"Well, I can't really say," said Miss Mehitable, hesitating. "It may be that I have dwelt on this subject until I have grown nervous and my very senses deceive me. I really cannot say, Horace; that was the reason I came to you to ask what I should do."
"Let us look the matter over calmly, Aunty."
"Now," she said, nervously drawing from her pocket two or three letters and opening them before me, "here are those letters, and your head is cool and steady. I wish you would compare the writing, and tell me what to think of it."
Now the letters and the directions were in that sharp, decided English hand which so many well-educated women write, and in which personal peculiarities are lost, to a great degree, in a general style. I could not help seeing that there was a resemblance which might strike a person, - especially a person so deeply interested, and dwelling with such intentness upon a subject, as Miss Mehitable evidently was.
"My dear Aunty," said I, "I see a resemblance; but have you not known a great many ladies who wrote hands like this?"
"Yes, I must say I have," said Miss Mehitable, still hesitating, - "only, somehow, this impressed me very strongly."
"Well," said I, "supposing that your sister has written to Ellery Davenport, may she not have intrusted him with communications under his promise of secrecy, which he was bound in honor not to reveal?"
"That may be possible," said Miss Mehitable, sighing deeply, "but O, why should she not make a confidante of me?"
"It may be, Aunty," said I, hesitatingly, "that she is living in relations that she feels could not be justified to you."
"O Horace!" said Miss Mehitable.
"You know," I went on, "that there has been a very great shaking of old established opinions in Europe. A great many things are looked upon there as open questions, in regard to morality, which we here in New England never think of discussing. Ellery Davenport is a man of the European world, and I can easily see that there may be circumstances in which your sister would more readily resort to the friendship of such a man than to yours."
"May God help me!" said Miss Mehitable.
"My dear Aunty, suppose you find that your sister has adopted a false theory of life, sincerely and conscientiously, and under the influence of it gone astray from what we in New England think to be right. Should we not make a discrimination between errors that come from a wrong belief and the mere weakness that blindly yields to passion? Your sister's letters show great decision and strength of mind. It appears to me that she is exactly the woman to be misled by those dazzling, unsettling theories with regard to social life which now bear such sway, and are especially propagated by French literature. She may really and courageously deem herself doing right in a course that she knows she cannot defend to you and Mr. Rossiter."
"Horace, you speak out and make plain what has been the secret and dreadful fear of my life. I never have believed that Emily could have gone from us all, and stayed away so long, without the support of some attachment. And while you have been talking I have become perfectly certain that it is so; but the thought is like death to me."
"My dear Aunty," I said, "our Father above, who sees all the history of our minds, and how they work, must have a toleration and a patience that we have not with each other. He says that he will bring the blind by a way they knew not, and 'make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight'; and he adds, 'These things will I do unto them, and will not forsake them.' That has always seemed to me the most godlike passage in the Bible."
Miss Mehitable sat for a long time, leaning her head upon her hand.
"Then, Horace, you would n't advise me," she said, after a pause, "to say anything to Ellery Davenport about it?"
"Supposing," said I, "that there are communications that he is bound in honor not to reveal, of what use could be your inquiries? It can only create unpleasantness; it may make Tina feel unhappy, who is so very happy now, and probably, at best, you cannot learn anything that would satisfy you."
"Probably not," said she, sighing.
"I can hand this envelope to him," I said after a moment's thought, "this evening, if you think best, and you can see how he looks on receiving it."
"I don't know as it will be of any use," said Miss Mehitable, 'but you may do it."
Accordingly, that evening, as we were all gathered in a circle around the open fire, and Tina and Ellery, seated side by side, were carrying on that sort of bantering warfare of wit in which they delighted, I drew this envelope from my pocket and said, carelessly, "Mr. Davenport, here is a letter of yours that you dropped in the library this morning."
He was at that moment playing with a silk tassel which fluttered from Tina's wrist. He let it go, and took the envelope and looked at it carelessly.
"A letter!" said Tina, snatching it out of his hand with saucy freedom, - "dated at Geneva, and a lady's handwriting! I think I have a right to open it!"
"Do so by all means," said Ellery.
