The Morgesons Part 13

I discovered that there was little love between him and Alice. I never heard from either an expression denoting that each felt an interest in the other's individual life; neither was there any of that conjugal freemasonry which bores one so to witness. But Alice was not unhappy.

Her ideas of love ended with marriage; what came afterward--children, housekeeping, and the claims of society--sufficed her needs. If she had any surplus of feeling it was expended upon her children, who had much from her already, for she was devoted and indulgent to them.

In their management she allowed no interference, on this point only thwarting her husband. In one respect she and Charles harmonized; both were worldly, and in all the material of living there was sympathy.

Their relation was no unhappiness to him; he thought, I dare say, if he thought at all, that it was a natural one. The men of his acquaintance called him a lucky man, for Alice was handsome, kind-hearted, intelligent, and popular.

Whether Cousin Alice would have found it difficult to fulfill the promise she made mother regarding me, if I had been a plain, unnoticeable girl, I cannot say, or whether her anxiety that I should make an agreeable impression would have continued beyond a few days.

She looked after my dress and my acquaintances. When she found that I was sought by the young people of her set and the Academy, she was gratified, and opened her house for them, giving little parties and large ones, which were pleasant to everybody except Cousin Charles, who detested company--"it made him lie so." But he was very well satisfied that people should like to visit and praise his house and its belongings, if Alice would take the trouble of it upon herself. I made calls with her Wednesday afternoons, and went to church with her Sunday mornings. At home I saw little of her. She was almost exclusively occupied with the children--their ailments or their pleasures--and staid in her own room, or the nursery.

When in the house I never occupied one spot long, but wandered in the garden, which had a row of elms, or haunted the kitchen and stables, to watch black Phoebe, the cook, or the men as they cleaned the horses or carriages. My own room was in a wing of the cottage, with a window overlooking the entrance into the yard and the carriage drive; this was its sole view, except the wall of a house on the other side of a high fence. I heard Charles when he drove home at night, or away in the morning; knew when Nell was in a bad humor by the tone of his voice, which I heard whether my window was open or shut. It was a pretty room, with a set of maple furniture, and amber and white wallpaper, and amber and white chintz curtains and coverings. It suited the color of my hair, Alice declared, and was becoming to my complexion.

"Yes," said Charles, looking at my hair with an expression that made me put my hand up to my head as if to hide it; I knew it was carelessly dressed.

I made a study that day of the girls' heads at school, and from that time improved in my style of wearing it, and I brushed it with zeal every day afterward. Alice had my room kept so neatly for me that it soon came to be a reproach, and I was finally taught by her example how to adjust chairs, books, and mats in straight lines, to fold articles without making odd corners and wrinkles; at last I improved so much that I could find what I was seeking in a drawer, without harrowing it with my fingers, and began to see beauty in order. Alice had a talent for housekeeping, and her talent was fostered by the exacting, systematic taste of her husband. He examined many matters which are usually left to women, and he applied his business talent to the art of living, succeeding in it as he did in everything else.

Alice told me that Charles had been poor; that his father was never on good terms with him. She fancied they were too much alike; so he had turned him off to s.h.i.+ft for himself, when quite young. When she met him, he was the agent of a manufacturing company, in the town where her parents lived, and even then, in his style of living, he surpa.s.sed the young men of her acquaintance. The year before they were married his father died, and as Charles was his only child, he left his farm to him, and ten thousand dollars--all he had. The executors of the will were obliged to advertise for him, not having any clue to his place of residence. He sold the farm as soon as it was put in his hands, took the ten thousand dollars, and came back to be married.

A year after, he went to Rosville, and built a cotton factory, three miles from town, and the cottage, and then brought her and Edward, who was a few months old, to live in it. He had since enlarged the works, employed more operatives, and was making a great deal of money.

Morgeson's Mills, she believed, were known all over the country.

