It will be found that good young ladies, while of course they have all the innocence of the dove, do display upon emergencies a considerable share of the wisdom of the serpent. And on this same mother wit and wisdom, Rose called internally, when that day, about eleven o’clock, she was summoned to the library, to give Harry his audience.
Truth to say, she was in a state of excited womanhood vastly becoming to her general appearance, and entered the library with flushed cheeks and head erect, like one prepared to stand for herself and for her sex.
Harry, however, wore a mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily nothings with which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth the path for a difficult confession.
She sat very quietly, with her hands before her, while Harry walked tumultuously up and down the room.
“Miss Ferguson,” he said at last, abruptly, “I know you are thinking ill of me.”
Miss Ferguson did not reply.
“I had hoped,” he said, “that there had been a little something more than mere acquaintance between us. I had hoped you looked upon me as a friend.”
“I did, Mr. Endicott,” said Rose.
“And you do not now?”
“I cannot say that,” she said, after a pause; “but, Mr. Endicott, if we are friends, you must give me the liberty to speak plainly.”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” he said impetuously; “that is just what I wish.”
“Allow me to ask, then, if you are an early friend and family connection of Mrs. John Seymour?”
“I was an early friend, and am somewhat of a family connection.”
“That is, I understand there has been a ground in your past history for you to be on a footing of a certain family intimacy with Mrs. Seymour; in that case, Mr. Endicott, I think you ought to have considered yourself the guardian of her honor and reputation, and not allowed her to be compromised on your account.”
The blood flushed into Harry’s face; and he stood abashed and silent.
Rose went on, —
“I was shocked, I was astonished, last night, because I could not help overhearing the most disagreeable, the most painful remarks on you and her, — remarks most unjust, I am quite sure, but for which I fear you have given too much reason!”
“Miss Ferguson,” said Harry, stopping as he walked up and down, “I confess I have been wrong and done wrong; but, if you knew all, you might see how I have been led into it. That woman has been the evil fate of my life. Years ago, when we were both young, I loved her as honestly as man could love a woman; and she professed to love me in return. But I was poor; and she would not marry me. She sent me off, yet she would not let me forget her. She would always write to me just enough to keep up hope and interest; and she knew for years that all my object in striving for fortune was to win her. At last, when a lucky stroke made me suddenly rich, and I came home to seek her, I found her married, — married, as she owns, without love, — married for wealth and ambition. I don’t justify myself, — I don’t pretend to; but when she met me with her old smiles and her old charms, and told me she loved me still, it roused the very devil in me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to humble her, and make her suffer all she had made me; and I didn’t care what came of it.”
Harry spoke, trembling with emotion; and Rose felt almost terrified with the storm she had raised.
“O Mr. Endicott!” she said, “was this worthy of you? was there nothing better, higher, more manly than this poor revenge? You men are stronger than we: you have the world in your hands; you have a thousand resources where we have only one. And you ought to be stronger and nobler according to your advantages; you ought to rise superior to the temptations that beset a poor, weak, ill-educated woman, whom everybody has been flattering from her cradle, and whom you, I dare say, have helped to flatter, turning her head with compliments, like all the rest of them. Come, now, is not there something in that?”
“Well, I suppose,” said Harry, “that when Lillie and I were girl and boy together, I did flatter her, sincerely that is. Her beauty made a fool of me; and I helped make a fool of her.”
“And I dare say,” said Rose, “you told her that all she was made for was to be charming, and encouraged her to live the life of a butterfly or canary-bird. Did you ever try to strengthen her principles, to educate her mind, to make her strong? On the contrary, haven’t you been bowing down and adoring her for being weak? It seems to me that Lillie is exactly the kind of woman that you men educate, by the way you look on women, and the way you treat them.”
Harry sat in silence, ruminating.
“Now,” said Rose, “it seems to me it’s the most cowardly and unmanly thing in the world for men, with every advantage in their hands, with all the strength that their kind of education gives them, with all their opportunities, — a thousand to our one, — to hunt down these poor little silly women, whom society keeps stunted and dwarfed for their special amusement.”
“Miss Ferguson, you are very severe,” said Harry, his face flushing.
“Well,” said Rose, “you have this advantage, Mr. Endicott: you know, if I am, the world will not be. Everybody will take your part; everybody will smile on you, and condemn her. That is generous, is it not? I think, after all, Noah Claypole isn’t so very uncommon a picture of the way that your lordly sex turn round and cast all the blame on ours. You will never make me believe in a protracted flirtation between a gentleman and lady, where at least half the blame does not lie on his lordship’s side. I always said that a woman had no need to have offers made her by a man she could not love, if she conducted herself properly; and I think the same is true in regard to men. But then, as I said before, you have the world on your side; nine persons out of ten see no possible harm in a man’s taking every advantage of a woman, if she will let him.”
“But I care more for the opinion of the tenth person than of the nine,” said Harry; “I care more for what you think than any of them. Your words are severe; but I think they are just.”
