Our Neighbours in the Corner House CHAPTER 10.
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If I am not in a dream, then life is indeed a fearful thing — that is, my life. Sometimes I persuade myself that I am only dreaming; that a nightmare is resting on me, and I try to arouse myself. But I still dream on in the same wretched way.
I had another dream once — I will call it a dream, for there came a sudden and wild awakening. Oh, it was a sweet, sweet, delicious dream of Heaven on the earth! But I am losing myself. I want to talk to you of my past life; to tell you a story that will give you the heart-ache. Shall I go on?
My father was a physician in the West. Where, I will not say now. I was his only child, and he was very ambitious in regard to me. Every advantage of education was afforded, and every possible accomplishment sought to be engrafted. The discipline of my girlish life was severe enough to diminish much of its enjoyment. But I had a quick mind and buoyant feelings. These prevented the breaking down of my spirits under a pressure of tasks which were not portioned out by my teachers with any kind of judgment or discretion.
When I was twelve years old, my mother died; but her place was supplied to me by dear Aunt Mary, her sister, the wisest and best woman who ever lived. In my nineteenth year, I came home from school, having completed the course of education assigned to me. My heart was free, as it had always been. There was hardly a girl of my age in the Academy, who had not, either in sport or earnest, encouraged a lover. But my fancies did not run in that way. Young men, at least those it had been my fortune to meet, were not, in anything, up to my ideal of the gender. I had an ideal. Not one dwelt upon in waking dreams, however. It was more of an unconscious, than a fondly cherished ideal. I can say that up to this period of my life, I had seen in no man's face anything that gave my heart a quicker motion — anything that I felt as a peculiar attraction — anything that dwelt with me hauntingly when alone. Yet was I conscious of a deep capacity for loving. There was in my thought faintly imaged, a home, in which I dwelt as in a kind of earthly paradise; a home such as I had never seen, yet had faith in, as a possibility. There was no selfish worldliness in this home; but the concord of all sweet affections.
My father was a man whose hard struggle with life had made him set an undue value upon wealth as a means of happiness. I think that in educating me with such care as he evinced, the leading thought in his mind was my preparation for what he would consider an advantageous marriage — money and position being regarded as the chief prerequisite. I can only account for this blindness of judgment, in a man who saw so clearly in most cases, in the way just intimated. His long struggle with poverty, and the pains and disabilities thereby entailed, caused him to magnify riches as the highest attainable earthly good; or, rather, as the means of reaching all good the world had to offer. His education and high professional standing, made him a man of rank in the community, and naturally singled me out, and gave me a certain distinctive position when I entered society. My beauty — the homage of admiring eyes, the image in my mirror, the words not spoken for my ears that reached them — all told me that I was beautiful — added to other and higher attractions of the mind — soon drew a crowd around me. There was more than one of these to whom my father would have given his daughter in marriage, without a sign of hesitation.
One day, a few weeks after my return home from school, as I sat at the window, looking out into the flower-garden that lay in front of our small but tasteful dwelling, I heard the gate open, and casting my eyes down the walk, saw a young man enter and approach the house. Something in his face, as our eyes met, held my gaze, until he passed from sight under the vine-covered portico. As he rang the bell, my heart gave a little bound, and then fluttered strangely for a moment. My father's office was on the other side of the hall. I sat listening, until a servant opened the door; and then I heard the young man enter and go into the office. In a few minutes he came out, and I heard the front door shut. I looked from the window, and saw him move down the walk. After passing through the gate, he paused to close it, and in doing so, turned his face towards the window at which I was still seated. Our eyes met again, and again mine rested in his, until he turned from me and walked down the street. I did not attempt to withdraw my eyes; and I doubt if I possessed power to do so. Again my heart gave a little throb, and again fluttered in a strange, new way.
