Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

CHAPTER IIIA TOTAL ECLIPSE

Nothing ever turns out just as we expect.

The next day promised to be long to Mell, but before the old tall clock in the corner tolled out the hour of ten, something happened which gave to its every moment a pair of golden wings. Miss Josey Martlett, one of those ancient angels who personate youth, who endeavor to assimilate facial statistics and unfledged manners, who are interested in everything under the sun except their own business, came driving up to old man Creecy’s farm. Under this lady’s auspices it had been, and through her material assistance, that the sprightly little country girl had been mercifully snatched out of regions of ignorance and darkness, and maintained for a number of years at a famous boarding-school, where, among other things, she had been taught to worship the beautiful in all its forms, to cultivate the refined in all its processes, and to execrate the common and the ugly in all its manifestations. A defective curriculum – for what is more common than human frailty; what uglier than, oftentimes, duty?

Let us hasten to concede that old man Creecy has some show of reason on his side. Not all education educates. The best may furnish us with feet and hands, eyes and wings, trained members, fit implements, shields, anchorage, strongholds, and stepping-stones; but also hiding-places, weak spots, loopholes, clogs, and stumbling-blocks.

“I would stay, but I can’t,” protested Miss Josey, as Mell insisted upon her taking off her hat and sitting down in the most comfortable rocker in the house, while she herself sat beside her and toyed with the visitor’s hand, and fanned away the heat; and then ran for a glass of fresh buttermilk, and brought in some red peaches and blue grapes on an outlandish little Jap waiter in all colors, “just too ’cute for anything.” Miss Josey was Mell’s only connecting link with the country “quality,” and hence appreciated in due proportion to her importance.

“I declare, Mell, you spoil me to death,” simpered Miss Josey, “and nothing else in life is half so nice as being spoiled to death. But I must eat and run – must, really – I’m just so busy I hardly know which way to turn. I want you to go to a picnic with me to-morrow.”

“A picnic!”

Mell’s heart got into her throat at one single bound, and stuck there. Jerome had said something about a picnic.

“What picnic, Miss Josey?”

“The Grange picnic. I’m one of the lady managers, as perhaps you know, and I want you to help me with the tables. Mrs. Rutland cannot go, and there are so few to be depended on.”

“You can depend on me,” said Mell; “I will go with you gladly – gladly spend and be spent for you, who have been always so kind to me.”

Hadn’t she, though? But this was the crowning act of all Miss Josey’s kindness. At this picnic she would see Jerome, and, who knows, perhaps find out his difficulties!

“You are a sweet girl, Mell,” returned Miss Josey, gratified. “So grateful, in a world chock full of the basest ingratitude. I told Miss Rutland, ‘Mell Creecy is the girl to take your place. She knows what to do, and she’ll do it!’”

After this, Mell could scarcely follow the drift of her visitor’s conversation. She was in a ferment of impatience for Miss Josey to be gone, that she might put the finishing touches to a new white dress in readiness for to-morrow’s festivities. But Miss Josey, who couldn’t possibly stay two short minutes when she arrived, did not get off under two mortal hours, or more. This is one of those little peculiarities of the sex, which the last one of them disavows.

Gone at last, Mell went dancing over the house and singing over her work at such a lively rate, that her father put his head in at the chamber-door wanting to know “what she was er makin’ sich er fuss erbout?”

“The Grange picnic, father, tra-la-la! I’m going with Miss Josey, folderolloll!”

“Oho! Devilho gwine ter be thar, I s’pose?”

“Yes, indeed! Hail, all hail! La-la-tra-la!”

“Make him toe the mark, darter!”

Mell’s song abruptly ceased.

To make an individual of Mr. Jerome Devonhough’s subtle intellect and masterful will toe the mark was going to be no easy matter. He was far from being an exact science whose formula could be reduced to the touchstone of certainty. Softer were his ways, and more complex his web, the fabric of his purpose more difficult to trace, than the intricate meshes of this cob-webbery lace she was basting in the neck of her dress. Nevertheless, every stitch of her needle fastened down her gathering intentions to the figure of her mind. Jerome must have done with these evasions; he must tell her the truth, and the whole truth; he must henceforth act right up to the notch, or else she would put an end to everything between them, and in the future have nothing whatever to do with him. Several measures such as these, rightly enforced, would, she believed, bring the most slippery Lothario in existence down on his knees at a woman’s feet, If the man really loved the woman. If Jerome really loved Mell.

