The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862

"Don't be unreasonable, Laura; when you get as old as I am, you will discover how much better and greater facts are than theories. It's all very well for men to say,—

'Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,'—

the soul is all they love,—the fair, sweet character, the lofty mind, the tender woman's heart, and gentle loveliness; but when you come down to the statistics of love and matrimony, you find Sally Hetheridge at sixty an old maid, and Miss Bowen at nineteen adored by a dozen men and engaged to one. No, Laura, if I had ten sisters, and a fairy godmother for each, I should request that ancient dame to endow them all with beauty and silliness, sure that then they would achieve a woman's best destiny,—a home."

Laura's face burned indignantly; she hardly let me finish before she exclaimed,—

"Susan Lee! I am ashamed of you! Here are you, an old maid, as happy as anybody, decrying all good gifts to a woman, except beauty, because, indeed, they stand in the way of her marriage! as if a woman was only made to be a housekeeper!"

Laura's indignation amused me. I went on.

"Yes, I am happy enough; but I should have been much happier, had I married. Don't waste your indignation, dear; you are pretty enough to excuse your being sensible, and you ought to agree with my ideas, because they excuse Frank, and yours do not."

"I don't want to excuse him; I am really angry about it. I can't bear to have Frank throw himself away; she is pretty now, but what will she be in ten years?"

"People in love do not usually enter into such remote calculations; love is to-day's delirium; it has an element of divine faith in it, in not caring for the morrow. But, Laura, we can't help this matter, and we have neither of us any conscience involved in it. Miss Bowen may be better than we know. At any rate, Frank is happy, and that ought to satisfy both you and me just now."

Laura's eyes filled with tears. I could see them glisten on the dark lashes, as she affected to tie her hat, all the time untying it as fast as ever the knot slid. She was a sympathetic little creature, and loved Frank very sincerely, having known him as long as she could remember. She gave me a silent kiss, and went away, leaving the letter, yet unopened, lying in my lap. I did not open it just then. I was thinking of Josephine Bowen.

Every summer, for three years, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen had come to Ridgefield for country-air, bringing with them their adopted daughter, whose baptismal name had resigned in favor of the pet appellation "Kitten,"—a name better adapted to her nature and aspect than the Impératrice appellation that belonged to her. She was certainly as charming a little creature as ever one saw in flesh and blood. Her sweet child's face, her dimpled, fair cheeks, her rose-bud of a mouth, and great, wistful, blue eyes, that laughed like flax-flowers in a south-wind, her tiny, round chin, and low, white forehead, were all adorned by profuse rings and coils and curls of true gold-yellow, that never would grow long, or be braided, or stay smooth, or do anything but ripple and twine and push their shining tendrils out of every bonnet or hat or hood the little creature wore, like a stray parcel of sunbeams that would shine. Her delicate, tiny figure was as round as a child's,—her funny hands as quaint as some fat baby's, with short fingers and dimpled knuckles. She was a creature as much made to be petted as a King-Charles spaniel,—and petted she was, far beyond any possibility of a crumpled rose-leaf. Mrs. Bowen was fat, loving, rather foolish, but the best of friends and the poorest of enemies; she wanted everybody to be happy, and fat, and well as she was, and would urge the necessity of wine, and entire idleness, and horse-exercise, upon a poor minister, just as honestly and energetically as if he could have afforded them: an idea to the contrary never crossed her mind spontaneously, but, if introduced there, brought forth direct results of bottles, bank-bills, and loans of ancient horses, only to be checked by friendly remonstrance, or the suggestion that a poor man might be also proud. Mr. Bowen was tall and spare, a man of much sense and shrewd kindliness, but altogether subject and submissive to "Kitten's" slightest wish. She never wanted anything; no princess in a story-book had less to desire; and this entire spoiling and indulgence seemed to her only the natural course of things. She took it as an open rose takes sunshine, with so much simplicity, and heartiness, and beaming content, and perfume of sweet, careless affection, that she was not given over to any little vanities or affectations, but was always a dear, good little child, as happy as the day was long, and quite without a fear or apprehension. I had seen very little of her in those three summers, for I had been away at the sea-side, trying to fan the flickering life that alone was left to me with pungent salt breezes and stinging baptisms of spray, but I had liked that little pretty well. I did not think her so silly as Laura did: she seemed to me so purely simple, that I sometimes wondered if her honest directness and want of guile were folly or not. But I liked to see her, as she cantered past my door on her pony, the gold tendrils thick clustered about her throat and under the brim of her black hat, and her bright blue eyes sparkling with the keen air, and a real wild-rose bloom on her smiling face. She was a prettier sight even than my profuse chrysanthemums, whose masses of garnet and yellow and white nodded languidly to the autumn winds to-day.