Charles was his own agent, as well as sole owner. There were no mills beside his in the neighborhood; to that fact she ascribed the reason of his having no difficulties in Rosville, and no enmities; for she knew he had no wish to make friends. The Rosville people, having no business in common with him, had no right to meddle, and could find but small excuse for comment. They spent, she said, five or six thousand a year; most of it went in horses, she was convinced, and she believed his flowers cost him a great deal too. "You must know, Ca.s.sandra, that his heart is with his horses and his flowers. He is more interested in them than he is in his children."

She looked vexed when she said this; but I took hold of the edge of her finely embroidered cape, and asked her how much it cost. She laughed, and said, "Fifty dollars; but you see how many lapels it has.

I have still a handsomer one that was seventy-five."

"Are they a part of the six thousand a year, Alice?"

"Of course; but Charles wishes me to dress, and never stints me in money; and, after all, I like for him to spend his money in his own way. It vexes me sometimes, he buys such wild brutes, and endangers his life with them. He rides miles and miles every year; and it relieves the tedium of his journeys to have horses he must watch, I suppose."

n.o.body in Rosville lived at so fast a rate as the Morgesons. The oldest families there were not the richest--the Ryders, in particular.

Judge Ryder had four unmarried daughters; they were the only girls in our set who never invited us to visit them. They could not help saying, with a fork of the neck, "Who are the Morgesons?" But all the others welcomed Cousin Alice, and were friendly with me. She was too pretty and kind-hearted not to be liked, if she was rich; and Cousin Charles was respected, because he made no acquaintance beyond bows, and "How-de-do's." It was rather a stirring thing to have such a citizen, especially when he met with an accident, and he broke many carriages in the course of time; and now and then there was a row at the mills, which made talk. His being considered a hard man did not detract from the interest he inspired.

My advent in Rosville might be considered a fortunate one; appearances indicated it; I am sure I thought so, and was very well satisfied with my position. I conformed to the ways of the family with ease, even in the matter of small breakfasts and light suppers. I found that I was more elastic than before, and more susceptible to sudden impressions; I was conscious of the ebb and flow of blood through my heart, felt it when it eddied up into my face, and touched my brain with its flame-colored wave. I loved life again. The stuff of which each day was woven was covered with an arabesque which suited my fancy. I missed nothing that the present unrolled for me, but looked neither to the past nor to the future. In truth there was little that was elevated in me. Could I have perceived it if there had been? Whichever way the circ.u.mstances of my life vacillated, I was not yet reached to the quick; whether spiritual or material influences made sinuous the current of being, it still flowed toward an undiscovered ocean.

Half the girls at the Academy, like myself, came from distant towns.

Some had been there three years. They were all younger than myself.

There never had been a boarding-house attached to the school, and it was not considered a derogatory thing for the best families to receive these girls as boarders. We were therefore on the same footing, in a social sense. I was also on good terms with Miss Prior. She was a cold and kindly woman, faithful as a teacher, gifted with an insight into the capacity of a pupil. She gave me a course of History first, and after that Physical Philosophy; but never recommended me to Moral Science. When I had been with her a few months, she proposed that I should study the common branches; my standing in the school was such that I went down into the primary cla.s.ses without shame, and I must say that I was the dullest scholar in them. We also had a drawing master and a music-teacher. The latter was an amiable woman, with theatrical manners. She was a Mrs. Lane; but no Mr. Lane had ever been seen in Rosville. We girls supposed he had deserted her, which was the fact, as she told me afterward. She cried whenever she sang a sentimental song, but never gave up to her tears, singing on with blinded eyes and quavering voice. I laughed at her dresses which had been handsome, with much frayed tr.i.m.m.i.n.g about them, the hooks and eyes loosened and the seams strained, but liked her, and although I did not take lessons, saw her every day when she came up to the Academy. She asked me once if I had any voice. I answered her by singing one of our Surrey hymns, "_Once on the raging seas he rode_."

She grew pale, and said, "Don't for heaven's sake sing that! I can see my old mother, as she looked when she sang that hymn of a stormy night, when father was out to sea. Both are dead now, and where am I?"

