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1836
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FULL THIRTY.
By Miss Sedgewick.
[p. 212]
‘In faith Lady, you have a merry heart.’
‘Yea my Lord, I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.’
THE first visit I paid after coming to town this winter, (this, to New York, most disastrous winter of 1836) was to Mrs. Orme, and her daughter Augusta.
Augusta I knew well and loved. She is the very impersonation of the spirit of cheerfulness, if brightness, intelligence, youth and health should be the indicated attributes of that spirit. Mrs. Orme was a stranger to me except by report. She was a southern lady by birth, and had resided with her family for many years at New Orleans, and at her house there, and her plantation in the neighborhood, some of my friends had enjoyed that hospitality which the southern members of our great family so generously and so gracefully extend to their brethren of the north. She had had several children, healthy and promising till they approached the age of maturity, when they were in turn the victims of the bilious diseases of their native climate. The anxiety consequent upon these repeated losses, induced the mother to consent to a proposal that Augusta should go to the North, where a different climate might avert the anticipated danger. Augusta came to Massachusetts, and the separation that was to have been for one year, was, by various circumstances, prolonged to five. At
[p. 213]
the expiration of that period, her mother, having in the mean time lost two younger children, and buried her husband, came to the north with impaired health and a fortune reduced, but still ample for her wants. Here, either from the change of climate or the more potent influence of the re-union with her daughter, she was in a very few months so renovated, that she determined to remain at least till time (“Time, the consoler !” ) should render the local association with her sorrows less vivid. She had relatives in the fashionable circles of New York, who she thought would give éclat to Augusta's introduction to society, and this decided her to fix her residence in this city. No two persons, of the same sex and country, and both amiable and well principled, could be more different than my laughing, singing, self-relying friend Augusta, and her timid, nervous, dependent mother. This difference, in part constitutional, was confirmed by education. Education, though it may bend the tree, does not change its nature. In any classification of the human family, the mother and daughter belong to different orders; but this will, if I mistake not, be manifest in the circumstances I am about to relate.
I found them at one of the fashionable boardinghouses at the lower end of Broadway. Mrs. Orme received me with her usual gentle courtesy, Augusta with her usual animation. My first enquiries were as to their accommodations, fellow-boarders, &c.
‘Accommodations!’ replied Mrs. Orme, shrugging her shoulders, ‘we do as well as we can — you know, of course, that I am obliged to dispense with a private drawing-room.’
‘Yes,’ said Augusta, ‘but then we have such a delightful room — see what a nice place for my piano.’
[p. 214]
‘A nice place enough,’ said the mother in a sad tone, ‘but what is the use, Augusta, when there is no one to hear you?’
‘Nobody, mama!’ she replied, laughing, and rattling her fingers over the keys,’ when I have you and myself— where else should I find such admiring, patient listeners?’
‘Dear child!’ said her mother, ‘I believe she would be content in a prison.’
‘Your sound reasons for such faith, mama?’
Mrs. Orme turned to me, slightly blushing, as if she feared I might think she had overpraised her child. ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘if you knew how well she bears her trials, you would not think I speak with a mother's partiality.’
‘Trials! mama,’ echoed Augusta.
‘Yes, my love — it certainly is a trial to be obliged to shut ourselves in our own room, or be liable to mix with any one who chooses to share the common drawing-room with us.’
‘A trial, mama!’
‘You may call it what you please, Augusta — I call it a trial.’
‘Well, I never once thought of it being disagreeable even.’
‘Then,’ continued the mother, still addressing me, ‘it is so very inconvenient not to have a servant of your own.’
‘It seems so to mama, because she has been accustomed to having so many; but the servants of the house, though somewhat resembling those spirits who 'will not come when you do call them,’ yet, when they do come, they are very civil and kind.’
[p. 215]
‘But they do not belong to me,’ urged Mrs Orme.
‘But do I not belong to you, mama?’ replied Augusta, and am I not always ready
‘To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds,’’ -----
‘Thou art a dainty spirit,’ thought I, as I looked on her bright face, sun-lit from the soul; and then to turn my friends’ thoughts from the evident discomforts of a boarding house, I asked if they had any agreeable inmates?
A list of them followed, by which it appeared they had the average fortune of persons so domiciliated. There were gentlemen and their wives, who had private drawing rooms — very kind they were to Augusta; but Mrs. Orme did not like to accept civilities which she could not return on equal terms. Then there were two or three pairs who were very much inclined to be sociable; but they were those sort of persons that one does not care to be intimate with.
‘Very good, kind persons, for all,’ interrupted Augusta.
‘There were some young merchants, very civil, --- but ---’
‘But merchants,’ said Augusta archly, ‘mama cannot divest herself of her southern prepossessions against all persons engaged in trade.’
‘That is not strange, Augusta, our prejudices are the last infirmities we get rid of.’
‘Just what Mr. Rayson said yesterday, and because, he said, not having any real foundation, you could not oppose truth to them.’
[p. 218]
‘There is a widow here,’ continued Mrs Orme, ‘a convenient sort of chronicler, who knows all the world, in all places and in all their affairs.’
‘And what she does not know,’ said Augusta, ‘she invents. Mamma, did you not overhear Mr. Rayson say to his next neighbour yesterday, when Mrs Wilson finished her long story about that poor man — I forget his name —that committed suicide, but she related every particular of the deed — not only the circumstances that preceded it, but the motives that led to it, and all that his wife said, and his father said, and his friends said, did you not hear Mr. Rayson whisper ‘founded on fact?’
‘Yes, I heard that, but I think there is no love lost between Mrs Wilson and Mr. Rayson.’
‘No, he can't like her, and of course she wont like him.’
‘There may have been some reason for her dislike — he is very satirical.’
‘I like such satire,’ said Augusta, ‘it only falls where it is provoked and deserved, for instance, this morning when those Englishmen were finding fault with every thing here, and blustering about every thing in that pattern little island of theirs, how aptly he quoted, from their own poet too — no, not theirs, ours — the world's,
‘Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain— Pr'ythee, think
there's livers out of Britain.’
‘Who is this Mr. Rayson, Augusta, that seems such a prodigious favorite,’ I asked, and added to my friend Mrs Orme, ‘you must look out — these boarding-house likings are dangerous.’
[p. 217]
Augusta laughed, as is her wont on all occasions, and then said, ‘Even Mamma will not be alarmed at that danger — why dear lady, Mr. Rayson is an old bachelor.’
‘How old, Augusta?’
‘Oh, old as the hills —full thirty.’
I know that 'full thirty' seems to eighteen almost the extreme limit of human life, but I had known too, stranger things happen than the approach of these distant points; and so I told my young friend.
Augusta laughed again, and said unless Mr. Clement Rayson was an illustration of the old syllogism ‘I move or I do not move; I do not move, therefore I move,’ she did not see how they were to become acquainted; for he was the only person in the house, that had not, directly or indirectly, sought an introduction to them.
This was true. Clement Rayson, though not soured to the world, (he had no acidulating tendencies in his character,) was shy of it, and particularly distrustful of the fashionable world. He had his reasons, as our chronicling widow had told the Ormes, in a long spun out fiction that had, as is usual in such romances, a substratum of truth. This short and simple truth was, that at the all-believing age he had loved, and had plighted his troth to a beautiful girl who had deserted him for a man full fifty years old, but who was rich and fashionable, neither of which, at that period, was Clement Rayson. He had since acquired a moderate fortune. His lacerated affections were much longer than is usual in such cases, in the process of healing.
In the mean time he withdrew from society, and having no family ties in the city to counteract his disposition to solitude, it grew upon him. He appeared to have
[p. 218]
the peculiarities incident to the single condition — appeared—but never was there a spirit less exclusive, and more unselfish. One class, and one alone, was excluded from his sympathies — the fashionable. He thought them all heartless fainéants, ‘unproductive consumers,’ cumberers of the ground. He knew that Mrs Orme belonged to this class, and he perceived that to her the world had but two phases — the one enlightened, the other unenlightened; the fashionable, and the unfashionable. Of course, his orbit could never cross hers. But with this undeniable infirmity, Mrs Orme had so much gentleness, such feminine softness, so much of the spirit, as well as of the letter of politeness, that it was difficult to sustain a sturdy dislike towards her. At first, Augusta did not impress him agreeably. He admired her Hebe freshness, her well-turned features, and the good humour and animation that almost made her beautiful, but he thought she wanted the timidity and reserve that so becomes a young creature on the threshold of an unknown world, a world veiled in shadow, and beset with danger. But he misjudged my young friend. Her boldness arose from what some philosophers, of the German school, have called the ‘unconscious.’ She did not, if we may use the expression, feel herself, nor was she looking in others' faces to see her own image reflected there. The present was to her for action and enjoyment, and if the future brought dangers, (she apprehended none,) she had resolution and strength to overcome them. Her most happy temperament seemed a sort of charm, an amulet against the principle of evil, in all its proteus shapes. ‘Miss Orme is not troubled with bashfulness,’ whispered
[p. 220]
Mrs. Wilson to Clement Rayson, as Augusta, at a first request, sat down to the piano, and played with great expression, a Spanish national air.
A similar criticism had clouded the clearer atmosphere of Rayson's mind; but there are some persons whose touch always produces discord, and Mrs. Wilson was eminently one of these. ‘Miss Orme is not bashful,’ he replied somewhat testily, ‘but bashfulness as often springs from vanity, and a craving for admiration, as from delicacy and self-distrust.’
‘Bless me! I thought you did not admire Miss Orme.’
‘I do not know her.’
‘Of course you would if you admired her. She is not of the thistle order. Every one in the house has observed your distant manner to the Ormes.’
Clement Rayson was, as we have said, reserved: he liked no intruding observers within his own little world of feelings — of likings and dislikings; and towards Mrs. Wilson he had an antipathy, resembling that which is often cherished for the feline race, to which she seemed to him to belong. He was annoyed by her remark, but he did not choose to enter into a defence, or explanation, and therefore he remained silent. The shield of silence is the most effectual defence against a thorough gossip; and if generally resorted to, their offensive weapons would rest for want of use.
