Rose Clark

"What an invaluable creature that Anne is," exclaimed madame, as she went out of the door in pursuit of the brown silk. "To think of the brazen-facedness of that young woman! I declare I could not have believed any body could tell a lie with such an innocent face. It is really almost past belief; what an invaluable creature Anne is. I never should be able to get along without her. I must go to Mme. Descomb's and select her a new dress hat. Just to think now of the impudence of that Rose.

"I must furnish Anne with means to go on some little excursion. I think I will buy her that pretty music-box I saw yesterday.

"How wide awake Anne is to my interests! Had it not been for her I might have been taken in by that scheming young woman. I hope nobody saw me go to her house; I must warn Chloe against her, it will not do for her to go there again."

CHAPTER XLVIII

Rose was sitting in her little parlor giving Charley his morning bath; the water was dripping from his polished limbs, and he was laughing and splashing about with the nude grace of a young sea-god; now catching his breath, as his head was immersed under water; now shaking back his dripping curls, and flashing upon you his dark bright eyes, as if life were all sunshine, and his infant sky were cloudless.

"I sall inform you zat you can leave my maison – my house – dis morning," said Rose's French landlady, entering the room without a preliminary rap. "You understand, mademoiselle —dis morning, I say – you are von bad woman, mademoiselle."

Twice Rose opened her lips to speak, but the color receded from her lips and cheeks, and she stood terror-struck and speechless.

"Zat is all ver' well," said madame, quite accustomed to see her country-women strike an attitude. "Zat is all ver' well; you did not expect I sall know any ting about it, but one personne tell me zat I know; you can go, for you are von bad woman."

"What is all this?" exclaimed Gertrude, opening the door and seeing Rose's pallid face and madame's angry gesticulations.

"Ah, ha! she has impose on you too!" exclaimed Madame Macqué. "She von ver' sly woman – ver' bad; she no' stay in my house long time."

"Woman!" said Gertrude, throwing her arm around Rose, "this is my sister; every word you speak against her you speak against me. She is as pure as that sweet child. If she leaves your house, I leave it."

"Ver' well —trés bien," said madame, shaking her overloaded French head-dress; "you can go, den – von day you see I tell you de truf when I say she von – "

"Don't repeat that again, in my hearing," said Gertrude, standing before her with sparkling eyes.

"Speak, Rose – dear Rose!" said Gertrude, kissing her cold face, as madame left the room. "Speak, Rose; do not let that miserable bundle of French trumpery crush so pure and noble a heart as yours. We will go away, Rose – you, and I, and dear little Charley. And, oh, Rose! when could I have a better time to plead for my brother's happiness, for yours, for my own? Put it beyond the power of any one to poison your peace, Rose; be indeed my sister."

Rose's only reply was a low shuddering sob, as she drew closer to Gertrude.

"Just as good as new," said Miss Anne, looking complacently at herself in the brown silk. "Anne, you should be prime minister; you have a talent for diplomacy; femininity is too circumscribed a sphere for the exercise of your talents. You did that well, Anne – Madame Vincent thrown completely off the track, Rose crushed and out of your way forever; the baby ditto. Madame Macque is very careful of her reputation in this country, because she never had any in France. Ha – ha, Anne, you are a genius – and this brown silk is a proof of it. Now, look out for presents about this time, for your star is at its culminating point. Rose has beauty – has she? Vincent fancied her – did he? A rose's doom is to fade and wither – to be plucked, then trodden under foot;" and Miss Anne laughed one of her Satanic laughs.

CHAPTER XLIX

Sally came into the kitchen just as the clock was striking seven. The Maltese cat heard the old clock, jumped up, and shook herself, just as if her dream of a ducking at the hands of the grocer-boy were true. Three stray cockroaches – cockroaches, like poor relatives, will intrude into the best-regulated families – scampered before Sally's footsteps to their hiding-places, and the little thieving brown mouse on the dresser took temporary refuge in the sugar-bowl.

Sally had been up stairs performing her afternoon toilet by the aid of a cracked looking-glass, which had a way of multiplying Sally's very suggestive to her crushed hopes. Sally, I am sorry to say, had been jilted. Milkmen do not always carry the milk of human kindness in their flinty bosoms. Time was when Jack Short never came into the kitchen with his can, without tossing Sally a bunch of caraway, or fennel, a nosegay of Bouncing Bettys, or a big apple or pear. Time was when his whip-lash always wanted mending, and it took two to find a string in the closet to do it, and two pair of hands to tie it on when found.