She turned round on the music stool, and banged out the accompaniment of "_O pilot, 'tis a fearful night_," and sang it with great energy.

After her feelings were composed, she begged me to allow her to teach me to sing. "You can at least learn the simple chords of song accompaniments, and I think you have a voice that can be made effective."

I promised to try, and as I had taken lessons before, in three months I could play and sing "_Should those fond hopes e'er forsake thee_,"

tolerably well. But Mrs. Lane persisted in affirming that I had a dramatic talent, and as she supposed that I never should be an actress, I must bring it out in singing; so I persevered, and, thanks to her, improved so much that people said, when I was mentioned, "She sings."

The Moral Sciences went to Dr. Price, and he had a cla.s.s of girls in Latin; but my only opportunity of going before him was at morning prayers and Wednesday afternoons, when we a.s.sembled in the hall to hear orations in Latin, or translations, and "pieces" spoken by the boys; and at the quarterly reviews, when he marched us backward and forward through the books we had conned, like the sharp old gentleman he was, notwithstanding his purblind eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

I heard from home regularly; father, however, was my only correspondent. He stipulated that I should write him every other Sat.u.r.day, if not more than a line; but I did more than that at first, writing up the events of the fortnight, interspersing my opinions of the actors engaged therein, and dwindling by degrees down to the mere acknowledgment of his letter. He read without comment, but now and then he asked me questions which puzzled me to answer.

"Do you like Mr. Morgeson?" he asked once.

"He is very attentive," I wrote back. "But so is Cousin Alice,--she is fond of me."

"You do not like Morgeson?" again.

"Are there no agreeable young men," he asked another time, "with Dr.

Price?"

"Only boys," I wrote--"cubs of my own age."

Among the first letters I received was one with the news of the death of my grandfather, John Morgeson. He had left ten thousand dollars for Arthur, the sum to be withdrawn from the house of Locke Morgeson & Co., and invested elsewhere, for the interest to acc.u.mulate, and be added to the princ.i.p.al, till he should be of age. The rest of his property he gave to the Foreign Missionary Society. "Now," wrote father, "it will come your turn next, to stand in the gap, when your mother and I fall back from the forlorn hope--life." This merry and unaccustomed view of things did not suggest to my mind the change he intimated; I could not dwell on such an idea, so steadfast a home-principle were father and mother. It was different with grandfathers and grandmothers, of course; they died, since it was not particularly necessary for them to live after their children were married.

It was early June when I went to Rosville; it was now October. There was nothing more for me to discover there. My relations at home and at school were established, and it was probable that the next year's plans were all settled.

"It is the twentieth," said my friend, Helen Perkins, as we lingered in the Academy yard, after school hours. "The trees have thinned so we can see up and down the streets. Isn't that Mr. Morgeson who is tearing round the corner of Gold Street? Do you think he is strange-looking? I do. His hair, and eyes, and complexion are exactly the same hue; what color is it? A pale brown, or a greenish gray?"

"Is he driving this way?"

"Yes; the fore-legs of his horse have nearly arrived."

I moved on in advance of Helen, toward the gate; he beckoned when he saw me, and presently reined Nell close to us. "You can decide now what color he is," I whispered to her.

"Will you ride home?" he asked. "And shall I take you down to Bancroft's, Miss Helen?"

She would have declined, but I took her arm, pushed her into the chaise, and then sprang in after her; she seized the hand-loop, in view of an upset.

"You are afraid of my horse, Miss Helen," he said, without having looked at her.

"I am afraid of your driving," she answered, leaning back and looking behind him at me. She shook her head and put her finger on her eyelid to make me understand that she did not like the color of his eyes.

"Ca.s.sandra is afraid of neither," he said.

"Why should I be?" I replied coldly.

We were soon at the Bancrofts', where Helen lived, which was a mile from the Academy, and half a mile from our house. When we were going home, he asked:

"Is she your intimate friend?"

"The most in school."

"Is there the usual nonsense about her?"

"What do you mean by nonsense?"

"When a girl talks about her lover or proposes one to her friend."