said the mother.

  "So will you, for what _you_ have said!" was the reply of the daughter,with that species of iteration which displays no wit but a great deal ofearnestness.

  "You know, as well as I do, that your father has set his heart upon thismatch," continued the mother, "and you know how much he is in the habitof allowing others to oppose him."

  "Yes, I know," replied the young girl, "and I know one thing more."

  "Indeed! and what is that?" asked the mother, with the slightestperceptible shade of a sneer in her voice.

  "--That both you and my father made a serious blunder in bringing _me_into the world, if you meant to get along entirely without opposition!"

  "Hoity toity!" exclaimed the mother, quite as much surprised as nettledat this original and forcible way of stating a domestic fact. "What hasbecome of your modesty? Do you mean to insult both your father andmyself?"

  "No!" said the young girl, in a sharper tone and with her words cut offmuch shorter and more decidedly than was her habit. While those plumplittle white fingers had been toying with the leaves of the book,sitting there in the twilight, heart and hand had evidently both beenbusy, and they had produced any other effect rather than making theirowner more tractable. "No! mother, no! But I tell you, once for all,that the match you are talking of is hateful! I have tried to keep stillwhile the affair seemed at some distance, but now that you bring itcloser it fills my whole being with disgust! Do drop it if you do notwish to drive me mad or make me disobedient. Oh, mother!" and the wholemanner of the young girl seemed to change and melt in a moment, as sherose hastily from her chair, ran to that on which her mother was seated,threw herself on her knees with her arms around her parent, and buriedher face in the sheltering lap,--"oh mother! do be my friend instead ofmy enemy, in this! I cannot--indeed I cannot marry that man!"

  There are a good many things they think they cannot do--these younggirls--and they never know themselves until they are tried. Perhaps itmay not always be well to try them to their full capacity, however!

  What Mrs. Maria Owen might have answered to this appeal, under othercircumstances, is uncertain. She was, or intended to be, a good andtender mother, and would have cut off her right hand rather than do anything which could make against the ultimate happiness of her daughter;and she really, at that moment, must have caught a glimpse of the factthat the heart of the young girl was very much interested in herrefusal. But if there was any sentiment which the worthy womanentertained more deeply than another, it was the belief that Judge Owen,her husband, was the most wonderful man in the world. She thought of himwith pride when his portly figure disappeared down the steps of amorning, when he was starting to go to "Court." She thought of him witha respect amounting to reverence when she contemplated him sitting

  "At once mild and severe, On his seat of dooming,"

  (to quote good old Esaias Tegner) a local Rhadamanthus from whosejudgment there could not be any possible appeal (although, sooth to say,there _were_ a good many appeals, and quite effectual ones, from thevery unimportant decisions to which only his authority extended). Andwhen he came home at
night, after dispensing justice for the whole day(to wit--three hours on the average) she looked with almost holyreverence on his broad brow, under which there must lie such a store oflegal knowledge, and thought what a blessed and honored woman she was tohave been allowed to mate with so much wisdom and so much dignity.

  Does this sound like sneering at the wife's pride and devotion? If so,let there be a word to qualify it. God knows that there are not too manywomen who respect and look up to their husbands, and that the sanctityand the happiness of the domestic circle would be much seldomer invadedif there was more of this feeling. Only those poor women, on an average,make such terrible mistakes as to the instances that should demand orallow the full indulgence of this pride; and miserable humbugs arelooked up to and worshipped so much of the time, while those who coulddeserve and should command that feeling are treated with indifference oreven despised by inferior minds to which they have been mated! They donot "manage these things" any "better in France," probably; but theymanage them ill enough in republican America at about this period, andthe result is not a pleasant or even a moral one!