"Poor old thing!" the faithless John would now say to the rosy little plumptitude who had won his heart away from the angular Sally; "Poor old thing! I was only fooling a little, just to keep my hand in, and she thought I was in love."

Sally had as much spirit as the rest of her sex, and so to show John that she was quite indifferent about the new turn in their affairs, she set the milk-pan, into which he was to pour his morning's milk, out into the porch, and closed the kitchen-door in his false face, that he might have nothing upon which to hinge an idea that she wanted to see him. And more; she tied the yellow neck-ribbon he gave her on the last fourth of July round the pump-handle, and if John Short had not been blind as well as "short," he must have seen that "when a woman will – she will, you may depend on't," and "when a woman won't – she won't, and there's an end on't."

Poor Sally, before she saw John, had lived along contentedly in her underground habitations, year after year, peeling potatoes, making puddings, washing, ironing, baking, and brewing; nobody had ever made love to her; she had not the remotest idea what a Champagne draught love was. She could have torn her hair out by the roots, when she did find out, to think she had so misspent her past time. It really did seem to her, although she was squint-eyed, that there was nothing else in this world of any account at all. She had thought herself happy when her bonnet was trimmed to suit her, or her gown a good fit; but a love-fit! ah, that was a very different matter. Poor Sally! mischievous John! – the long and short of it was, if Bouncing Bettys have any floral significance, Sally should have been Mrs. Short.

Of course, she had no motive on the afternoon we speak of, to look long in the cracked looking-glass; it made no difference now whether she wore her brown calico with the little white dots, or her plaid delaine with the bishop sleeves; there was no use in braiding her hair, or in putting on her three-shilling collar; she had resigned herself to her fate. She even threw a pitcher of hot water at the innocent organ-grinder, because he played Love's young Dream.

Still you see, she goes on mechanically with her work, putting the tea-kettle over the fire, setting the six brass lamps in a regular row on the mantle, and tucking the ends of some clean towels, out of sight, in the half-open bureau-drawers. Sally is neat; but John Short's little Patty is plump and rosy.

Ah! now she has some company – there is Miss Harriet Place, who has the misfortune to have so stiff a neck that when she turns it, her whole body must follow. Miss Harriet has black eyes, affects the genteel, and speaks of "my poor neck" in a little mincing way, as if its stiffness were only a pretty little affectation on her part. Her cronies wink at this weakness, for Miss Harriet has a gift at trimming their bonnets, and putting finishing touches to all sorts of feminine knicknacks; then, here comes Alvah Kittridge, who is a rabid Free-will Baptist, and who lives at Mayor Treadwell's! where they have such fine dinners; at which the Mayor drinks a great deal, and "finds fault very bad," with every thing the next morning. Miss Alvah pays her way as she goes, both in stories, and maccaroons; the former her own, the latter Mayor Treadwell's.

Last, but by no means least, comes Mrs. Becky Saffron, all cap-border and eyes, the only other noticeable thing about her being her mouth, which displays, in her facetious moods, two enormous yellow tusks, one upper and one under, reminding the observer of a hungry catamount; this resemblance scarce diminishes on acquaintance, as Mrs. Becky, like all the skinny skeleton-ish tribe, is capable of most inordinate guzzling and gorging.

"Glad to see you, Miss Place," said Mrs. Becky (giving her cap-border a twitch), and getting on the right side of that stiff-necked individual, "I have not set eyes on you these six months."

"No," minced Miss Place; "I called at your boarding-house, and they said you had gone somewhere, they could not tell where."

"Oh, I'm nobody; of course they wouldn't know; I'm nobody. I'm down in the world, as one may say. I'm nobody but 'Becky.' I come and go; nobody cares, especially when I go," and Mrs. Becky gave her two yellow tusks an airing.

"I left my old place some time ago. I'm to broth-er's now." Mrs. Becky always pronounced the first syllable of this word like the liquid commonly designated by that syllable. "Yes, I'm to broth-ers now. His wife never wanted me in the house. She's dreadful pert and stuck-up, for all she was nobody; so I have always been boarded out, and been given to understand that my room was better than my company. But something queer has happened. I can't find out what, only that broth-er has got the whip-rein of his wife now, and has it all his own way; so he came and told me that it would cost less for him to keep me at St. John's Square than to board me out; so there I am.