“O Mr. Endicott!” said Rose, “live for something higher than for what I think, — than for what any one thinks. Think how many glorious chances there are for a noble career for a young man with your fortune, with your leisure, with your influence! is it for you to waste life in this unworthy way? If I had your chances, I would try to do something worth doing.”
Rose’s face kindled with enthusiasm; and Harry looked at her with admiration.
“Tell me what I ought to do!” he said.
“I cannot tell you,” said Rose; “but where there is a will there is a way: and, if you have the will, you will find the way. But, first, you must try and repair the mischief you have done to Lillie. By your own account of the matter, you have been encouraging and keeping up a sort of silly, romantic excitement in her. It is worse than silly; it is sinful. It is trifling with her best interests in this life and the life to come. And I think you must know that, if you had treated her like an honest, plain-spoken brother or cousin, without any trumpery of gallantry or sentiment, things would have never got to be as they are. You could have prevented all this; and you can put an end to it now.”
“Honestly, I will try,” said Harry. “I will begin, by confessing my faults like a good boy, and take the blame on myself where it belongs, and try to make Lillie see things like a good girl. But she is in bad surroundings; and, if I were her husband, I wouldn’t let her stay there another day. There are no morals in that circle; it’s all a perfect crush of decaying garbage.”
“I think,” said Rose, “that, if this thing goes no farther, it will gradually die out even in that circle; and, in the better circles of New York, I trust it will not be heard of. Mrs. Van Astrachan and I will appear publicly with Lillie; and if she is seen with us, and at this house, it will be sufficient to contradict a dozen slander
s. She has the noblest, kindest husband, — one of the best men and truest gentlemen I ever knew.”
“I pity him then,” said Harry.
“He is to be pitied,” said Rose; “but his work is before him. This woman, such as she is, with all her faults, he has taken for better or for worse; and all true friends and good people, both his and hers, should help both sides to make the best of it.”
“I should say,” said Harry, “that there is in this no best side.”
“I think you do Lillie injustice,” said Rose. “There is, and must be, good in every one; and gradually the good in him will overcome the evil in her.”
“Let us hope so,” said Harry. “And now, Miss Ferguson, may I hope that you won’t quite cross my name out of your good book? You’ll be friends with me, won’t you?”
“Oh, certainly!” said Rose, with a frank smile.
“Well, let’s shake hands on that,” said Harry, rising to go.
Rose gave him her hand, and the two parted in all amity.
CHAPTER XXIII.
COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS.
Harry went straightway from the interview to call upon Lillie, and had a conversation with her; in which he conducted himself like a sober, discreet, and rational man. It was one of those daylight, matter-of-fact kinds of talks, with no nonsense about them, in which things are called by their right names. He confessed his own sins, and took upon his own shoulders the blame that properly belonged there; and, having thus cleared his conscience, took occasion to give Lillie a deal of grandfatherly advice, of a very sedative tendency.
They had both been very silly, he said; and the next step to being silly very often was to be wicked. For his part, he thought she ought to be thankful for so good a husband; and, for his own part, he should lose no time in trying to find a good wife, who would help him to be a good man, and do something worth doing in the world. He had given people occasion to say ill-natured things about her; and he was sorry for it. But, if they stopped being imprudent, the world would in time stop talking. He hoped, some of these days, to bring his wife down to see her, and to make the acquaintance of her husband, whom he knew to be a capital fellow, and one that she ought to be proud of.
Thus, by the intervention of good angels, the little paper-nautilus bark of Lillie’s fortunes was prevented from going down in the great ugly maelstrom, on the verge of which it had been so heedlessly sailing.
Harry was not slow in pushing the advantage of his treaty of friendship with Rose to its utmost limits; and, being a young gentleman of parts and proficiency, he made rapid progress.
The interview of course immediately bred the necessity for at least a dozen more; for he had to explain this thing, and qualify that, and, on reflection, would find by the next day that the explanation and qualification required a still further elucidation. Rose also, after the first conversation was over, was troubled at her own boldness, and at the things that she in her state of excitement had said; and so was only too glad to accord interviews and explanations as often as sought, and, on the whole, was in the most favorable state towards her penitent.
Hence came many calls, and many conferences with Rose in the library, to Mrs. Van Astrachan’s great satisfaction, and concerning which Mr. Van Astrachan had many suppressed chuckles and knowing winks at Polly.
“Now, pa, don’t you say a word,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan.
“Oh, no, Polly! catch me! I see a great deal, but I say nothing,” said the good gentleman, with a jocular quiver of his portly person. “I don’t say any thing, — oh, no! by no manner of means.”
Neither at present did Harry; neither do we.
CHAPTER XXIV.
SENTIMENT v. SENSIBILITY.
The poet has feelingly sung the condition of
”The banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, and garlands dead,” &c.,
and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description on the Follingsbee mansion.
Charlie Ferrola, however, was summoned away at early daylight, just as the last of the revellers were dispersing, by a hurried messenger from his wife; and, a few moments after he entered his house, he was standing beside his dying baby, — the little fellow whom we have seen brought down on Mrs. Ferrola’s arm, to greet the call of Mrs. Follingsbee.