I recalled myself from this dream of recollection, better satisfied with Miss Bowen than I had been before. I could see just how her beauty had bewitched Frank,—so bright, so tiny, so loving: one always wants to gather a little, gay, odor-breathing rose-bud for one's own, and such she was to him.

So then I opened his letter. It was dry and stiff: men's letters almost always are; they cannot say what they feel; they will be fluent of statistics, or description, or philosophy, or politics, but as to feeling,—there they are dumb, except in real love-letters, and, of course, Frank's was unsatisfactory accordingly. Once, toward the end, came out a natural sentence: "Oh, Sue! if you knew her, you wouldn't wonder!" So he had, after all, felt the apology he would not speak; he had some little deference left for his deserted theories.

Well I knew what touched his pride, and struck that little revealing spark from his deliberate pen: Josephine Bowen was rich, and he only a poor lawyer in a country-town: he felt it even in this first flush of love, and to that feeling I must answer when I wrote him,—not merely to the announcement, and the delight, and the man's pride. So I answered his letter at once, and he answered mine in person. I had nothing to say to him, when I saw him; it was enough to see how perfectly happy and contented he was,—how the proud, restless eyes, that had always looked a challenge to all the world, were now tranquil to their depths. Nothing had interfered with his passion. Mrs. Bowen liked him always, Mr. Bowen liked him now; nobody had objected, it had not occurred to anybody to object; money had not been mentioned any more than it would have been in Arcadia. Strange to say, the good, simple woman, and the good, shrewd man had both divined Frank's peculiar sensitiveness, and respected it.

There was no period fixed for the engagement, it was indefinite as yet, and the winter, with all its excitements of South and North, passed by at length, and the first of April the Bowens moved out to Ridgefield. It was earlier than usual; but the city was crazed with excitement, and Mr. Bowen was tried and worn; he wanted quiet. Then I saw a great deal of Josephine, and in spite of Laura, and her still restless objections to the child's childish, laughing, inconsequent manner, I grew into liking her: not that there seemed any great depth to her; she was not specially intellectual, or witty, or studious, or practical; she did not try to be anything: perhaps that was her charm to me. I had seen so many women laboring at themselves to be something, that one who was content to live without thinking about it was a real phenomenon to me. Nothing bores me (though I be stoned for the confession, I must make it!) more than a woman who is bent on improving her mind, or forming her manners, or moulding her character, or watching her motives, with that deadly-lively conscientiousness that makes so many good people disagreeable. Why can't they consider the lilies, which grow by receiving sun and air and dew from God, and not hopping about over the lots to find the warmest corner or the wettest hollow, to see how much bigger and brighter they can grow? It was real rest to me to have this tiny, bright creature come in to me every day during Frank's office-hours as unintentionally as a yellow butterfly would come in at the window. Sometimes she strayed to the kitchen-porch, and, resting her elbows on the window-sill and her chin on both palms, looked at me with wondering eyes while I made bread or cake; sometimes she came by the long parlor-window, and sat down on a brioche at my feet while I sewed, talking in her direct, unconsidered way, so fresh, and withal so good and pure, I came to thinking the day very dull that did not bring "Kitten" to see me.

The nineteenth of April, in the evening, my door opened again with an impetuous bang; but this time it was Frank Addison, his eyes blazing, his dark cheek flushed, his whole aspect fired and furious.

"Good God, Sue! do you know what they've done in Baltimore?"

"What?" said I, in vague terror, for I had been an alarmist from the first: I had once lived at the South.

"Fired on a Massachusetts regiment, and killed—nobody knows how many yet; but killed, and wounded."

I could not speak: it was the lighted train of a powder-magazine burning before my eyes. Frank began to walk up and down the room.

"I must go! I must! I must!" came involuntarily from his working lips.

"Frank! Frank! remember Josephine."