At this instant I heard the office door open quickly. My father came out, crossed the hall, and looked into the parlor. He did not speak, but I saw his brows contract a little, as his eyes rested upon me steadily, and I thought, with a shade of suspicion in them, for a prolonged moment. I was conscious that my cheeks grew suddenly warmer, and that my manner lost its quiet self-possession. He went back to his office without speaking.
It was plain to me that my father had seen the young man pause and look towards the parlor window, and that he had left his office to see if I were sitting there. This fact bound the other fact in my mind, and gave it a more distinct impression; and, at the same time, I felt, painfully, that I was not to be left free in any matter of the heart. I had already discovered a certain worldliness, as it then struck me, in my father; a looking to wealth and social standing — as higher than personal character.
"And am I to be sacrificed to these!" said I, as I sat that day at the window, with my eyes upon the little gate through which the stranger had passed, and, in passing, left his image in my mind. And, then and there, I said, resolutely, "Never!"
At dinner-time I discovered, two or three times, in looking up suddenly, my father's eye fixed intently on my face, and each time I was conscious of a heightened color. Naturally enough, I connected this unusual scrutiny of my countenance, with the incident of the morning, and so the incident was kept more vividly in thought.
All at once, I seemed awakening to a new consciousness. When my head went down upon its pillow that night, I was not the same being in all things, who had arisen from quiet dreams in the morning. An inner world, in which I moved vaguely, I saw, indistinctly, had opened upon me. I felt an indefinite yearning after something that included the happiness of my life; and with it, came a fear that this something would forever elude my grasp. I had passed from girlhood to womanhood, in a single hour!
I can never forget that first night of my new consciousness. I slept and awoke many times — the hours lapsing away in wakeful musings, or sleeping dreams — sweet, weird, bewildering fantasies, which haunted me long afterwards with their delicious memories.
On the next morning, as we met at the breakfast table, I saw that the new interest in my father's mind had not died out. I was changed in something, and it was plain to men that he saw it. My usual vivacity was gone, and so was my usual keen appetite.
"Are you not well, Edith?" asked my father.
I tried to smile indifferently as I answered that I was very well; but the expression of my face by no means satisfied him. He looked uneasy and concerned. As he arose from the table at the conclusion of breakfast, he came around to where I was sitting, and laid his fingers on my wrist.
"Your pulse beats rather quickly," he remarked. "Didn't you sleep well?"
"Not very well," I replied.
He scanned my face closely, and then left us and went to his office to attend to some patients who had called. From the breakfast room, I passed to the parlor, and sat down at the window overlooking the garden at the front of the house. Usually I practiced on the piano immediately after breakfast; but I felt no desire now to touch the instrument, although I was extremely fond of music, and had acquired considerable skill as a performer. I had taken a book from the center-table and laid it open in my lap, but not to read, so quickly was I learning the art of concealment. In a little while Aunt Mary — she had lived with us since my mother's death — came in and lingered, talking for some time. How I wished she would leave me alone! It was the first time in all my life, that I had felt her presence an unwelcome one.
"Don't you feel well enough to practice?" she asked, coming to the window, and laying her hand on my shoulder in her affectionate way.
"Oh, yes, I'm well enough," I answered; "but the practicing mood is not on me this morning."
Just then I heard the gate-latch click. Looking up, I met the face that had haunted me since yesterday. I did not stir nor speak until it passed from sight beneath the portico, and the distant tinkling of the door-bell came to my ears.
"I must say a word to that young man," remarked Aunt Mary, leaving the window and going quickly from the parlor. For a short time, I heard them speaking together in the hall, in what seemed a familiar way; but nothing of what they said came to my ears. Then I heard him go into my father's office, and Aunt Mary's footsteps sound on the stairs as she ascended to the rooms above.
"She knows him!" The words moved, in a whispered ejaculation, on my lips.