‘Of all people on earth,’ said Mrs Wilson, crossing the room and seating herself next Augusta Orme, who had already forgotten her musical triumph, and was absorbed in a book she had taken from the table, ‘of all people on earth, I detest your close-mouthed ones.'
‘Do you, Mrs. Wilson?— thought we were apt to like our opposites.’
[p. 220]
‘No inuendo, I trust, Miss Orme?’
‘Certainly not, I merely meant that you were communicative.’
This was so much more flattering a term than that suggested by the lady's conscience, that she took it as a compliment, and replied that she was naturally frank, and added that she thought Miss Orme and herself much alike.
‘Heaven forefend!’ thought Augusta, and laughed, a laugh that could not have stirred a feather on the ‘fretful porcupine,’ and therefore it did not ruffle the widow Wilson's plumes. On the contrary, she gave a proof of her graciousness by whispering —‘ How strange it is that Clement Rayson is so prejudiced against you!’
‘Is he? I am sorry for it.’
‘You do not look much disturbed.’ There was something almost provoking to our touchy lady in the serenity she could not cloud.
‘Why should I, Mrs. Wilson? I have done nothing that I am conscious of to create the prejudice, and therefore can do nothing to remove it. But I do sincerely wish the good man would get rid of it, for prejudices must be uncomfortable burdens, and Mr. Rayson seems a very clever and a very agreeable person to those he likes.’
Mrs. Wilson, finding the daughter impracticable, transferred her efforts to the mother, who, as she found, was more facile. It was no difficult achievement to make Mrs. Orme uncomfortable on any given subject, and the next time I saw her, I found her very much puzzled in solving the riddle of ‘that Mr. Clement Rayson's dislike to her and Augusta.’ Her consolation
[p. 221]
was, that he knew nobody that they knew, and therefore she did not see how it could very well do them any injury; but still it was dangerous to have an enemy, especially for a young lady just ‘coming out.’
All this fabric of Mrs. Wilson's mischievous brain would have been harmless, but that it augmented Mrs. Orme's horror of the society of boarding houses; infused a double quantity of coldness into her deportment towards Mr. Rayson; heightened the barriers between herself and the cleverest and best person in the family; confirmed our friend's prejudices against all fashionable people; and finally gratified widow Wilson's petty malignity against him. How true it is, that the lesser as well as the greater evils of life, are of our own creation!
In the mean while, Clement Rayson's eye (doubtless without the consent of his will) often turned towards Augusta's face, so bright with health and happiness. There is a peculiar charm in this sunny character, to men who have passed the zenith of youth. This may account for the devotion of sexagenarian bachelors to the youngest girls in company. We do not mean to implicate Rayson in any such foible; for, if guilty of the count in the indictment — if ‘full thirty,’ he was not much more. Regarding himself as a fixture in this aforesaid boarding house, he had surrounded himself with those rare comforts in this city, where persons rather alight than abide, provisions for permanence. He had his dressing-room, his sleeping apartments, and his library. [1]* This library adjoined the room occupied by
[p. 222]
Mrs. Orme and her daughter, and here, secure from observation, Clement Rayson would lay aside his book, to listen from beginning to end, to songs that he had often wished, with a certain licensed churl, ‘were impossible as well as difficult.’ He even began to entertain a secret fondness for Italian music, which he had deemed all monotonous, and like a certain friend of ours, had affected to believe, and dared to say, there was but one Italian song. Augusta had a collection of fine old English ballads. These she occasionally sung, and he heard them, every word, for her piano was placed against the wall that separated the two rooms. Of course her face was towards him, and often did he wish that this wall, like him who enacted ‘lime and and roughcast,’ in Pyramus and Thisbe,
‘----- having thus its part discharged so,
And being done, this wall away would go.’
that he might have a glimpse of the bright face behind. ‘That face,’ he said to himself, ‘that is like a gleam of sunshine to every thing it looks upon.’
‘I must have my library removed — I can never read a word here,’ thought he, as he smiled in silent response, to the merry peals of laughter that ever and anon came from that apartment over which a ‘dancing star’ seemed to him to preside. And as he listened to the cheerful tones
[p. 223]
that responded to Mrs. Orme's low monotonous voice, ‘how can she’ thought he, ‘resist such an influence! but she will soon be exposed to worse and more potent influences: to the parrotry, frivolity, and heartlessness of the world, and there this enchanting buoyancy of spirit, the mere virtue, perchance after all, of health of constitution! will soon be dimmed and lost.’ Alas! Augusta's buoyancy was soon to be tried by a very different pressure from that he anticipated, and a far heavier.
The evening of the sixteenth of December I passed with Mrs. Ornie and Augusta. They were both in a state of pleasurable excitement. The floor was strewn with boxes, and the table, sofa, and chairs were covered with dresses, caps, artificial flowers, and curious decorations just sent home in time for the gay season. Invitations had been sent out and accepted to parties and balls. Under what circumstances of overwhelming distress these invitations were soon after recalled, will long be remembered in the brilliant circles of our metropolis, where the bridal array was changed for mourning weeds.
Mrs. Orme was in all the flutter of indecision as to the dress to be selected for the coming out evening. She preferred the blue embroidered Seraphine crape which a friend had selected in Paris; she was certain, absolutely certain that it was perfectly new. There is magic in that word which may not convey its true import to the ears of our rustic reader. It does not mean simply that it is unworn, but that it is fresh from the inventive loom of a Paris milliner around whose head ‘such light visions float.’ While I was examining and
[p. 224]
duly admiring the blue Seraphine, Augusta put her veto upon it. She would not come out in a dress that would make her so conspicuous. In vain her mother urged the importance of the first impression — the coup de théatre. Augusta laid the Seraphine crape aside, and was wavering between a silk that her mother pronounced ‘the loveliest pink,’ and a white muslin, when a servant entered with a Camelia Japonica directed to Miss Orme. One pure, stately white flower sat upon the stalk, between two buds, like a queen between her maids of honor. ‘This decides me,’ exclaimed Augusta ‘my white muslin, and this Camelia in my hair.’
‘Who sent it?’ asked the mother. The servant did not know, and all that we could ascertain was that it had been left at the door by a man who merely said it was ordered at their green-house, but whether that green-house was Thorburn's, Smith's, or Hogg's, was uncertain, and Mrs. Orme concluded her enquiries by saying she was glad on the whole not to know, for she preferred Augusta should come out unshackled by even so slight an obligation as the gift of a flower imposed.
Augusta's curiosity, as was natural, was more excited than ours, and before the Camelia was deposited in a glass of water, she had run over the list of her gentlemen acquaintance, and in turn guessed all but — the right one.
People who are well advanced in life are prone to look upon its events and circumstances in the light of a shell enclosing a kernel, for their picking, the moral of the tale. And this kernel, like the jewel found by a certain classic bird, is apt to prove sweet or bitter, valueless or priceless, according to the character of the
[p. 225]
finder. This tendency must excuse the moralizing humor I fell into, on seeing my young friend so much engrossed and fluttered by the approach of this grand era of her life — her coming out.
‘If Augusta,’ thought I ‘rational, well educated, with a mind so well balanced that all its motions are harmonious, is thus affected by her advent, what a perilous moment it must be to those who are neither fitted by nature nor education, for the sudden transit from obscurity to notoriety. Inexperienced and unreflecting, what views must they have of the social laws, of their nature, of the objects of society, of the purposes and responsibilities of existence.’
Man has been justly called an imitative animal. Here we are, a young nation, set apart from the families of the old world, with every incitement to, and facility for making a new experiment in the economy of human life, and like the Chinese, who made the new shoes slip-shod, after the pattern, we copy the forms of European society, bad enough where they exist, but as ill adapted to our use as the slip-shod shoes to the wearer — as fantastical for us as a fan for an Iceland belle.
For example, in this working country, where the gentlemen must be at their offices and counting-houses by nine o'clock — where the domestic machine must stop, or the springs be set in motion by the mistress of the family before that hour, — with the pressure of this necessity upon us, we assemble at our evening parties at ten and eleven, because forsooth the fainéants of Europe do so! And for the same sufficient reason, our young ladies must have their comings out!
But what is to be done? How are their school-days and society compatible? The processes of nature are to be imitated. The dawn preludes the day: the bud slowly unfolds to the sun, gathering strength with every expanding leaf to bear its rays.
We are aware that there are no Quixotes more extravagant than those who preach revolutions in manners and customs; but where, as in our case, they are not the natural result of the condition of the people, may we not hope for modifications and ameliorations? for the dawn of a millennium on our social world, when the drawing-room shall no longer be an arena, where there is a short contest for a single prize, (what are the modes of that contest, and what the prize so obtained ? ) but shall become the social ground where men and women shall be players, as well as spectators, — where rational christian people may meet without a sacrifice of health or duty; and where young people and children shall come for the formation of their social character, and where all may enjoy on equal terms the very highest pleasure of our gregarious natures ? — But we beg pardon, our tale is becoming a homily.
Before the evening closed, I perceived, and with secret satisfaction, that Augusta manifested some weariness at her mother's endless anxieties upon the details of the coming evening, such as ‘whether they should go at ten or a quarter past ? — whether, in case Augusta were asked, she had best sing ? — whether there could be any objection to her waltzing, with her cousin ? — she waltzed so well! and sundry other momentous questions. When the field of vision is narrow, the objects are magnified. ‘Dear mamma,’ said Augusta, ‘pray leave these trifles to fate.’
[p. 227]
‘Life is made up of such trifles, my child.’
‘Mine shall not be,’ replied Augusta. Little did she think what a seal was soon to be set to this lightly uttered resolution.
