95Thus compelled, Miss Ruthven stopped and submitted gracefully to an introduction, which Linwood was in fact at the moment urging, and she peremptorily refusing.
“Now, here we are, just at our own door,” said Miss Charlotte Ruthven to Eliot, “and you must positively come in and take tea with us.” Eliot still hesitated.
“Why, in the name of wonder, should you not?” said Linwood, who appeared just coming to himself.
“You must come with us,” said Miss Ruthven, for the first time speaking, “and let me show your friend how very magnanimous I can be.”
“Indeed, you must not refuse us,” urged Miss Charlotte.
“I cannot,” replied Eliot, gallantly, “though it is not very flattering to begin an acquaintance with testing the magnanimity of your sister.”
Helen Ruthven bowed, smiled, and coloured; and at the first opportunity said to Linwood, “your friend is certainly the most civilized of all the eastern savages I have yet seen, and, as your friend, I will try to tolerate him.” She soon, however, seemed to forget his presence, and to forget every thing else, in an absorbing and half-whispered conversation with Linwood, interrupted only by singing snatches of sentimental songs, accompanying herself on the piano, and giving them the expressive application that eloquent eyes can give. In the meanwhile Eliot was left to Miss Charlotte, a commonplace, frank, and good-humoured person, particularly well pleased at being relieved from the rôle she had lately played, a cipher in a trio.
Mr. and Mrs. Ruthven made their appearance with the tea-service. Mr. Ruthven, though verging towards sixty, was still in the unimpaired vigour of manhood, and was marked by the general characteristics, physical and moral, of a Virginian: the lofty stature, strong and well-built frame, the open 96brow, and expression of nobleness and kindness of disposition, and a certain something, not vanity, nor pride, nor in the least approaching to superciliousness, but a certain happy sense of the superiority, not of the individual, but of the great mass of which he is a component part.
His wife, unhappily, was not of this noble stock. She was of French descent, and a native of one of our cities. At sixteen, with but a modicum of beauty, and coquetry enough for half her sex, she succeeded, Mr. Ruthven being then a widower, in making him commit the folly of marrying her, after a six weeks’ acquaintance. She was still in the prime of life, and as impatient as a caged bird of her country seclusion, or, as she called it, imprisonment, where her daughters were losing every opportunity of achieving what she considered the chief end of a woman’s life.
Aware of her eldest daughter’s propensity to convert acquaintances into lovers, and looking down upon all rebels as most unprofitable suiters, she had sedulously guarded against any intercourse with the officers at the Point.
Of late, she had begun to despair of a favourable change in their position; and Miss Ruthven having accidentally renewed an old acquaintance with Herbert Linwood, her mother encouraged his visits from that admirable policy of maternal manœuvrers, which wisely keeps a pis-aller in reserve. Helen Ruthven was one of those persons, most uncomfortable in domestic life, who profess always to require an object (which means something out of a woman’s natural, safe, and quiet orbit) on which to exhaust their engrossing and exacting desires. Mr. Ruthven felt there was a very sudden change in his domestic atmosphere, and though it was as incomprehensible to him as a change in the weather, he enjoyed it without asking or caring for an explanation. Always hospitably inclined, he was charmed with Linwood’s good-fellowship; and while he discussed a favourite dish, obtained 97with infinite trouble, or drained a bottle of Madeira with him, he was as unobservant of his wife’s tactics and his daughters’ coquetries as the eagle is of the modus operandi of the mole. And all the while, and in his presence, Helen was lavishing her flatteries with infinite finesse and grace. Her words, glances, tones of voice even, might have turned a steadier head than Linwood’s. Her father, good, confiding man, was not suspicious, but vexed when she called his companion away, just, as he said, “as they were beginning to enjoy themselves,” to scramble over frozen ground or look at a wintry prospect! or to play over, for the fortieth time, a trumpery song. Helen, however, would throw her arms around her father’s neck, kiss him into good-humour, and carry her point; that is, secure the undivided attentions of Herbert Linwood. Matters were at this point, after a fortnight’s intercourse, when Eliot entered upon the scene; and, though his friend Miss Charlotte kept up an even flow of talk, before the evening was over he had taken some very accurate observations.