"O pshaw! there 's nothing in it," said Tina.
"Not an uncommon circumstance in a lady's letter," said Ellery.
"You saucy fellow!" said Tina.
"Why," said Ellery, "is it not the very province and privilege of the fair sex to make nothing more valuable and more agreeable than something? that 's the true secret of witchcraft."
"But I sha' n't like it," said Tina, half pouting, "if you call my letters nothing."
"Your letters, I doubt not, will be an exception to those of all the sex," said Ellery. "I really tremble, when I think how profound they will be!"
"You are making fun of me!" said she, coloring.
"I making fun of you? And what have you been doing with all your hapless lovers up to this time? Behold Nemesis arrayed in my form."
"But seriously, Ellery, I want to know whom this letter was from?"
"Why don't you look at the signature?" said he.
"Well, of course you know there is no signature, but I mean what came in this paper?"
"What came in the paper," said Ellery, carelessly, "was, a neat little collection of Alpine flowers, that, if you are interested in botany, I shall have the honor of showing you one of these days."
"But you have n't told me who sent them," said Tina.
"Ah, ha! we are jealous!" said he, shaking the letter at her. "What would you give to know, now? Will you be very good if I will tell you? Will you promise me for the future not to order me to do more than forty things at one time, for example?"
"I sha' n't make any promises," said Tina; "you ought to tell me!"
"What an oppressive mistress you are!" said Ellery Davenport. "I begin to sympathize with Sam Lawson, - lordy massy, you dunno nothin' what I undergo!"
"You don't get off that way," said Tina.
"Well," said Ellery Davenport, "if you must know, it 's Mrs. Breck."
"And who is she?" said Tina.
"Well, my dear, she was my boarding-house keeper at Geneva, and a very pretty, nice Englishwoman, - one that I should recommend as an example to her sex."
"Oh!" said Tina, "I don't care anything about it now."
"Of course," said Ellery. "Modest, unpretending virtue never excites any interest. I have labored under that disadvantage all my days."
The by-play between the two had brought the whole circle around the fire into a careless, laughing state. I looked across to Miss Mehitable; she was laughing with the rest. As we started to go out, Miss Mehitable followed me into the passageway. "My dear Horace," she said, "I was very absurd; it comes of being nervous and thinking of one thing too much."
CHAPTER XLV.
WEDDING BELLS.
THE fourteenth of June was as bright a morning as if it had been made on purpose for a wedding-day, and of all the five thousand inauspicious possibilities which usually encumber weddings, not one fell to our share.
Tina's dress, for example, was all done two days beforehand, and fitted to a hair; and all the invited guests had come, and were lodged in the spacious Ki
ttery mansion.
Esther Avery was to stand as bridesmaid, with me as groomsman, and Harry, as nearest relative, was to give the bride away. The day before, I had been in and seen both ladies dressed up in the marriage finery, and we had rehearsed the situation before Harry, as clergyman, Miss Debby being present, in one of her most commanding frames of mind, to see that everything was done according to the Rubric. She surveyed Esther, while she took an approving pinch of snuff, and remarked to me, aside, "That young person, for a Congregational parson's daughter, has a surprisingly distinguished air."
Lady Widgery and Lady Lothrop, who were also in at the inspection, honored Esther with their decided approbation.
"She will be quite presentable at court," Lady Widgery remarked. "Of course Sir Harry will wish her presented."
All this empressement in regard to Harry's rank and title, among these venerable sisters, afforded great amusement to our quartette, and we held it a capital joke among ourselves to make Esther blush by calling her Lady Percival, and to inquire of Harry about his future parliamentary prospects, his rent-rolls and tenants. In fact, when together, we were four children, and played with life much as we used to in the dear old days.
Esther, under the influence of hope and love, had bloomed out into a beautiful woman. Instead of looking like a pale image of abstract thought, she seemed like warm flesh and blood, and Ellery Davenport remarked, "What a splendid contrast her black hair and eyes will make to the golden beauty of Tina!"
All Oldtown respectability had exerted itself to be at the wedding. All, however humble, who had befriended Tina and Harry during the days of their poverty, were bidden. Polly had been long sojourning in the house, in the capacity of Miss Mehitable's maid, and assisting assiduously in the endless sewing and fine laundry work which precedes a wedding.