The mercury was below zero, and as I walked briskly home I heard the first stroke of the bell that sounded the alarm of that fire which before morning laid so rich a portion of our city in ruins.
The bells rang at first, for the most part, unheeded, for as the Turk moves tranquilly amidst the plague, hardened by use, so we, familiarised to the every-day tocsin, pursue our usual avocations when it sounds throughout the city. But there were some who, on that memorable night, answered from the first with quickened pulses to the boding sound. They knew the firemen were exhausted by a severe labor of the preceding night, that their hose were frozen, and that there was no supply of water in the city. They reflected that the fire had broken out amidst packed warehouses, filled with combustibles; that the perfect dryness of the atmosphere and the extreme cold must accelerate its progress; but reason, fear, imagination, all fell far short in their anticipations of the horrid reality.
We have no intention to perpetrate such a presumption as an attempt to describe the scene would imply; we can only note the particulars — the spreading of the fire, quicker than thought, windward and leeward from house to house, and from street to street — the pillar of flame that shot up from the lofty dome of the Exchange — the crash of its falling — the calmness, though sublime courage of the men, who, with their casks of gunpowder proceeded through showers of sparks
[p. 228]
to the edifices marked for explosion — the momentary wavering of those edifices when the match was fired — the explosion — and at the very instant the stately pile was a prostrate mass of ruins — the consternation of the citizens— the firemen, the very men who had so often seemed the chartered masters of the devouring element, looking on, mute, paralyzed, impotent spectators — the piles and masses of merchandise moved twice and thrice, and finally consumed. Merchants hurrying from their up-town residences to the scene of action, and coaches bearing ladies to the spectacle!
The appearance to the more distant observer, to whom the flames looked like a solid wall against the clear blue sky, and the gems of Heaven, like celestial witnesses, calmly gazing on this mortal coil — all this will not be forgotten, and cannot be described. But there were instances of self-command, generosity, and heroism, the moral phœnixes which rose from the gross elemental fire that may be recorded by the humblest pen, and will at least live longer on the pages of an annual than in the columns of a forgotten newspaper.
One anecdote was given in the journals of the city, the day after the fire, which we have since heard from unquestionable witnesses, and which we shall repeat unvarnished. Who would try, by coloring, to add beauty or grace to such truth?
A gallant young man belonging to our navy, who a few days before, for some slight misdemeanor had been ejected from it, was busied with thousands in removing merchandise, when he heard piercing shrieks from a woman. He made his way to her. In the general distress she was little heeded. She seemed like a maniac.
[p. 229]
In answer to his demand of ‘what is the matter?’ she pointed to one of the burning houses and said, ‘my child is there!’ ‘In what part of the house?’ She was calmed by his interposition, and described the room in the third story. He darted towards the house. As he placed his foot on the threshold, the firemen adjured him to come back, and told him if he went on he could not return. They were attempting to force him back, but he sprang beyond their grasp, and unchecked by the flames that were crackling along the beams, he mounted to the apartment and entered it — the fire was glancing around the cornice of the room. — The child, a sturdy infant of some six or seven months, was awake, and holding up its hand before its eyes, and twining it around, delighted with the reflection of the flame, that in another moment would have reduced its little frame to ashes. His preserver caught the boy in his arms, and descended to the last landing place. The bannister was on fire. He hesitated—he had passed an open window — should he return and leap from that? — he might crush the child. So pressing against the wall, he rushed down uninjured, save the scorching of his coat — a scorch that will make it a precious relic.
Those who have never heard the spontaneous gushings from that holy fountain which is never quite dried in any heart, should have heard the shoutings and clappings of hands when the young man reappeared and placed the boy in his mother's arms — they should have seen how, for a moment, every other interest was suspended in admiration, and how the young hero, finishing his generous act with the only grace that could be added to
[p. 230]
it, modestly shrank from the tribute he had so well earned, and disappeared. [2 *]
The morning of the 17th found the city in indescribable anxiety, dismay, and bewilderment. No one could calculate the extent of the loss — the direct loss — no one dared to anticipate the loss from the bankruptcy of merchants, the failure of monied institutions, and the suspension of business and payments. All sympathy was directed to the merchants, for to few had it then occurred that the ruin would pass over the palace, and prostrate the cottage.
The first intimation I had of such a result was from a gentleman who said to me, ‘I fear your friend Mrs. Orme has lost every thing. I am told her agent Robert Smith invested all her property in fire insurance stock.’ I knew such ill news as this must have flown to her ears, and I determined immediately to go to her.
The streets were a wild exhibition of the horrible and the ludicrous — the strange motley that human affairs so often wear. Here were militiamen called out as guards, bustling along in all the mock importance of their brief authority, and there were firemen dragging themselves to their homes — looking like ghosts who had outstayed their time.
Here was timid, shivering poverty, stealing stealthily along, amid bales of blankets, and stacks of woolen goods, eyeing them wishfully from beneath the half lifted lid — and there, (a timely admonition!) were
[p. 231]
police-men dragging detected pilferers to justice. Here the merchant on whose face was written ‘sudden calamity has overtaken me,’ and beside him the bold beggar, her shoulders laden with piles of half consumed blankets, ends of shawls, and bits of silk that yesterday made a part of his countless wealth!
‘Take physic, pomp,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st spare the superflux to them
And show the Heavens more just.’
I crossed a street, making my way through carts, wagons, and coaches laden with boxes and cases of the richest merchandise, and turned out of my course to a point of view where a group of amateur spectators were gazing at the ruins — not with tearless eyes. We all stood for a few moments in profound silence looking at the standing fragments of walls — the smouldering piles of brick that covered thousands (millions?) of unconsumed and inaccessible property — at the fire still burning unresisted, because irresistible, towards the water's edge — at the ashes of to-day — the millions of yesterday. ‘This’ said a gentleman next me, ‘is the levelling system with a vengeance!’
‘Yes, but it is a levelling to teach levellers,’ replied another, ‘those ignorant and corrupt persons who would construct barriers between the rich and poor, out of their evil passions, must now acknowledge their mutual dependence — the demonstrated identity of their interests. The working men will realise that the enterprise and industry of the wealthy merchant feeds the channels of their prosperity. Heaven grant they may not long feel it from a loss of the supply.’
[p. 232]
‘The rascals! it's a good lesson for them.’ This bitter exclamation was made by one of those who look upon themselves as having a chartered right to their accidental prosperity, and who, as far as they can oppose the laws of Providence, obstruct those supplies of Heaven-directed bounty to the poor.
I turned from the idlers and pursued my course, winding as well as I might, along the walks encumbered with the various merchandise that comes from every explored corner of our globe to this great commercial mart; bales of cotton, piles of domestic goods — hard ware and porcelain — English woolens and Dutch toys— French silks and stacks of German baskets, &c, &c.— a volume might be filled with the specifications indicated by these et cetéras, but I have already abused the curiosity of my readers, if perchance they have any, in the fate of my heroine.
I found my friend Mrs. Orme, as I had feared, plunged into the depths of despair. She was pacing up and down her room. As I entered, she clasped her hands, exclaiming, ‘ruined ! — totally ruined!’
‘But my dear friend, your property was not surely all invested in fire insurance stock?’
‘Yes, all. At least, I have no reason to doubt it. — Of course you know, being totally unacquainted with business myself, [3]* I leave my affairs entirely to the discretion of my agent, and Mrs Wilson says she heard him say only last week that he had vested my money — all of it — in six different companies, so that I should be quite safe. I remember, too, he asked me about fire stock, and I told him it would make me uncomfortable
[p. 233]
whenever the bell rung. But he said something about the companies always making good dividends; and I have not thought of it since, till Mrs. Wilson came into my room at two o'clock, to prepare my mind, as she said. Mrs. Wilson blames Mr. Smith, and so do I.’
‘I did not controvert this position, for I know it is the most common solace of undisciplined minds, to impute the blame to another. ‘Where,’ I asked, ‘was Augusta?’
Her mother did not know. She believed she had gone out —‘Strange that she could go out, and leave me, at such a moment. She is a dear child, but she has one defect — it is a natural one, and she can not cure it. I do not blame her, but I often feel it. She wants sensibility. I dont mean to complain of her, but think how I must have felt to see her go, just as usual, about her ordinary avocations this morning. She even, once or twice, while she was putting away the things you saw here last night, sang! I suppose it was involuntary — but it is so strange — so unlike me!’
Mrs. Orme is not the only person that measures the qualities of others by her own, as if that were an infallible standard. I ventured to intimate that it was very fortunate for Augusta if she could meet such a reverse with firmness.
‘Firmness — oh, yes! but then do you know she has been- trying to convince me that it is not a calamity to weep for? that, I think, as Mrs. Wilson says, is carrying firmness a little too far; but she is a dear child, and, except in this blemish, every thing I could wish. And this perhaps spares her a great deal of suffering.’
[p. 234]
‘Useless suffering,’ thought I, ‘suffering never designed by him who chasteneth because he loveth.’
‘But where,' continued the mother, ‘can Augusta stay! It is not considerate of her, as Mrs. Wilson says, to leave me this morning.’
Her perplexities were ended by Augusta's entrance. Her face was beaming. ‘Good news, mama! she cried, ‘the last ten thousand remitted from New Orleans, is safe.’ She kissed her mother, and wiped the tears that flowed afresh at this unexpected intelligence.
‘These shall be the last tears this business costs you, mama; then turning round, she saw me, apologized for having overlooked me, and instinctively sought a shelter for the undue grief she knew her mother must have exhibited to me.
‘This horrid fire,’ she said, ‘has kept mama up all night, and made her so nervous!’
‘But are you certain you are rightly informed, Augusta?’ asked the mother, ‘Mrs. Wilson was so sure!’
‘Oh, Mrs. Wilson! I was sure from the moment that trumpery woman said it, it could not be so. Her reports, like dreams, go by contraries. But I was afraid, mama, of inspiring any false hope, so I resolved to go at once to Mr. Smith.’