"It is no use for broth-er's wife to teach me about silver forks and finger-bowls, about not doing this, or that, or t'other thing; can't teach an old dog new tricks. But I let her fret. I am not afraid of her now, for whenever she gets on her high horse, broth-er fetches her right off with the word "damages." I can't tell for the life of me what it means. I've seen her change right round when he whispered it, as quick as a weather-cock, and it would be all fair weather in one minute. It's curious. How do you like your new place, Alvah?"

"Places are all about alike," said Alvah, dejectedly. "See one, you see all. Damask and satin in the parlor; French bedsteads and mirrors in my lady's chamber, and broken panes of glass up in the attic; lumpy straw beds, coarse, narrow sheets, torn coverlets, and one broken table and chair, will do for the servants' room. Always fretting and fault-finding too, just as if we had heart to work, when we are treated so like dogs; worse than dogs, for young master's Bruno has a dog-house all to himself, and a nice soft bed in it; which is more than I can say. I declare it is discouraging," said Alvah. "It fetches out all the bad in me, and chokes off all the good. Mistress came down the other day and scolded because I washed myself at the kitchen sink. Well, where should I wash? There is neither bowl, pitcher, wash-stand, or towels furnished in my attic, and, after cooking over the fire all day, it isn't reason to ask any body not to wash wherever they can get a chance. It don't follow that I like dirt, because I have to do dirty work. I can't put clean clothes over a soiled skin. I feel better-natured when I am clean – better-tempered and more human like. When I first went out to live, I was conscientious like; but now, I know it is wicked, but I get ugly and discouraged, and then I don't care. I say if they treat me like a dog, I shall snatch a bone when I can get it. Mistress, now, wants breakfast at just such a time. She is too stingy to find me in proper kindling for my fire, so in course it keeps going out as fast as I light it, and henders me; and then she gets in a fury 'cause breakfast don't come up. Well, I stood it as long as I could; now I pour lamp-oil on the wood to make it kindle; that does the business. I reckon it isn't no saving to her not to buy kindling. I know it isn't right; but I get aggravated to think they don't have no bowels for us poor servants."

Mrs. Becky Saffron paid little attention to this narrative. There was more attractive metal for her on the tea-table, upon which Sally had just placed some smoking hot cakes, and a fragrant pot of tea. Mrs. Becky's great yellow black eyes rolled salaciously round in her head, and her two tusks commenced whetting themselves against each other, preparatory to a vigorous attack on the edibles.

"Green tea!" exclaimed Mrs. Becky, after the first satisfactory gulp – "not a bit of black in it – that's something like;" and untying her cap-strings, she spread her white handkerchief over her lap, and gave herself up to the gratification of her ruling passion, next to gossip. "How did you come by green tea in the kitchen?" asked the delighted Mrs. Becky.

"Oh, I laid in with the housekeeper," answered Sally; "she has dreadful low wages, and has hard work enough to get even that. I iron all her muslins, and she finds me in green tea. 'Live, and let live,' you know."

"That reminds me," minced Miss Place, who sometimes set up for a wit, "that's what I read on the side of a baker's cart the other day, 'Live, and let live;' but, unfortunately, right under it was written 'Pisin cakes!'"

About half an hour after this, Mrs. Becky choked over her sixth cup of tea; Miss Place's pun had just penetrated her obtuse intellect.

CHAPTER L

MR. FINCH FINELS TO TOM CORDIS

"Dear Tom, —

"The next best thing to seeing you, you witty dog, is reading one of your letters; but accept a little advice from one who has had experience, and don't throw away so many good things on one individual; economise your bon-mots, my dear fellow, spread them over your private correspondence as sparingly as they do butter on bread at boarding-schools. Ah! you will grow wiser by and by, when you find out how very rare is an original idea. Why – we literary people, if by chance we improvise one in conversation, always stop short after it, and turning to our friends say, 'Now remember, that's mine, don't you use it, for I intend putting it in my next book.'

"What am I doing, hey? Living by my wits, though not in the way of literature, which I find does not pay; for there has been such a surfeit of poor books that even a good one is now eyed with suspicion.

