Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

    Wednesday, Dec. 24th.

Blessed Edith! Guess who said this to-day, after I had been reading aloud in the Westminster Review – “I don’t understand a word, hardly, about this constructive policy and conservative elements, or what sort of difference there is between them. It indeed, seems to me that they must mean really the same thing. Don’t it to you?”

“Oh no, aunt.”

“No, I suppose not; for you are like your uncle. He talks about these things a great deal, and about the political economists, too, as if they were something like gods – or very mischievous men, for I am sure, now I think about it, I can’t tell which it is – whether he approves them or not. At any rate, if they are wise and good men, I think he is as good as the best of them can be, I am sure” – with a long sigh, and listlessly drawing the point of her needle along the hem she was making – “there isn’t an hour, hardly, that I am not wondering at all he knows, and wishing that I were a hundredth part as wise.”

“I wouldn’t mind this, aunt. You are good and kind, and everybody loves you. Aunt! aunt! see! Ponto has upset your basket; he is eating your spools, isn’t he? What a naughty dog.”

Ponto took the reproof for so much coaxing, and came scrambling over me. Aunt half-sighed, half-laughed, and said —

“This is the way Ponto serves me, if I don’t see to him. And I never do see to him, or any thing else, when I am talking or trying to think closely, never; I am discouraged sometimes, especially when I think how different you and your uncle are; and Mother Hedelquiver would see to twenty things, as if they were but one – I would give all the world that I could do the same. Ponto, Ponto, be still, or I will box your ears!”

But he didn’t be still, nor did aunt box his ears. He slipped off from beneath her hand and ran over the carpet like a bewitched thing, with a sleeve of the dress aunt was making in his mouth. He is a splendid little spaniel, the pet of all in the house, and I believe the fellow knows it.

I have had letters from home since I wrote before, and see what my mother says – “You are right, my good Rosamonde, truth is best for us; not only for its own great sake, but, as you, say, we feel so much better and nobler every way when speaking and acting it; and, besides, it serves us best in the end. It has been serving us a good turn, as you shall hear presently.

“Mrs. Hayden called here the day that we got your last. You know I have always tried to keep up appearances before her more than almost any other, she has things in such style at home. If she has ever called when I was feeling discouraged about our affairs I brushed the depression all away, you know, and was as lively and full of this and that thing that was going on, as if I hadn’t a care in the world. I was, in fact, never myself for one minute in her company until that day. Well, when she came in I was alone, your father was going here and there in the city, to make it appear that he had a great deal on his hands I have no doubt, and I was in tears over your letter – I brushed the tears off a little, but they ran again as soon as she began to speak kindly to me; and she was really as kind as a woman could be, Rose – so I told her all about our discouragements, how long they have lasted, how they were growing deeper, and all; and read her your letter and showed her the bank-bills. She was very sober, and as I had never seen her so before, it didn’t seem to me that it could be the same Mrs. Hayden that usually comes in once in six months, and after sitting fifteen minutes, talking of the weather, crotchet-work, her domestics and the like, goes out again as cold and stately as she came. She sat close beside me, and threw off her bonnet when she found the strings troublesome. She said she wished I had spoken of these things before, for that your father might have been helped to a good business in the first of it, as well as not. She told me to be of good courage, to be thankful that I have such a daughter. Here her tears started and mine ran again – she said she would speak to her husband, his brother, and hers, and all would soon be right.

“And all is right. Two retainers have already come in, one of fifty dollars, another of twenty. Old Judge Bailey sent for your father the other day – the judge is uncle to Mrs. Hayden; your father read with him six months, but never had put himself in his way, and so the judge had quite lost sight of him. He told your father that he would be in need of him often, and that if he – the judge, I mean – does sometimes scold and send the chairs against the wall when the gout is on him, your father must let it go as if it were a little rain and hail; he will give him, at the same time that he scolds, good work and good pay. I hope he wont scold, for I think your father is too proud to bear much – he would sooner sacrifice the work and the pay. I am afraid that nearly all these energetic patrons are either cross or whimsical, or have some troublesome fault. Your father says that, according to your Uncle Frederick’s philosophy of compensation, they are likely to have. Well, we must wait and see.

“P. S. I left this for your father to write a little, if he could find time; but he can’t, as true as you live. He is busy early and late with great books, and pens, and sheets of paper, and parcels of documents tied up with red tape. You don’t know how good this seems. He is as happy with it as a child, and proud of being all fagged out. You would be delighted to see him; he looks younger by ten years than he did a fortnight ago. He wants you to come home now. He says he couldn’t have consented to your going to stay so long but that he thought it might be pleasanter for you there. I couldn’t certainly. I hope you will try to come sooner, for, guess who comes in to inquire about you – Esquire Charles Hayden; our Mr. Hayden’s youngest brother, you know, just home from California when you went away. He has established himself here; has his office close by your father’s; was in last evening, and didn’t want to talk of anybody but you. Mrs. Hayden had been telling him about you.