‘And that was what you went out for ? — Dear child!’
I ventured to say, for I could not help it, ‘there are other manifestations of sensibility than passiveness and tears.’
‘I went first,’ continued Augusta, ‘to Mr. Smith's house, but, as I ought to have foreseen, he was not at home.’
[p. 235]
‘But surely, my child, you did not go alone down Wall street.’
‘No; fortunately, just as I was turning into Wall street, and thinking what a piece of work I should have to make my way, I met Mr. Clement Rayson. He stopped, and asked me where I was going, and begged leave to attend me. It was very kind of him, and amusing too, after we had sat opposite for three weeks, without speaking. Well, I found Mr. Smith with a face as long as my arm; but he seemed quite relieved, when I told him it was so much better than we expected, and assured him, mama, you would not care for the loss, since we had enough left.’
‘Enough!’ sighed the mother, who already began to shift her unhappiness from the total loss of their finances to their reduction.
Augusta did not hear her mother, or else, to turn the current of her thoughts, she said, ‘Oh, mama, Mr. Rayson has told me such a sad piece of news — quite enough to put the loss of property out of one's head. That beautiful, lovely woman, Mrs. Moreson, whom we saw at Dr. Hayward's, is dead. She died without a moment's warning, while her sister was dressing for her cousin's wedding.’
After the usual exclamations of sympathy and sorrow, Mrs. Orme said she supposed the parties, then, would be given up.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Augusta, ‘and there is my beautiful Camelia must fade unseen.’
‘Your fit emblem, I fear, my child; for now, you cannot come out.’
‘But I can stay in, mama, without drooping. There
[p. 236]
are some hardy plants that do not need sunshine — I think I am one of those.’
And so it proved. A few days after, I was again with my friends, anxious to know what their arrangements were to be, for I was well aware that the income of ten thousand dollars could not maintain them in their present style of living — would not even pay their board. I found Mrs. Orme troubled and undecided — Augusta, strong and cheerful in her self-reliance.
‘You have come,’ she said, receiving me affectionately, ‘just in time to aid our deliberations. We find that we can live independently and pleasantly in the country on our present income.’
‘It comes very hard upon me, though,’ said Mrs. Orme, ‘for I have an antipathy to a country life.’
‘And therefore,’ continued Augusta, ‘I wish mama not to think of it. Her income is quite sufficient to secure her an agreeable town residence, and I should be ashamed of myself if I could not earn my own support. I have a double object in this. Mama has grown so nervous about losses, that she is afraid of being stripped of what remains; and I want to convince her, that even in that event we should do well enough.’
‘But how, my dear girl, can you earn your living?’
‘Oh, in twenty ways. I can turn governess.’
‘I utterly object to that,’ said the mother, ‘I have seen too many of them, and I know what dog's lives they lead.’
I ventured to suggest that I had seen some very happy ones.
‘I should have no fears on that score,’ said Augusta, ‘for I believe our own happiness is in our own hands;
[p. 237]
but then any employment that will separate me from mama, is objectionable. I can give music lessons; combine music and singing lessons, which would be very profitable.’
‘Dear child, dont use such words — they make me so nervous. I cannot consent to your giving music lessons, there is something so degrading in running from house to house, and selling your time to other people.’
‘This is what ninety-nine hundredths of the world do, mama, and I do not wish to be among the exempts. I would,’ she continued, addressing me, ‘open a school, but I am afraid I am too young to have children confided to my care.’
‘Pity you are not ‘full thirty,’ said I.
‘Ah,’ replied Augusta, ‘that reminds me of Clement Rayson. Last night I was speaking of that beautiful camelia, and I do suspect he knows where it came from, but he will not give me the least clew. He merely said it must be from some very young man, for they were addicted to such fooleries! That was a saying, was it not, that marked the sayer ‘full thirty ?’ — But what were we talking of— my occupation; it is not, like Othello's ‘gone’ — would that it were come!’
‘I have an excellent plan,’ interposed the mother, ‘if we can only persuade Augusta to adopt it. When summer comes, I shall be quite willing to make an experiment of country life. In the mean time, a very slight addition to our income would pay our expenses here without intrenching on our capital. Perhaps you do not know it, but Augusta excels in all sorts of ingenious, lady-like manufactures — worsted work in particu-
[p. 238]
lar. And she is so quick! she net the loveliest purse for Clement Rayson — all of it yesterday.’
‘I trust, Augusta,’ said I, ‘you marked it ‘full thirty,’ for ladies' favors are sometimes misinterpreted.’
‘Clement Rayson is past the danger of such coxcomberies,’ replied Augusta.
‘Now,’ resumed the mother, ‘Augusta could dispose of her work at the ‘Ladies' Depository,’ without the slightest exposure. The utmost delicacy is observed there, Mrs. Wilson tells me. By the way, Augusta, it just occurs to me that Mrs. Wilson must work for the Depository, how else could she afford to wear blond capes ? — but, as I was saying, she tells me that the names of those who deposite articles there, are religiously kept secret. Your orders are referred to numbers, not names.’
‘And why all this reserve?’ I innocently asked.
‘My dear friend, the institution is designed for ladies of reduced fortune, to enable them to dispose of their work without it ever being known that they work for their living.’ [4]*
I smiled, and Augusta said, ‘you think as I do, I am sure of it.’
‘And how is that, Augusta?’
‘Why, that these same reduced ladies might as well
[p. 239]
be ashamed of giving bread to their children, as of earning it for them; and that this very labor of which they are ashamed, is most creditable — perchance the most honorable act of their whole lives.’
‘Pity,’ I ventured to add, ‘it does not occur to them, that working for their living, places' them in the same category with the first in the land — the lawyer, the clergyman, the merchant, &c., — and rescues them from the helplessness and dependence into which misfortune usually casts females of their class.’
Those little understand the country they live in, who, by such an institution, virtually pronounce labor degrading, and virtually insult those of their sex, who professedly work for their living.’ [5]*
‘As you agree with me,’ resumed Augusta, ‘I hope you will persuade mama to let me do something more productive than lady-like work. I have three projects — pray dont laugh at me—if one fails, another may succeed, you know. When I was at school in Boston, I made some translations from the French and Spanish, for a work a friend of ours was publishing there. He paid me compliments on my success, which, making due allowance for his partiality, and gratitude, &c, allow me to aspire to the place of a hack translator to the Harpers, or some other publishing house here.’
I knew my young friend understood French and Spanish well, and wrote her own language with correctness and freedom. I gave my hearty concurrence to the plan.
[p. 240]
‘When I can't get work from a publisher, continued Augusta, ‘I can copy music — I can do that very rapidly. I have often copied songs for poor Stefani to sell to her scholars.’
‘Now for your third project, Augusta.’
‘You will think me a great braggart — but you know I must give an inventory of my commodities. When I was staying at Mr. Johnson's, he had an accumulation of law papers to be copied. Grace Johnson and I assisted him, and he gave me the credit of doing mine in right clerkly style. Mama herself taught me to write, and now, dear mama, I may pay you for the pains you took in forming my hand.’
‘It is the only thing, my child, I ever taught you.’
‘But, my dear Mrs. Orme, you have given her a firstrate education, and she is now going to prove to you that this is the safest investment of capital.’
My friend, propitiated by these agreeable truths, was evidently leaning our way, when a new difficulty occurred to her.
‘But how,’ she asked, ‘is Augusta to get this work? I had rather starve than she should go bustling about to book stores, music shops, and lawyers' offices.’
‘I have thought of all that, mama, and I mean to get Mr. Rayson to make inquiries for me. I shall ask the favor of him as freely as if he were my father.’
‘Your acquaintance, Augusta,’ said I, ‘with Clement Rayson, has made astonishing progress since the fire.’
‘Yes, our walk down Wall street, that morning, put us on a friendly footing at once, and ever since, he has been as kind to mama and me as possible. He has a very fine library, and he lends us his books, and obliges us in every possible way.’
[p. 241]
‘I knew,’ said I, ‘his library occupied the apartment next yours, and to tell you the truth, I was afraid your piano might annoy him — he is not fond of music.’
‘Oh pardon me ! indeed he is, for he has asked me again and again to play the songs I had unconsciously sung to him through the wall. I am sure you are wrong, no one seems to relish them as he does.’
I believed I was right, but I had the grace not to persist in saying so, while I admired the rare happiness of Augusta's mind, in being unsusceptible to small as well as great evils. Mrs. Orme, after a good deal of persuasion, more availing with her than reason, came into our plans, and I was deputed to engage Clement Rayson's friendly offices.
At my request, I was admitted to his library, where I unfolded my errand. I spoke of Augusta as I felt, and I am sure his heart responded, for never did I see his fine face so lit with animation, till I chanced to quote, as a sort of apology for the trouble we were giving him, the reason Augusta had assigned for the freedom she felt in applying to him. His countenance changed — he repeated my words with a vexed accent, ‘as soon as if I were her father! would she?’ At that moment, fortunately, Augusta commenced one of his favorite songs, and exorcised the evil spirit. He was all ear till she finished, and then reverting to our last words, ‘tell me,’ he asked, ‘honestly, do I look so desperately old?’
‘Oh no! two minutes ago, you might have passed for a gallant lover, who indited sonnets to his mistress' eye brow, and secretly sent her those orthodox love-tributes — bouquets!’ He blushed, and knocked down half a dozen books by a sudden movement of his arm. While
[p. 232]
he was replacing them, I added, ‘when my friends first came to this house, I confess you looked to me careworn— I might have taken you for full thirty.’
‘I am thirty-one precisely. That, however, is not quite old enough for Miss Augusta's father. However he added, wisely shifting the subject to a better point of view, ‘I am content to make any impression that affords me an opportunity of serving her. An admirable creature she is, and most fortunate!’
‘Admirable she certainly is, but I should not select this moment of her life to call her fortunate.’
