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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Bessie's Fortune," Mary Jane Holmes weaves a poignant narrative that explores themes of love, social class, and the pursuit of happiness against the backdrop of 19th-century America. The novel is stylistically characterized by its vivid descriptions and the nuanced portrayal of its female protagonist, Bessie, who navigates societal constraints in her quest for personal fulfillment and fortune. Set amidst the prevailing literary context of the era, which often depicted moral dilemmas and the virtues of self-improvement, Holmes' work resonates with contemporary issues surrounding gender and class dynamics while offering a compelling character study. Mary Jane Holmes, a prominent figure in the 19th-century literary scene, was known for her keen insights into women's lives and the complexities of their emotional landscapes. Having lived through her own struggles in a patriarchal society, Holmes drew from personal experiences and societal observations to create relatable and inspiring characters. Her commitment to addressing women's issues set the stage for a rich exploration of Bessie's life, reflecting Holmes' belief in the transformative power of love and self-determination. "Bessie's Fortune" is not merely a tale of romance but a celebration of resilience and self-discovery. Readers interested in historical novels that challenge societal norms will find Holmes' work a thought-provoking addition to their literary collection. This engaging story invites readers to reflect on their own definitions of fortune and fulfillment in an ever-evolving world. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Bessie's Fortune
Table of Contents
Introduction
In Bessie’s Fortune, the shifting meanings of fortune—wealth, chance, reputation, and the hard-won blessings of home—gather around a young woman whose choices reveal how love, duty, and social expectation contend for the power to shape a life, weighing gain and loss not only in coins but in character as prosperity beckons and belonging is at stake.
Mary Jane Holmes, a popular American novelist of the nineteenth century, wrote domestic fiction that reached a wide readership and helped define the era’s taste for emotionally engaging, socially observant narratives. Bessie’s Fortune belongs to this tradition, aligning with the period’s blend of romance, moral reflection, and everyday realism. First issued in the late nineteenth century, the novel situates its characters within recognizable households and communities, where personal decisions intersect with public judgment. While the specifics of locale are less central than the social fabric itself, the book’s focus on family ties, status, and the pressures of respectability marks it as representative of its time and genre.
Without relying on elaborate contrivance, the story introduces a young woman named Bessie and arranges her among relationships, opportunities, and constraints that steadily complicate her path. From its early chapters, the narrative sets Bessie within an environment where economic realities intersect with affection and reputation, establishing a framework in which a change in circumstance can alter the terms of courtship, obligation, and self-understanding. The book offers the kind of experience associated with nineteenth-century domestic fiction: intimate scenes, moral testing, and unfolding suspense grounded in recognizably human motives rather than sensational spectacle, inviting readers to observe how character forms and reveals itself over time.
Holmes’s voice is accessible and often warm, drawing readers close to ordinary rooms and conversations where significant choices are made. The style balances sentiment with clarity, using crisp pacing and episodic turns to maintain momentum while lingering over the feelings and scruples that guide behavior. Rather than dwell on spectacle, the narrative builds tension through misunderstandings, reversals of expectation, and the persuasive force of conscience. The mood is hopeful yet candid about social limits; irony and tenderness mingle as the book weighs outward success against inward worth. The result is a narrative that comforts, questions, and quietly challenges assumptions about what it means to do well.
Key themes surface early and remain central: the moral uses and abuses of money, the negotiation of class boundaries, the power and limits of reputation, and the resilience of women within constraining norms. Bessie’s Fortune examines how prosperity promises security yet complicates loyalty, how courtship is shaped by both affection and social arithmetic, and how a household’s stability can hinge on integrity as much as income. It also considers the claims of duty—to kin, community, and self—and the costs of pursuing or resisting those claims. Through these concerns, the novel probes the gap between what society rewards and what conscience requires.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions retain sharpness: What does economic mobility demand of us, and what, if anything, should remain nonnegotiable? How do gendered expectations shape opportunity and judgment, and where do individuals find room to act? Bessie’s Fortune offers a lens on the social mechanics of the nineteenth century—courtship conventions, household economies, communal scrutiny—while inviting reflection on present-day analogues. It rewards readers interested in cultural history and those drawn to character-driven fiction that weighs empathy against expediency. The novel’s appeal lies in its steady insistence that comfort, respect, and love are never only material, and that character is a form of wealth.
Approached on its own terms, Bessie’s Fortune offers the satisfactions of a carefully plotted domestic narrative and the texture of a bygone moral world. Readers may find it fruitful to notice how small acts—letters, visits, confidences—shift the balances of trust and expectation, and how Holmes orchestrates community voices to test a protagonist’s resolve. Attending to these patterns illuminates the book’s craft and its ethical stakes. For admirers of nineteenth-century fiction and newcomers alike, the novel stands as an invitation to consider how fortune is made, measured, and spent, and how the quiet dramas of ordinary life can yield the most enduring reckonings.
Synopsis
Bessie grows up in modest circumstances, supported by a loving but financially strained household that values honesty, hard work, and quiet pride. From childhood she hears hints about a distant connection to a once-prosperous family, a story preserved in keepsakes and half-remembered letters. These fragments suggest a right to something larger than her present life, yet they never displace her practical duties. When financial pressures mount, a chance discovery of old papers brings the family history into sharper focus, raising the possibility of a claim. With encouragement from trusted friends, Bessie resolves to seek clarity, not riches, about who she is and what she deserves.
The narrative reviews the past that set her present in motion: a youthful romance, family disapproval, and decisions that scattered relatives across continents. Bessie’s guardian has protected fragile memories while struggling to secure the daily bread, and Bessie has learned to measure worth by conduct rather than coins. An acquaintance from outside her circle—observant, fair-minded, and independent—enters the story, offering perspective without promises. As small-town conversations swell into gossip, Bessie weighs pride against necessity. Her guiding principle remains simple: she will accept only what rightfully belongs to her, and she will do no harm to others in pursuing it.
