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

Here they are, all in a row:

Reason Number One. – She was not quite sure of Jerome – quite sure, perhaps, in regard to his affections, but not his intentions. Love is much, but not everything, and a lover surrounded by difficulties is not to be depended upon matrimonially.

Number Two. – She was as resolutely bent upon getting out of this mean, sordid life as ever, and what way was there but this way?

Number Three. – Rube was rich, and Rube’s wife would be rich, too. For her part, she was sick and tired of poverty. Poverty, in a world governed by wealth, is the most unpardonable sin in that world’s decalogue.

Number Four. – Rube was in “society,” and what ambitious woman ever yet saved her soul outside the magic circle of society?

Number Five. – Rube was an aristocrat, and Rube’s wife would be ex necessitate rei, an aristocrat also. Her Creator, she believed, had intended her for an aristocrat; otherwise why had He endowed her with intellect, beauty, and the power to sway men’s passions?

Number Six. – The fact that she did not love Rube had, in reality, nothing to do with Rube’s eligibility as a husband. He would make a very good one, an infinitely better one than none at all!

Of course, she would be paying a tremendous price for all these worldly advantages. Mell was aware of that all the while, but after deducting from the gross weight of their true value the real or approximate weight of their possible evils and disadvantages, she would undoubtedly still be getting the best of a good bargain.

What is life but an enigmatical offset of losses and gain – so much gain on the one hand, so much loss on the other? And what was this transaction between herself and Rube but a repetition, under a somewhat different formula, of those mathematical problems worked out on her slate at school? It was all very simple.

Young woman, if you were in Mell’s place; if you had six good reasons for not telling the man you are about to marry that you did not care a straw about him, wouldn’t you hold your peace?

Then cast no stones at Mell.

Mell was deeply moved by Rube’s words, but not deep enough to damage her future prospects. And since a woman has very poor prospects outside of matrimony, ought we not to excuse her for attending closely to business?

At all events, although Mell’s thoughts were heavy, and her soul stirred within her, and her thick breathing almost stifled in a painful sense of guilt, she did not say a word. Feeling that Rube’s eyes were fixed upon her, she raised to him her own, suffused in tears; an answer which fully satisfied her companion. From which it will appear that a woman may weep for the man she takes in – weep, and yet keep on taking him in.

And what can a man do? How could Rube tell that it was the hidden pathos of his own groundless faith, and not a feeling of sympathetic affection, which brought such softness of expression into that girl’s luminous orbs?

If the actual is the only true thing, and amounts to everything, as it really does in the school of Realism, there is still one difficulty to be encountered – to get hold of the actual. He who aspires to find out the actual, where a woman is concerned, must get himself another kind of eye, one whose vision is introspective and able to penetrate into that mysterious element in a clever woman’s nature which enables her so successfully to clothe the Not-True in the beautiful garments of Truth.

Rube Rutland felt uncertain about a good many things – his own strength under temptation, his mother’s consent to this marriage, Clara’s temper, the great sea serpent, the Pope’s infallibility, the man in the Iron Mask, and many a cock-and-bull story beside, but he never once doubted Mell Creecy’s love, the purest myth among them all.

He came, after this, every day to the little house upon the hill, and had it out “comferterble in the parler,” as old man Creecy had advised Jerome to do. He courted with the enthusiasm of an incorrigible faddist over a new fad; and no lover of those olden days of which he had spoken, when goodly knights tilted in the jousts of arms, and won fair lady’s favor with deeds of prowess, ever yet surpassed a modern mighty man with a mission. Devotion itself is paralyzed when it comes to them.

At the Bigge House, as one may suppose, there had been considerable consternation when its young master announced his intention of taking to wife old Jacob Creecy’s daughter. Consternation, but hardly surprise; for Rube had ever been one of those lawless members of well-conducted households privileged to say and do outrageous things, and expected to turn out of the beaten track on the slightest provocation.

Miss Rutland was most concerned. Said she to her brother:

“Rube, why not marry a female Ojibbwa, and be done with it? That would be an improvement on Mell Creecy as a mésalliance. My God! Rube, you can’t bring a girl here into this house as your wife, whose father talks like a nigger, who says ‘dis,’ and ‘dat,’ and ‘udder;’ or do you expect to hold your position in society, your place among honorable men, simply by the grace of heaven?”

