Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848

"Mary did not seem to fancy him much, and when at length her brother came for us, and Mr. Gardner quietly proposed himself to Mr. Dunbar as Mary's suitor, and he had told him the connection would give him great pleasure, they neither of them seemed to think much more was necessary, for absolutely nothing was said to Mary till we got home. Mr. Dunbar lived at Cambridge then, near Boston. He was a widower, and Mary lived with him, and kept his house in some sort, and played with his little boy occasionally. You may suppose she was not a very staid personage, for she was at this time only seventeen years old, and as I was more than twenty-seven, I occasionally checked her wildness, while I could not help laughing at her graceful follies. She should have been born of a French mother and a Spanish father, for she was gay and volatile as the summer insect, and yet she had much depth of feeling, and was full of romantic tenderness, with sometimes a haughty expression that seemed altogether foreign to her usual character of face, and looked only the index of what might be expected of her if she should ever be exasperated to fight against her destiny. But so far destiny seemed to wait humbly on her pleasure; she was beloved by all, and though left early an orphan, had found in the indulgent tenderness of her brother and his wife a delightful home.

"A little while after our return, Mr. Dunbar took an opportunity when business did not press, for he went daily into Boston and left Mary and me to ourselves through the day, just to mention the little matter of Mr. Gardner's proposal to Mary; and to say he had accepted it so far as he was concerned.

"Now, girls, you must not ask me about characters, I shall tell you the facts, and you must guess at the characters of persons by them, the whys you can ascertain as well as I could tell you. When Mr. Dunbar had told Mary, who received the intelligence in silence, he dismissed the topic and no further allusion was made to it.

"I asked Mary soon after if she considered herself engaged to Mr. Gardner.

"'Certainly not.'

"I asked her if she liked him, and she gave me the same laconic answer. So I, too, dismissed the topic. There was a little mystery in Mary's manner about this time. If she did not like Mr. Gardner she did like young Randolph, a Southerner, and a student, who walked with her, and sent her flowers, and notes, and all sorts of pretty and poetical things to read – poems marked for her eye, and the sweetest and newest music for her piano. Then of a moonlight night we had serenades without number, and soft strains sung in a deep, rich voice, so that what with flowers, music, notes and very expressive looking and sighing, the prospect was all but shut out for poor Mr. Gardner, and opening an interminable vista for Randolph.

"Weeks went on – oh, I forgot; in the meantime Mr. Gardner wrote two letters, one to Mr. Dunbar about Mary, and one to Mary herself, but not much about her. It was mostly a business letter, written in a calm, friendly style, and asking her opinion about some alterations he proposed making in the house, adding a wing, I think. He seemed to consider her a person who had a right to be consulted in his arrangements, and I remember he finished his letter with 'Yours, &c.' Mary handed the letter to me with a look of extreme vexation, which at length subsided into a hearty laugh. I laughed too, but Mr. Dunbar did not, and looked rather surprised at us.

"In the course of four weeks from the time of our return, this ardent lover appeared in person. He drove up to the door in a very handsome carriage, and with his servant, all looking very stylish. I saw Mary color extremely, but she sat quite still, and when Mr. Gardner entered and went toward her holding out his hand, she remained in her place, and did not move her hand at all. He shook hands with the rest of us. Mary made tea, and one or two persons coming in, Mr. Gardner became rather animated, and appeared as he was, a very gentlemanly, intelligent person. At last Mary could bear it no longer. She ran out of the room and went up to her chamber. She shared hers with me, and Mr. Gardner's was adjoining ours. It was rather late, between ten and eleven o'clock, and presently Mr. Gardner, who was somewhat fatigued, bade us good-night and ascended to his own apartment. I then went to Mary's room: I found her in a state of great excitement and indignation, and yet though I sympathized fully with her, there was something so comical in the business-like way of doing the thing, which Mr. Gardner had adopted, and his entire unconsciousness of the sort of person he was to deal with, that I began to laugh heartily.

"'Hush! hush! for Heaven's sake! he can hear every word! Oh, my heart! – do you believe, he has come up stairs and gone straight to bed, and is this minute fast asleep! there – hear him! don't laugh! he'll wake as sure as you do!'