When the opportunity arises to present her claim, Bessie travels far from home to a grand residence bound up with her family’s name. The place, imposing and timeworn, is presided over by an ailing elder whose word can influence outcomes. Some relatives greet Bessie with guarded courtesy; others treat her as an intruder. Bureaucratic requirements put her under scrutiny, and she is asked for proofs she only partly possesses. The outsider who has watched her quietly now becomes an ally, though independence on both sides keeps their understanding tentative. Bessie’s presence reveals old fractures among those who fear what recognition might bring.
Installed on sufferance within the household, Bessie’s days are filled with observation and careful restraint. She notices the rhythms of privilege and the vulnerabilities behind them: a sickbed that needs tending, a child who needs patience, a servant who needs respect. In moments of service she finds a place that no legal document can assign. Corridors lined with portraits suggest likenesses she cannot deny, and casual remarks yield clues that make past events feel near. Without argument, her steadiness begins to unsettle assumptions. Those least secure in their positions question her motives, while those who prize character more than lineage take note.
Formal inquiries gather pace as attorneys compare signatures, dates, and testimonies. An old will surfaces, but its provisions hinge on circumstances difficult to prove. Rival claimants produce counter-stories and artful delays. A whisper campaign hints at irregularities in the earlier romance that connects Bessie to the house, threatening to stain her cause. Meanwhile, a misunderstanding strains her rapport with the one person inclined to see her fairly. The social atmosphere grows tense: drawing rooms become courts of opinion, and every small lapse is weighed heavily. Bessie answers with patience, unwilling to advance at anyone else’s unjust expense.
A sudden crisis interrupts the legal maneuvering—a grave illness, an accident, a night when decisions must be made quickly. In that testing hour Bessie’s priorities are clear: she aids those in danger without regard for her standing. The event loosens tongues and unlocks a cache of long-hidden words, in the form of a letter, a confession, or a document preserved against the wrong moment. Its contents, while not fully disclosed, shift the story’s axis, forcing powerful figures to reconsider what is due. Compassion, once seen as a private virtue, becomes a public fact shaping how the parties proceed.
When the immediate danger passes, the household reassembles on altered ground. The new evidence requires verification, and the slow machinery of law resumes its turn. Offers are made to Bessie—some generous, some self-protective—asking her to accept less than full acknowledgment in exchange for peace. She refuses to be bought at the cost of truth or another’s rightful claim. Friendships mend as motives are clarified, yet opposition persists where privilege feels threatened. The atmosphere is quieter but more resolute: reputations matter, and each concession carries a moral weight that cannot be measured in money alone.
As the final phase unfolds, identities are sorted, responsibilities accepted, and the true meaning of fortune emerges. Without detailing outcomes, the narrative affirms that recognition follows evidence and that affection follows merit. Relationships, once clouded by suspicion, find their proper terms. Bessie’s path, whether marked by inheritance or by simple independence, is steadied by the regard she has earned. Those who first doubted her learn the limits of pride; those who trusted her see their judgment confirmed. The ally who stood apart steps closer, not as a savior but as someone who understands the value she always possessed.
The novel closes by underscoring that wealth of character prevails over accidents of birth. Inheritance, if it comes, is meaningful only when joined to duty and kindness. The old conflicts between rank and worth do not vanish, but they are set in right proportion. Bessie’s fortune, in the broadest sense, is the respect, belonging, and love she secures by acting justly. The story’s final effect is one of order restored without triumphalism, suggesting that true prosperity rests in integrity. By tracing her journey from uncertainty to recognition, the book confirms its central message: the heart’s royalty outlasts the world’s.
Historical Context
Mary Jane Holmes set Bessie’s Fortune in the social world of the late 1870s, roughly contemporary with its publication in that decade, when both the United States and Britain were reshaping their social orders. The novel’s locales reflect small-town New England respectability alongside the allure and constraint of Victorian Britain’s class system, a transatlantic frame made practical by railways, ocean steamships, and telegraphs. Domestic interiors, parsonages, and genteel boardinghouses anchor the American scenes, while English estates and urban drawing rooms evoke the rigid hierarchies of the United Kingdom. The time and place situate the plot within the upheavals of Reconstruction’s end and the dawning Gilded Age.
The close of Reconstruction (1865–1877) and the Gilded Age’s early consolidation set the novel’s socioeconomic backdrop. Federal withdrawal from the South in 1877 under President Rutherford B. Hayes coincided with rapid northern and western expansion, industrial concentration, and struggles over respectability and mobility. The U.S. population rose from 38.6 million (1870 Census) to 50.2 million (1880), with railroad mileage surpassing 70,000 miles by 1870. Holmes’s story mirrors this environment by foregrounding anxieties about status, propriety, and self-making: characters secure futures through marriage, employment, and inheritance in ways that echo the era’s fluid yet fraught hierarchies and the moral scrutiny placed on rising fortunes.
The Panic of 1873 and the ensuing Long Depression (1873–1879, with effects into the 1880s) profoundly shaped ideas of “fortune.” Triggered in part by the collapse of Jay Cooke & Company on September 18, 1873, the crisis closed the New York Stock Exchange for 10 days and pushed major railroads into bankruptcy, spurring mass unemployment and wage cuts. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 erupted in Martinsburg, West Virginia, spreading to Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis, and was suppressed by federal troops. The novel’s emphasis on precarious wealth, prudent economies, and the strategic role of wills and dowries reflects the volatility of this period, when sudden reversals made inheritance and marital alliances vital hedges against instability.