“If, Si, Wenn, Se!” vociferated Mell, stamping her fiery little foot. “Why was it ever put into articulate speech?”

She knew it, this highly educated girl, in so many languages, and could not blot it out in a single one of them! Is not mere human knowledge a kind of blunt tool?

But she was ready, bright and early, the next morning, so promptly ready that Miss Josey commended her in unstinted terms.

“Had it been Clara,” said Miss Josey, as Mell sprang lightly into the little basket phaeton, “she’d have kept me waiting, probably, a whole hour without a scruple of compunction! Come, we will go to the Bigge House first for some things I must carry.”

To the Bigge House? The gates of Paradise were about to open for Mell. Rejoice with her, all ye who read. How will you feel when the doors of your big house are about to unclose themselves before your long-aspiring and wistful gaze, disclosing within the risen Star of Conquest, the bright realization of many golden visions and many rose-colored dreams?

This Bigge House, of so much local fame and importance, was, in fact, a spacious mansion of no small pretention, and having been originally built for a man named Bigge, in spite of all that the present owners could do in the way of writing and calling it Rutland Manse, it remained, year after year, the Bigge House. Pleasantly situated, well-constructed, and well-kept, the house itself was surrounded by extensive and beautiful grounds, a grove, a grass plot, a flower garden embellished with trellises, terraces, fountains, rare shrubbery, and an artificial pond to row pretty little boats on, and secondly, to propagate fish. The family were of an old stock, but a newly rich – a class who like much to enjoy their money, and better still, to show it.

On this cloudless summer morn, perfect as weather goes, so perfect that one might look upon it as a Providential complicity in the booming of the Grange picnic, a gracious provision of nature to suit one special occasion, the approaches to the Bigge House presented a stirring scene. Carriages, buggies, and wagons, vehicles of every description, and vehicles nondescript, lined the roadways in every direction. Servants were rushing hither and thither, fresh arrivals coming every few moments to swell the throng, voices calling to each other in joyous recognition, fair hands waving au revoirs, as they dashed by, without stopping, on their way to the scene of the day’s festivities. A pleasurable sense of expectation brightened every face, a buoyant sense of exhilaration quickened every heart, and high above the heads of all, a brilliant sun, regnant on a field of blue, lighted up the long sloping hills and broad green valleys. Mell looked about her wonderingly. Who were all these people, and how many of them would she know before the day was done?

Miss Josey had left her holding the reins while she ran in for a cargo of bundles. It was not at all necessary, except in Miss Josey’s imagination. Her well-groomed little nag was alive, it is true, but some live things creep, and Aristophanes – called Top, – was one of them. He never thought of starting anywhere as long as he could stand still. In this respect, he differed from his mistress, who never stayed anywhere, as long as she could find enough news to keep going.

“Hold him tight, Mell,” had been Miss Josey’s injunction when she left Mell alone with Top.

At another time this arrangement would have greatly disappointed Mell. Her whole being had clamored to get inside the Bigge House, and, behold! here she sat along with Top outside the sacred precincts. But, somehow, her heart beat so high with rainbow-tinted fancies, she was altogether unconscious of anything amiss in the situation. If not within the very courts of the wonderful palace, the very penetralia of the Penates, she was very near the goal; nearer than she had ever been before. She could almost look in – she could almost see the shining garments and gloriously bright faces of the beings she envied, the beings who lived that life so far above her own. She had come thus far; she waited at the gate, and some day the great doors would be flung wide open for her; she would cross the threshold. But not alone. One would bear her company who was ever an honored guest there, and in many another home of wealth and fashion and influence.

These thoughts transferred their suppressed rapture into the expression of her face – into cheeks dazzling for joy – into eyes swimming in lustre – into a mouth wreathed into curves of exquisite transport. She was beautiful.

A number of young gallants came crowding about the gate. They stood in the plentitude of checked tweeds and light flannel, with the latest sheen on a boot, and the latest paragon of a hat – mighty swells, conscious of their own superiority, eying this deuced pretty girl, and wondering who she was.