When they took their leave, and twice after they had shut the outer door, Helen called Linwood back for some last word that seemed to mean nothing, and yet clearly meant that her heart went with him: and then
“So fondly she bade him adieu,
It seemed that she bade him return.”
The young men had a long, dark, and at first rather an unsocial walk. Both were thinking of the same subject, and both were embarrassed by it. Linwood, after whipping his boots for ten minutes, said, “Hang it, Eliot, we may as well speak out; I suppose you think it deused queer that I said nothing to you of my visits to the Ruthvens?”
“Why, yes, Linwood—to speak out frankly, I do.”
98“Well, it is, I confess it. At first my silence was accidental—no, that is not plummet and line truth; for from the first I had a sort of a fear—no, not fear, but a sheepish feeling, that you might think the pleasure I took in visiting the Ruthvens quite inconsistent with the misery I had seemed to feel, and, by Heavens, did feel, to my heart’s core, about that affair at Westbrook.”
“No, Linwood—whatever else I may doubt, I never shall doubt your sincerity.”
“But my constancy you do?” Eliot made no reply, and Linwood proceeded: “Upon my soul, I have not the slightest idea of falling in love with either of these girls, but I find it exceedingly pleasant to go there. To tell the truth, Eliot, I am wretched without the society of womankind; Adam was a good sensible fellow not to find even Paradise tolerable without them. I knew the Ruthvens in New-York: I believe they like me the better, apostate as they consider me, for belonging to a tory family; and looking upon me, as they must, as a diseased branch from a sound root, they certainly are very kind to me, especially the old gentleman—a fine old fellow, is he not?”
“Yes—I liked him particularly.”
“And madame is piquant and agreeable, and very polite to me; and the girls, of course, are pleased to have their hermitage enlivened by an old acquaintance.”
Linwood’s slender artifice in saying “the girls,” when it was apparent that Miss Ruthven was the magnet, operated like the subtlety of a child, betraying what he would fain conceal. Without appearing to perceive the truth, Eliot said, “Miss Ruthven seems to restrict her hospitality to old acquaintance. It was manifest that she did not voluntarily extend it to me.”
“No, she did not. Helen Ruthven’s heart is in her hand, and she makes no secret of her antipathy to a rebel—per se a 99rebel; however, her likes and dislikes are both harmless—she is only the more attractive for them.”
Herbert had not been the first to mention Helen Ruthven; he seemed now well enough pleased to dwell upon the subject. “How did you like her singing, Eliot?” he asked.
“Why, pretty well; she sings with expression.”
“Does she not? infinite!—and then what an accompaniment are those brilliant eyes of hers.”
“With their speechless messages, Linwood?” Linwood merely hemmed in reply, and Eliot added, “Do you like the expression of her mouth?”
“No, not entirely—there is a little spice of the devil about her mouth; but when you are well acquainted with her you don’t perceive it.”
“If you are undergoing a blinding process,” thought Eliot. When the friends arrived at their quarters, and separated for the night, Linwood asked and Eliot gave a promise to repeat his visit the next evening to the glen.
101CHAPTER X.
“He is a good man.
�
��Have you heard any imputation to the contrary!”
From this period Linwood was every day at the glen, and Eliot as often as his very strict performance of his duties permitted. He was charmed with the warm-hearted hospitality of Mr. Ruthven, and not quite insensible to the evident partiality of Miss Charlotte. She did not pass the vestibule of his heart to the holy of holies, but in the vestibule (of even the best of hearts) vanity is apt to lurk. If Eliot therefore was not insensible to the favour of Miss Charlotte, an every-day character, Linwood could not be expected to resist the dazzling influence of her potent sister. A more wary youth might have been scorched in the focus of her charms. Helen Ruthven was some three or four years older than Linwood,—a great advantage when the subject to be practised on combines simplicity and credulity with inexperience. Without being beautiful, by the help of grace and versatility, and artful adaptation of the aids and artifices of the toilet, Miss Ruthven produced the effect of beauty. Never was there a more skilful manager of the blandishments of her sex. She knew how to infuse into a glance “thoughts that breathe,”—how to play off those flatteries that create an atmosphere of perfume and beauty,—how to make her presence felt as the soul of life, and life in her absence a dreary day of nothingness. She had little true sensibility or generosity (they go together); but selecting 102a single object on which to lavish her feeling, like a shallow stream compressed into a narrow channel, it made great show and noise. Eliot stood on disenchanted ground; and, while looking on the real shape, was compelled to see his credulous and impulsive friend becoming from day to day more and more inthralled by the false semblance. “Is man’s heart,” he asked himself, “a mere surface, over which one shadow chaseth another?” No. But men’s hearts have different depths. In some, like Eliot Lee’s (who was destined to love once and for ever), love strikes a deep and ineradicable root; interweaves itself with the very fibres of life, and becomes a portion of the undying soul.