"But laugh I did, for I could not help it, albeit Mary's pallid face and earnest eyes checked me in the midst.

"'Now I am going down stairs this minute to put a stop to all this at once. I could not have believed stupidity could have gone so far. I shall see my brother and have an end put to his journeys here: good heavens! to think of it.'

"This I could not object to, of course. Indeed, from the first of this very peculiar 'arrangement' I had not been consulted by either Mary or her brother, and I had a dreamy sort of feeling that by and by we should all wake up and find Mr. Gardner was only an incubus, instead of the unpleasant reality he was getting to be.

"I sat still for nearly or quite half an hour, when Mary returned to her chamber on tiptoe and looking very pale.

"'Now, what is it?' said I earnestly, for I saw it was no joke to poor Mary: her very lips were pallid and trembling, and her hand was pressed to her side as if to still the convulsive springing of her heart.

"'I – I have been talking it over to William,' she said, in a thick, hasty voice; 'I told him I could go no further with this man – this no man – who is willing to take me, without so much as inquiring if I have a heart to bestow – but oh! oh, Susan – Randolph has gone!' she sobbed out in a complete passion of grief, that could not brook further concealment or restraint.

"'But how do you know this?' I asked, after, as you may suppose, I had soothed and hushed her as far as I was able.

"'William told me so himself. I told him I could not, would not marry Mr. Gardner – and he would not believe me – called me a foolish, nonsensical child, who didn't know my own mind – and at last, when nothing else would have any effect on his mind, I said – I said – ah! Susan, how hard it was and is to say it! I loved another!'

"'And how then, my poor child?'

"'Then – he just in his quiet, calm way, that kills one, you know – for it seems the death-blow to all sentiment – he said, 'Mary, if you mean young Randolph, whom I have sometimes met here, playing the lover, all I can say is, he is too discreet to contest the field, witness this note of farewell which was sent to my office this afternoon. He desires his very respectful compliments to you, Mary.' Would you believe it, Susan? I took that note – and read every word of it; yes, and I smiled, too, as I gave it back to him, as if it were the most indifferent thing in the world – though I felt then, as I do now, every line of it chilling my heart like ice.'

"'Dear Mary,' I said, still very quietly, for she grew almost wild with excitement, 'how is this? Why has Randolph gone? have you had any quarrel?'

"'Quarrel! God help you – no! – how should that be? don't I love the very dust he treads on!' she screamed out violently at last, and went into a hysteric fit. The sound of her maniacal voice brought her brother to the door with anxious inquiry, but as I told him Mary was a little over excited, and quiet would soon restore her, at my earnest request he retired. In a short time I was able, with bathing her head in cold water, and constantly soothing her with low murmuring tones of endearment, to see her sobbing herself into a troubled sleep, and as I looked on her beautiful face, pale as marble, and the black hair wetted and matted back from her fine brow, I felt that I saw a double victim to the cruel indifference of others, and the violent emotions of her own untutored nature."

Alice and Louisa Stanwood had gazed steadily into the face of their grandmother, while in the relation of this true story, it lighted up with remembered emotion.

"Poor, poor girl!" said they; "but where, then, was Mr. Gardener all this while? Surely he must have relented."

"Truth compels me to say, my romantic girls, that this quiet-loving lover, to all human appearance, was not in the least disturbed. Indeed, as I listened to the painful breathings of Mary, every now and then catching, as if for life, at a breath, and then hushed into all but dead silence, I was distinctly aware of certain audible demonstrations of profound composure on the part of Mr. Gardner. In sooth, he was not a lover for a romance writer at all; but such as he was – and you must remember our agreement was that I should only relate facts, not account for them – such as he was, he rose with the lark and took his usual walk, to promote his appetite and prolong his life.

"When he returned, as Mary was too unwell to go down stairs, I descended to the breakfast-room where I found Mr. Dunbar uneasily walking the room.

"'How is Mary?' said he, the moment he saw me? 'No better? Tell her to be comforted – be quiet. God forbid I should do any thing to make her unhappy. I will speak to Mr. Gardner about the matter myself, and tell him it can't be.'