It was a cowardly thing to do, but I did it. Frank turned ghastly white, and sat down in a chair opposite me. I had, for the moment, quenched his ardor; he looked at me with anxious eyes, and drew a long sigh, almost a groan.

"Josephine!" he said, as if the name were new to him, so vitally did the idea seize all his faculties.

"Well, dear!" said a sweet little voice at the door.

Frank turned, and seemed to see a ghost; for there in the door-way stood "Kitten," her face perhaps a shade calmer than ordinary, swinging in one hand the tasselled hood she wore of an evening, and holding her shawl together with the other. Over her head we discerned the spare, upright shape of Mr. Bowen looking grim and penetrative, but not unkindly.

"What is the matter?" went on the little lady.

Nobody answered, but Frank and I looked at each other. She came in now and went toward him, Mr. Bowen following at a respectful distance, as if he were her footman.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," said she, with the slightest possible suggestion of reserve, or perhaps timidity, in her voice. "Father went first for me, and when you were not at Laura's, or the office, or the post-office, or Mrs. Sledge's, then I knew you were here; so I came with him, because—because"—she hesitated the least bit here—"we love Sue."

Frank still looked at her with his soul in his eyes, as if he wanted to absorb her utterly into himself and then die. I never saw such a look before; I hope I never may again; it haunts me to this day.

I can pause now to recall and reason about the curious, exalted atmosphere that seemed suddenly to have surrounded us, as if bare spirits communed there, not flesh and blood. Frank did not move; he sat and looked at her standing near him, so near that her shawl trailed against his chair; but presently when she wanted to grasp something, she moved aside and took hold of another chair,—not his: it a little thing, but it interpreted her.

"Well?" said he, in a hoarse tone.

Just then she moved, as I said, and laid one hand on the back of a chair: it was the only symptom of emotion she showed; her voice was as childish-clear and steady as before.

"You want to go, Frank, and I thought you would rather be married to me first; so I came to find you and tell you I would."

Frank sprang to his feet like a shot man; I cried; Josephine stood looking at us quite steadily, her head a little bent toward me, her eyes calm, but very wide open; and Mr. Bowen gave an audible grunt. I suppose the right thing for Frank to have done in any well-regulated novel would have been to fall on his knees and call her all sorts of names; but people never do—that is, any people that I know—just what the gentlemen in novels do; so he walked off and looked out of the window. To my aid came the goddess of slang. I stopped snuffling directly.

"Josephine," said I, solemnly, "you are a brick!"

"Well, I should think so!" said Mr. Bowen, slightly sarcastic.

Josey laughed very softly. Frank came back from the window, and then the three went off together, she holding by her father's arm, Frank on his other side. I could not but look after them as I stood in the hall-door, and then I came back and sat down to read the paper Frank had flung on the floor when he came in. It diverted my mind enough from myself to enable me to sleep; for I was burning with self-disgust to think of my cowardice. I, a grown woman, supposed to be more than ordinarily strong-minded by some people, fairly shamed and routed by a girl Laura Lane called "Dora"!

In the morning, Frank came directly after breakfast. He had found his tongue now, certainly,—for words seemed noway to satisfy him, talking of Josephine; and presently she came, too, as brave and bright as ever, sewing busily on a long housewife for Frank; and after her, Mrs. Bowen, making a huge pin-ball in red, white, and blue, and full of the trunk she was packing for Frank to carry, to be filled with raspberry-jam, hard gingerbread, old brandy, clove-cordial, guava-jelly, strong peppermints, quinine, black cake, cod-liver oil, horehound-candy, Brandreth's pills, damson-leather, and cherry-pectoral, packed in with flannel and cotton bandages, lint, lancets, old linen, and cambric handkerchiefs.

I could not help laughing, and was about to remonstrate, when Frank shook his head at me from behind her. He said afterward he let her go on that way, because it kept her from crying over Josephine. As for the trunk, he should give it to Miss Dix as soon as ever he reached Washington.

In a week, Frank had got his commission as captain of a company in a volunteer regiment; he went into camp at Dartford, our chief town, and set to work in earnest at tactics and drill. The Bowens also went to Dartford, and the last week in May came back for Josey's wedding. I am a superstitious creature,—most women are,—and it went to my heart to have them married in May; but I did not say so, for it seemed imperative, as the regiment were to leave for Washington in June, early.