It is an awful thing for people of the flimsy, vain, pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking character of Charlie Ferrola, to be taken at times, as such people will be, in the grip of an inexorable power, and held face to face with the sternest, the most awful, the most frightful realities of life. Charlie Ferrola was one of those whose softness and pitifulness, like that of sentimentalists generally, was only one form of intense selfishness. The sight of suffering pained him; and his first impulse was to get out of the way of it. Suffering that he did not see was nothing to him; and, if his wife or children were in any trouble, he would have liked very well to have known nothing about it.
But here he was, by the bedside of this little creature, dying in the agonies of slow suffocation, rolling up its dark, imploring eyes, and lifting its poor little helpless hands; and Charlie Ferrola broke out into the most violent and extravagant demonstrations of grief.
The pale, firm little woman, who had watched all night, and in whose tranquil face a light as if from heaven was beaming, had to assume the care of him, in addition to that of her dying child. He was another helpless burden on her hands.
There came a day when the house was filled with white flowers, and people came and went, and holy words were spoken; and the fairest flower of all was carried out, to return to the house no more.
“That woman is a most unnatural and peculiar woman!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, who had been most active and patronizing in sending flowers, and attending to the scenic arrangements of the funeral. “It is just what I always said: she is a perfect statue; she’s no kind of feeling. There was Charlie, poor fellow! so sick that he had to go to bed, perfectly overcome, and have somebody to sit up with him; and there was that woman never shed a tear, — went round attending to every thing, just like a piece of clock-work. Well, I suppose people are happier for being made so; people that have no sensibility are better fitted to get through the world. But, gracious me! I can’t understand such people. There she stood at the grave, looking so calm, when Charlie was sobbing so that he could hardly hold himself up. Well, it really wasn’t respectable. I think, at least, I would keep my veil down, and keep my handkerchief up. Poor Charlie! he came to me at last; and I gave way. I was completely broken down, I must confess. Poor fellow! he told me there was no conceiving his misery. That baby was the very idol of his soul; all his hopes of life were centred in it. He really felt tempted to rebel at Providence. He said that he really could not talk with his wife on the subject. He could not enter into her submission at all; it seemed to him like a want of feeling. He said of course it wasn’t her fault that she was made one way and he another.”
In fact, Mr. Charlie Ferrola took to the pink satin boudoir with a more languishing persistency than ever, requiring to be stayed with flagons, and comforted with apples, and receiving sentimental calls of condolence from fair admirers, made aware of the intense poignancy of his grief. A lovely poem, called “My Withered Blossom,” which appeared in a fashionable magazine shortly after, was the out-come of this experience, and increased the fashionable sympathy to the highest degree.
Honest Mrs. Van Astrachan, however, though not acquainted with Mrs. Ferrola, went to the funeral with Rose; and the next day her carriage was seen at Mrs. Ferrola’s door.
“You poor little darling!” she said, as she came up and took Mrs. Ferrola in her arms. “You must let me come, and not mind me; for I know all about it. I lost the dearest little baby once; and I have never forgotten it. There! there, darling!” she said, as the little woman broke into sobs in her arms. “Yes, yes; do cry! it will do your little heart good.”
There are people who, wherever they move, freeze the hearts of those they touch, and chill all demonst
ration of feeling; and there are warm natures, that unlock every fountain, and bid every feeling gush forth. The reader has seen these two types in this story.
“Wife,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, coming to Mrs. V. confidentially a day or two after, “I wonder if you remember any of your French. What is a liaison?”
“Really, dear,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan, whose reading of late years had been mostly confined to such memoirs as that of Mrs. Isabella Graham, Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress,” and Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest,” “it’s a great while since I read any French. What do you want to know for?”
“Well, there’s Ben Stuyvesant was saying this morning, in Wall Street, that there’s a great deal of talk about that Mrs. Follingsbee and that young fellow whose baby’s funeral you went to. Ben says there’s a liaison between her and him. I didn’t ask him what ’twas; but it’s something or other with a French name that makes talk, and I don’t think it’s respectable! I’m sorry that you and Rose went to her party; but then that can’t be helped now. I’m afraid this Mrs. Follingsbee is no sort of a woman, after all.”
“But, pa, I’ve been to call on Mrs. Ferrola, poor little afflicted thing!” said Mrs. Van Astrachan. “I couldn’t help it! You know how we felt when little Willie died.”
“Oh, certainly, Polly! call on the poor woman by all means, and do all you can to comfort her; but, from all I can find out, that handsome jackanapes of a husband of hers is just the poorest trash going. They say this Follingsbee woman half supports him. The time was in New York when such doings wouldn’t be allowed; and I don’t think calling things by French names makes them a bit better. So you just be careful, and steer as clear of her as you can.”
“I will, pa, just as clear as I can; but you know Rose is a friend of Mrs. John Seymour; and Mrs. Seymour is visiting at Mrs. Follingsbee’s.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 369