Lovers and Husbands CHAPTER 11.
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In Flora's sudden resolution and abrupt action, her feelings were consulted less than her judgment. Had she allowed the former to speak — they would have pleaded hard for Garnett. This she well knew, and, therefore, acting from a clear conviction of right, she gave her heart no time thus to plead for the object of its regard, until it was too late. After she had, with tearful eyes, related all to her mother, dwelling upon the deep interest she had felt for him, the latter said,
"Ah, my child, you have escaped, I doubt not, a lifetime of wretchedness! I knew Mr. Garnett's father well. His wife was one of my dearest friends; we were girls together; she married about the same time that I did — ten years after she died, I think, of a broken heart. Her husband was not a man of good principles, nor had he any well-grounded love for his sweet wife. Young and beautiful, her lovely person was his admiration; he offered himself, and was accepted. A year or two sufficed to bring on satiety. Ill health rendered her less attractive than at first. He grew cold, then careless, and then unkind. The tears he shed for her when the clods of the valley sounded upon her coffin-lid were for the eyes of others, not for his loss. 'Like father like son' is not an unmeaning adage. It is founded in the nature of things, and, having been confirmed by general observation, has passed into a proverb. The son of a man who has called bad principles good, and not only called them so — but made them rules of conduct in life, must inherit a tendency to similar moral obliquities. It does not necessarily follow that he will, in actual life, make these tendencies to evil his own. He need not, if he will oppose them; but, if he yields at all to their impulses, he is in great danger of becoming their slave.
In such danger, I would naturally suppose young Garnett to be; and, if ignorant of all that you have discovered, and he were now to ask me for your hand, I would not yield it up until I possessed the most indubitable proofs that he had actually risen above his hereditary inclinations. That he has not, in one respect at least, what you have yourself heard and seen, clearly shows. How far he has been influenced, in the passion declared, by external accomplishments alone — it is not possible for me to say. I must believe, however, that these have mainly influenced him."
"To that conclusion, my own mind has already come," Flora said. "He could not have loved goodness in me, for he seems not to regard goodness in the abstract as anything."
"And no man who does not seek to love what is good and what is true, can make a woman really happy. This, believe me, my child, is an immutable truth."
Thus Mrs. Elton sought to encourage and strengthen her daughter's mind, that she could plainly see, was suffering keenly. The image stamped upon her heart could not be effaced in a moment. It still rested there, and it required a constant effort to keep from regarding it with pleasurable feelings. More difficult than she had at first imagined it would be, was her self-imposed task. Many a sleepless hour, through the night watches, did it cause her — robbing her cheek of its bloom, her eye of its brightness, and her step of its buoyant grace; but she struggled hard, sustained by an ever undimmed consciousness that she had acted right. In this way months elapsed, during which time she had not once left Rose Hill, nor once heard from her friend Emily. With her, under the circumstances, she did not venture to communicate. She rightly imagined the cause of her silence to lie in her husband's anger at her refusal of his friend's offer, upon the ground of alleged unworthiness from base principles.
Doctor Arlington heard that Flora had come back, a day or two after her return from New York; but, remembering the reserve and coldness with which she had treated him, he did not venture, for some time, to call upon her. When he did do so, he noticed, with pain, that there was a change in her — a change that indicated mental suffering. Her manner was kind, sincere, and altogether unaffected; but there was something about her that he could not comprehend. Of one thing he was satisfied, that she did not feel the same interest in him, that he felt in her. A whole week elapsed, and he called in again and spent an hour with Flora and her mother. Flora looked thoughtful, and said but little. Something evidently preyed upon her mind. The effect of this was to produce in Arlington, a deeper tenderness for her, that had in it little of a regard to self. Gradually, as he continued his visits, evincing all the while a delicacy of feeling that Flora had never before perceived, she began to find pleasure in his society.
After a while, her thoughts turned towards him while absent, and her mind pondered over some of the sentiments he had uttered, finding in them both purity, truth, and beauty. From this, by an easy transition, contrasts began to arise in her thoughts between the brilliant, attractive Garnett — and the plain country doctor. She took sentiments that both had uttered, and weighed them calmly; she compared known acts of each. The result was in favor of the less imposing of the two personages. Doctor Arlington was sound to the core, even if the external he presented was not so pleasing; and, as her good sense quickly told her that what was within, must come out — she readily saw that, in the end, both the external and the internal of Doctor Arlington would be far more attractive, and gain a wider commendation, than the other's possibly could. So far as the power of rendering a wife happy was concerned, she felt that there was no comparison between them.
A willingness to admit so much as this, even in thought, would have been a good omen for the doctor, had he only been able to read the maiden's thoughts; but if he could not do this, he could very easily perceive something nearly resembling a likeness of them in her manner — at least, a likeness of so much of them as favored himself. The natural result was an increased regard, manifested with a delicacy that touched more deeply the heart of Flora. She felt the truth, that one was seeking to win her, not by dazzling her mind, and thus taking her captive — but by endeavoring to inspire her with the same tender sentiments that pervaded his own bosom.
After this, there were few obstacles to be overcome by Arlington — but he was in no hurry to consummate his wishes. Marriage, in his eyes, was too pure and holy a state to be rushed into from any suddenly-inspired impulses. For himself, he was fully satisfied in regard to Flora — but he would have shuddered at the thought of marrying her while she was not as fully and as rationally satisfied in regard to him. That she might be able to know him well, he made no offer of himself for nearly a year after her return from the city, although, during that time, he visited her constantly, and showed her the most delicate attentions.
When he did ask the happiness of calling the hand he tenderly clasped his own, that hand was yielded with a thrill of interior joy. The love that united them was based upon an accurate knowledge of each other's moral qualities, the exponents of which existed in a truly corresponding intelligence. These could not grow old nor fade — but ever bloom in spring beauty. On these, the corroding finger of time could make no impression. Sickness might blast, "or pain devour;" the eye lose its brightness, and the cheek its soft vermilion — yet love like this would burn on with a brighter blaze.
Long before this event, she had heard of the marriage of Garnett to Arabella Lyon without an emotion of pain. But a short period elapsed after Doctor Arlington's declaration of love, before a happy wedding-party assembled at Rose Hill. We need not say who was married.
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