“You ought to know, Rube,” said one.

“But, I don’t!” said Rube. “I will know before I’m much older though, you can depend upon me for that! She’s with Miss Josey.”

Mell did not notice them beyond a casual glance. They had about them, incontestably, an enormous lot of style, but compared to Jerome, they were flat, – awfully flat. She caught a glimpse of him now, this swellest swell of the period, coming down the marble steps of the mansion.

Some one is with him – a lady. Yes, just as she thought, Clara Rutland. Here they come. She, so – so – almost ugly, and he, so – so – so Jerome-like. That’s the only way to express it. Jerome is more than simply handsome, more than merely graceful, more than a man among men – he’s a non-such, in a nut-shell!

But here he is, almost in speaking distance, and every step bringing him nearer. Isn’t he going to be surprised? Isn’t he going to be delighted? Isn’t he going to shake her hand and smile that impenetrable smile, and – ?

How is this? Jerome has come and gone. He did not look at her – he did not once raise his eyes in passing.

Just ahead of this poky little vehicle, where Mell awaited the return of Miss Josey, stood a lordly equipage, all silver plate and shine, with a well-dressed groom standing in front of the champing, restive, mettlesome animal, as eager to be off and gone somewhere as the most restless of human hearts in a human bosom.

Into this nobby turnout Jerome assisted Miss Rutland, and then springing in himself, grasped the reins from the groom’s hands. For one awful moment (to Mell) the horse stood straight upon his hind legs, and then, obeying Jerome’s voice, who said in the quietest of tones, ‘Go on, Rhesus,’ gave one wild plunge and dashed ahead, leaving Mell with a stifled feeling, as if she was buried alive under twenty feet of volcanic ashes.

But what did it mean – his passing her without a sign of recognition? Jerome might be of a truant disposition, of unstable fancy, and superior in his own strength to most ordinary rules, but he couldn’t help knowing her face to face. There was a bare possibility that he had not really seen her; his sight, come to think of it, was none of the best, or, at least, he habitually wore an interesting little pince-nez dangling from his button-hole, and sometimes, though not often, stuck it across the bridge of his well-shaped nose with telling effect.

With such arguments, and much wanting to be convinced, Mell recovered her equipoise to some extent, managing to hear about half Miss Josey was saying, and to answer only once or twice very wildly at random. Arrived at their destination, she assisted her patroness in receiving and arranging the baskets; this important contingent of the day’s proceedings being satisfactorily disposed of, they followed the example of the crowd at large and strolled about in search of some amusement. A more delightful location for a day’s outing it would be hard to find, the world over. On three sides of the principal grove, stretched an immense plateau, smooth as a flower-garden, and level as a plumb line, and on the fourth side a sudden, bold declivity, just as if a giant hand had pulled the clustering hills apart and left them wide asunder, laying bare the heart of a magnificent ravine. In this wild gorge were stupendous cliffs and brinks, shady shelves o’erhanging secluded and romantic nooks, enormous rocks holding plentiful treasures in moss and lichen, singularly constructed mounds, probably the remaining deposit of a prehistoric race, wild flowers in variety, wild scenery in perfection, and a beautiful stream of running water, wherein disported finny tribes in abundance. Nothing in the highest art of gardenesque could produce such results as this. A mere ramble amid such scenes of diverse picturesqueness – nature’s wear and tear in moods of passion – amounts to a study of geological architecture under favoring conditions.

Mell loved nature, but not as she loved Jerome. Her brains were crammed with wild speculations in regard to him, which accounts for the fact that she had no mind on that eventful day to invest in all those wonderful manifestations of nature’s power and nature’s mystery.

During their circuitous meanderings, two young men joined Miss Josey and were duly presented to her protégé. They were fine young fellows, and very pleasant, too, but Mell continued so preoccupied in the vain racking of her brain, trying to imagine what had become of Jerome and Clara Rutland, that she did not catch their names, and replied to their efforts at conversation with monosyllabic remarks. One of them, a merry-tempered, straightforward, stalwart young chap, armed with rod and bait, asked her, with a flattering degree of warmth, if she wouldn’t go with them a-fishing; but reflecting if she did so, she would in all likelihood be out of the way of seeing Jerome for hours to come, Mell declined without circumlocution, glad to get rid of him on the pretext of having promised to assist Miss Josey in her onerous duties, as commissary of subsistence. Discouraged, the young fisherman bowed and left.