  The check to any possible motherly concession to the weakness of Emily,which Mrs. Owen experienced on this occasion, arose from the coming ofthe ponderous man of law, whose heavy footstep and loud cough were atthat moment heard in the hall. Had the daughter been less absorbed thanshe was in her own feelings, she too might have heard those tokens ofthe Judge's presence; and had she been as wise as her mother, anyfurther discussion of the subject would have been stopped and the comingcatastrophe averted.

  Either she did not observe or she was too much absorbed to heed whoheard her, for at the very moment when Judge Owen, a large-framed,portly, broad-browed, iron-gray man of fifty, entered the back parlorand stood full in the presence of his wife and daughter, the latter waslooking up to her mother with clasped hands and half sobbing out arepetition of her former declaration: "I cannot--indeed I cannot marrythat man!"

  "Hush! Emily, hush!--no more of this!" said the mother, half in hopethat her husband might not have caught the words; but she was widelymistaken. The ears so much in the habit of listening to the least quaverin the tone of a witness's voice, were not to be trifled with in thepresent instance.

  "Hey? What is this?" asked the Judge, in a tone that admitted of notrifling in the answer.

  "Nothing--that is--Emily was talking of--" began the abashed wife, witha stammer.

  "Of--_I_ know," said the father, who had heard quite enough of hisdaughter's words to know without asking, and who was more behind thecurtain than his wife, in some other respects. "I heard what thisschool-girl muttered. She _cannot_ marry the man whom I intend she_shall_ marry, and she has taken this opportunity, when she supposed Iwas absent, to acquaint you with her determination."

  "Not determination," said the mother, willing to smooth affairs as muchas possible--"say wish."

  "No, mother, determination!" said the young girl, springing to her feetwith an energy which was really not an ordinary part of hernature,--under the impression that now, if ever, was the time to giveutterance to her true sentiments. "Father used the rightword--determination! I cannot marry Boad Bancker, and I won't! There youhave it!"

  There was nothing classic or even romantic in the young lady's mode ofexpression, or the nickname which she bestowed upon her would-be lover;but they were at least natural, which is something gained in this worldof pretences and deceptions.

  "You won't? and why, I should like to know?" broke in the Judge, for themoment surprised out of the violence that might have resulted, by thevery audacity of the declaration.

  "Because he is hateful, and ugly, and I do not like him, and--" answeredMiss Emily, with a charming return to the system of the school-girlwhich she had just been called by her father.

  "Silence!" thundered Judge Owen, who had recovered from the blow andthought that he had a refractory juryman or an insolent attorney to putdown. "Silence! I have had enough of this. John Boadley Bancker is theman I have selected for your husband. He belongs to an excellent family,has wealth enough to keep a wife in comfort and even luxury, and haslately proved himself a true patriot by springing up at the call of thePresident--" (Judge Owen had by this time forgotten his indignation, andfancied himself for the moment addressing an immense assemblage at UnionSquare or in the Park)--"by springing up at the call of the President,girding on his--"

  "--Shoulder-straps!" put in Miss Emily, who had recovered from heragitation and began to be mischievous the moment her father began to bedidactic and ponderous. Whether he heard the interpolation or not, issomewhat doubtful.

  "--Girding on his sword," the Judge went on, "and marching--"

  "--Up and down Broadway!" put in the young girl, in a secondparenthesis, not more audible than the other.

  "That is, he has not marched, but is going to march to the seat of war,to fight for--"

  "--The niggers!" again and finally interpolated the incorrigible, whohad somehow managed to get a peep behind the curtain of national affairsand to see towards what the great struggle seemed tending.

  "--For the defence of the country," the Judge concluded his peroration.Then he went on with the pith of his remark, to the effect that the girlwho could be mad enough and disobedient enough to refuse the hand ofsuch a man as _that_, might go to--mumble--mumble--mumble--for she couldnever more be daughter of his!

  By this time Emily had recovered her equanimity, and almost her spirits,and her mother shared in the feeling of relief, for the explosion hadnot been half so violent as expected. But there are pauses in storms,the moment before the coming of the most destructive blasts of all, andthe temper of Judge Owen was gusty. Miss Emily fancied that the wholeought to be said while the subject was under discussion, and, to use avulgarism, she "put her foot in it."