The day but one before the wedding was one of those warm, soft days that so rarely come in May. My windows were open, and the faint scent of springing grass and opening blossoms came in on every southern breath of wind. Josey had brought her work over to sit beside me. She was hemming her wedding-veil,—a long cloud of tulle; and as she sat there, pinching the frail stuff in her fingers, and handling her needle with such deft little ways, as if they were old friends and understood each other, there was something so youthful, so unconscious, so wistfully sweet in her aspect, I could not believe her the same resolute, brave creature I had seen that night in April.

"Josey," said I, "I don't know how you can be willing to let Frank go."

It was a hard thing for me to say, and I said it without thinking.

She leaned back in her chair, and pinched her hem faster than ever.

"I don't know, either," said she. "I suppose it was because I ought. I don't think I am so willing now, Sue: it was easy at first, for I was so angry and grieved about those Massachusetts men; but now, when I get time to think, I do ache over it! I never let him know; for it is just the same right now, and he thinks so. Besides, I never let myself grieve much, even to myself, lest he might find it out. I must keep bright till he goes. It would be so very hard on him, Susy, to think I was crying at home."

I said no more,—I could not; and happily for me, Frank came in with a bunch of wild-flowers, that Josey took with a smile as gay as the columbines, and a blush that outshone the "pinkster-bloomjes," as our old Dutch "chore-man" called the wild honeysuckle. A perfect shower of dew fell from them all over her wedding-veil.

The day of her marriage was showery as April, but a gleam of soft, fitful sunshine streamed into the little church windows, and fell across the tiny figure that stood by Frank Addison's side, like a ray of glory, till the golden curls glittered through her veil, and the fresh lilies-of-the-valley that crowned her hair and ornamented her simple dress seemed to send out a fresher fragrance, and glow with more pearly whiteness. Mrs. Bowen, in a square pew, sobbed, and snuffled, and sopped her eyes with a lace pocket-handkerchief, and spilt cologne all over her dress, and mashed the flowers on her French hat against the dusty pew-rail, and behaved generally like a hen that has lost her sole chicken. Mr. Bowen sat upright in the pew-corner, uttering sonorous hems, whenever his wife sobbed audibly; he looked as dry as a stick, and as grim as Bunyan's giant, and chewed cardamom-seeds, as if he were a ruminating animal.

After the wedding came lunch: it was less formal than dinner, and nobody wanted to sit down before hot dishes and go through with the accompanying ceremonies. For my part, I always did hate gregarious eating: it is well enough for animals, in pasture or pen; but a thing that has so little that is graceful or dignified about it as this taking food, especially as the thing is done here in America, ought, in my opinion, to be a solitary act. I never bring my quinine and iron to my friends and invite them to share it; why should I ask them to partake of my beef, mutton, and pork, with the accompanying mastication, the distortion of face, and the suppings and gulpings of fluid dishes that many respectable people indulge in? No,—let me, at least, eat alone. But I did not do so to-day; for Josey, with the most unsentimental air of hunger, sat down at the table and ate two sandwiches, three pickled mushrooms, a piece of pie, and a glass of jelly, with a tumbler of ale besides. Laura Lane sat on the other side of the table, her great dark eyes intently fixed on Josephine, and a look in which wonder was delicately shaded with disgust quivering about her mouth. She was a feeling soul, and thought a girl in love ought to live on strawberries, honey, and spring-water. I believe she really doubted Josey's affection for Frank, when she saw her eat a real mortal meal on her wedding-day. As for me, I am a poor, miserable, unhealthy creature, not amenable to ordinary dietetic rules, and much given to taking any excitement, above a certain amount in lieu of rational food; so I sustained myself on a cup of coffee, and saw Frank also make tolerable play of knife and fork, though he did take some blanc-mange with his cold chicken, and profusely peppered his Charlotte-Russe!

Mrs. Bowen alternately wept and ate pie. Mr. Bowen said the jelly tasted of turpentine, and the chickens must have gone on Noah's voyage, they were so tough; he growled at the ale, and asked nine questions about the coffee, all of a derogatory sort, and never once looked at Josephine, who looked at him every time he was particularly cross, with a rosy little smile, as if she knew why! The few other people present behaved after the ordinary fashion; and when we had finished, Frank and Josephine, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, Laura Lane and I, all took the train for Dartford. Laura was to stay two weeks, and I till the regiment left.