‘Is she not plucked from the brink of fashionable life, and an opportunity afforded her of using her fine faculties to some purpose?’
Every man has his mania. I was aware of Clement Rayson's and forbore to oppose it.
Nothing could be more zealous, than was Rayson in procuring employment for Augusta. His zeal might have been stimulated by the certainty that if her earnings were intermitted, she and her mother must seek less expensive lodgings. So never a day passed over her head that she had not that prime blessing — plenty of work; and time to read, to sew, to walk, (how, in spite of the snow-storms, ice, slop, and avalanches of this worse than polar winter, has she daily achieved a two or three mile walk!) to play, and sing, and be agreeable; in short, to do every thing, even ‘lady-like work.’ Best of all was it, in her mother's opinion, that she found time to accept the civilities of certain fashionable people, whose attentions to her were no wise abated, by their knowledge of the fact that she worked for her living. Superior people are not superior to
[p. 243]
prejudices, but if truth can be fairly brought to bear upon them, it dissolves them as the direct rays of the sun melt away the ice. As a fashionable equipage that had brought visiters to the Ormes, drove away from the door, ‘there are exceptions to my rule,’ thought Clement Rayson. ‘I was wrong to involve a whole class in the opinion I had conceived of individuals of that class.’ For the first time it occurred to him, that the inconstancy of his early love might have been rather owing to some inherent defect in her, than to the influence of her fashionable associates. ‘After all,’ thus he concluded his mental reverie, ‘there is no character to be relied on but that which, instead of being subdued by circumstances, resists and controls them — a character like Augusta Orme's.’
When a man — be he full thirty — begins to make a young lady his standard of ideal perfection, the next act of his drama may be anticipated.
I knew my friends were getting on well, that Augusta was turning her industry to good account, often earning by mere copying three dollars a day, [6]* and that Mrs. Orme was enjoying the sense of independence and security naturally inspired by the exercise of her daughter's power, and satisfied they were happy, and being otherwise occupied, I had not seen them for more than a month when, one fine morning, a ring at the street door was followed by Augusta's appearance in my room. Her face was full of meaning. I could not guess what
[p. 244]
it meant. She was embarrassed too, the first time I had ever seen her so.
She untied and retied her bonnet, sat down, rose, and sat down again—then after a vain struggle burst into tears, the first I had ever seen flow from her bright eyes; and finally, throwing a letter into my lap exclaimed, ‘what a fool I am!’ and laughed.
‘That laugh at any rate, proves you are yourself,’ I said, ‘which I very much doubted.’
I read the letter. It was from Clement Rayson—the very ‘quotidian of love’ was upon him.
‘You find it hard to say no to so ardent a lover.’ No reply. ‘There is no evidence here,’ I continued, ‘that the climate of full thirty has chilled his heart.’
‘How can you always remind me of that foolish speech?’
‘Then you do not mean to say no?’
‘I mean to do just what you advise me—if ’ she added archly, and in her natural vein, ‘you advise me as I wish. Here is anothyer letter, and this it is that perplexes me.’ The second letter was brief, and like its precursor, unfit for quite sane readers. Therefore we copy it.
‘The enclosed I wrote two days ago, but had not the courage to send it to you. Necessity now makes me bold. Within the last hour I have received intelligence that obligers me to go to Europe—for two years! – perhaps longer—I must sail next week. I cast all on a single die—happiness or misery is before me. If I go alone, I go the most wretched outcast on earth.’
‘If you invest me with the right, I shall beg Mrs. Orme to go with us. Us! Am I not presumptuous?’
[p. 245]
My pencil was in my hand. 'Shall I cross out this us, Augusta?'
‘First tell me, do you not think it is quite too hasty?’
‘Why, let us see, your acquaintance began on the morning of the 17th of December. January, February, March — three months under the same roof, beginning with paternal protection on the one part, and filial confidence on the other—‘
‘Pray — if you love me, pray do not again advert to that, but tell me honestly, do you not think it is quite too short a time to have matured a sentiment to be relied on for life?’
‘Some fruits ripen wonderfully fast in some soils, and under certain influences.’
‘But you do think — I am sure of it from your repeated hints--’ now there was a tremulousness in her voice, as in the patient's when he discloses his worst symptom to his physician, ‘you do think the difference of age an objection?’
‘An inferior objection to thousands that are every day surmounted.’
Her face brightened. ‘And you think it possible perfectly to recover from a first love — from an attachment so strong as that which Clement confesses in his first foolish letter he long cherished for that jilt?’
‘Possible! every day's experience proves it to be very easy.’
‘There is no use’ she said, her pretty lips curling into their natural smile, ‘in urging any more objections, for you will certainly obviate them.’
‘Yes, Augusta, just as long as I see you urge them to be obviated. That decides the affair in my opinion.
[p. 246]
This affection which is the staple of life springs up and is matured under every variety of circumstances, character and condition. The only point to be settled, is that it exists in its purity and perfection. In this case, I am quite sure as to that point, so are you, my dear ; now run home and write a fit answer to this ‘foolish’ letter.’ She threw her arms around my neck. Love, like a fire kindled for a specific purpose, imparts its warmth to whatever approaches it. One propriety occurred to me that my young friend seemed to have overlooked. ‘Is mama propitious?’ I asked.
‘Not yet consulted, because I feared to tell her while there was the least uncertainty as to which way the scale would turn — Clement is such a prodigious favorite with her nowadays.’
‘Then all is well.’ A few days after, in obedience to a previous summons from Augusta, I joined a male friend, and we, with her mother, were the only witnesses of her marriage vows before the altar of Grace Church. She was dressed in the white muslin she had selected for her coming out, and a white camelia in her hair, so like the one presented to her for that occasion, that I at once came to the right conclusion — it was the gift of the same donor.
My friends had secured the best boon of human life, and therefore I resigned without a sigh the expectation that Augusta Orme would have gone on to illustrate my favorite theory — that a good education, and a well principled and happily balanced mind, will render a woman independent of the vicissitudes of fortune.
[*Notes]
[1]* Many persons suppose that a library is not a natural appurtenance for a merchant. This is a mistake. Our merchants constitute a cultivated class, and many among them indulge in the refined luxury of books, to an extent that would be incredible to those who have formed their opinion of the body from some of the impotent members. We happen to know that one of our merchants has a fine library at his house, and another, for his leisure moments at his counting house, where there are duplicates of books of reference — expensive editions of such works as Boyle's Dictionary. This is indeed the luxury of fortune — if that can be called luxury, which, as the political economists say, is reproduced by its consumption.
[2]* We have just heard that the President has fitly rewarded his heroism by a restoration to his place in the navy. An opportunity thus offered him, his promotion may be safely left in his own hands.
[3]* So are most women. Should they be so?
[4]* It is but justice to state that this institution, though originally set on foot for the purpose specified in the text, is no longer limited to that. With the exception of this one very objectionable feature, viz: the facility afforded for the indulgence of a false pride, and sickly sensibility, it is a most creditable institution, and, from the character of the ladies who manage it, we may hope that this imperfection will not long be permitted in deference to prejudices that should be exploded.
[5]* I once heard a young lady say of a gentleman, — a teacher of the learned languages — that he was ‘a charming person, but not in society.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Oh, he works for his living, you know.’ ‘Straws show,’&c.
[6]* Lest the example of our favorite should be impotent for want of credibility, we inform our young lady readers that we have known this amount of labour performed in six hours out of the twenty four , day after day, by a girl minus fifteen.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Full Thirty
Subject
The topic of the resource
The Great Fire of 1835, women and work, May-December romance.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman and her mother find themselves in reduced circumstances after a fire that devastates New York City. The daughter is supported in her efforts to earn a living by an older female friend of the family, who narrates the story, and a mature bachelor who develops romantic feelings for the young woman.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, [edited by Samuel G. Goodrich], pp. 214-246.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1837 [pub. 1836]
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1836
As You Like It
bachelors
boarding house
camelias
class
coming out
Cymbeline
fashion
Female education
fire insurance stock
Grace Church
Harpers
heroism
King Lear
Ladies' Depository
marriage
May-December romance
Much Ado About Nothing
New York City
Pyramus and Thisbe
self reliance
Shakespeare
society
The 1835 Great Fire of New York
The Tempest
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir
the unconscious
Wall Street
women and work
-
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dbbdf53f8de5cce5b2f4dfba34d2220d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1833
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1833.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
“The Bridal Ring” by Miss Sedgwick [1833].
The following account, received from a friend, we have ventured to transcribe, and prepare for publication.
It is now nearly three years since I was told that two travellers, an elderly gentleman and his daughter, had stopped at the principal inn of the village, and were like to be detained there a long time, by the illness of the young lady, whom our physician had pronounced to be threatened with a ‘course of fever.’ This I knew to be an opinion which our professor, of what Napoleon has so happily called ‘the conjectural art,’ was apt oracularly to intimate of every case which he did not comprehend, and moreover that his nostrums and confinement in a close room in most cases verified his prediction.
My humanity was awakened by the forlorn condition of the strangers, and, I may as well confess the infirmity, my curiosity was excited by all that I heard of them. I was reminded of the story of La Roche. Who that has ever read that most beautiful, and in this age of story writing, still unequalled tale, could hear of a father and daughter, detained at an inn, without enquiring into their condition? I could not, and I repaired to the tavern, secretly hoping to find that some resemblance to ‘Mademoiselle,’ or to the saintly La Roche, in my travellers, who seemed to me to have lightened upon our uneventful village, to sustain my almost famished appetite for romance. I was announced to the father, and admitted to the little parlor he occupied. My first glimpse of captain St. Clair put my imagination to flight. A more striking contrast to the meek, devout La Roche, could scarcely have been found. The captain had the erect and elaborate deportment that is the usual result of military breeding; the consequential etiquettical politeness that is rather a tribute to self-respect, than a deference to the subject of it. He was on the verge of old age, but without any thing of the gentleness, humility, and spirituality that so well becomes the old, and is the crown of those who have ‘fought a good fight.’