It was fully ten minutes before the young man left my father and passed from the house. He moved with quick steps down the walk, opened and shut the gate, then stood on the outside, and looked towards the window at which I was seated. Our eyes met as on the day before. There was no sign of recognition on his part; nothing like a smile, or shade of familiarity; but a half wonder, blended with admiration, in his eyes, and a deep seriousness on his handsome countenance. What he read in my face, I could not tell, for I was unconscious of what it expressed. He stood, as it seemed to me, scarcely an instant, and then walked hastily away. I had not stirred, nor taken any note of outward things, when I heard my name uttered, in rather a stern voice, by my father.
Starting up, I turned a crimsoning face upon him.
"Do you know that young man?" he asked, his eye reading my face with an eagerness of gaze I had never experienced before. It seemed as if he was looking right down into my thoughts.
"I do not." My answer was a stammering one.
"Edith, take care! Don't deceive me!" My father had grown calmer than when he first spoke — calmer, at least, externally.
"Why should I deceive you?" I asked, regaining my self-possession, and looking up into his face with a gaze so steady that his eyes turned aside.
"Then you don't know him?" He spoke in evident relief.
"No, sir."
"You observed him yesterday?"
I said "Yes" with what indifference I could assume.
"And again today?"
"Yes, sir."
"Evidently," said my father, "he put himself out to attract your attention. There was no occasion for his call here today. It was only an excuse. I know him well; and I tell you now, Edith, to beware of him. He's a presuming upstart!"
I did not answer. How could I? But my father seemed to expect me to say something, and stood gazing down upon me. My eyes had fallen to the floor — but I felt that his eyes were on my face, reading it as intently as if he were scanning the pages of a book. He was not satisfied; and no wonder. To such an injunction, no response but a full, out-spoken one, can be satisfactory. If I had smiled indifferently, and spoken in a light, careless way of the young man, as of one about whom I knew nothing and cared less — my father would have accepted the affirmation with a mind partly assured at least. But silence and unconcealed embarrassment left him on a sea of doubt. He would have been a wiser man, had he left me without deepening still further the impression he had made; without setting the image of that young man in my memory in a circle of pain, where it would ever after be distinctly visible.
"Do you understand me, Edith?" His voice was imperative.
What could I say? He was pressing me too closely. My father moved back a step or two, and then stood still. I did not look up, but I knew that he was regarding my face and attitude with an eagle-eyed scrutiny. Slowly, at last, he turned from me, and I was alone. With steps that scarcely left a sound behind them, I went up to my room, shut the door, and locked it. My heart was beating almost wildly. Why should my father act in so strange a way? Who was this young man, that his daring to look towards me, should occasion so much disturbance in my father? Aunt Mary knew him. When she said that she must speak a word with him, there was nothing in her voice or manner that could be construed into repulsion or dislike. She had talked with him in a familiar way, as the sound of their voices, which came to my ears, plainly intimated. All these things floated in my thoughts, and were dwelt upon, as I sat dreaming, musing and pondering, in a new and strange state of mind, for a long time.
As for the yet unknown person, whose single glance towards me had so greatly disturbed my father, he had become invested with vaguely imagined, but imposing attributes. He could be no ordinary young man, that was clear, or my father would have cared nothing for him. I was satisfied of this. His face I had seen twice. I might not have remembered it very distinctly, but for the spur to memory which I had received. Now I recalled and dwelt upon it, until I knew every feature as well as if his picture had been in my hands. It was a handsome, intelligent, manly face, full of noble feelings. Just the face to make an impression on a woman's heart. It had made already on mine, an ineffaceable impression.
"Here is my destiny!" said I at last, as the image gained newer and newer distinctness in my thought. "I have neither stepped aside nor forward to meet it; I have not sought it in restless infatuation. It has met me in the way, and I cannot pass it by, if I would!"
It had been my purpose to ask Aunt Mary about the young man, but now I changed this intention. I would wait and let events shape themselves. That we should meet, face to face and at no distant period, I felt certain. Till then, I would be silent to everyone.
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