"His earnest manner quite convinced me that however he might seem, his sister was really very near his heart, and 'albeit unused to the melting mood,' I felt my eyes fill with tears, as I turned and ran up to Mary's room to comfort her poor heart. She was comforted and quieted, though she declined leaving her room till after Mr. Gardner's departure; and I left her, at her own request, to silent reflection.

"And now you will think all the trouble was over. But did ever faint heart win fair ladie? Never. And Mr. Gardner's heart did not sink when he was told the true story of Mary's indifference and aversion. Both brother and lover had deceived themselves, or rather they had not thought about it. But now that he did think about it, Mr. Gardner was not inclined to relinquish the pursuit. He knew that women were fickle and strange beings, and oft-times refused the very happiness they were dying to possess. Whether Mary were of this species he knew not, but at all events the prize was worth trying for. So he told Mr. Dunbar he would not trouble Mary more at present, but leave it to time. Time did a great many things. Time might make him acceptable to the very heart that now tossed him as a scorned thing away.

"Now Alice, my dear child, don't give up my Mary, nor think her a heartless being, when I tell you that in six months from that time she became Mrs. Gardner. A very lovely bride she was, too – pale as a snow-drop, and graceful as the lake-lily. She smiled, too, with a sort of contented smile, not radiant, not heartfelt, not joyous; there were no deeps of her being stirred as she stood calm and passionless by the altar, and promised to love and honor Mr. Gardner, but a very quiet and pensive sort of pleasure. A part of her soul seemed to have been buried with the past, and to have been forcibly crushed down with all its young ardor and bloom forever; but above it was an everyday being, full of determination to do her duty, to make her husband happy, and be as happy herself as she could. So she was married; and so she stepped into a handsome carriage with Mr. Gardner, and the bridemaids and groomsmen followed in another; and never was there a gayer and merrier cavalcade than at Mary Dunbar's marriage.

CHAPTER II

"Now, my dear girls, you must skip over a few years, during which I neither saw nor heard of Mary Dunbar. I returned from a journey which I had been taking, and was glad to feel that Mr. Gardner's house lay in my nearest route home. I longed to see Mary in her new character, now that she had had time to feel and perform her duties, and proposed to be with her for a few days, that I might form my own opinion touching this 'mariage de convenance.'

"Mr. Gardner's house was one of some pretension originally; that is to say, it had been built in the style of country gentlemen in New England forty years ago. A row of white-pine pillars surrounded the house from roof to basement, and formed a piazza-walk very convenient in a dull day. Six chimneys crowned the roof, and the whole arrangement was tasteful and imposing. There was a terrace of green turf all round the house, and the offices and out-buildings were at a short distance from the main building. As the stage-coach wound up the avenue, I noticed in the disposition of the grounds and shrubbery the evident hand of female taste. Fantastic arbors, almost hid behind clematis and honeysuckle; little white arches supporting twining roses of twenty sorts, and trees arranged in picturesque groups, gave a character of beautiful wildness to the scenery.

"I fancied Mary the presiding genius of the place as I last had seen her, white and bright, with a little rose-tint on her cheek, caught from nature and the happy quiet of her life – for I had heard that she rejoiced in an infant, whose beauty and promise I knew must renew all the affectionate sympathies of her woman's heart.

"The stage-coach stopped. A servant opened the door, and to my inquiry for Mrs. Gardner, answered hesitatingly, that 'he believed she did not wish to see company.' How much of apprehension was compressed into that brief moment. What could have happened to her? Much might have happened, and I not know it, for I had been living in great seclusion, and had had no correspondence with Mary. However, I gave my card to the man, and bade him take it to Mrs. Gardner, meanwhile sitting with a throbbing heart in the carriage.

"The man returned in a short time with a message requesting me to stop, and to have my trunks taken off. Not a welcoming voice or face met me – and in silence I followed the servant to the parlor. Mary was sitting there; some fire was in the grate, though it was in July; and she hovered over it as if she sought to warm her heart enough to show proper feeling at the sight of an old friend.

"'Mary Dunbar!' I cried out, with my arms outspread, for the figure before me of hopelessness and gloom gave me a feeling almost heart-breaking.