Women’s property rights, contested across the English-speaking world, inform the book’s core premise that a woman’s “fortune” carries legal and moral stakes. Under coverture, a married woman’s property traditionally merged with her husband’s. In the United States, reforms proceeded state by state—New York’s Married Women’s Property Acts of 1848 and 1860, Massachusetts (1855), and Ohio (1861) expanded women’s separate estates and earnings. Britain’s Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 allowed wives to keep their wages and inherit small sums; the sweeping 1882 Act granted women control over property as if they were single. Holmes’s plotlines—guardians, trustees, contested wills—mirror this transition, dramatizing female agency amid evolving property law.
Transatlantic mobility and communication accelerated the kinds of cross-border inheritance disputes that fiction eagerly explored. The successful laying of the permanent transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 and regular steamship service by the Cunard and White Star lines (typical New York–Liverpool crossings of 9–10 days in the 1870s) compressed distance and time. English primogeniture, entails, and strict settlement practices (reformed in part by the Settled Land Act of 1882) contrasted with American intestacy and probate patterns under state law. By staging letters, telegrams, and voyages as plot catalysts, the novel leverages real legal and logistical conditions: claims to English estates, questions of legitimacy, and the cultural pull of titles intersect with American ideas of merit and wealth.
Urbanization, immigration, and the gendered labor market frame the novel’s pathways to respectability. In 1870, about a quarter of Americans lived in urban places; by 1880, that share approached 28 percent, supported by heavy immigration—roughly 2.8 million arrivals in the 1870s, notably Irish, German, and Scandinavian. Domestic service dominated women’s paid work, with a large plurality of employed women recorded as servants or in personal service in the 1870 Census. The book’s reliance on companion, governess, seamstress, or housekeeper roles reflects these realities, using employment to signal character virtue or vulnerability and to test the moral economies that governed female independence and social ascent.
Philanthropy and organized charity expanded in tandem with urban poverty and economic shocks. The Children’s Aid Society, founded by Charles Loring Brace in New York in 1853, pioneered child rescue and placement programs; Charity Organization Societies emerged in the 1870s (e.g., Buffalo, 1877) to systematize relief and moral oversight. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1874) mobilized female voluntary power in reform. Holmes’s narrative turns on visits, almsgiving, and reputational surveillance, aligning with these movements’ emphasis on character, thrift, and deservingness. The novel scrutinizes how benevolence could both uplift and police, echoing contemporary debates over pauperism, respectability, and the limits of private charity.
As social and political critique, the book interrogates the nexus of wealth, gender, and legitimacy across the Atlantic world. It exposes coverture’s lingering injustices by showing how women’s economic security hinges on trustees, settlements, and marital calculations even as law reforms advance. It also critiques class pretension and the transactional marriage market, where titles or fortunes can eclipse merit. By juxtaposing British hereditary privilege with American plutocratic display in the wake of the Panic of 1873, the narrative questions the moral foundations of both systems. Charity appears as a test of power and conscience, revealing the era’s strain between public virtue and private interest.
Bessie's Fortune
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
THE JERROLDS OF BOSTON.
Mrs. Geraldine Jerrold, of Boston, had in her girlhood been Miss Geraldine Grey[1], of Allington, one of those quiet, pretty little towns which so thickly dot the hills and valleys Of New England. Her father, who died before her marriage, had been a sea-captain, and a man of great wealth, and was looked upon as a kind of autocrat[2], whose opinion was a law and whose friendship was an honor. When a young lady, Miss Geraldine had chafed at the stupid town and the stupider people, as she designated the citizens of Allington, and had only been happy when the house at Grey's Park was full of guests after the manner of English houses, where hospitality is dispensed on a larger scale than is common in America. She had been abroad, and had spent some weeks in Derbyshire at the Peacock Inn, close to the park of Chatsworth, which she admired so much that on her return to Allington she never rested until the five acres of land, in the midst of which her father's house stood, were improved and fitted up as nearly as possible like the beautiful grounds across the sea. With good taste and plenty of money, she succeeded beyond her most sanguine hopes, and Grey's Park was the pride of the town, and the wonder of the entire county. A kind of show place it became, and Miss Geraldine was never happier or prouder than when strangers were going over the grounds or through the house, which was filled with rare pictures and choice statuary gathered from all parts of the world, for Captain Grey had brought something curious and costly from every port at which his vessel touched, so that the house was like a museum, or, as Miss Geraldine fancied, like the palaces and castles in Europe, which are shown to strangers in the absence of the family.
At the age of twenty-two, Miss Geraldine had married Burton Jerrold, a young man from one of the leading banks in Boston, and whose father, Peter Jerrold, had, for years, lived on a small farm a mile or more from the town of Allington. So far as Geraldine knew, the Jerrold blood was as good as the Grey's, even if old Peter did live a hermit life and wear a drab overcoat which must have dated back more years than she could remember. No one had ever breathed a word of censure against the peculiar man, who was never known to smile, and who seldom spoke except he was spoken to, and who, with his long white hair falling around his thin face, looked like some old picture of a saint, when on Sunday he sat in his accustomed pew by the door, and like the publican, seemed almost to smite upon his breast as he confessed himself to be a miserable sinner.
Had Burton Jerrold remained at home and been content to till the barren soil of his father's rocky farm, not his handsome face, or polished manners, or adoration of herself as the queen of queens, could have won a second thought from Geraldine, for she hated farmers, who smelled of the barn and wore cowhide boots, and would sooner have died than been a farmer's wife. But Burton had never tilled the soil, nor worn cowhide boots nor smelled of the barn, for when he was a mere boy, his mother died, and an old aunt, who lived in Boston, took him for her own, and gave him all the advantages of a city education until he was old enough to enter one of the principal banks as a clerk; then she died and left him all her fortune, except a thousand dollars which she gave to his sister Hannah, who still lived at home upon the farm, and was almost as silent and peculiar as the father himself.