This was severe; but it was not all – not half, in fact, that Rube had to hear before he got rid of Clara. But it was not the first time he had brought a hornet’s nest about his ears, nor swam against the stream, nor borne the brunt of Clara’s tongue. Through much practice Rube had pretty well mastered the art of holding out, which does not consist so much in talking back as in saying nothing. Moreover, his cause was good, and half a man can hold out with a good cause to hold on. One hard speech Rube did make to Clara; he told her, in effect, that whatever might be the grammatical shortcomings of old Jacob Creecy himself, his daughter knew more in one single minute than Clara would ever learn in a lifetime.

Mrs. Rutland was not less unwilling, but more reasonable.

“You are my only son,” she said to him, “my first-born. I expected you to add lustre to the family and make a great match.”

“The family is illustrious enough,” replied he; “if not, it will never be more illustrious at my expense. I will have none of your great matches, mother. I intend to marry the woman I love. I have loved her ever since she was a child. None of the rest of you need marry her, however; I will not impose that task upon you. But Mellville is to be my wife to a dead certainty, and I am my own master.”

“You are, my son. I have not sought to prevent your marrying her. I have only expressed my disappointment.”

“Well, I am sorry about that. But see here, mother; I will make it easy for you. Keep this as your own home as long as you live, and I will make another home for myself and the wife you do not like.”

“No, no, my dear boy, ever generous, ever kind! As your wife she must be dear to me. What is a mother’s greedy aspiration compared to her child’s real happiness? Follow your bent, my boy; follow it with your mother’s sanction. And now, do you still love me a little, Rube, in spite of this new love?”

“A little, dear mother!” He threw his arms about her. “No, not a little! Much, very much; more than ever before! And believe me, when you know Mell, you will feel very differently about it. You have only seen her so far, through Clara’s eyes; come and see her as she is; come now, mother, with me.”

And so it came about that on a certain day Rube came as usual to the farm-house, but not as usual, alone. His mother came with him – came, looking about her with prying eyes, and a nose bent on thorough investigation, and a mind ready to ferret out every idea in Mell’s brain; a mind ready to probe every weak place in Mell’s character; a mind ready to catechize every integument in Mell’s body.

The look of things about the premises prepossessed her at once in the girl’s favor. The house was neither large, handsome, nor fresh; but it was venerable, an attribute greatly esteemed by people of rank. Much of its unpainted ugliness was concealed in trailing vines and creeping ivy, much of its dilapidation shrouded in luxuriant shrubbery, an every-day adaptation of the simplest elements of relief, technique. The little front garden, in its white-sanded walks and well-weeded beds, brilliant in many-hued blossoms, was just like a spruce country-damsel in her best bib and tucker. The little parlor, daintily furnished and tastefully arranged, where the visitor trod, not on bare boards, but a neat carpet, commingling Turkish forms and Yankee interpretations, was still more suggestive. Into this cozy apartment Mell had really crowded, in practical forms, all she had learned of human nature as it appears in man’s nature. Pretty things there were, but none too pretty for use. Perfect neatness there was, but not too perfect to interfere with a man’s love for the let-me-do-as-I-please principle. Here a man who smokes might, after asking permission, puff away to his heart’s content, puff away without a compunction and without a frown from its ministering spirit. Or, if my lord feels in a breaking mood, let him break, break right and left, and there’s no great harm done; a few dollars would put them all back. This is a consideration by no means small or unimportant to some men, who seem inspired to break everything they touch, from a woman’s heart to the most venerated of old brass icons.

This little room did everything it could to please a man, and put nothing in his way; although it made him feel, with its presiding genius in it, every kind of way, except uncomfortable.

There’s a rose upon the mantle, stuck by careless hand in a vase of antique design – one rose, no more; for one such faultless rose as this fills up all the spirit’s longing in a rose. A thousand roses, perfect of their kind, could do no more. Here we have sub rosa a profound philosophical maxim showing its colors – as brief as profound, i.e., enough is enough, whether it be enough rose or enough stewed pigeon with green peas.