In other circumstances Eliot would have obeyed his impulses, and endeavoured to dissolve the spell for his friend; but he was deterred by the consciousness of disappointment that his sister was so soon superseded, and by his secret wish that Linwood should remain free till a more auspicious day should rectify all mischances. Happily, Providence sometimes interposes to do that for us which we neglect to do for ourselves.
As has been said, Linwood devoted every leisure hour to Helen Ruthven. Sometimes accompanied by Charlotte and Eliot, but oftener without them, they visited the almost unattainable heights, the springs and waterfalls, in the neighbourhood of West Point, now so well known to summer travellers that we have no apology for lingering to describe them. They scaled the coal-black summits of the “Devil’s Peak;” went as far heavenward as the highest height of the “Crow’s Nest;” visited “Bull-Hill, Butter-Hill, and Break-neck,”—places that must have been named long before our day of classic, heathenish, picturesque, and most ambitious christening of this new world.
Helen Ruthven did not affect this scrambling “through bush, through brier,” through streamlet, snow, and mud, 103from a pure love of nature. Oh, no, simple reader! but because at her home in the glen there was but one parlour—there, from morning till bedtime, sat her father—there, of course, must sit her mother; and Miss Ruthven’s charms, like those of other conjurers, depended for their success on being exercised within a magic circle, within which no observer might come. She seemed to live and breathe alone for Herbert Linwood. A hundred times he was on the point of offering the devotion of his life to her, when the image of his long-loved Bessie Lee rose before him, and, like the timely intervention of the divinities of the ancient creed, saved him from impending danger. This could not last much longer. On each successive occasion the image was less vivid, and must soon cease to be effective.
Spring was advancing, and active military operations were about to commence. A British sloop-of-war had come up the river, and lay at anchor in Haverstraw Bay. Simultaneously with the appearance of this vessel there was a manifest change in the spirits of the family at the glen—a fall in their mercury. Though they were still kind, their reception of our friends ceased to be cordial, and they were no longer urged, or even asked, to repeat their visits. Charlotte, who, like her father, was warm and true-hearted, ventured to intimate that this change of manner did not originate in any diminution of friendliness; but, save this, there was no approach to an explanation; and Eliot ceased to pay visits that, it was obvious, were no longer acceptable. The mystery, as he thought, was explained, when they incidentally learned that Captain Ruthven, the only son of their friend, was an officer on board the vessel anchored in Haverstraw Bay. This solution did not satisfy Linwood. “How, in Heaven’s name,” he asked, “should that affect their intercourse with us? It might, to be sure, agitate them; but, upon my word, I don’t believe they even know it;” and, in the simplicity of 104his heart, he forthwith set off to give them information of the fact. Mr. Ruthven told him, frankly and at once, that he was already aware of it,—and Helen scrawled on a music-book which lay before them, “Do you remember Hamlet? ‘ten thousand brothers!’” What she exactly meant was not plain; but he guessed her intimation to be, that ten thousand brothers and their love were not to be weighed against him. Notwithstanding this kind intimation, he saw her thenceforth unfrequently. If he called, she was not at home; if she made an appointment with him, she sent him some plausible excuse for not keeping it; and if they met, she was silent and abstracted, and no longer kept up a show of the passion that a few weeks before had inspired her words, looks, and movements. Herbert was not destined to be one of love’s few martyrs; and he was fast reverting to a sound state, only retarded by the mystery in which the affair was still involved. Since the beginning of his intercourse with the family, his Sunday evenings had been invariably spent at the glen; and now he received a note from Miss Ruthven (not, as had been her wont, crossed and double-crossed), containing two lines, saying her father was ill, and as she was obliged to attend him, she regretted to beg