"At present, however, I am, thanks to Mrs. John Howe, in a comfortable state of wardrobe and purse. You should see this Venus! Who can set bounds to the vanity of woman? (This is in Proverbs, I believe; if it is not it ought to be.) At any rate, woman's vanity is the wire I am now pulling, to keep me in bread and butter.

"Mrs. John Howe is old, ugly, and shrewish; how she would rave, if she saw this! All her married life, she has led her husband by the nose. John is a good-natured, easy fellow, with no brains or education to speak of. Latterly, something has turned up between them, deuce knows what, I don't; but Richard is himself again, smokes when and where he likes, and goes round like the rest of us.

"You will see that he is improving when I tell you that he has bought his wife off to mind her own business, and let him mind his, by an allowance of so much a year; and here's where the interest of my story comes in, my dear boy, for just so long as I can make Mrs. John believe that she is as young as she ever was, (and as beautiful, as by Jove! she never was), and that I can not exist one minute out of her presence, why so much the more hope there is for my tailor and landlady, confound them! En passant: I dare say you might wince a little at the idea of being supported by a woman; that only shows that you have not yet learned to recognize 'the sovereignty of the individual.' But the best thing is yet to come. Mrs. John imagines herself a blue-stocking! though she can not spell straight to save her life, and has not the remotest idea whether Paris is in Prussia or Ireland. You should hear her mangle Italian, which she has just begun. It makes my very hair stand on end; I see where it is all tending. She asked me the other day about the divorce law; as if I would marry the old vixen! Never mind, so long as the money holds out I shall hoodwink her even in this.

"Write soon. I saw little Kate last week, fresh as a Hebe, and beautiful as nobody else ever was, or can be. Pity she is such a little Puritan! She would be irresistible were it not for that humbug. I live in hope that contact with the world, and intercourse with me, will eradicate this, her only weakness. Bless her sweet mouth, and witching eyes.

"Yours, as usual,

Finels."

CHAPTER LI

"The dirge-like sound of those rapids," said Rose, as she tossed on her pillow at the public-house, at Niagara, vainly courting sleep; "it oppresses me, Gertrude, with an indescribable gloom."

"Your nerves are sadly out of tune, dear Rose; it will be quite another affair to-morrow, i. e., if the sun shines out. Niagara's organ-peal will then be music to you, and the emerald sheen of its rushing waters – the rosy arch, spanning its snowy mist – beautiful beyond your wildest dream! And that lovely island, too. Dear Rose, life, after all, is very beautiful. But how cold your hands are, and how you tremble; let me try my sovereign panacea, music;" and drawing Rose's head to her breast, Gertrude sang —

"Tarry with me, oh, my Saviour!For the day is passing by;See! the shades of evening gather,And the night is drawing nigh.Tarry with me! tarry with me!Pass me not unheeded by."Dimmed for me is earthly beauty,Yet the spirit's eye would fainRest upon Thy lovely features —Shall I seek, dear Lord, in vain?Tarry with me, oh, my Saviour!Let me see Thy smile again."Dull my ear to earth-born music;Speak Thou, Lord! in words of cheer;Feeble, faltering, my footstep;Leaps my heart with sudden fear.Cast Thine arms, dear Lord, about me,Let me feel Thy presence near!"

"Poor Rose," sighed Gertrude, as she kissed her closed lids, laid her head gently back upon the pillow, and released the little hand within her own. "If she could only bear up under this new trial; she is so pure and good that the thought of the sin the world wrongly imputes to her is wearing her life away. This journey, which I hoped would do so much for her, may fail after all. Poor wronged Rose! how can it be right the innocent should thus suffer?" but ere the murmur had found voice the answer came:

"For right is right, since God is God,And right the day must win:To doubt, would be disloyalty —To falter, would be sin."

And laying her cheek by the side of Rose, Gertrude slept.

The next day was fine, and the faint smile on Rose's pale face was sweet as the much longed-for sunlight. Our travelers descended to the ample drawing-room of the hotel to breakfast.

Rose glanced timidly about, scanning the forms which passed before her, as was her wont at a new place, and then the unsatisfied eye drooped beneath its snowy lid; and they who had been struck with the pensive beauty of her face, gazed upon it unnoticed by its object, whose thoughts were far away.