  "Boad Bancker," she said (she had the common weakness of supposing thatthe use of a nickname belittled the person spoken of)--"Boad Bancker maybe a soldier, but nobody knows it. I know he is a fool; and he is amiserable humbug, pretending to be a young man, when he is as old as_you_, Pa!"

  If Judge Owen had a weakness unworthy one of the shining lights of thebench, it lay in thinking that his fifty years were only thirty, andthat he was yet a young man. Other men than the Judge have labored underthe same delusion, and found sick rooms and decrepitude necessary todisabuse them. Probably nothing in his daughter's power to utter wouldhave made him so angry. He had only muttered before--this time hethundered.

  "Old! You are talking about age, are you, you shameless, impertinenthussy--insulting _me_ as well as my friends, are you! I know you, and byG--" (he was a dignitary of the legal profession, and he was speaking inthe presence of his wife and daughter; but the truth must berecorded)--"I know what you are driving at, and I'll break you of yourfancy or I'll break your stubborn neck! You don't like Bancker, thehusband _I_ pick out for you, because he is not a beardless boy, and youchoose to consider him _old_. And you think I will permit you toencourage that miserable beggar, Frank Wallace, because he is _young_!Let me see one more sign of familiarity between him and yourself, and Iwill kick him out of the house, as I would a dog--and you may go afterhim! Do you hear me? Now look out!" And the Judge rang the bell for theservant, scolded her for not lighting the gas that no one had beforewished lighted, and stormed out of the room, leaving his wife to followhim, and his daughter to drop again into her chair and muse over thepleasant prospect for after-life lying so broadly before her.

  But if the young girl had passed through an agitating and unpleasantscene, and if the prospects for her future life had been sensiblynarrowed within the preceding half hour, the depths of her being had notbeen stirred as they were to be before she slept. Perhaps she hadoccupied the position of depression into which she had fallen, in thechair by the window, with her head upon her hand, for five minutes--abitter sea of thought surging through her mind, and her flash ofresolution so giving way before her father's terrible anger, that shefelt almost ready to sacrifice her happiness, life, every t
hing, to obeyhim and secure peace--when a hand was laid gently upon her shoulder, andthe quiet face of Aunt Martha, framed in its widow's cap, peered intoher own.

  "Oh, Aunt, I am so glad you have come down! I was so lonely and sowretched!" broke out Emily, the moment she felt the touch and saw theface.

  "I have been down some time, sitting in the front parlor by the window,and trying to make music out of that very-badly-cracked hand-organ thatwas playing on the other side of the way," said the widow, taking herseat by the young girl's side. Perhaps five-and-forty years had passedover the widowed younger sister of Judge Owen, who made her home in aquiet upper chamber of his house. But they had not much thinned her talland magnificent form, or entirely destroyed, though they had completely_subdued_, the quiet beauty of her face, which must once have beenstrikingly like that of her niece. She had been in youth the underlingof her family, as her elder brother had been the tyrant; and it wasperhaps a fitting sequel, that at this period of her life she shouldhave become, to some small extent, a pensioner on his bounty, as well asa peacemaker in his household.

  "You have been in the front parlor some time?" echoed her niece,surprised. "Then you must have heard--"

  "I heard quite enough," was the answer, as Aunt Martha possessedherself of both the young girl's hands, and finally drew down thenut-brown head so that it rested upon her bosom. "I heard a few of yourwords--enough to tell me what are your feelings toward the man whom theywish to make your husband. I heard your father's fierce resolution, andI made my own."

  "And what was that?" asked the young girl, rising from her recumbentposition, and showing something of the surprise she felt at hearing hergentle and pliant aunt speak of forming resolutions. She had cause to bemore surprised in a moment.