Mr. Linwood to omit his usual Sunday evening visit! Linwood had a lurking suspicion—he was just beginning to suspect—that this was a mere pretext; and he resolved to go to the glen, ostensibly to inquire after Mr. Ruthven, but really to satisfy his doubts. It was early in the evening when he reached there. The cheerful light that usually shot forth its welcome from the parlour window was gone—all was darkness. “I was a rascal to distrust her!” thought Linwood, and he hastened on, fearing good Mr. Ruthven was extremely ill. As he approached the house he perceived that, for the first time, the window-shutters were closed, and that a bright light gleamed through their crevices. He put his hand on the latch of the door to open it, as 105was his custom, without rapping; but no longer, as if instinct with the hospitality of the house, did it yield to his touch. It was bolted! He hesitated for a moment whether to knock for admittance, and endeavour to satisfy his curiosity, or to return as wise as he came. His delicacy decided on the latter course; and he was turning away, when a sudden gust of wind blew open one of the rickety blinds, and instinctively he looked through the window, and for a moment was riveted by the scene disclosed within. Mr. Ruthven sat at a table on which were bottles of wine, olives, oranges, and other most rare luxuries. Beside him sat a young man—his younger self. Linwood did not need a second glance to assure him this was Captain Ruthven. On a stool at her brother’s feet sat Charlotte, her arm lovingly resting on his knee. Mrs. Ruthven was at the other extremity of the table, examining, with enraptured eye, caps, feathers, and flowers, which, as appeared from the boxes and cords beside her, had just been opened.
But the parties that fixed Linwood’s attention were Helen Ruthven and a very handsome young man, who was leaning over her chair while she was playing on the piano, and bestowing on him those wondrous glances that Linwood had verily believed never met an eye but his! What a sudden disenchantment was that! Linwood’s blood rushed to his head. He stood as if he were transfixed, till a sudden movement within recalling him to himself, he sprang from the
steps and retraced his way up the hill-side:—the spell that had well-nigh bound him to Helen Ruthven was broken for ever. No man likes to be duped,—no man likes to feel how much his own vanity has had to do with preparing the trap that insnared him. Linwood, after revolving the past, after looking back upon the lures and deceptions that had been practised upon him, after comparing his passion for Helen Ruthven with his sentiments for Bessie Lee, came to the consoling conclusion that he had never loved Miss Ruthven. He was 106right—and that night, for the first time in many weeks, he fell asleep thinking of Bessie Lee.
On the following morning Linwood confided to Eliot the denœument of his little romance. Eliot was rejoiced that his friend’s illusion should be dispelled in any mode. After some discussion of the matter, they came to the natural conclusion that a clandestine intercourse had been for some time maintained by the family at the glen with the strangers on board the sloop-of-war, and that there were reasons for shaking Linwood and Eliot off more serious than Linwood’s flirtation having been superseded by a fresher and more exciting one.
In the course of the morning Eliot, in returning from a ride, at a sudden turn in the road came upon General Washington and Mr. Ruthven, who had just met. Eliot was making his passing salutation when General Washington said, “Stop a moment, Mr. Lee, we will ride in together.” While Eliot paused, he heard Mr. Ruthven say, “You will not disappoint me, general,—Wednesday evening, and a quiet hour—not with hat and whip in hand, but time enough to drink a fair bottle of ‘Helicon,’ as poor Randolph used to call it—there are but two left, and we shall ne’er look upon its like again. Wednesday evening—remember.” General Washington assented, and the parties were separating, when Mr. Ruthven, in his cordial manner, stretched out his hand to Eliot, saying, “My dear fellow, I should ask you too; but the general and I are old friends, and I want a little talk with him, by ourselves, of old times. Besides, no man, minus forty, must have a drop of my ‘Helicon;’ but come down soon and see the girls,—they are Helicon enough for you young fellows, hey?”
The Linwoods Page 10