“Good-bye, dear. Mrs. Hayden has just sent me word that she will call in an hour, with Charles, to take me out to ride with them. I believe it more and more, that truth is best. Don’t you, Rose?”

No, my mother! I should believe it all the same, if, in following after it, you had been led into countless difficulties and tribulations, I should still believe it altogether best, because best for the soul, let what will come – come to the body.

Mr. Marsden, one of the village merchants, went to Boston yesterday, and aunt commissioned him to tell Alfred Cullen, with whom he deals largely, to come up and spend New Year with her and uncle. Now heaven forbid!

Uncle says – “Come, Monde, come and hear what that rascally Louis Napoleon is doing.” I go, for France is, as it were, our next door neighbor in these days.

—

CHAPTER IV

MONDE TO EDITH

    Danville, Dec. 29, 1851.

Isn’t this outrageous bad, Edith? Mr. Marsden brought along, when he came back, a note from Alfred Cullen, saying that he will come to D – ; a box of oysters from him for uncle, another of figs for aunt, (and she wants to see me eat them every five minutes; I think it is much the same as if she saw me eating the giver.)

Aunt is so glad to have him come that she hardly knows her head from her feet. She is in danger of stumbling over Ponto, or a foot-cushion, at every turn. She gives more directions to Bessy and Hamlet than ten Bessys and Hamlets could follow. It is well for them that she revokes half of them on the spot; that she modifies the rest according to their liking, and ends with telling them both to go on and do just what they see needs to be done, and to do it in the way they think best. She has no doubt, she says, that it will be done better than she can advise. And so it will assuredly. Bessy has been in the family ten years, Hamlet three; they both have clear brains and strong hands, and, as Bessy says, “have got the hang of every thing from garret to cellar.” This is no light achievement, for one does not often see so large a house, or such overflowing abundance. By the by, do you know that uncle has paid our house rent for the last ten years, and given us money and other things beside? I am thinking that, if you do not, you may be calling him “a miserly old fellow.” He has offered my father land, but my mother dreads leaving the city where she was reared. Now I hope you think, as Aunt Alice and I do, that uncle is the best man on earth, except Kossuth – I must say, except Kossuth always; for I believe he is the best man that breathes, or that has breathed, since the days of Christ. Uncle and I talk about him, we read his speeches, and I keep saying in my heart – “the Christ of the nations! the Christ of the nations!” And often a great fear comes over me, that, in another sense than his truth, his self-immolating goodness, his destiny is to be like that of the Christ. My heart is aching for him now – still I can put back the pain, and say, “Father, let it be as seemeth good in Thy sight; for, whether he lives or dies, in him the great cause of freedom and human progress shall be glorified; and he is strong and patient to drink of the cup that Thou givest him.”

    Tuesday, 30th.

I think this Alfred Cullen, who will come to D – to-morrow or next day, must be altogether precious. Even uncle is moved a little. He gives Hamlet orders touching John, and John’s harness, and the oats John must have, that he and his trappings may be in good condition for Alfred’s use. Aunt looks at me and adds some suggestions about Kate. Kate must be fed well and made sleek as can be; for – perhaps – . Aunt goes no further than this “perhaps” of hers, lately – she has seen, I presume, that her plans which embrace Alfred Cullen and me jointly, annoy me. Indeed, I was quite savage over them before she gave them up. Bessy bakes pies, and loaves of all sorts of cake and ginger-bread, without number, and wipes the dust out of every corner. Aunt praises all that she does and all that Hamlet does, puts her caps in order and sponges her dresses. Paulina Monroe, meanwhile, comes in often to look at my collars, under-sleeves and cuffs, that she may make her some like them. Her dress-maker hurries her sewing on a brown Thibet like mine, made like mine, that it may be finished before to-morrow night. Paulina smiles incessantly, has flutter in her manner, and a red spot on each cheek; so that Ponto and I are the only two who go our ways precisely in the usual mode. In truth, I am not sure that Ponto and I are entirely unaffected; we are out of doors more than heretofore, and when in the house are a little less sedate; I can’t bring my mind to my writing as usual, and I shall be glad when his face is set again toward Boston.

Good-night! I shall finish my letter after he comes. I shall tell you now, however, what a beautiful gift I had yesterday from uncle – a plumed Kossuth hat. This is for me to wear when riding. I wore it to-day, and uncle walked round it and me, saying with kindling eyes – “That is splendid! You never looked half so well, Monde, in any thing!” And according to the revelations of the long mirror, I think I never did. But it is a fact, Edith, my fair one, that I am as brown as a berry. Good-bye.

