An Original Belle Part 6

"You are wrong. I now see that your words were natural to one like you, and they were unjust only because I was not deliberate. Mr.

Lane, let me be your friend. I could give you almost a sister's love; I could be so proud of you!"

"There," he said. "You have triumphed after all. I pledge you my word--all the manhood I possess--I will do whatever you ask."

She took his hand in both her own with a look of grat.i.tude he never forgot, and spoke gladly: "Now you change everything. Oh, I am so glad you did not go away before! What a sad, sleepless night I should have had, and sad to-morrows stretching on indefinitely! I ask very much, very much indeed,--that you make the most and best of yourself. Then I can try to do the same. It will be harder for you than for me. You bring me more hope than sadness; I have given you more sadness than hope. Yet I have absolute faith in you because of what papa said to me last night. I had asked him how I could cease to be what I was, be different, you know, and he said, 'Develop the best in your own nature naturally.' If you will do this I shall have no fears."

"Yet I have been positively brutal to you to-night."

"No man can be so strong as you are and be trifled with. I understand that now, Mr. Lane. You had no sentimentality to be touched, and my tears did not move you in the least until you believed in my honest contrition."

"I have revealed to you one of my weaknesses. I am rarely angry, but when I am, my pa.s.sion, after it is over, frightens me. Marian, you do forgive me in the very depths of your heart?"

"I do indeed,--that is, if I have anything to forgive under the circ.u.mstances."

"Poor little girl! how pale you are! I fear you are ill."

"I shall soon be better,--better all my life for your forgiveness and promise."

"Thank G.o.d that we are parting in this manner," he said. "I don't like to think of what might have happened, for I was in the devil's own mood. Marian, if you make good the words you have spoken to-night, if you become the woman you can be, you will have a power possessed by few. It was not your beauty merely that fascinated me, but a certain individuality,--something all your own, which gives you an influence apparently absolute. But I shall speak no more in this strain. I shall try to be as true a friend as I am capable of becoming, although an absent one. I must prove myself by deeds, not words, however. May I write to you sometimes? I will direct my letters under the care of your father, and you may show them to him or your mother, as you wish."

"Certainly you may, and you will be my first and only gentleman correspondent. After what has pa.s.sed between us, it would be prudery to refuse. Moreover, I wish to hear often of your welfare.

Never for a moment will my warm interest cease, and you can see me whenever you wish. I have one more thing to ask,--please take up your old life to-morrow, just where you left off. Do nothing hastily, or from impulse. Remember you have promised to make the most and best of yourself, and that requires you to give conscience and reason fair hearing. Will you also promise this?"

"Anything you asked, I said."

"Then good-by. Never doubt my friends.h.i.+p, as I shall not doubt yours."

Her hand ached from the pressure of his, but the pain was thus drawn from her heart.

CHAPTER VI.

A SCHEME OF LIFE.

MARIAN waited for her father's return, having been much too deeply excited for the speedy advent of quiet sleep. When at last he came she told him everything. As she described the first part of the interview his brow darkened, but his face softened as she drew toward the close. When she ceased he said:--

"Don't you see I was right in saying that your own tact would guide you better than my reason? If I, instead of your own nature, had directed you, we should have made an awful mess of it. Now let me think a moment. This young fellow has suggested an idea to me,--a general line of action which I think you can carry out. There is nothing like a good definite plan,--not cast-iron, you know, but flexible and modified by circ.u.mstances as you go along, yet so clear and defined as to give you something to aim at. Confound it, that's what's the matter with our military authorities. If McClellan is a ditch-digger let them put a general in command; or, if he is a general, give him what he wants and let him alone. There is no head, no plan. I confess, however, that just now I am chiefly interested in your campaigns, which, after all, stand the best chance of bringing about union, in spite of your negative mood manifested to-night. Nature will prove too strong for you, and some day--soon probably--you will conquer, only to surrender yourself. Be that as it may, the plan I suggest need not be interfered with. Be patient.

I'm only following the tactics in vogue,--taking the longest way around to the point to be attacked. Lane said that if you carried out your present principle of action you would have a power possessed by few. I think he is right. I'm not flattering you. Little power of any kind can co-exist with vanity. The secret of your fascination is chiefly in your individuality. There are other girls more beautiful and accomplished who have not a t.i.the of it. Now and then a woman is peculiarly gifted with the power to influence men,--strong men, too. You had this potency in no slight degree when neither your heart nor your brain was very active. You will find that it will increase with time, and if you are wise it will be greater when you are sixty than at present. If you avoid the Scylla of vanity on the one hand, and the Charybdis of selfishness on the other, and if the sympathies of your heart keep pace with a cultivated mind, you will steadily grow in social influence. I believe it for this reason: A weak girl would have been sentimental with Lane, would have yielded temporarily, either to his entreaty or to his anger, only to disappoint him in the end, or else would have been conventional in her refusal and so sent him to the bad, probably. You recognized just what you could be to him, and had the skill--nature, rather, for all was unpremeditated--to obtain an influence by which you can incite him to a better manhood and a greater success, perhaps, than if he were your accepted lover. Forgive this long preamble: I am thinking aloud and feeling my way, as it were. What did you ask him to promise? Why, to make the most and best of himself.