"Marry one of the Grey girls if you can," the aunt had said to her nephew upon her death bed. "It is a good family, and blood is worth more than money[1q]; it goes further toward securing you a good position in Boston society. The Jerrold blood is good, for aught I know, though not equal to that of the Greys. Your father is greatly respected in Allington, where he is known, but he is a codger[3] of the strictest type, and clings to everything old-fashioned and outre. He has resisted all my efforts to have him change the house into something more modern, even when, for the sake of your mother, I offered to do it at my own expense. Especially was I anxious to tear down that projection which he calls a lean-to[4], but when I suggested it to him, and said I would bring a carpenter at once, he flew into such a passion as fairly frightened me. 'The lean-to should not be touched for a million of dollars; he preferred it as it was,' he said; so I let him alone. He is a strange man, and—and—Burton, I may be mistaken, but I have thought there was something he was hiding. Else, why does he never smile, or talk, or look you straight in the face? And why is he always brooding, with his head bent down and his hands clenched together? Yes, there is something hidden, and Hannah knows it, and this it is which turned her hair grey so early, and has made her as queer and reticent as your father. There is a secret between them, but do not try to discover it. There may be disgrace of some kind which would affect your whole life, so let it alone. Make good use of what I leave you, and marry one of the Greys. Lucy is the sweeter and the more amiable, but Geraldine is more ambitious and will help you to reach the top."
This was the last conversation Mrs. Wetherby ever held with her nephew, for in two days more she was dead, and Burton buried her in Mt. Auburn[5], and went back to the house which was now his, conscious of three distinct ideas which even during the funeral had recurred to him constantly. First, that he was the owner of a large house and twenty thousand dollars; second, that he must marry one of the Greys, if possible; and third, that there was some secret between his father and his sister Hannah; something which had made them what they were; something which had given his father the name of the half-crazy hermit, and to his sister that of the recluse; something which he must never try to unearth, lest it bring disquiet and disgrace.
That last word had an ugly sound to Burton Jerrold, who was more ambitious even than his aunt, more anxious that people in high positions should think well of him, and he shivered as he repeated it to himself, while all sorts of fancies flitted though his brain.
"Nonsense!" he exclaimed at last, as he arose, and, walking to the window, looked out upon the common, where groups of children were playing. "There is nothing hidden. Why should there be? My father has never stolen, or forged, or embezzled, or set any one's house on fire. They esteem him a saint in Allington, and I know he reads his Bible all the time when he is not praying, and once he was on his knees in his bedroom a whole hour, for I timed him, and thought he must be crazy. Of course so good a man can have nothing concealed, and yet—"
Here Burton shivered again, and continued: "And yet, I always seem to be in a nightmare when I am at the old hut, and once I told Hannah I believed the house was haunted, for I heard strange sounds at night, soft footsteps, and moans, and whisperings, and the old dog Rover howled so dismally, that he kept me awake, and made me nervous and wretched, I don't remember what Hannah said, except that she made light of my fears, and told me that she would keep Rover in her room at night on the floor by her bed, which she did ever after when I was at home. No, there is nothing, but I may as well sound Hannah a little, and will go to her at once."
When Mrs. Wetherby died, her nephew sent a message to his father and sister, announcing her death, and the time of the funeral. He felt it his duty to do so much, but he did not say to them, "Come, I expect you." In fact, away down in his heart, there was a hope that they would not come. His father was well enough in Allington, where he was known; but, what a figure he would cut in Boston, in his old drab surtout and white hat, which he had worn since Burton could remember. Hannah was different, and must have been pretty in her early girlhood. Indeed, she was pretty now, and no one could look into her pale, sad face, and soft dark eyes, or listen to her low, sweet voice, without being attracted to her and knowing instinctively that, in spite of her plain Quakerish dress, she was a lady in the true sense of the word. So, when she came alone to pay the last token of respect to the aunt who had never been very gracious to her, Burton felt relieved, though he wished that her bonnet was a little more fashionable, and suggested her buying a new one, which he would pay for. But Hannah said "no," very quietly and firmly, and that was the end of it. The old style bonnet was worn as well as the old style cloak, and Burton felt keenly the difference between her personal appearance and his own. He, the Boston dandy, with every article of dress as faultless as the best tailor could make it, and she, the plain countrywoman, with no attempt at style or fashion, with nothing but her own sterling worth to commend her, and this was far more priceless than all the wealth of the Indies. Hannah Jerrold had been tried in the fire, and had come out purified and almost Christlike in her sweet gentleness and purity of soul. She knew her brother was ashamed of her—whether designedly or not, he always made her feel it—but she had felt it her duty to attend her aunt's funeral, even though it stirred anew all the bitterness of her joyless life.
And now the funeral was over, and she was going home that very afternoon—to the gloomy house among the rocks, where she had grown old, and her hair gray long before her time—going back to the burden which pressed so heavily upon her, and from which she shrank as she had never done before. Not that she wished to stay in that grand house, where she was so sadly out of place, but she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, so that she escaped from the one spot so horrible to her. She was thinking of all this and standing with her face to the window, when her brother entered the room and began, abruptly:
"I say, Hannah, I want to ask you something. Just before Aunt Wetherby died, she had a long talk with me on various matters, and among other things she said she believed there was something troubling you and father, some secret you were hiding from me and the world. Is it so? Do you know anything which I do not?"
"Yes, many things."