He received me politely, being, as he has since told me, struck with what Johnson calls the air of a ‘born gentleman;’ the only quotation from a book I ever heard from the captain. I apologized for my intrusion, by boasting of my talents as a nurse, and expressing an earnest wish to be of service to his daughter. The worn, broken and neglected, as it now was, there was one chord that vibrated to the touch, and that chord I had fortunately struck.
His courtesy, as formal, external, and military as his epaulettes, gave place to an expression of real feeling, as he conducted me to his daughter’s apartment.
Dear Arabella! after the lapse of three years of daily and confidential intercourse, can I recall my first impressions of the youthful stranger, who, even amidst the unbecoming shrouding of a sick bed, seemed to me one of the most lovely and graceful creatures I had ever seen. A small bible was lying open on her pillow, and beside it a freshly plucked white rose, whose leaves were not more soft nor fair than her cheek. Her night cap was untied and pushed back, and discovered such a wealth of hair as I have never seen equalled in hue or quality, unless it be in Miss Hall’s exquisite picture of the Greek girl, Garaphelia. Every one acknowledged the tenderness and sweetness that characterized Arabella’s beauty; cavillers sometimes said she wanted spirit and variety, but to me, there was an immeasurable power in the purity and elevation of her countenance, and her eye had the calm, mysterious, wonderful expression which reveals the deathless spirit that informs this soul speaking organ. Captain St. Clair communicated my errand to his daughter. She gave me her hand, and expressed her gratitude with an earnestness and simplicity that evinced her susceptibility to kindness. Her accent was slightly foreign. ‘My daughter,’ said captain St. Clair, ‘unhappily, cannot quite rid herself of her French accent. She has lived for the most part in the south of France, in the family of a protestant clergyman, a relative of her mother. Poor Belle! she has always been delicate, and I was flattered into the hope that a favorable climate would strengthen her, but it has been of no use, she still bends like a reed to every blast.’
‘My dear father is too anxious,’ said Miss St. Clair, looking at me with a smile—‘And can I help being anxious, madam,’ replied the captain, ‘when all the treasure I have on God’s earth—yes all—is in that frail casket.’
‘But you are too apprehensive papa—I had but a slight chill and fever, and papa must send for a physician, and then I must take medicine.’
‘And of course be sick, Miss St. Clair—I well understand all those sequences, if indeed they be not consequences. But as the doctor has humanely suspended his drugs to day, we will try what nursing and the sensitive powers of nature will do.’
Arabella gratefully accepted my proposition—the circumstances of sickness banish ceremony—my superior age inspired Arabella with a childlike confidence; her father was delighted with my success, and before the day was over, we were on the footing of intimate friends—and before a week had passed, she and her father were inmates of my house. I had learned their history, and become thoroughly acquainted with their characters.
Captain St. Clair, when considerably past forty, had married a lovely young woman, the daughter of a Swiss officer in the English service—she had died a few months after the birth of Arabella. The regiment to which captain St. Clair was attached, was ordered to the East Indies, and Arabella was left with her mother’s connections in the south of France. The captain, from a series of ill fortune, for such he esteemed his regiment being exempted from the desperate chances of war, wore away year after year, without promotion, and finally, when he had a reasonable expectation of a majority, he was superseded by a young officer. In his first disgust, he resigned his commission and returned to Europe; and being joined by his daughter in England, where his asperity had been increased by finding himself forgotten or slighted by the friends of his youth, he embarked for America, and withdrew from a country whose ingratitude, he thought, had severed the bonds of his allegiance. But, in spite of his resentment, the captain’s long cherished national partialities often broke forth. An Ethiopian will change his color before an Englishman ceases to be English—before he changes the first article of faith in his national creed—that England is the wisest, happiest, best portion of the habitable globe. Captain St. Clair’s strict adherence to this creed, atoned for his voluntary expatriation, though it manifested a discrepancy, (not very uncommon) between faith and practice. If he ever found a shadow of a fault in Arabella, he traced it to her French education, and whatever was wrong in America, was so because it was not English. I remember asking my new friends, before I knew them quite well enough to understand their biases, ‘if they had ever seen any thing so beautiful as our autumnal foliage? No pen,’ I added, in the fervor of my home bred admiration, ‘no pen can describe it; no painter dare copy it.’
‘No, madam, no, certainly not,’ replied the captain, ‘it is gaudy and unnatural—quite unlike any thing in England.’
I appealed to Arabella, if she did not think it magnificent. ‘I am not fond of brilliant colors’, she answered, ‘I am so used to the russet hue of our old trees at Clermont.’ How different are the same sentiments from different persons. Arabella turned away to hide the tear that had risen at the remembrance of her French home, while captain St. Clair graciously proceeded to inform me of the particulars in which English scenery far excelled ours.
Captain St. Clair was in quest of a place to fix his residence, when accident detained him in our village. The American world was all before him, and the advantage of being near me, as he kindly said, induced him to purchase a place in my neighborhood, that just suited his taste and finances. Clermont cottage, as Arabella named her new residence in memory of her former home, was about a mile from the village, on the borders of a pretty sheet of water, that she called a lake, and I am not therefore bound to give it its vulgar appellation. There is some virtue in names, and the new nomenclature which Arabella adopted at Clermont, graced the other refinements introduced there. The farm house became a cottage—a name to conjure with, and call up a thousand images of rural beauty. The front yard that sloped to the lake, after having the ambitious fence that enclosed it removed, became a lawn. The stoop, with no other alteration than a latticing of sweet briars and honey suckles, was converted into a piazza—and the pond, an appellation that recalls to mind pickerel and geese, became a lake—a name consecrated by poetry—one of the water privileges of the muses.
My friend seemed to have a mysterious tie to the innocent and beautiful in nature. Never have I seen the birds so tame as they were on the lawn at Clermont cottage, and the flowers that grew under Arabella’s culture were more graceful, had a sweeter odour, and a brighter tint—at least I thought so—than any other.
I have often wondered that Arabella’s reserved manners and secluded life did not give offence to the good people of the village. She never left her home, except to see me, or a visit of charity. Her superior elegance was tempered by a soft diffidence, that seemed to fall over it like a veil, increasing its charm, while it dimmed its lustre. She was religious, and yet, if I may be allowed the word, her religion was the most uncreeded I ever knew. The bible she never criticized, but believed with implicit faith. In our age and land of theological discussion, she could not always be so fortunate as to escape hearing controversy, but she listened to it as a child listens, silent and deferential it may be—but uninterested and uncomprehending. If ever appealed to, she modestly replied that having bred protestant in the midst of catholics, she had been instructed to avoid theological discussion, and to be content with feeling and practicing religion; and in these departments of our faith all acknowledged her superiority, although some might have regretted that she had not been indoctrinated in the mysteries of theology. To confess the truth, Arabella was rather ignorant in all departments of science. The little pedants of our infant schools, who rattle off their definitions of spheroids, rhomboids, and equilateral triangles, far surpassed her in science. She had a respectable acquaintance with history, but of politics she knew no more than a fair Circassian, though she read the newspapers aloud to her father from beginning to end. She was familiar with the best poets of England, Italy, and France—this was the extent of her erudition. She had an exquisite taste in poetry, and her sweet voice seemed to give it its natural vehicle of music. It was perhaps this sublimated aliment that gave a romantic cast to her mind. She had no taste for romance reading. Few works of this description had enough of nature and elevation for so pure and unperverted a mind as hers.
I used often to speculate with womanly solicitude, on Arabella’s future destiny. Her father, according to the common course of nature, could not long survive; Arabella was so tender, so relying in her character, that the protection, and dependence of conjugal life seemed essential to her, but where in our ‘working day world,’ and in the obscurity in which she lived, was she to find a person suited to her. How vain in our forecast!
A popular law school, which soon became celebrated from the reputation of the eminent professor who presided over it, was established in the village, about a year after captain St. Clair’s settlement among us. Pupils resorted hither from all parts of the United States. Among the rest came Wingfield Clayborne, a son of a former acquaintance of mine. Of course he was welcomed to all the hospitalities I could offer him. At my house he obtained the rare privilege of frequent intercourse with Arabella. I say, rare, for owing to captain St. Clair’s aristocratic demeanor, and Arabella’s reserve, and her unaffected and utter indifference to young men in their official character of beaux, the law students had no access to Clermont cottage. In vain were formal introductions, in vain poetic effusions to the lily, the snow drop and the snow berry, for by the name of these pure and cold emblems was she addressed. In vain, too, moonlight serenades—she remained as impassive as polar ice to the sunbeam. Tender and affectionate as my young friend was to me, as devoted as she was to her father, I sometimes doubted whether she possessed a due portion of that sensibility essential to the perfection of women. Alas! I was not long left to doubt.
Clayborne was at first sight struck with Arabella’s beauty and grace. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He had himself been partly educated abroad. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He had himself been partly educated abroad. He disliked excessively what he called the brusquerie of our northern ladies: laughed at their all-knowingness, and detested their independence and rationality. I defended my countrywomen, and asked Arabella if she did not think there was more of false refinement, than true sentiment in Clayborne’s fastidiousness. She replied that she had no skill at analyzing, but I saw by the deep suffusion on her cheek, that she understood Clayborne’s opinions, as they were meant as tribute to her. It was plain whatever Clayborne did not admire, he did devotedly admire my friend, and that her heart was filled with new emotions which she indulged without question or fear.
Clayborne’s tastes corresponded with hers, but I sometimes thought his were merely the offspring of a cultivated imagination. I feared, too, (but I was aware that I was somewhat jealous for my friend,) that Clayborne’s love was tinged and adulterated by gratified vanity. That he had the pride of a virtuoso, in attaining a gem that was unattainable to others. But I did not often criticise severely; I could not, Clayborne knew too well how to propitiate the few he cared to lease. I can now look back upon a thousand little flatteries that I then called attentions.