On a spider-legged table in this diminutive lady’s bower, there sat a dish of ferns; some moss was growing in a basket; some colored strands of wool lay across a piece of canvas; a carved paper-cutter peeped out from the leaves of an unread book, left lying on an ottoman by some person who had been seated in an easy-chair with silken cushions, soft to rest upon in weariness, in a cozy corner; and on a sofa of crimson plush reposed, in restful quiet, a guitar with blue ribbon attached. This guitar told its own tale; Mell had learned something useful, after all, at that famous boarding-school; for to the strumming of this guitar she could sing you, with inimitable taste and in a bird-like voice, an English madrigal, or a French chansonnette, or one of those plaintive love ditties which finds its way into the listener’s heart through any language.

“Now, mother,” said Rube, looking about him with pardonable pride, “isn’t this pleasant? Have we, amid all our grandeur, any such snug den as this?”

“Well, no, Rube! It is charming! Multum in parvo, one may say. But whom have we here?”

It was Mell, halting for one awe-struck instant in the doorway, attired in a fresh muslin dress, with ribbons to match her eyes, and cheeks dyed a red carnation at the formidable prospect of meeting, face to face, the august mistress of the Bigge House. Rube pressed forward to meet her, and took her fluttering hand in his own, and led her forward.

“Your new daughter, mother, and this, Mellville, is our good mother. You’ll get along famously with her, I believe, in spite of Clara.”

Who but a blundering man, like dear honest Rube, would have so completely let the domestic cat out of the bag?

No need for Mell to be the most wide-awake creature in existence to understand on the spot, the real status of affairs, as concerned herself, at the Bigge House.

Subjugated at once by her beauty, constrained to admit her lady-like deportment, Mrs. Rutland kissed the rounded cheek and hoped she would make her dear boy very happy. And Mell looked flatteringly conscious of the great lady’s condescension, and blushingly avowed her unalterable determination to try. This interesting little ceremony seemed to dissipate all the underlying displeasure at Rube’s choice in his mother’s mind.

She watched the girl closely during the interview which followed. Many girls are pretty and lady-like, not many are to be found as well educated as Mell Creecy, or as thoroughly equipped by both nature and education to entertain, to amuse, to fascinate. This was that part of Mell which “tuck arter her ole daddy,” as old Jacob was wont to say. Even Clara Rutland’s manners were not more easy and irreproachable, and Clara had never been half so ready in speech and apt in reply. It was a matter of agreeable wonder to Mrs. Rutland how a hard-working uneducated farmer could have such a daughter, and she wondered also if this phenomenal social prodigy could be found so strongly marked in any other land under the sun.

Obeying an instinct of curiosity, the visitor inquired:

“Your father and mother, Melville, are they here? Will they see us?”

“Not if I can help it!” inwardly.

Outwardly very different.

“So sorry! Mother is not well to-day. She is rarely well, and rarely sees anyone. Father is as usual busy upon the farm.”

“Rube says your father is a very thorough farmer,” remarked the visitor.

“Doesn’t a good farmer make money out of it,” queried Mell, glancing at her betrothed with a doubtful little smile, “just as a lawyer does out of law, and a doctor out of physic? The earth is full of gold, and ought not a good digger to strike it somewhere – some time? Father, at any rate, is devoted to farming, as an occupation, and is happy in it, getting out of the ground more of God’s secrets than the rest of us find among the stars.”

“That is a pretty idea, Mellville,” said Mrs. Rutland.

“Bless you!” exclaimed Rube, “that’s nothing! She’s full of ’em!”

Full of them, yes; and feeding his honest soul upon them, in place of the real bread of affection.

The visit was long and pleasant, and at its close Mell accompanied her guests to the very door of their carriage. There Mrs. Rutland again touched the girl’s soft cheek with her high-bred lips. Her foot was upon the stepping-stone, when with a sudden thought, she turned once more.

“Mellville, we are to be very gay next week, a house full of company; but I suspect we shall be honored with very little of Rube’s society unless we first secure yours. Will you come, then, and make us a little visit?”

“You are kind,” answered she, coloring beautifully with intensity of gratification. “Most kind! I will come with exceeding pleasure.”

These were perhaps the first unstudied words she had uttered in Mrs. Rutland’s presence. There was no doubt about her wanting to go to the Bigge House. She had been wanting to go there a long time. A veritable flood-tide of joy filled her being at this speedy consummation of her dearest hopes, but it was not of this she thought at that moment, nor of Mrs. Rutland, nor of Rube. “I will see Jerome,” was what Mell thought.