On this auspicious morning she came gloriously forth, rustling in a stiff changeable lutestring, her very Sunday best, and with her mind made up to enter an Episcopal church for the first time in her life. There had, in fact, occurred some slight theological skirmishes between Polly and the High Church domestics of Miss Debby's establishment, and Miss Mehitable was obliged to make stringent representations to Polly concerning the duty of sometimes repressing her testimony for truth under particular circumstances.
Polly had attended one catechising, but the shock produced upon her mind by hearing doctrines which seemed to her to have such papistical tendencies was so great that Miss Mehitable begged Miss Debby to allow her to be excused in future. Miss Debby felt that the obligations of politeness owed by a woman of quality to an invited guest in her own house might take precedence even of theological considerations. In this point of view, she regarded Congregationalists with a well-bred, compassionate tolerance, and very willingly acceded to whatever Miss Mehitable suggested.
Harry and I had passed the night before the wedding-day at the Kittery mansion, that we might be there at the very earliest hour in the morning, to attend to all those thousand and one things that always turn up for attention at such a time.
Madam Kittery's garden commanded a distant view of the sea, and I walked among the stately alleys looking at that splendid distant view of Boston harbor, which seemed so bright and sunny, and which swooned away into the horizon with such an ineffable softness, as an image of eternal peace.
As I stood there looking, I heard a light footstep behind me, and Tina came up suddenly and spattered my cheek with a dewy rose that she had just been gathering.
"You look as mournful as if it were you that is going to be married!" she said.
"Tina!" I said, "you out so early too?"
"Yes, for a wonder. The fact was, I had a bad dream, and could not sleep. I got up and looked out of my window, and saw you here, Horace, so I dressed me quickly and ran down. I feel a little bit uncanny, - and eerie, as the Scotch say, - and a little bit sad, too, about the dear old days, Horace. We have had such good times together, - first we three, and then we took Esther in, and that made four; and now, Horace, you must open the ranks a little wider and take in Ellery."
"But five is an uneven number," said I; "it leaves one out in the cold."
"O Horace! I hope you will find one worthy of you," she said. "I shall have a place in my heart all ready for her. She shall be my sister. You will write to me, won't you? Do write. I shall so want to hear of the dear old things. Every stick and stone, every sweetbrier-bush and huckleberry patch in Oldtown, will always be dear to me. And dear old precious Aunty, what ever set it into her good heart to think of taking poor little me to be her child? and it 's too bad that I should leave her so. You know, Horace, I have a small income all my own, and that I mean to give to Aunty."
Now there were many points in this little valedictory of Tina to which I had no mind to respond, and she looked, as she was speaking, with tears coming in her great soft eyes, altogether too loving and lovely to be a safe companion to one forbidden to hold her in his arms and kiss her, and I felt such a desperate temptation in that direction that I turned suddenly from her. "Does Mr. Davenport approve such a disposition of your income?" said I, in a constrained voice.
"Mr. Davenport! Mr. High and Mighty," she said, mimicking my constrained tone, "what makes you so sulky to me this morning?"
"I am not sulky, Tina, only sad," I said.
"Come, come, Horace, don't be sad," she said, coaxingly, and putting her hand through my arm. "Now just be a good boy, and walk up and down with me here a few moments, and let me tell you about things."
I submitted and let her lead me off passively. "You see, Horace," she said, "I feel for poor old Aunty. Hers seems to me such a dry, desolate life; and I can't help feeling a sort of self-reproach when I think of it. Why should I have health and youth and strength and Ellery, and be going to see all the beauty and glory of Europe, while she sits alone at home, old and poor, and hears the rain drip off from those old lilac-bushes? Oldtown is a nice place, to be sure, but it does rain a great deal there, and she and Polly will be so lonesome without me to make fun for them. Now, Horace, you must promise me to go there as much as you can. You must cultivate Aunty for my sake; and her friendship is worth cultivating for its own sake."
"I know it," said I; "I am fully aware of the value of her mind and character."