“Such a pretty girl,” he remarked to his companion. “It’s a pity she doesn’t know what to say!”

Think of Mell Creecy not knowing what to say! The girl who was always saying things nobody else had ever thought of saying. Such is the pretty pass to which an unhappy love may bring the brightest girl! And, after all, she saw absolutely nothing of Jerome until all those wagon upon wagon loads of baskets had been ransacked, and their tempting contents emptied out upon the festive board, giving forth grateful suggestions of the coming mid-day meal.

While squeezing lemons, flushed and more than ever anxious, deft of hand, but uneasy in mind, the buggy containing Jerome and Miss Rutland dashed into the grove.

“We’ve been all the way to Pudney,” called out the young lady, holding up to view some tied-up boxes, “and here are the prizes.”

“All right,” responded Miss Josey, “but do let us have the ice. The prizes are of no consequence to a famishing people, but the dinner is, and we are about ready.”

“She’s powerfully interested in the prizes,” commented a girl at Mell’s elbow, “but she has a good right to be.”

“Why?” inquired Mell.

“Because she is going to be crowned queen of love and beauty.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve put things together, and that’s the way they sum up to me. That young man with her can beat all of our boys, and he’s going to crown her.”

“Is he?” ejaculated Mell.

Let him dare to do it! Before Jerome Devonhough should place a victor’s crown on Clara Rutland’s head, she would – well, what would she do? “Anything!” muttered Mell, between her teeth.

Poor Mell! She had been to such an expensive school and learned so many things, and not one of them was of the slightest use to her in this sore strait. Could there not be established a new school for girls, differing materially from the old; founded upon a more adaptable basis, taught after a hitherto unknown method, and including prominently in its curriculum of studies, that branch of knowledge whose acquisition enables a woman to bear long, to suffer in silence, and in weakness to be strong? These are the practical issues in a woman’s daily life, and although in such a school she might not get her money’s worth in German gutturals and French verbs, she would, at least, have indulged in a less reckless expenditure of time in obtaining useless knowledge.

But let us not blame the schools over much, and without a just discrimination. Not all the fault lies at their door. Something there is amiss among the girls themselves. It may be, that they love and hate, and talk too much, even in one language.

In a girl of Mell’s temperament, love would not have been love, lacking jealousy, and its twin-feeling, revenge. More’s the pity, Mell!

That picnic dinner was splendid. Everybody enjoyed it but Mell, and it was not the young fisherman’s fault that she did not. Although he was in attendance upon another young lady, who seemed to know what to say, and said it incessantly, he kept an eye on Mell, and proffered her every tempting dish he could lay his hands upon. To no purpose; for Mell could not eat. She tried, and the very first mouthful paralyzed her ability to swallow. It was altogether as much as she could do to keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all these omnivorous, happy people. What made it all the worse, at breakfast time she had been happier than they – too happy, in fact, to eat, and now, here at dinner, she was too miserable.

And there sat the author of all her misery, not twelve feet distant, perfectly oblivious to her proximity, nay, her very existence. Not by any chance did he ever look toward her, or show any consciousness of her presence. So devoted and so marked were his attentions to that uninteresting and anything but attractive Clara Rutland, that Mell heard it commented upon on all sides. These two, so sufficient unto themselves, were among the first to leave the festal board and wander off in sylvan haunts. Anon, all appetites were satisfied, and amid the buzzing of tongues and boisterous flashes of merriment, the multitude again dispersed. Unobserved and in a very unenviable frame of mind, the unhappy Mell stole away to herself. The paramount desire of her wounded spirit was to get beyond the ken of human eye. In a hidden recess screened by an overhanging rock, she sat down, the prey of such discordant and chaotic thoughts as wear away, in time, the bulwarks of reason. It was yesterday, no, the day before, no, longer, that he had called upon God to witness that she alone was dear to him, she only precious in his sight, and now, how stands the case? Ah, dear God, you heard him say it! Oh, All-seeing Eye, you have looked upon him this day, and will not a lightning blast from an indignant Heaven palsy the false tongue, whose words have no more meaning than loose rubble!