The voice which gave this reply was not like Hannah's voice, but was hard and sharp, and sounded as if a great ways off, and Burton could see how violently his sister was agitated, even though she stood with her back to him. Suddenly he remembered that his aunt had also said: "If there is a secret, never seek to discover it, lest it should bring disgrace." And here he was, trying to find it out almost before she was cold. A great fear took possession of Burton then, for he was the veriest moral coward in the world, and before Hannah could say another word, he continued:
"Yes, Aunt Wetherby was right. There is something; there has always been something; but don't tell me, please, I'd rather not know."
He spoke very gently for him, for somehow, there had been awakened within him a great pity for his sister, and by some sudden intuition he seemed to understand all her loneliness and pain. If there had been a wrongdoing it was not her fault; and as she still stood with her back to him, and did not speak, he went up to her, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, said to her:
"I regret that I asked a question which has so agitated you, and, believe me, I am sorry for you, for whatever it is, you are innocent."
Then she turned toward him with a face as white as ashes and a look of terror in her large black eyes, before which he quailed. Never in his life, since he was a little child, had he seen her cry, but now, after regarding him fixedly a moment, she broke into such a wild fit of sobbing that he became alarmed, and passing his arm around her, lead her to a seat and made her lean her head upon him, while he smoothed her heavy hair, which was more than half gray, and she was only three years his senior.
At last she grew calm, and rising up, said to him:
"Excuse me, I am not often so upset—I have not cried in years—not since Rover died," here her voice trembled again, but she went on quite steadily. "He was all the companion I had, you know, and he was so faithful, so true. Oh, it almost broke my heart when he died and left me there alone!"
There was a world of pathos in her voice, as she uttered the last two words, "There alone," and it flashed upon Burton that there was more meaning in them than was at first indicated; that to live there alone was something from which his sister recoiled. Standing before her, with his hand still upon her head, he remembered, that she had not always been as she was now, so quiet and impassive, with no smile upon her face, no joy in her dark eyes. As a young girl, in the days when he, too, lived at home, and slept under the rafters in the low-roofed house, she had been full of life and frolic, and played with him all day long. She was very pretty then, and her checks, now so colorless, were red as the damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the rocky pasture land. It was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it was iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head, and only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite of her, softened the severity of her face. Just when the change began in his sister. Burton could not remember, for, on the rare occasions when he visited his home he had not been a close observer, and had only been conscious of a desire to shorten his stay as much as possible, and return to his aunt's house, which was much more to his taste. He should die if he had to live in that lonely spot, he thought, and in his newly awakened pity for his sister, he said to her, impulsively:
"Don't go back there to stay. Live with me. I am all alone, and must have some one to keep my house. Von and I can get on nicely together."
He made no mention of his father, and he did not half mean what he said to his sister, and had she accepted his offer he would have regretted that it had ever been made. But she did not accept it, and she answered him at once:
"No, Burton, so long as father lives I must stay with him, and you will be happier without than with me. We are not at all alike. But I thank you for asking me all the same, and now it is time for me to go, if I take the four o'clock train. Father will be expecting me."
Burton went with her to the train, and saw her into the car, and bought her Harper's Monthly, and bade her good-by, and then, in passing out, met and lifted his hat to the Misses Grey, Lucy and Geraldine, who had been visiting in Boston, and were returning to Allington.
This encounter drove his sister from his mind, and made him think of his aunt's injunction to marry one of the Greys. Lacy was the prettier and gentler of the two, the one whom everybody loved, and who would make him the better wife. Probably, too, she would be more easily won than the haughty Geraldine, who had not many friends. And so, before he reached his house on Beacon street, he had planned a matrimonial campaign and carried it to a successful issue, and made sweet Lucy Grey the mistress of his home.
It is not our purpose to enter into the details of Burton's wooing. Suffice it to say, that it was unsuccessful, for Lucy said "No," very promptly, and then he tried the proud Geraldine, who listened to his suit, and, after a little, accepted him, quite as much to his surprise as to that of her acquaintances, who knew her ambitious nature.
"Anything to get away from stupid Allington," she said to her sister Lucy, who she never suspected had been Burton's first choice. "I hate the country, and I like Boston, and like Mr. Jerrold well enough. He is good-looking, and well-mannered, and has a house and twenty thousand dollars, a good position in the bank, and no bad habits. Of course, I would rather that his father and sister were not such oddities: but I am not marrying them, and shall take good care to keep them in their places, which places are not in Boston."
And so the two were married, Burton Jerrold and Geraldine Grey, and there was a grand wedding, at Grey's Park, and the supper was served on the lawn, where there was a dance, and music, and fireworks in the evening; and Sam Lawton, a half-witted fellow, went up in a balloon, and came down on a pile of rocks on the Jerrold farm, and broke his leg; and people were there from Boston, and Worcester, and Springfield, and New York, but very few from Allington, for the reason that very few were bidden. Could Lucy have had her way, the whole town would have been invited; but Geraldine overruled her, and made herself life-long enemies of the people who had known her from childhood. Peter Jerrold staid at home, just as Burton hoped he would, but Hannah was present, in a new gray silk, with some old lace, and a bit of scarlet ribbon at her throat, and her hair arranged somewhat after the fashion of the times. This was the suggestion of Lucy Grey, who had more influence over Hannah Jerrold than any one else in the world, and when she advised the new silk, and the old lace, and the scarlet ribbon, Hannah assented readily, and looked so youthful and pretty, in spite of her thirty years, that the Rev. Mr. Sanford, who was a bachelor, and had preached in Allington for several years, paid her marked attention, helping her to ices, and walking with her for half an hour on the long terrace in a corner of the park.