The tall Indian head-waiter was at his post, as purveyor of corn-cakes and coffee; and excellently well as he filled it, Gertrude protested, as an artist, against such a desecration of his fine athletic form and kingly air.

Human nature is never more en déshabille than in traveling; and Gertrude's bump of mirthfulness found ample food in the length and breadth of the well-filled breakfast-table. The jaded pleasure-seekers, whose fashion-filmed eyes were blind to natural beauty, were talking of "doing the Falls in one hour." The little new-made bride sat there with love-swimming eyes, innocently expecting to escape detection in the disguise of a plain brown traveling-dress: pretty little simpleton! and casting such tell-tale glances at her new husband, too! The half-fledged "freshman" was there, with his incipient beard and his first long-tailed coat, making love and bad puns to a knot of his sister's mischief-loving female friends.

In came the pompous city aristocrat, all dignity and shirt-collar, following his abdomen and the waiter with measured steps and supercilious glance, to the court-end of the table. There, too, was the pale student, feasting his book-surfeited eyes on the pleasanter page of young beauty's April face. There, too, the unsophisticated country girl, too anxious to please, exhausting all her toilet's finery on the breakfast-table. There, too, the poor dyspeptic, surveying with longing eye the tabooed dainties, for which he must pay to Dame Nature if he ate, and to the landlord whether or no.

"Your spirits are at high-water mark this morning," said John to his sister, as Gertrude's quick eye took these notes of her neighbors. "I think you have made up your mind not to grow old. You look as handsome as a picture, this morning."

"As an artist, allow me to tell you that your compliment is a doubtful one," said Gertrude. "And as to old age, which is such a bugbear to most of my sex, I assure you it has no terrors for me. My first gray hair will excite in me no regretful emotions."

"Ah! you can well afford to be philosophic now," retorted John, touching the shining curls around his sister's face.

"You don't believe me? I assure you that the only terror old age has for me is its helplessness and imbecility. My natural independence revolts at being a burden even to those whom I love;" and Gertrude's tone had a touch of sadness in it. "You remember old Aunt Hepsy, John? how long her body outlived her mind; how at eighty years she would beg for tin carts, and soldiers, and rag dolls, and amuse herself by the hour with them, like a little child. This, I confess, is humiliating. In this view I can truly say I dread old age. But the mere thinning of the luxuriant locks, the filming of the bright eye, the shrinking of the rounded limbs, these things give me no heart-pangs in the anticipation. I can not understand the sensitiveness with which most men and women, past the season of youth, hear their age alluded to. It certainly can be no secret, for if Time deal gently with them the family register will not; and if the finger of vanity obliterate all traces of the latter, some toothless old crone yet hobbles, who, forgetful of every thing else, yet remembers the year, week, day, minute, and second in which (without your leave) you were introduced to life's cares and troubles.

"Beside, old age need not be repulsive or unlovely," said Gertrude; "look at that aged couple, yonder! How beautiful those silver hairs, how genuine and heart-warming the smile with which they regard each other! To my eye, there is beauty on those furrowed temples, beauty in those wrinkled hands, so kindly outstretched to meet each other's wants. Life's joys and sorrows have evidently knit their hearts but more firmly together. What is the mad love of youthful blood to the sun-set effulgence of their setting lives? God bless them!" said Gertrude, as, kindly leaning one on the other, they passed out the hall. "Old age may be beautiful!"

"Yes," replied John, "when the heart is kept fresh and green; that which neutralizes the counsels of old age is the ascetic severity with which it too often denounces innocent pleasure, forgetting that the blood which now flows so sluggishly in its veins had once the torrent's mad leap. But look, Gertrude, while I discuss this ham omelette, and see what is in the morning papers."

"Well – in the first place, 'dreadful casualty.' What would editors do, I wonder, without these dreadful casualties? I sometimes amuse myself, when I have nothing better to do, in comparing their relative tastes for the horrible, and their skill in dishing it up spicily to the appetites of their various readers. The ingenuity they manifest in this line is quite incredible.

"Observe now, the flippant heartlessness with which these city items, are got up, as if a poor degraded drunkard were the less an object of pity that he had parted with the priceless power of self-resistance! A man who could make a jest of a sight so sad, has sunk lower even than the poor wretch he burlesques.