The captain’s heart too was soon completely won. He pronounced Clayborne the only accomplished man he had seen in America, which, ‘no doubt,’ he would add in one of his patriotic parentheses, ‘is owing to his having seen society in England.’ I believed him to be well principled, and I felt him to be excessively interesting, and regarding anxiously Arabella’s solitary condition; and casting a prudent eye on the future prospects of this well born and talented young man, I was gratified by his intense devotion to my friend; and I observed with satisfaction, the sudden flushing of her cheek and faltering of her voice at his approaching footstep. She dwelt on the passages of poetry he selected, cherished every flower he gave her, sung over his favorite songs, and betrayed by many other signs, infallible to a veteran eye, the existence of a sentiment of whose power over her she was not herself fully aware.
After a thousand indirect, but intelligible declarations, Clayborne made a formal avowal of his hopes; they were sanctioned by Arabella, and ratified by captain St. Clair.
Clayborne’s father was dead. He had no one to consult but a doting mother who had never denied him any thing. He showed me her letter in reply to one communicating his engagement. She assented to his wishes, and sent a polite assurance of future kindness to Miss St. Clair, but the letter concluded with an expression of disappointment that seemed to have been too pungent to be repassed, that her son had neglected the article of fortune, so important to him, in his matrimonial arrangement. The letter displeased me, I was displeased too, with his showing it to me, and for the first time, seeing Arabella’s lover in an unfavorable light, I fancied his ardor had abated since his certainty of possessing her affections. I began to analyse his character, to suspect that the element of his fastidiousness was pride, and that his demand of an intense devotion, an exclusive and all absorbing sentiment, proceeded, not as he fancied from sensibility, but from a purely human feeling, compounded of selfishness and vanity.
Not long after the engagement, a circumstance occurred that increased my concern, lest my pure and trustful friend, had lavished her heart on one unworthy of the treasure.
Captain St. Clair’s banker in London failed, and his narrow income was reduced to less than a hundred pounds sterling per annum. This, with the place he occupied, would have been an ample fortune to a New England father and daughter, who should have understood thoroughly what wonderful science, the worth of a shilling, and should have had the maxims of poor Richard, inwrought in the fabric of their characters. But though my friend was capable of any mode or degree of self denial, the art of turning a penny was an inscrutable to her as the art of the alchymist; and how, without some such legerdemain, was a luxurious table, and wine, his staff of life, to be provided for her father?
Captain St. Clair was prostrated by his misfortune. Arabella communicated to me his despondency. ‘If I could do any thing?’ said she, half enquiringly.
‘You can,’ I replied, ‘but how, my dear Arabella, with your feelings and your reserved manners, how can you meet the trials and mortifications of a sub-teacher in a boarding school, for instance?’
‘Oh, do not think so meanly of me,’ she said, ‘if my feelings disqualify me for my duties, the sooner I get rid of them the better.’
‘Then, my dear child, your troubles are at an end. Mrs. Butler, (Mrs. B. was the mistress of a successful school in the village,) has just parted with her teacher of music, your accomplishment in music will command the highest salary she can give.’
Arabella begged me to secure the place for her immediately, and said she would return home and make the plan acceptable to her father.
‘But Clayborne,’ said I, ‘he must first be consulted.’
Arabella hesitated for a moment, and then replied. ‘No; to consult him, would be to appeal to him. We will make our arrangements, and communicate them to him afterwards.’
The arrangement was quickly made. Mrs. Butler was liberal in her terms. The girls were enchanted with the expectation of having the lovely Miss St. Clair for their teacher, and the captain’s pride, after a slight hesitation, deferred to his necessities.
But Clayborne’s pride was invincible. He was at first indignant. He felt injured. He remonstrated with me, and entreated Arabella; the fatigues, vexations, and anxieties of a teacher seemed never to cross his mind but the degradation! ‘Arabella St. Clair, a teacher in a yankee school!’ he exclaimed, ‘at the call and beck of half bred girls; daughters of tailors and shoemakers!’ At first I laughed at his folly, and then treated it with the serious contempt it deserved. I even tried to solace his pride by reminding him of the illustrious persons that had been compelled by vicissitudes, to make their talents available in this way; I told him that throughout New England, even in our polished Metropolis, teachers were on the highest level; but he was unyielding, and so was my gentle friend. Her decision might be called pride too, but it was that ratified and rectifying principle that is sustained by conscience.
Her first and present duty was to her father. If, as Clayborne urged, she had consented to an immediate marriage, she must have left her father was a narrowed income to pine in solitude, and have encumbered Clayborne with a burden of expences, before he had finished the study of his profession. She did not waver for an instant, but entered on her new occupation with a vigor and grace that surprised even me, her fond friend.
One thing I noted; after this, Clayborne, though he had been a most passionate admirer of Arabella’s music, never asked her to play or sing. I once inconsiderately remarked this to her, she made no reply, but I perceived that her eyes filled with tears.
Months passed on. Arabella’s employment inevitably brought her into observation, and her beauty, grace and accomplishments were a constant theme. Clayborne’s passion, or at least its manifestations, became more ardent, and as the time for his return to his native state, drew night, he was possessed with a lover’s apprehensions and jealousies. He expressed a fear; it might have arisen from the conscious fallibility of his own affections, that he might be superseded. He entreated Arabella to permit their marriage to take place before his departure. He obtained her father’s consent, this gave authority to his entreaties, but Arabella resisted them, and resisted the pleadings of her own heart. Her resolution was fixed, never to leave her father while his well being depended on her exertions. In his selfish importunity he betrayed a doubt of her constancy. She meekly replied, that her fidelity to her father, should be her warrant that she could not prove faithless to him.
This was the only approach to a boast I ever heard from her lips. How well did her subsequent conduct justify it!
The evening preceeding Clayborne’s departure, the lovers passed on my piazza; I took care that they should not be molested by intruders. It was late when I heard his parting footsteps; I waited for Arabella, but she did not appear, and afraid that she would be exhausted by the indulgence of her feelings, I went to her. She stood where Clayborne had left her, leaning her head against one of the pillars of the piazza. Her hands were clasped and raised, and I perceived on her finger a diamond ring, which Clayborne had always worn, and which he had told me was given to him by his mother at the time of her second marriage. It had been his father’s bridal gift, and he had received it on condition that it should never be transferred, till he placed it on the finger of his bride. After a few days, and when I thought Arabella could bear a little bantering, I reminded her of this. She said nothing, but I never shall forget the sudden contraction of her brow, nor the deep painful blush that suffused her pale cheek and alabaster neck.
Clayborne wrote by every post. His letters, which I have since seen, were as impassioned, and almost as eloquent as Rousseau’s; they all began, ‘My beloved wife,’ and finished with ‘your devoted husband.’
After a while, they became more temperate, and contained such notices of his occupations and pleasures, as she could read to me. In less than six months the ‘beloved wife’ gave place to ‘dear Arabella,’ and the fever heat of the lover seemed to have subsided to the calm temperament of the friend. Arabella, till now, mindful of every present duty, devoted to the happiness of every one around her, became abstracted and almost melancholy; the faint but distinct rose like tinge on her cheek, faded to absolute and sickly paleness. She still gave lessons at the school, but with languor and effort.
One little month more passed away. She was sitting with me one day, when my servant brought her a letter. She read it, sat for a few moments as if she were petrified, then threw on her hat and shawl, and left me without a word of explanation. I did not for a long time know the contents of the letter. I have since seen it: what follows is an extract from it.
‘After long and painful reflection on the subject, my dear Arabella, I have come to the decision that it would be ungenerous in me, not to offer to release you from an engagement, in the shackles of which you are wasting your beautiful youth. Gifted creature! you may create your own destiny! while I, a poor devil of a lawyer, must go my daily round for ‘nought but provender.’ There was much more in the letter, but all ‘words, words’ without any distinct, or certainly apparent, meaning.
I transcribe the following passage from his next letter. ‘You are in the Melpomene vein, my dear Arabella, and since you have taken me so seriously, why seriously will be. I cannot see, I confess, why you should estimate promises made in a moment of excited, and extravagant feeling as indissolubly binding. I do not claim to be as deeply read in the code of sentiment as you are, but it seems to me to be a very plain dictate of common sense, the promises cannot be binding if the parties will mutually relinquish them. Why be tremulous over a fancied duty? I disdain to hold you bound by a by-gone promise, and henceforth release you from any obligation in any way contracted with me, and wish ‘as if we had never met.’
After this Arabella received at distant intervals, and answered letters from Clayborne, but his were burned as soon as read, and I could only guess at their contents. Her father was ignorant and unsuspicious of any change in her affairs. He imputed the change in Arabella’s appearance to Clayborne’s protracted absence, and sometimes wondered that the young man no longer forwarded him the southern newspapers, which he had at first done punctually. When I remarked to him that Arabella’s health seemed to be failing, he took the alarm, insisted that she should relinquish teaching, and acquiesced in my proposal that they should abandon the cottage and pass the winter with me. Arabella was still alive to every look and word of kindness, and she gratefully acceded to my wishes.
Not long after their removal to my house, I received a letter from Clayborne. He said he presumed I was aware that his engagement with Miss St. Clare was at an end, and he begged my influence to persuade her to relinquish and forward to him a diamond ring. ‘Miss St. Clair, he says, ‘will my dear madam pay deference to your opinion, and your good sense will at once perceive her weakness in retaining, from girlish sentiment, a ring which has no longer any significance to her, and is of incalculable moment to me, as the lady to whom I hope shortly to be united, for reasons which it is not necessary to communicate, insists on deferring our nuptials till he receives it. I would be the last to impute any baseness of mind to Miss St. Clair; but how am I to explain her obstinate retention of the pledge of a retracted vow.’