  "What was my resolution?" echoed Aunt Martha. "A strange one, perhaps,but one quite as immovable as my big brother's!"

  "Yes, yes--tell me, Aunt, _dear_ Aunt!" pleaded Emily, feeling thatthere was some shadow of hope in such words from such a source.

  "My resolution?" said the placid woman, placid now no longer, butstarting to her feet, speaking with rapid energy, and seeming, for themoment, half a foot taller than usual--"My resolution is that you shallnever marry the man whom I have heard you say that you loathe anddetest--not if sacrificing myself can save you--not if I can prevent thewrong, by even taking his life!"

  "Aunt! Aunt I what are you saying!" broke out the young girl, surprised,and even horrified. "Do not say so, Aunt, for heaven's sake! I _do_dislike Col. Bancker; I cannot marry him without misery; but his life!You do not know what words you use."

  "Do I not?" said the aunt, and there was a bitterness in her tone whichher niece had never before heard there, and which perhaps no one elsehad heard there for many a long year. "Do I not? His life--pshaw! whatis his life, or the life of any man, compared to some other lives thatare sacrificed without punishment or even the knowledge of any crimebeing committed!"

  "Aunt, dear Aunt, it is for me that you are saying this, and you knowthat I thank you; but you are excited, you are not yourself--"

  "I _am_ myself--perhaps for the first time in years!" said the widow,the tones of her voice still betraying the same bitterness. "In the lasthalf hour I have lived over again half a life-time of misery. Close thatdoor!" And she pointed to the door leading into the front parlor, with agesture of command that shamed her brother's most forcible attempt atdignity. Her niece closed the door, and stepped back to her chair. Theaunt retained her standing position, and a part of the time walked thefloor of the little back parlor with strides that the shorter limbs ofEmily could not have compassed, as she went on:

  "I had you close that door because I did not wish to speak to the wholehouse: though the whole house might hear me without disadvantage tothemselves. You do not know why I am so much excited: I will tell you.That man--your father and my brother--did an unwise thing in recallingthe past by that brutal speech and that rough oath; but he did recallit, and he must take the consequences. I have said that you should notmarry that man whom you detest, and you shall not--no matter how Iprevent it! But do not mistake me, Emily! I am not arranging that youshall marry another man, and one whom your parents dislike. That is yourbusiness, not mine."

  "I will not marry against my parents' will or against yours," saidEmily, as her aunt paused for a moment--"only prevent my marrying thisman whom I dislike, without doing any crime!"

  "Hush, and listen to _me_!" said the aunt, almost sternly. "Do you thinkthat it is of yourself alone that I am speaking? No--I am thinking andspeaking more of myself than of you. Do you guess the riddle? No, youcannot. Emily, _I have myself once married a man whom I loathed, and Iknow what it means!_"

  "You, Aunt? good heavens!" was the pitying reply of the young girl,while the usually placid widow, occasionally with both hands to her headas if in severe suffering, still walked the room as she spoke.

  "You begin to understand me, and you begin to perceive how that manthreatening to marry _you_ to a man you hate, has opened again thewounds of my own sacrifice--a sacrifice _he_ made nearly twenty yearsago--heaven forgive him! Richard West was a gambler and a libertine.There was an indefinable something which told me as much, very soonafter I met him. He was tall and fine-looking, and he had politicalinfluence. My brother had a motive for courting him. He carried out thatobject by introducing him to _me_. I can scarcely say that I lovedelsewhere, though I certainly had a preference. From the first I had adislike to West, which soon grew into absolute aversion. Meanwhile I wasallowing myself to be more and more in his company, and my whole family,with my big brother at their head, were importuning me to marry him. Iwas a little reckless and did not know myself; and I think it was moreto get clear of his importunities and theirs, than for any otherpurpose, that I at last permitted myself to be engaged to him. I hatedto be teased--I had no other settled hope in the world--and so Ipromised to marry a man whom I despised. Are you listening?"