There was a trip to Saratoga, and Newport, and the Catskills, and then, early in September, Burton brought his bride to the house on Beacon street, which Geraldine at once remodeled and fitted up in a style worthy of her means, and of the position she meant her husband to occupy. He was a growing man, and from being clerk in a bank, soon came to be cashier, and then president, and money and friends poured in upon him, and Geraldine's drawing-rooms were filled with the elite of the city. The fashionables, the scholars, the artists, and musicians, and whoever was in any degree famous, met with favor from Mrs. Geraldine, who liked nothing better than to fill her house with such people, and fancy herself a second Madame De Stael[6], in her character as hostess. All this was very pleasing to Burton, who, having recovered from any sentimental feeling he might have entertained for Lucy, blessed the good fortune which gave him Geraldine instead. He never asked himself if he loved her; he only knew that he admired, and revered, and worshiped her as a woman of genius and tact; that what she thought, he thought; what she wished, he wished; and what she did he was bound to say was right, and make others think so too. There had been a condescension on her part when she married him, and she never let him forget it; while he, too, mentally acknowledged it, and felt that, for it, he owed her perfect allegiance, from which he never swerved.
CHAPTER II.
GREY JERROLD.
Just a year after the grand wedding at Grey's Park, there was born to Burton and Geraldine a little boy, so small and frail and puny, that much solicitude would have been felt for him had there not been a greater anxiety for the young mother, who went so far down toward the river of death that every other thought was lost in the great fear for her. Then the two sisters, Hannah and Lucy, came, the latter giving all her time to Geraldine, and the former devoting herself to the feeble little child, whose constant wail so disturbed the mother that she begged them to take it away where she could not hear it cry, it made her so nervous.
Geraldine did not like children, and she seemed to care so little for her baby that Hannah, who had loved it with her whole soul the moment she took it in her arms and felt its soft cheek against her own, said to her brother one day:
"I must go home to-morrow, but let me take baby with me. His crying disturbs your wife, who hears him however far he may be from her room. He is a weak little thing, but I will take the best of care of him, and bring him back a healthy boy."
Burton saw no objection to the plan, and readily gave his consent, provided his wife was willing.
Although out of danger, Geraldine was still too sick to care for her baby, and so it went with Hannah to the old home among the rocks, where it grew round and plump, and pretty, and filled the house with the music of its cooing and its laughter, and learned to stretch its fat hands toward the old grandfather, who never took it in his arms, or laid his hands upon it. But Hannah once saw him kneeling by the cradle where the child was sleeping, and heard him whisper through his tears:
"God bless you, my darling boy, and may you never know what it is to sin as I have sinned, until I am not worthy to touch you with my finger. Oh, God forgive and make me clean as this little child."
Then Hannah knew why her father kept aloof from his grandson, and pitied him more than she had done before.
It was the first of October before Geraldine came up to Allington to claim her boy, of whom she really knew nothing.
Only once since her marriage had she been to the farm-house, and then she had driven to the door in her handsome carriage with the high-stepping bays, and had held up her rich silk dress as she passed through the kitchen into the "best room," around which she glanced a little contemptuously.
"Not as well furnished as my cook's room," she thought, but she tried to be gracious, and said how clean every thing was, and asked Hannah if she did not get very tired doing her own work, and praised the dahlias growing by the south door, and ate a few plums, and drank some water, which she said was so cold that it made her think of the famous well at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.
"Your well must be very deep. Where is it?" she asked, not because she cared, but because she must say something.
On being told it was in the woodshed she started for it, and mistaking the door, was walking into a bedroom, when she was seized roughly by her father-in-law, whose face was white as ashes, and whose voice shook, as he said:
"Not in there; this is the way."
For an instant Geraldine looked at him in surprise he seemed so agitated; then, thinking to herself that probably his room was in disorder, and the bed unmade, she dismissed it from her mind, and went to investigate the well, whose water tasted like that at Carisbrooke Castle.
Half an hour in all she remained at the farm-house, and that was the only time she had honored it with her presence until the day when she came to take her boy away.
Not yet fully recovered from her dangerous illness, she assumed all the airs of an invalid, and kept her wraps around her, and shrank a little when her husband put her boy in her lap, and asked her if he was not a beauty, and did not do justice to Hannah's care, and the brindle cow whose milk he had fed upon. And in truth he was a healthy, beautiful child, with eyes as blue as the skies of June, and light chestnut hair, which lay in thick curls upon his head. But he was strange to Geraldine, and she was strange to him, and after regarding her a moment with his great blue eyes, he turned toward Hannah, and with a quivering lip began to cry for her. And Hannah took him in her arms and hugging him to her bosom, felt that her heart was breaking. She loved him so much, he had been so much company for her, and had helped to drive away in part, the horror with which her life was invested, and now he was going from her; all she had to love in the wide world, and so far as she knew, the only living being that loved her with a pure, unselfish love.
"Oh, brother! oh, sister!" she cried, as she covered the baby's dimpled hands with kisses, "don't take him from me; let me have him; let him stay awhile longer. I shall die here alone with baby gone."
But Mrs. Geraldine said "No," very decidedly, for though as yet she cared but little for her child, she cared a great deal for the proprieties, and her friends were beginning to wonder at the protracted absence of the boy; so she must take him from poor Hannah, who tied on his scarlet cloak and cap of costly lace, and carried him to the carriage and put him into the arms of the red-haired German woman who was hereafter to be his nurse and win his love from her.
Then the carriage drove off, but, as long as it was in sight, Hannah stood just where it had left her, watching it with a feeling of such utter desolation as she had never felt before.
"Oh, baby, baby! come back to me!" she moaned piteously. "What shall I do without you?"
"God will comfort you, my daughter. He can be more to you than baby was," the old father said to her, and she replied:
"I know that. Yes, but just now I cannot pray, and I am so desolate."
