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

“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.

Now this dainty rustic maiden, as we have seen, looked at when framed in a high-necked, long-sleeved, simple morning-gown, made a sweet picture for any eye; but it was, in some respects, a tame presentation compared to this gorgeously arrayed being, bedecked in flowers and a low corsage, with marble shoulders, shapely throat, alabaster neck and rounded arms, bewilderingly displayed, cunningly concealed. This fairy-like being cannot be a bona fide woman; she is more likely a study from Reynolds or Gainsborough, who has stepped out of canvas and a gilt frame on the wall there, merely to delight the living eye and inflame the fumes of vital fancy.

Not long, however, whether sprite or woman, did she pose there in admiration of her own face and figure. For, truth to tell, they have both become hateful in the girl’s own sight. Her fair face looks to herself no longer as a fresh-gathered blossom sparkling with dew, as the ethereal interpreter of a woman’s pure soul, blameless and serene. Much more does it look, to her own acute sensibilities, as a painted mask, put on for hard service; always in place, always properly adjusted, proof against attack, but every little loophole needing to be defended at every point. A mask very troublesome to wear, but not upon any account to be discarded, since it concealed the discordance of a secret love and the clanking of a chain.

But now, to-night, in this empty room, in this deep silence and blessed solitude, where there is no eye to see, no ear to hear, she will throw off for one thankful moment the ugly, hateful thing. She will allow the dejected visage to fitly portray the dejected mind; she will breathe freely once more, and sigh and sigh, and moan and moan, and wring her hands in uncontrollable agony; and, ignoring the fact that the heaviest part of her trouble is of her own making, wonder why she had ever been born for such as this.

Hope is entirely dead in Mell’s heart. Transplanted out of the lowly valley of her own birth to the mountain-tops of her soul’s desire, she feels as lonely as we might imagine the spirit of Greek art, set down in a modern world. Turn whatever way she would, there was but one fate for her – martyrdom. If she did not marry Rube, she would be a martyr in her own humble home; if she did marry him, she would be a martyr in his more pretentious one; and there was not as great a difference as she had thought between the air in the valley and the air on the mountain-top. It is the lungs which breathe, and not the air inhaled, most at issue, and a martyr is a martyr anywhere, the social type being hardly less excruciating to undergo than others more quickly ended.

Pitiful in the extreme are such thoughts in a young mind; pitiful such manifestations of suffering in one too young to suffer.

How the people upstairs would be surprised if they could see her! How the Honorable Archibald, who liked things jolly, begawd! who thought all evidence of feeling bad form, you know; who believed, root and branch, in British stoicism, even in the jaws of death; how he would advise her in a spirit of friendliness and a well-bred way, not aw to make a blawsted dolt of herself – if he only knew. Fortunately, he did not know; fortunately, nobody knew.

Nobody?

Then who or what is that creature in semblance of man, in attitude of deepest thought, with folded arms and hanging head, darkly shadowed, dimly seen, scarcely discernible in the embrasure of the window over there?

Spirit or man? If a man, he might be a dead one for all the noise he makes – only a dead man was never known before to use his eyes in such a lively manner, or his ears to such good purpose, or to betray so deep an interest in a living woman, even in a ball dress.

Mell did not look towards him, did not know he was there; yet, on a sudden, as if from some inward sense of vigilance rather than any extraneous source of knowledge, her pulses strangely fluttered – she became aware that she was not in reality alone. How, in the absence of visual impression, we can only say by an instinct as unaccountable as the phenomenon of sound waves which excite wire vibrations.

She was mysteriously imbued with another presence, if such a thing is possible, and in all the world there was but one who could so clothe the circumambient air in his own personality.

That one was Jerome Devonhough. Perceiving she now knew he was there, he got up and came towards her.

Mell did not look at him; she looked upon the floor. He looked straight at her, and looked so long and hard, and with a gaze so fixed and steady, that he seemed to be slowly absorbing her very being into his own entity.