"You and Harry ought both to visit her," said Tina, "and write to her, and take her advice. Nothing improves a young man faster than such female friendship; it 's worth that of dozens of us girls."
Tina always had a slight proclivity for sermonizing, but a chapter in Ecclesiastes, coming from little preachers with lips and eyes like hers, is generally acceptable.
"You know," said Tina, "that Aunty has some sort of a trouble on her mind."
"I know all about it," said I.
"Did she tell you?"
"Yes," said I, "after I had divined it."
"I made her tell me," said Tina. "When I came home from school, I determined I would not be treated like a child by her any longer, - that she should tell me her troubles, and let me bear them with her. I am young and full of hope, and ought to have troubles to bear. And she is worn out and weary with thinking over and over the same sad story. What a strange thing it is that that sister treats her so! I have been thinking so much about her lately, Horace; and, do you know? I had the strangest dream about her last night. I dreamed that Ellery and I were standing at the altar being married, and, all of a sudden, that lady that we saw in the closet and in the garret rose up like a ghost between us."
"Come, come," said I, "Tina, you are getting nervous. One should n't tell of one's bad dreams, and then one forgets them easier."
"Well," said Tina, "it made me sad to think that she was a young girl like me, full of hope and joy. They did n't treat her rightly over in that Farnsworth family, - Miss Mehitable told me all about it. O, it was a dreadful story! they perfectly froze her heart with their dreary talk about religion. Horace, I think the most irreligious thing in the world is that way of talk
ing, which takes away our Heavenly Father, and gives only a dreadful Judge. I should not be so happy and so safe as I am now, if I did not believe in a loving God."
"Tina," said I, "are you satisfied with the religious principles of Mr. Davenport?"
"I 'm glad you asked me that, Horace, because Mr. Davenport is a man that is very apt to be misunderstood. Nobody really does understand him but me. He has seen so much of cant, and hypocrisy, and pretence of religion, and is so afraid of pretensions that do not mean anything, that I think he goes to the other extreme. Indeed, I have told him so. But he says he is always delighted to hear me talk on religion, and he likes to have me repeat hymns to him; and he told me the other day that he thought the Bible contained finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be got from all other books put together. Then he has such a wonderful mind, you know. Mr. Avery said that he never saw a person that appreciated all the distinctions of the doctrines more completely than he did. He does n't quite agree with Mr. Avery, nor with anybody; but I think he is very far from being an irreligious man. I believe he thinks very seriously on all these subjects, indeed."
"I am glad of it," said I, half convinced by her fervor, more than half by the magic of her presence, and the touch of the golden curls that the wind blew against my cheek, - true Venetian curls, brown in the shade and gold in the sun. Certainly, such things as these, if not argument, incline man to be convinced of whatever a fair preacher says; and I thought it not unlikely that Ellery Davenport liked to hear her talk about religion. The conversation was interrupted by the breakfast-bell, which rung us in to an early meal, where we found Miss Debby, brisk and crisp with business and authority, apologizing to Lady Widgery for the unusually early hour, "but, really, so much always to be done in cases like these."
Breakfast was hurried over, for I was to dress myself, and go to Mr. Davenport's house, and accompany him, as groomsman, to meet Tina and Harry at the church door.
I remember admiring Ellery Davenport, as I met him this morning, with his easy, high-bred, cordial air, and with that overflow of general benevolence which seems to fill the hearts of happy bridegrooms on the way to the altar. Jealous as I was of the love that ought to be given to the idol of my knight-errantry, I could not but own to myself that Ellery Davenport was most loyally in love.
Then I have a vision of the old North Church, with its chimes playing, and the pews around the broad aisle filled with expectant guests. The wedding had excited a great deal of attention in the upper circles of Boston. Ellery Davenport was widely known, having been a sort of fashionable meteor, appearing at intervals in the select circles of the city, with all the prestige of foreign travel and diplomatic reputation. Then the little romance of the children had got about, and had proved as sweet a morsel under the tongues of good Bostonians as such spices in the dulness of real life usually do. There was talk everywhere of the little story, and, as usual, nothing was lost in the telling; the beauty and cleverness of the children had been reported from mouth to mouth, until everybody was on tiptoe to see them.