The burden was pressing more heavily than ever, and Hannah's face grew whiter, and her eyes larger, and sadder, and brighter as the days went by, and there was nothing left of baby but a rattle-box with which he had played, and the cradle in which he had slept. This last she carried to her room up stairs and made it the shrine over which her prayers were said, not twice or thrice, but many times a day, for Hannah had early learned to take every care, great and small, to God, knowing that peace would come at last, though it might tarry long.
Geraldine sent her a black silk dress, and a white Paisley shawl in token of her gratitude for all she had done for the baby. She also wrote her a letter telling of the grand christening they had had, and of the handsome robe from Paris which baby had worn at the ceremony.
"We have called him Grey," Geraldine wrote, "and perhaps, he will visit you again next summer," but it was not until Grey was two years old, that he went once more to the farm-house and staid for several months, while his parents were in Europe.
What a summer that was for Hannah, and how swiftly the days went by, while the burden pressed so lightly that sometimes she forgot it for hours at a time, and only remembered it when she saw how persistently her father shrank from the advances of the little boy, who, utterly ignoring his apparent indifference, pursued him constantly, plying him with questions, and sometimes regarding him curiously, as if wondering at his silence.
One day, when the old man was sitting in his arm-chair under the apple trees in the yard, Grey came up to him, with his straw hat hanging down his back, his blue eyes shining like stars, and all over his face that sweet smile which made him so beautiful. Folding his little white hands together upon his grandfather's knee, he stood a moment gazing fixedly into the sad face, which never relaxed a muscle, though every nerve of the wretched man was strung to its utmost tension and quivering with pain. The searching blue eyes of the boy troubled him, for it seemed as if they pierced to the depths of his soul and saw what was there.
"Da-da," Grey said at last. "Take me, peese; I'se tired."
Oh, how the old man longed to snatch the child to his bosom and cover his face with the kisses he had so hungered to give him, but in his morbid state of mind he dared not, lest he should contaminate him, so he restrained himself with a mighty effort, and replied:
"No, Grey, no; I cannot take you. I am tired, too."
"Is you sick?" was Grey's next question, to which his grandfather replied:
"No, I am not sick," while he clasped both his hands tightly over his head out of reach of the baby fingers, which sometimes tried to touch them.
"Is you sorry, then?" Grey continued, and the grandfather replied:
"Yes, child, very, very sorry."
There was the sound of a sob in the old man's voice, and Grey's blue eyes opened wider as they looked wistfully at the lips trembling with emotion.
"Has you been a naughty boy?" he said; and, with a sound like a moan, Grandpa Jerrold replied:
"Yes, yes, very, very naughty. God grant you may never know how naughty."
"Then why don't Auntie Hannah sut oo up in 'e bed'oom?" Grey asked, with the utmost gravity, for, in his mind, naughtiness and being shut up in his aunt's bedroom, the only punishment ever inflicted upon him, were closely connected with each other.
Almost any one would have smiled at this remark, but Grandpa Jerrold did not. On the contrary there came into his eyes a look of horror as he exclaimed:
"Shut me in the bedroom! That would be dreadful indeed."
Then, springing up, he hurried away into the field and disappeared behind a ledge of rocks, where, unseen by any eye save that of God, he wept more bitterly than he had ever done before.
"Why, oh, why," he cried, "must this innocent baby's questions torture me so? and why can I never take him in my arms or lay my hands upon him lest they should leave a stain?"
Then holding up before him his hard, toil-worn hands, he tried to recall what it was he had heard or read of another than himself who tried to rid his hands of the foul spot and could not.
"Only the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," he whispered to himself, while his lips moved spasmodically with the prayer habitual to them; four words only, "Forgive me, Lord, forgive."
It had always been a strong desire with Grey to be led around the premises by his grandfather, who had steadily resisted all advances of that kind, until with a child's quick intuition, Grey seemed to understand that his grandfather's hands were something he must not touch.
That afternoon, however, as Mr. Jerrold was walking on the green sward by the kitchen door, with his head bent down and his hands clasped behind him, Grey stole noiselessly up to him, and grasping the right hand in both his own, held it fast, while he jumped up and down as he called out to Hannah, who was standing near:
"I'se dot it, I'se dot it—dada's han', an' I sal keep it, too, and tiss it hard, like dat," and the baby's lips were pressed upon the rough hand, which lay helpless and subdued in the two small palms holding it so tight.
It was like the casting out of an evil spirit, and Granpa Jerrold felt half his burden rolling away beneath that caress. There was a healing power in the touch of Grey's lips, and the stain, if stain there were upon the wrinkled hand, was kissed away, and the pain and remorse were not so great after that.
Grey had conquered and was free to do what he pleased with the old man, who became his very slave, going wherever Grey liked, whether up the steep hill-side in the rear of the house or down upon the pond near by, where the white lilies grew and where there was a little boat in which the old man and the child spent hours together, during the long summer afternoons.
In the large woodshed opposite the well, and very near the window of Granpa Jerrold's bedroom, a rude bench had been placed for the use of pails and washbasins, but Grey had early appropriated this to himself and persisted in keeping his playthings there, in spite of all his grandfather's remonstrances to the contrary. If his toys were removed twenty times a day to some other locality, twenty times a day he brought them back, and arranging them upon the bench sat down by them defiantly, kicking vigorously against the side of the house in token of his victory, and wholly unconscious that every thud of his little heels sent a stab to his grandfather's heart.
What if he should kick through the clapboards? What if the floor should cave in? Such were the questions which tortured the half crazed man, as he wiped the perspiration from his face and wondered at the perversity of the boy in selecting that spot of all others, where he must play and sit and kick as only a healthy, active child can do.
But after the day when Grey succeeded in capturing his hands, Granpa Jerrold ceased to interfere with the play-house, and the boy was left in peace upon the bench, though his grandfather often sat near and watched him anxiously, and always seemed relieved when the child tired of that particular spot and wandered elsewhere in quest of amusement.