    Wednesday, 31st.

Well! Alfred Cullen came this morning while I was gone to ride. We did not expect him until evening, because it is a day’s journey from Boston. But he stopped last evening at St. C – , where he had friends and business, and this morning was brought over.

“Guess who’s in the sitting-room with your uncle and aunt,” said Hamlet, with a broad smile, as he came to help me out of the saddle.

“Paulina, I dare say, Hamlet.”

“No. You go in an’ see who ’t is. Come, Katy.”

I came in straightway, expecting to see Hamlet’s pretty sister, Fanny; but saw, instead, a man of about thirty years; by no means tall, (for a man, that is; he is a little above me,) by no means large, but noble and graceful, and with a look in the highest degree animated and gentle. He and uncle stood face to face, talking energetically and laughing.

“Here she is!” said uncle, as soon as he saw me. “Here’s Monde. Monde, our friend, Mr. Cullen. Our niece, Miss Hedelquiver, Alfred. Ponto, be still; behave yourself, Ponto.”

Ponto wouldn’t behave himself at all, in the way uncle proposed; he was quite too glad to see me. When I would have stepped forward a little to meet Mr. Cullen, he was jumping on my long skirts and catching them in his teeth; and when I would have shaken hands with him, he sprang up between us, and was so unmanageable, that we were forced to dispense with the hand’s-shaking altogether. We called him a vicious puppy and boxed his soft ears a little; but, as we laughed all the while, he only dragged my skirts the more pertinaciously and jumped the higher. And judge you whether I was not glad that he did; glad that I must be busy scolding him and getting my skirts and gloves and riding-stick away from him; for uncle said, turning to Mr. Cullen —

“How do you like Monde’s hat, Alfred?”

“I was just thinking that it is the most becoming thing I ever saw,” replied he.

“I think so,” said uncle.

I can’t very well bear having any thing about my person commended, you know; especially if it brings such eyes as uncle’s and Mr. Cullen’s to bear upon my figure; and so I was glad enough to have aunt come into the room, and forward into our midst, that the survey might be broken.

But it was not long, for aunt looked down on my long train, and then said:

“Paulina has been trying to persuade Rosamonde to put on a Bloomer with her, she didn’t like to adopt it alone. But I think Rosamonde is wise in clinging to the long skirts, especially for riding. Do you like the Bloomers, Alfred?”

“Not at all! not at all!” and his eye ran over my figure again.

“Nor I,” said uncle. “To tell the truth,” – with his eyes on my face – “Monde wrote us spirited letters; I remembered a certain sort of dash and courage in her character, and I was more than half afraid that she would come amongst us looking up out of a Bloomer, and that the first thing she began to talk about would be Women’s Rights. Not, as Heaven knows,” added uncle, with increasing seriousness, “because there is not need of changes here, as every where else; but because the changes proposed are, as it appears to me, poor, one-sided things. I would not, therefore, like to hear so thoroughly sensible a girl as Monde, clamoring for them.”

“You will make Monde blush,” said aunt.

“Not at all,” Aunt Alice, replied I, doffing my hat, “I can bear very well having my brain praised, you know, at any time. Ponto – Ponto, bring me my glove.”

“Yes, that is true,” said aunt. And added, after a moment’s pause – “I can never make much out of this Woman’s Rights business. With sister Eunice it is ‘equal rights, equal privileges, equal pantaloons,’ and some more, I don’t know what else. I never pretend to understand a word of it.”

This was cunning in aunt. We all had a hearty laugh over it. But good-night, dearest; I will finish in the morning.

    Morning.

When I returned to the parlor, after changing my dress, yesterday, uncle and Mr. Cullen sat in their arm-chairs, face to face, talking with thoughtful eyes of Congress and Hungary. If Congress would do thus and so, then Hungary could do so and thus, so and thus. If Congress would not, then God help Hungary. They had their eyes on each other’s face; they appeared as if they two could sit there and talk forever, never once lacking themes of interest, never once tiring of each other’s discourse. And uncle – dear, good man that he is! – let me have a part now and then, by saying – “Yes, this is what I was saying to you yesterday, you remember, Monde.” And then again – “And Monde, I see, thinks the same.” So that he and Mr. Cullen soon came to speak as much to me as to each other.

Aunt came in, in a jet black dress, and rich black lace cap, with scarlet trimmings. She looked happy, and was as fresh and graceful as a girl – only her cap and collar were both awry, and a lock of hair straggled. Her eyes sought Mr. Cullen’s directly.

“Mother,” said he, answering her smile with one as genial, “I am as hungry as a wolf. What are you going to have for dinner, I wonder.”

“Guess.”