"The sound of her own maiden name acted like magic on Mary. She sprung to my arms like a frightened bird, and clung to me with such intensity of sad earnestness in her face, that it brought back to me all the old sorrow of that night of suffering at her brother's. Once more I soothed her, smoothed back the dark plumage of her hair, and with soft words and gentle caresses, brought her to quietness.

"'You are ill, my poor Mary,' I said, as I looked at her sunken cheek, and the deep gloom about her eyes. 'Where is Mr. Gardner?'

"'Oh, he is gone most of the time,' said she hastily, and then, for the first time, seeming to recollect her duty as hostess, she added, 'but you are tired and travel-soiled, and hungry, too, I dare say; let me make you comfortable.' She laughed a little as she spoke, but not like her old laugh, it was affected, and died in its birth.

"She rang the bell, gave orders for lunch to be brought in, and a room prepared for me, with something of her old activity, and saying cordially, 'Now you must stay with me; now I have got you here, I cannot spare you again.' She relapsed into thoughtfulness and absence. This strange manner puzzled me not a little.

"I went up stairs. The white dreariness of my room chilled me. Mary did not accompany me as she would once have done, to see that all was comfortable for me. The muslin window-curtains hid the view outside, and the stately high-post bedstead, with its gilded tester, looked as if sleep would be afraid to 'come anear' it. My trunks were brought up, and then a silence like death was in the house. No child was in the house, that was clear – and nobody else it would seem. Well, I must wait. I should know all in good time. I dressed and went down to the parlor. Mary still hovered over the fire, looking, in her white wrapper and whiter face, more like a ghost than any living thing. I had intended to be calmly cheerful, to talk to Mary about old times, and by degrees to lead her to speak of so much of her present life as would give me an insight into the mysterious sorrow that reigned like a presence over the dwelling.

"But as poor Ophelia says, 'we know what we are, but not what we shall be.' So no more did I know how to look at that crouching figure and be cheerful and calm. I lost all presence of mind, and could only sit down and cry heartily. Mary rose at the sound of my weeping and came to me.

"'Do you know I cannot weep, Susan? These fountains are drained dry. See, there are no tears in my eyes, though God knows my heart is drowned all day and night. It is dreadful to have such a burning head as mine, and no tears to wet it withal.'

"I wiped my eyes and grew calmer when I saw the wild brightness of her eye; and dreading another nervous attack, I did my best to quiet both her and myself. The day passed on without further reference to any present griefs; she showed me her little conservatory, with a few rare flowers in it, which she had reared with much care, and led me over the pleasantest paths in the grounds and groves attached to the house. In one of these groves, at some distance from the house itself, was a little cleared space, and in the centre of that a small, a very small mound.

"I knew at once what it was. There slept the child I had heard of. So had been broken the dearest tie Mary had felt binding her to life. She stood with me a moment, looking at the mound with a steadfast look, and then putting back her hair from her forehead, as if she tried to remember something, she smiled sadly, and said in a broken voice,

"'You see I cannot shed one tear, even on my child's grave.' I led her gently away among the old trees and quiet paths, and we sat in the warm July shadows till the sun went down.

"You may guess how thankful I was to see at last, as we turned homeward, the tears slowly falling over her face and dropping on her dress, as she walked on, evidently unconscious of the blessed relief. 'Like music on my heart' sunk these tears, for I knew that with them would come the coolness, 'like a welcoming' over her burning pulse, and I carefully abstained from saying a word that would interrupt the feelings rather than thoughts which now agitated her. We returned to the house; tea was served silently, for even the domestics hardly spoke above a whisper; and then we sat in the soft moonlight and looked on the sleeping scene before us. The summer sounds of rural life had long died away, and nothing but the untiring chirp of the tree-toad was to be heard. The melancholy monotony of the scene hushed Mary's spirit to a quiet she had not for a long time known, and at last she became conscious of having wept freely.

"'I have wept, thank God! that shows I am human. Now ask me all about what you want to know. I think I can talk about it. Mr. Gardner? Oh, he is gone – he is gone a great deal, you know; his business leads him continually away from home, and that leaves me, of course, very dull – very. Shouldn't you think it ought to, Susan dear?'