“Sweetest of mothers!” said Rube inside the vehicle.

“Luckiest of men!” returned his mother. “I am returning home as did the Queen of Sheba; the half was not told!”

Rube now felt solid, unquestionably solid, in his own mind.

Mell, standing yet in the gateway, looked after them; gladly received they had been, like many another guest; gladly, too, dismissed.

“The chain tightens,” cogitated the future mistress of the Bigge House, “and if I should want to break it!”

But why should she want to break it, unless —

“There’s no use counting upon that,” Mell frankly admitted to herself, “and no man’s difficulties must be allowed to interfere with my future. And Rube is so eligible! A good fellow, too; a most excellent fellow! There’s a something, however. What is it?”

We will tell you, Mell – Rube is not Jerome.

Going back into the house she found her father and mother peeping through the blinds.

“Lord, Lord!” exclaimed old Jacob. “You’se jess er gittin’ up, Mell! I knowed ye could do it, darter; but I mus’ say, I never lookt fer yer ter git es high es the Bigge House.”

Mrs. Creecy inquired about Mrs. Rutland. Was she nice? pleasant?

“Very. No one could be nicer or pleasanter. She asked for you – both of you.”

“She did? Then why didn’t you tell us?”

“Wife!” remonstrated the old farmer, “you is sartingly loss yo’ senses! Don’t ye know, when Mell’s fine friends comes er long, we’s expected ter run inter er rat-hole or some udder hole? All the use chillun has fer parients these days is ter keep ’em er going. Onst Mrs. Rullan’, Mell aint gwine ter know us by site! She aint no chile er mine, no how, Mell aint!”

“Wall, now, she is yourn, I kin tell ye,” cried Mrs. Creecy, flaring up, very much to the enjoyment of her liege lord.

The daughter turned off in disgust. Her father’s pleasantries were the least pleasant of all his disagreeable ways. A coarse man’s humor is apt to be the coarsest thing about him.

It was under very different auspices from those of her day dreams, that Mell, after a few days of busy preparation, was admitted into the sacred precincts of the social hierarchy.

Jerome was to have been the founder of her greatness, her steersman in these unknown waters – not Rube.

None in this higher realm welcomed her more graciously than Clara. Clara had high views of philosophy, but only one maxim: “See how the hare runs, hear how the owl cries, accept the inevitable, and get all you can out of it.”

Jerome returned from Cragmore the day following her own domestication into this new sphere of existence. How strange it all seemed, and how unnatural! How strange he should find her there, and with so good a right to be there! Surely years have intervened since those lovely mornings in the meadow, when Sukey cropped the dew-wet grass, and she sat on the old tree-stump and Jerome lay at her feet.

Surely long, long years!

So long that Jerome has forgotten all about them – and her. She is now to him only Miss Creecy, the prospective wife of his nearest friend, the prospective mistress of the Bigge House, and not attractive, it would appear, in these new surroundings. Others, very likely, did not notice how he never spoke to her, if he could help it; how he never looked at her, if he could help it; how they kept far apart, as far as the East is from the West, though sleeping under the same roof, and eating at the same table, and constantly together morning, noon, and night. Others did not notice all these things, but Mell did.

“He despises me,” sobbed Mell in the darkness of her own chamber, smothering her sobs in her own pillow. “Once he loved, and now he despises me!”

Better go to sleep, Mell; tears cannot wash away stern facts, and what good would it do now, if he did love you?

The other guest has come; the one of whom Jerome had spoken. It is the Honorable Archibald Pendergast, who is middle-aged, well-fed, and somewhat portly, who has big round shoulders and a jolly way of looking at things, who bellows out his words with a broad accent, and says, Aw! aw! with tremendous effect; who wears his whiskers à la manière Anglaise, as befits a man proud of his British ancestry and his English ways. This great man’s marvellous wealth and honors, and incalculable influence in national councils, and stupendous grandeur of future prospects, carry everything before him – at the Bigge House, and everywhere else.

Adapting herself with versatile cleverness, to these prevailing conditions in her unaccustomed environment, Mell’s conception of modes and manners expanded day by day, and she began to see plainly a good many objects only dimly discerned before.