There was, however, one place in the house which Grey never sought to penetrate, and that was his grandfather's bedroom. It is true he had never been allowed to enter it, for one of Hannah's first lessons was that her father did not like children in his room. Ordinarily this would have made no difference with Grey, who had a way of going where he pleased; but the gloomy appearance of the room where the curtains were always down did not attract him, and he would only go as far as the door and look in, saying to his aunt:
"Bears in there! Grey not go."
And Hannah let him believe in the bears, and breathed more freely when he came away from the door, though she frequently whispered to herself.
"Some time Grey will know, for I must tell him, and he will help me."
This fancy that Grey was to lift the cloud which overshadowed her, was a consolation to Hannah, and helped to make life endurable, when at last his parents returned from Europe, and he went to his home in Boston. After that Grey spent some portion of every summer at the farm-house growing more and more fond of his Aunt Hannah, notwithstanding her quiet manner and the severe plainness of her personal appearance so different from his mother and his Aunt Lucy Grey. His Aunt Hannah always wore a calico dress, or something equally as plain and inexpensive, and her hands were rough and hard with toil, for she never had any one to help her. She could not afford it, she said, and that was always her excuse for the self-denials she practiced. And still Grey knew that she sometimes had money, for he had seen his father give her gold in exchange for bills, and he once asked her why she did not use it for her comfort. There was a look of deep pain in her eyes, and her voice was sadder than its wont, as she replied:
"I cannot touch that money. It is not mine; it would be stealing, to take a penny of it."
Grey saw the question troubled his Aunt Hannah, and so he said no more on the subject, but thought that when he was a man, and had means of his own, he would improve and beautify the old farm-house, which, though scrupulously neat and clean, was in its furnishing plain in the extreme. Not a superfluous article, except what had been sent from Boston, had been bought since he could remember, and the carpet, and chairs, and curtains in the best room had been there ever since his father was a boy. And still Grey loved the place better than Grey's Park, where he was always a welcome guest, and where his Aunt Lucy petted him, if possible, more than did his Aunt Hannah.
And sweet Lucy Grey, in her trailing dress of rich, black silk, with ruffles of soft lace at her throat and wrists, and costly diamonds on her white fingers, made a picture perfectly harmonious with Grey's natural taste and ideas of a lady. She was lovely as are the pictures of Murillo's Madonnas, and Grey, who knew her story, reverenced her as something saintly and pure above any woman he had ever known. And here, perhaps, as well as elsewhere, we may very briefly tell her story, in order that the reader may better understand her character.
CHAPTER III.
LUCY.
She was five years older than her sister Geraldine, and between the two there had been a brother—Robert, or Robin, as he was familiarly called—a little blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, with a face always wreathed in smiles, and a mouth which seemed made to kiss and be kissed in return. He was three years younger than Lucy, who, having been petted so long as the only child, looked somewhat askance at the brother who had come to interfere with her, and as he grew older, and developed that wonderful beauty and winning sweetness for which he was so remarkable, the demon of jealousy took possession of the little girl, who felt at times as if she hated him for the beauty she envied so much.
"Oh, I wish he was blind!" she once said, in anger, when his soft blue eyes had been extolled in her hearing and compared with her own, which were black as midnight and bright as the wintry stars.
And, as if in answer to her wish, an accident occurred not long after, which darkened forever the eyes which had caused her so much annoyance. Just how it happened no one knew. The two children had been playing in the dining-room, when a great crash was heard, and a wild cry, and Robin was found upon the floor screaming with agony, while near him lay a broken cup, which had contained a quantity of red pepper, which the housemaid had left upon the sideboard until ready to replenish the caster. Lucy was crying, too, with pain, for the fiery powder was in her eyes, also. But she had not received as much as Robin, who from that hour, never again saw the light of day.
There were weeks of fearful suffering when the little hands were tied to keep them from the eyes which the poor baby, who was only two years and a half old, said, "Bite Robin so bad," and which, when at last the pain had ceased, and the inflammation subsided, were found to be hopelessly blind.
"Blind! blind! Oh, Robin, I wish I was dead!" Lucy had exclaimed, when they told her the sad news, and with a bitter cry she threw herself beside her brother on his little bed and sobbed piteously. "Oh, Robbie, Robbie, you must not be blind! Can't you see me just a little? Try, Robbie. You must see me; you must."
Slowly the lids unclosed, and the sightless eyes turned upward toward the white face above them, and then Lucy saw there was no hope; the beautiful blue she had so envied in her wicked moods, was burned out, leaving only a blood-shot, whitish mass which would never again in this world see her or any other object.
"No, shister," the little boy said, "I tan't see 'oo now. It 'marts some yet, but bime by I see 'oo. Don't ty;" and the little hand was raised and groped to find the bowed head of the girl weeping in such agony beside him.
"What for 'oo ty so? I see 'oo bime by," he persisted, as Lucy made no reply, but wept on until her strength was exhausted and she was taken from the room in a state of unconsciousness, which resulted in a low nervous fever, from which she did not recover until Robbie was as well as he ever would be, and his voice was heard again through the house in baby laughter, for he had not yet learned what it was to be blind and helpless.
Lucy had said, when questioned with regard to the accident, that she had climbed up in a chair to get some sugar for herself and Robin from the bowl on the shelf of the sideboard, that she saw the cup of pepper and took it up to see what it was, and let it drop from her hand, directly into the face of Robin, who was looking up at her. Thus she was answerable for his blindness, and she grew suddenly old beyond her years, and devoted herself to her brother, with a solicitude and care marvelous in one so young, for she was not yet six years old.
"I must be his eyes always as long as I live," she said, and she seldom left his side or allowed another to care for him in the least.