Into the heaviness of these thoughts, growing heavier with access of bitterness as the moments sped, there came the ringing tones of a voice – a voice well known to Mell.

Shaking off her lethargy and looking out from her hiding place, she beheld the object of all these harrowing reflections, grasping Miss Rutland’s two hands in his own, as they together, and laughingly, descended a precipitous declivity. Once down, they proceeded with access of laughter, to push their way through a tangle of brushwood. To get out of this into the beaten path, they must necessarily advance in the direction of her place of concealment, and, devoured with jealousy, inflamed with distrust, tortured with the cruel madness of love, Mell determined to satisfy herself on the spot, as to whether Jerome’s avoidance was premeditated or unintentional. Just as the couple emerged from their nether difficulties, and stood on clear ground and firm footing, Mell suddenly stepped forth upon the same path, confronting them face to face. Miss Rutland did not speak. Mell knew she would not, although they had attended the same boarding school for years, lived in the same house, and graduated in the same class, where Miss Rutland, unlike herself, achieved no distinction of self-merit; being content to be accounted distinguished through the sepulchre of a dead father.

Mell did not expect recognition from her in such a place at such a time; for the neighboring rocks were alive with the best families in the county, and Clara was one of those feeble brained persons, who have minds suited to all purposes, save use and knowledge of that kind which may be put on and off as a movable garment. Such creatures, tossed about helplessly on the billows of circumstance, keep one finger on the public pulse, and know you, or know you not, according to its beat. For all this, Mell cared nothing in that supreme moment. One swift glance at Clara, and after that every faculty of her mind and body was centered on Jerome. He was evidently surprised at being nearly run over by this blustering and blowsy young lady, but beyond that – nothing. He looked her full in the face, the unknowing look of a total stranger. The result of this look was to Mell calamitous. A waving blankness came before her sight, her knees trembled, her strength seemed poured out like water, and staggering to a tree, she caught hold of it for support.

“Cut – cut, dead!”

This, after all that had passed between them, was simply brutal. But the despised and slighted country girl was only momentarily stunned, not crushed. Out of the throes of her wounded pride and injured affection, there burst forth the devouring flames of a fiery and passionate nature, incapable of any luke-warmness in emotion. Her eyes dilated, her fingers twitched, her face set like a flint, her lip curled in scorn, and she shook her clenched fist at Jerome’s retreating figure.

“Contemptible coward! Miserable trickster! What have I ever done, that you should refuse to speak to me in the presence of Clara Rutland?”

Her bosom heaved; she sobbed aloud, and shook her fist again.

“I’ll make you sorry for this! I’ll get even with you, yet!” Words, whose fierce earnestness embodied a prophesy, and were followed by a prayer:

“Oh, God, only give me the power to make him feel it, and I ask no more! I care not what then befalls me!”

This paroxysm of passion swept over her as a besom of destruction, leaving her quenched as tow, white, unnerved, quite pitiful and hushed. She sank to the ground and into a state of semi-unconsciousness.

Some one coming near, some one lifting her into a sitting posture, some one pouring cold water upon her head, and holding something to her nose aroused her.

“That’s right,” said the young fisherman, “open your eyes – open them wide! It’s nobody but me. I wouldn’t tell another soul, for I know you wouldn’t want the mischief of a fuss made over it. But how did you come to pitch over?”

“I did not come to pitch over,” said Mell, bewildered, “did I?”

“Of course you did! I had been looking for you for ever so long, and standing on top there, I happened to look down, and saw you lying here. And you never will know how scared I was, for, at first, I thought you were dead. Gad, didn’t I make tracks, though, after I got started! But, drink a little more of this, and now, don’t you feel set up again?”

“Considerably so,” said Mell, trying, too, to look set up. He was so kind, and she, poor, bruised thing, so grateful. This little word, kind, so often upon the lip – upon yours and mine, and the lips of our friends, as we encounter them socially on our pilgrimage day by day, is only at certain epochs in our own lives fully understood, and deservedly cherished deep down in the heart. And yet, so few of us can be great, and so many of us could be kind if we would, and oftener than we are.