“I don’t think,” remarked she, quite innocently to Rube, the day after the great man’s advent, “that Mr. Devonhough admires the Senator as much as the rest of us.”

“I shouldn’t wonder!”

Rube looked knowing and laughed.

“If he was as badly stuck on you as he appears to be on Clara, I wouldn’t admire him either!”

“But,” said Mell, “is Jerome?”

“Yes, certainly. Didn’t you know that? I thought you did. They are in the same interesting predicament as ourselves. Only Clara won’t announce, because she wants to keep up to the last minute her good times with other men. I don’t see how Devonhough stands it, and I’m awfully glad you’re not that sort of a girl!”

“How long?” asked not-that-sort-of-a-girl, trying to steady her voice, trying to maintain her rôle of a disinterested inquirer.

“How long have they been engaged!” repeated Rube. “Let me see – Six months at least.”

“Six months!”

“You seem surprised, Mell.” He turned his glance full upon her.

“Not at all,” said she, pulling herself to rights. “I was only thinking that you ought to be willing to wait as long as that.”

“So I would; as many years, for that matter, if there was any good reason why I should. But there is not; not one, and so, Mell – ”

“Six months!” ejaculated Mell, in the privacy of her own room. “So all the while he lay at my feet he was engaged to Clara Rutland!”

Mell began to understand Jerome’s difficulties.

Later on she saw clearly some other things. Clara is fond of Jerome, and would gladly, for that reason, marry him; but she is likewise attracted by the mighty Senator’s wealth, and national importance, and English ancestry, and future expectations; and for such reasons leans matrimonially towards the Honorable Archibald, who is thirty years older than Jerome, but thirty years richer and thirty years greater. Between two fires Clara meanwhile keeps to the letter of the law with Jerome, and holds out in ambuscade le pot au lait to the Honorable Archibald.

A closer acquaintance with the interior circuit of these unwanted surroundings, so delicately refined, so distinctly aristocratic, so far above her own poor world, and yet withal, so unsatisfying and so “over-charged with surfeiting,” developed to Mell the startling fact that a life spent in incessant amusement not only soon ceases to amuse, but becomes, in process of time, a devouring conflict with ennui. She recalled with a sense of wondering comprehension the Arab proverb: “All sunshine makes the desert.”

Another thing, these women at ease, with nothing in the world to do, Mell was thunderstruck to discover, were the hardest worked people she had ever known, striving each on a daily battle-ground of dawdling, dressing, and pleasure. Seeking after some personal end, some empty honor, or some favorite phantom just out of reach. What bickering and strife; what small conspiracies; what canker at the roots and stunting in the fruit; what Guelph and Ghibbeline factions in the midst of all this music, and dancing, and laughter! The same amount of time spent in a good cause, Mell’s long head could not but realize, would ease the rack, plant many a blade of corn, staunch many a bleeding wound, wipe the death drops from many a ghastly brow, lift up heaps of fallen heroes prone on stony plains, and plant the standard of the cross on many a benighted shore. Outside, Mell had yearned towards this stronghold of the rich, as a place where there was plenty of room for growth and happiness: inside, she discovered with astonishment and a groan, that there was plenty of room there for dullness and unhappiness as well. Idleness without repose, leisure and no ease, tears and no time to shed them – on every side, and unexpected dry-rot in the substance of things, she had pictured to her own fancy as fair, and only fair.

“Then,” interrogated Mell of her conscious Ego, “if not here, where dwelleth content?”

Mayhap, Mell, upon the rock where the hawks nest, or in that haven where the roving wind hideth its tired self for rest. Somewhere, but never among the haunts of men. The deep hath its treasures, and there are treasures of the mine; the mind hath its treasures, and there are treasures of store; but content is the golden treasure, hardest of all to find, and when found hardest to keep.

One night there was a ball, and the social lights of Pudney and Cragmore, and the capital of the State itself, turned out in full force. The Bigge House was crammed to its utmost capacity.

Dressing early, Mell left her room to other guests, in various stages of evening toilet, and descending to the first floor, looked about her for some quiet spot where, for a time, she could hide herself and her tumultuous thoughts. The large reception room was dimly lighted as yet, and empty apparently. Glad to find it so, she walked in, and standing between the long pier-glasses, a tapering column draped in tulle clouds, took a full-length, back and front inspection of her own person.