  "Yes, dear Aunt, listening with my whole heart as well as my ears!" saidthe young girl, creeping up to her as she made a momentary pause, andtaking one of her aunt's hands in both of her own. Strange to say, theaunt did not permit her hand to be retained. She drew it away as if forthe moment she had no care for human sympathy,--and went on with heragitated walk and her narration.

  "I had a shuddering horror of the marriage, very soon after myengagement was formed, though I knew nothing, except from my ownperception, against the character of West. That feeling grew as themarriage day approached, and I found that instead of schooling myself tomeet with calmness what was now inevitable, every day increased anaversion which was both mental and physical. I commenced to make mywedding clothes. I began to think that I would rather be making myshroud. And yet I worked on, stolidly, and bore the caresses of the manwho was so soon to be my husband. He grew warmer and warmer in hismanifestations as the marriage day approached. I suppose he thought hewas flattering and pleasing me! God help him, if he did! I was handsome,I know it--and the sensualist began to gloat over the charms he wouldso soon have in possession. I began to think how soon the slimy wormswould crawl over me! At length all this culminated. West was fool enoughto take me one night to the Old Park Theatre, where Ellen Tree was thenplaying. She played _Julia_, in "The Hunchback," and I heard her makethat agonized appeal to _Master Walter_ and allude to the expectedhorrors of an unloving marriage-bed. My eyes were opened. I saw it all,now, as I had never done before. It was not alone my existence and mymentality that I must sacrifice, but my _body_. That too was to be givenup! To what horrible profanation and outrage was I to be subjected! Myhead grew dizzy and my eyes blind. I shared in the torments of_Julia_--I was _Julia_ herself. I was on the brink of a precipice, withhell beneath me and devils goading me on to the leap. I went homestunned and half crazed. West spoke to me, but I believe that I neveranswered him a word. If I could have killed him suddenly and withoutreflection, I should have done it.

  "The next day I implored my brother to assist me in breaking the hatefulengagement.
He refused, insultingly, and threatened me with a ruinedreputation and the scorn of every one who knew me, if, after being sonotoriously engaged to West, and in his private society so much, themarriage should now be broken off. I had no one else to whom to appeal,and appeal to my _bridegroom_ would have been worse than useless. Icould not combat every thing and everybody. My God! my God!--that Ishould have given up!--but I did. I went on finishing mywedding-clothes, with only a week between me and their use. Oh how Ishuddered as my needle ran over the soft white laces and ruffles! Theywere to deck my dainty limbs for _outrage_--such outrage as I did notthen know--and such as you can only dream. I only saw before me a vaguehorror, but that horror was enough to set me on the dizzy verge ofmadness, of suicide or of _murder_.

  "A week went by, and in the presence of a minister of God I swore to alie. Richard West swore to another, for he was no more capable of lovethan of honor. Then followed what, woman though you already are, Icannot tell you of--prostitution, outrage, that left me a poordishonored _thing_--my womanhood a curse, and the creeping horror ofphysical repugnance to a loathsome touch my bridal portion! God forgivethose who forced me to this! God forgive them!--I do not know that _I_ever can! Ten years afterwards I saw one happy day--the first since myengagement. It was when Richard West was shot down in a gambling-houseby one of his victims, and brought home dead!

  "Now, Emily, you know, better than any other living, the heart of thewoman who is supposed to be so calm and placid! Now you can have someidea what I have suffered to-night, when I saw the same pit opening for_you_? Do you understand me? Have I said enough?"

  "Enough, dear, dear Aunt, but not one word too much! I understand you, Iknow you, now! Oh, save me, save me at any sacrifice from thismarriage!" And the young girl was sobbing in the arms of Aunt Martha,who now that her story was told grew her gentle self again, and smootheddown the brown hair with a promise of aid and sympathy which was notlikely to be forfeited.