All the passions of my woman’s nature were roused. I could not comprehend why Arabella should permit such a request to be repeated, and I resolved if I had any influence with her, that no indulgence of memory or hope should delay the transmission of the ring to its most unworthy giver. It was a difficult task to approach the subject. Affectionate as Arabella was, and as trustful as a child on all other subjects, she had never even alluded to Clayborne since she first doubted his fidelity. I first spoke in hints. Arabella would not understand me. I then went directly and explicitly to the point. Bitterly have I since repented it! I read Clayborne’s letter to her. I reproached her with throwing away her life, in cherishing a hopeless passion for a most unworthy object. I besought her by every motive of pride and delicacy—I adjured her, as she would preserve my esteem and her own self respect, to relinquish the worthless pledge of false and broken vows.
She heard me out with an expression of dignity and gentleness. When I afterwards recalled it, I knew she had pitied me while I reproached her. When I finished, she collected all the energies of her soul to reply, and she did so in a low but sustained voice.
‘You too doubt me,’ she said, ‘but I will not blame you. Cannot you believe that I have sufficient reasons for retaining this ring. I cannot now communicate them. Your judgment might differ from mine, and I have no strength to oppose your arguments. Death alone can divorce me from this ring—it has long been in my eyes the signet of my death warrant. Clayborne will not have to wait long for it,’ she added, holding up her emaciated hand, and showing me the small guard she was obliged to wear to retain the ring on her slender finger. ‘When you send it to him, send it simply with a notice of my death.’
‘You have reproached me with cherishing a hopeless passion for a worthless object. Indeed you have mistaken me. My love for Clayborne was extinguished, when I discovered that he whom I love was a creature of my imagination—a creature of noble qualities and high aims; of pure, tender and disinterested affections, one whom neither events nor place, life nor death could change—but to improve.’
‘My dear friend, it was not continuing, but ceasing to love, that gave such a shock to my life. It was the sudden loss of that which was the sweet employment of my thoughts, the object of my efforts, the stimulant of my mind. In the first amazement of my grief I forgot that life was God’s gift, to be preserved and cherished, not for the object I should select, but for those it should please him to assign me. For this, I deserve your reproach. I selfishly shrunk from my duties; I permitted the feelings that were given me for benevolent uses to consume my life. I meditate much and bitterly on all this. And I trust that He who looks with a pitiful eye on the sins of his children, has forgiven me. I feel my death to be rapidly approaching; I dread it only for my poor father.’
For the first time, Arabella shed tears, she paused for a few moments, and wept in my arms, silently and freely.
‘I cannot,’ she resumed, ‘think of his loneliness and disappointment without anguish.’
I assured her that her father should want no kindness I could render. She replied, that she doubted not my kind disposition, ‘but who,’ she added, with characteristic truth and simplicity, ‘who, but his child can bear with all the infirmities of my poor old father?’
She requested me never again to speak to her of Clayborne. ‘I am not willing,’ she said, ‘to break the holy calm it has pleased God to grant me. Are you now satisfied with me, my dearest friend?’
I told her, ‘that I was certain she acted from the purest and most exalted motives.’ ‘Simply, from a sense of duty,’ she replied, and the conversation dropped there.
Afterwards, for many weeks, she constantly, though almost imperceptibly, declined. She made unceasing efforts to conceal the progress of her malady from her father. ‘I long to be at rest,’ she would say to me, ‘but for his sake, I will do and suffer whatever may prolong my life.’ And most patiently did she listen to medical advice, most cheerfully take every remedy prescribed. It had been her custom to play her father to sleep in the afternoon, and this she continued to do, even after she became so weak, that she secretly begged me to sit by her, and support her with my arm. Every day, till the very last week of her life, she sat or reclined on the sofa, till her father retired to bed, and then she was carried exhausted to her own apartment.
It was heart breaking to see one so generous in her affection, so true to her duties, the victim of a selfish and capricious passion. It is true, in spite of the poet of nature, and the millions that quote him, that many have died for love. Not of love, perhaps, for it is in its nature a sustaining and vivifying passion; but from the extinction of hope, of expectation, of purpose, of all that breathes a soul into life.
Clayborne, finding his letter to me ineffectual, addressed a similar one to captain St. Clair. The old man had, I believe, before this, gradually come to a right conclusion respecting the recreant love; but his pride and his feeling were too deeply wounded to allow him to speak on the subject. Never did I witness anything so fierce and frightful as his rage at Clayborne’s letter. He swore that he would rather have cut off his daughter’s hand and sent it, than to have waited for a second request for the ring. When the energy of his rage was spent, he wept like a child, and in this moment of weakness, I obtained a reluctant promise from him that he would not disturb Arabella with this grievous subject. He kept his promise, and when with her was apparently calm, but
‘The deepest ice that ever froze,
Can only o’er the surface close;
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows—and cannot cease to flow.’
A few more weeks passed on, and I received a southern newspaper. One passage was encircled by a pen line. It was the advertisement of Clayborne’s marriage with a Miss Wythe, a lady of whom I had heard as a beauty and a fortune. Of course, I burnt the paper without communicating its tidings. Arabella’s life was gently wearing away; each day left her with abated strength, but her spirit seemed to receive peace and courage, from the fountain of strength and joy to which it was so rapidly approaching. Even her father caught a ray from the light of that world that was opening upon his child. He was calm and gentle, and would listen, with a look almost devotional, to her intreaties that would be resigned to the will of God. He would walk in her room and sit by her bed hour after hour, and forget and forego his walk, his cigars, and his wine, and all those daily recurring indulgencies that had seemed to constitute his sum of life. I was sitting one evening beside Arabella. She had passed a day of extreme weakness, hardly discovering any consciousness, excepting once or twice when I read a few passages from the bible, and she looked up with a sweet smile of assent—the response of her spirit to the words of inspiration.
My servant, by mistake, admitted two of our neighbors, who, with some drops of benevolence, have a flood of curiosity that impels them to witness, wherever they can, the last conflict of humanity. Use has given them a sort of official right to intrude on deathbed scenes, and they go to them, con amore, like the wretched cummers in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ When they entered, I was sitting beside Arabella, holding her hand in mine. Her beautiful hair lay in rich masses on the pillow. There was a slight contraction on her brow, and a quick and labored respiration; excepting these manifestations of the presence of the spirit, she was as serene as death itself. Mrs. Smith came to the bedside, and after standing there for a few moments, ‘she changes fast, I think ma’am,’ she said,— I answered by pointing to a seat at the farther end of the room. She turned to her companion and said ‘she still breathes, Patty, and that is all.’ They seated themselves on each side captain St. Clair; protracted anxiety seemed to have exhausted his sensibility. His eyes were half closed, and he was nearly unconscious of any external impressions. Yet it was curious to see the power of habit in his customary politeness. ‘It is a dying world, captain,’ said Mrs. Smith.
‘Yes, madam.’
‘And an uncommon dying season it has been,’ interposed Miss Patty—‘eleven deaths since Fast—no, I am wrong, widow Brown’s was the tenth, Miss Arabella’s will be the eleventh. It is a solemn time, captain.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘It is a dark world, captain,’ resumed Mrs. Smith, ‘and we are blind creatures. If Miss Arabella is prepared, we ought not to mourn for her.’
‘Madam?’
Here I interposed; I observed a slight tremulousness about Arabella’s mouth, that indicated she was not unnoticing, as I had supposed, and I hesitated no longer to request the woman to leave the room.
But their dull sense did not feel the instruments of torture they were handling. ‘If you should need us during the night, captain,’ said Miss Patty, ‘don’t hesitate to send for us.’
‘Need you!—for what, in Heaven’s name?’ asked the captain, for the first time speaking naturally.
‘To lay out your daughter, sir.’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed the wretched father; the woman left the apartment
Arabella gently pressed my hand, opened her eyes, and fixed them intently on me. ‘Am I dying,’ she asked, ‘tell me truly, I did not think it was so near, but I am not frightened.’
‘I believe, my dear child,’ I replied, ‘that you have little more to endure.’
‘God’s will be done,’ she said, ‘I am ready; one thing yet remains to do, and then I am perfectly ready.’ Her father approached the bedside at the sound of her voice. ‘This ring,’ she continued, feebly raising her hand, ‘was put on my finger on your piazza, the night before Clayborne’s departure. He feared my constancy, and he prayed me to kneel with him, and with God for our witness to exchange the marriage vow. I promised in the awful presence we had invoked, to wear this ring till death should divorce us.’
Her father heard her thus far, and then a flood that had been so long accumulating and fretting against its barriers, burst forth in imprecations and curses. Never shall I forget the deep heart rending groan, that Arabella, who had scarcely given an audible sight to her own injuries and sufferings, now uttered; never can I describe the energy with which she raised her head from the pillow, and clasping her arms around her father’s neck, drew his head down to her bosom, saying, ‘Oh father, as you hope to be forgiven; as you are thankful to God for giving peace to your dying child, take back those horrid words and forgive him—father, forgive him.’
‘I do—I do, my child.’
‘Dear father!’ she murmured, and pressed her lips to his burning cheek. A few moments after, I disengaged her clasped hands from her father’s neck, while yet the sweet smile, which the parted spirit had left there, hovered on her lips.
------------------------------‘Death should come,
Gently to one of the gentle mould like thee.
Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain;
And we will trust in God, to see thee yet again.’
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Bridal Ring
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women, Love, Death, Vow
Description
An account of the resource
Arabella, a young woman of particular musical talent and beauty, becomes engaged to Wingfield Clayborne. Clayborne falls out of love with her and requests the ring back. Arabella takes literally the vow she gave Clayborne and returns the ring only after ‘death do us part.’
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
In The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by S[amuel] G. Goodrich, 223-46 Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1833 [pub. 1832].
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Gray and Bowen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1833
Contributor
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Lucinda Damon-Bach
Meghan Smith
Shawn Riggins
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Arabella
Autumn
Clayborne
Clermont Cottage
Death
engagement
Love
religion
St. Clair
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir
Vow