"Thus incoherently she began; but the first step taken, and secure of sympathy in her hearer, she went on, and you will believe me when I tell you we talked till midnight, and that then Mary sunk, like a weary child, into my arms in a sound sleep.

"I cannot give you her precise words, but the import of her relation I shall never forget. A few words will suffice to tell you what it took her hours of emotion and tears to reveal.

"You remember I told you she looked determined to do her duty, and be as happy a wife as she could. Did ever a wife succeed in being happy with duty for the material? Perhaps if Mr. Gardner had been an ardent lover, somewhat impulsive, and eager to commend himself to her grateful affection, he would have succeeded in doing so; indeed, I am sure of it, in time it must have been so; but, alas! Mr. Gardner was a calm, gentlemanly, sensible, phlegmatic person, who thought his wife's impulsive and hasty nature should be occasionally checked, and who had no toleration for, nor sympathy with, her excitable spirit. Consequently, she soon learned to have a calm exterior when he was at home, which his frequent absences made it easy to assume. They had been married something like three years, and Mary was the delighted mother of a healthy and lovely daughter. Her heart, which had almost closed in the chilly atmosphere of her husband's manners, expanded and flowered luxuriantly in the warmth of maternity. In her happiness she reflected a part of its exuberance on her husband, and smiled with much of her old gayety. 'I felt my young days coming back to me,' she said.

"One day the post brought a letter for her, which she opened, and then left the room to read. The letter was from young Randolph. The writer apologized for his year's silence to her, by an account of a long illness, &c. He knew of her happiness, of her child; in short, he seemed to be informed of every thing about her. He asked to be permitted to correspond with her. The letter expressed the strongest and deepest interest, but couched in such respectful and friendly terms as were difficult to resist. Mary struggled long with her sense of what was due to herself and her husband; but right at last conquered, and she re-entered the room with the letter in her hand. Tremblingly she gave it to her husband, who read a part of it, and then said, with much kindness of manner,

"'Correspond with any of your friends, male or female, my dear. I have not the slightest objection.'

"Mary's good spirit was still at her ear, and she said with some difficulty,

"'Mr. Gardner, the writer of this letter was once much interested in me.'

"'And you in him, eh? Well, my love, those things are all gone by; I can fully trust you. So again, I say, correspond with any body you like, provided you don't ask me to read the letters.'

The generous confidence of her husband deeply affected Mary; but, unhappily, it did not induce her to the safe course of declining the correspondence with this fascinating and dangerous friend. The correspondence went on for years, nay, it was continued up to the time of my visit. And now, my dears, I must stop the current of my story for a minute, to utter my protest against this most dangerous and wretched of all theories —Platonic friendships between a married woman and her male friends. But for the false notions of safety in such a friendship, Mary Dunbar might now be a loved and loving woman. This you will not believe could have been with Mr. Gardner; but remember, Mary was getting to love Mr. Gardner a good deal, and habit and duty and maternal happiness would have done much; so that in a sort, she would have been both loved and loving. The letters from Randolph, which she showed me, were very interesting, and full of fine sensible remarks on education, all so interspersed with gentle and deep interest for herself, that you saw she was never out of his mind and heart for an instant. Just such letters as a happy married woman would never read, and what any woman's instinct protects her from if she listens to it.

"Things had gone on in this way for two years, or thereabouts, when the child, who had been the subject of so many theories, and in whom were garnered all the conscious hopes of Mary, was taken suddenly ill. Her anxiety induced her immediately to summon medical assistance; and she could hardly believe her physician when he said there were no grounds for apprehension. The child had a sore throat; there was a considerable degree of inflammation about the system, and when he left, he directed Mary to have some leeches applied to the neck of the little girl, at the same time pointing to the spot where he wished them to take the blood.

Mary was particular to place them there, but to her great alarm, the blood issued from the punctures in such a quantity as to drench the bed-linen almost immediately. In vain she tried to stop it – it flowed in torrents, and before the horror-struck servants could summon the physician, the life had ebbed from the child – nothing but a blood-stained form remained. The physician said the jugular vein had been pierced, and that it was something like half an inch nearer the ear than he ever saw it before. I believe he was not to blame – far less was the wretched instrument, whose agony I will not attempt to describe.