An odd time I had, after we were fairly settled in our quiet hotel, with those two girls. Laura was sentimental, sensitive, rather high-flown, very shy, and self-conscious; it was not in her to understand Josey at all. We had a great deal of shopping to do, as our little bride had put off buying most of her finery till this time, on account of the few weeks between the fixing of her marriage-day and its arrival. It was pretty enough to see the naïve vanity with which she selected her dresses and shawls and laces,—the quite inconsiderate way in which she spent her money on whatever she wanted. One day we were in a dry-goods' shop, looking at silks; among them lay one of Marie-Louise blue,—a plain silk, rich from its heavy texture only, soft, thick, and perfect in color.

"I will have that one," said Josephine, after she had eyed it a moment, with her head on one side, like a canary-bird. "How much is it?"

"Two fifty a yard, Miss," said the spruce clerk, with an inaccessible air.

"I shall look so nice in it!" Josey murmured. "Sue, will seventeen yards do? it must be very full and long; I can't wear flounces."

"Yes, that's plenty," said I, scarce able to keep down a smile at Laura's face.

She would as soon have smoked a cigar on the steps of the hotel as have mentioned before anybody, much less a supercilious clerk, that she should "look so nice" in anything. Josey never thought of anything beyond the fact, which was only a fact. So, after getting another dress of a lavender tint, still self-colored, but corded and rich, because it went well with her complexion, and a black one, that "father liked to see against her yellow wig, as he called it," Mrs. Josephine proceeded to a milliner's, where, to Laura's further astonishment, she bought bonnets for herself, as if she had been her own doll, with an utter disregard of proper self-depreciation, trying one after another, and discarding them for various personal reasons, till at last she fixed on a little gray straw, trimmed with gray ribbon and white daisies, "for camp," she said, and another of white lace, a fabric calculated to wear twice, perhaps, if its floating sprays of clematis did not catch in any parasol on its first appearance. She called me to see how becoming both the bonnets were, viewed herself in various ways in the glass, and at last announced that she looked prettiest in the straw, but the lace was most elegant. To this succeeded purchases of lace and shawls, that still farther opened Laura's eyes, and made her face grave. She confided to me privately, that, after all, I must allow Josephine was silly and extravagant. I had just come from that little lady's room, where she sat surrounded by the opened parcels, saying, with the gravity of a child,—

"I do like pretty things, Sue! I like them more now than I used to, because Frank likes me. I am so glad I'm pretty!"

I don't know how it was, but I could not quite coincide with Laura's strictures. Josey was extravagant, to be sure; she was vain; but something so tender and feminine flavored her very faults that they charmed me. I was not an impartial judge; and I remembered, through all, that April night, and the calm, resolute, self-poised character that invested the lovely, girlish face with such dignity, strength, and simplicity. No, she was not silly; I could not grant that to Laura.

Every day we drove to the camp, and brought Frank home to dinner. Now and then he stayed with us till the next day, and even Laura could not wonder at his "infatuation," as she had once called it, when she saw how thoroughly Josephine forgot herself in her utter devotion to him; over this, Laura's eyes filled with sad forebodings.

"If anything should happen to him, Sue, it will kill her," she said. "She never can lose him and live. Poor little thing! how could Mr. Bowen let her marry him?"

"Mr. Bowen lets her do much as she likes, Laura, and always has, I imagine."

"Yes, she has been a spoiled child, I know, but it is such a pity!"

"Has she been spoiled? I believe, as a general thing, more children are spoiled by what the Scotch graphically call 'nagging' than by indulgence. What do you think Josey would have been, if Mrs. Brooks had been her mother?"

"I don't know, quite; unhappy, I am sure; for Mrs. Brooks's own children look as if they had been fed on chopped catechism, and whipped early every morning, ever since they were born. I never went there without hearing one or another of them told to sit up, or sit down, or keep still, or let their aprons alone, or read their Bibles; and Joe Brooks confided to me in Sunday-school that he called Deacon Smith 'old bald-head,' one day, in the street, to see if a bear wouldn't come and eat him up, he was so tired of being a good boy!"