Why not let this sentence suggest the social scheme of your life?

Drop fellows who have neither brains nor heart,--no good mettle in them,--and so far as you have influence strive to inspire the others to make the most and best of themselves. You would not find the kitchen-maid a rival on this plan of life; nor indeed, I regret to say, many of your natural a.s.sociates. Outwardly your life will appear much the same, but your motive will change everything, and flow through all your action like a mountain spring, rendering it impossible for you to poison any life."

"O papa, the very possibility of what you suggest makes life appear beautiful. The idea of a convent!"

"Convents are the final triumph of idiocy. If bad women could be shut up and made to say prayers most of the time, no harm at least would be done,--the good, problematical; but to immure a woman of sweet, natural, G.o.d-bestowed impulses is the devil's worst practical joke in this world. Come, little girl, it's late. Think over the scheme; try it as you have a chance; use your power to incite men to make the most and best of themselves. This is better than levying your little tribute of flattery and attention, like other belles,--a phase of life as common as cobble-stones and as old as vanity. For instance, you have an artist among your friends. Possibly you can make him a better artist and a better fellow in every way. Drop all m.u.f.fs and sticks; don't waste yourself on them. Have considerable charity for some of the wild fellows, none for their folly, and from the start tolerate no tendencies toward sentimentality. You will find that the men who admire girls bent on making eyes rather than making men will soon disappear. Sensible fellows won't misunderstand you, even though prompted to more than friends.h.i.+p; and you will have a circle of friends of which any woman might be proud. Of course you will find at times that unspoken negatives will not satisfy; but if a woman has tact, good sense, and sincerity, her position is impregnable. As long as she is not inclined to love a man herself, she can, by a mere glance, not only define her position, but defend it. By simple dignity and reserve she can say to all, 'Thus far and no farther.' If, without encouragement, any one seeks to break through this barrier he meets a quiet negative which he must respect, and in his heart does respect. Now, little girl, to sum up your visit, with its long talks and their dramatic and unexpected ill.u.s.tration, I see nothing to prevent you from going forward and making the best and most of your life according to nature and truth.

You have a good start, and a rather better chance than falls to the lot of the majority."

"Truly," said Marian, thoughtfully, "we don't appear to grow old and change by time so much as by what happens,--by what we think and feel. Everything appears changed, including you and myself."

"It's more in appearance than in reality. You will find the impetus of your old life so strong that it will be hard even to change the direction of the current. You will be much the same outwardly, as I said before. The stream will flow through the same channel of characteristic traits and habits. The vital change must be in the stream itself,--the motive from which life springs."

How true her father's words seemed on the following evening after her return! Her mother, as she sat down, to their dainty little dinner, looked as if her serenity had been undisturbed by a single perplexing thought during the past few days. There was the same elegant, yet rather youthful costume for a lady of her years; the same smiling face, not yet so full in its outline as to have lost all its girlish beauty. It was marred by few evidences of care and trouble, nor was it spiritualized by thought or deep experience.

Marian observed her closely, not with any disposition towards cold or conscious criticism, but in order that she might better understand the conditions of her own life. She also had a wakening curiosity to know just what her mother was to her father and he to her. The hope was forming that she could make them more to each other. She had too much tact to believe that this could be done by general exhortations. If anything was to be accomplished it must be by methods so fine and un.o.btrusive as to be scarcely recognized.

Her father's inner life had been a revelation to her, and she was led to query: "Why does not mamma understand it? CAN she understand it?" Therefore she listened attentively to the details of what had happened in her absence. She waited in vain for any searching and intelligent questions concerning the absent husband. Beyond that he was well, and that everything about the house was just as she had left it, Mrs. Vosburgh appeared to have no interest. She was voluble over little household affairs, the novel that just then absorbed her, and especially the callers and their chagrin at finding the young girl absent.

"Only the millionnaire widower remained any length of time when learning that you were away," said the lady, "and he spent most of the evening with me. I a.s.sure you he is a very nice, entertaining old fellow."

"How did he entertain you? What did he talk about?"

"Let me remember. Now I think of it, what didn't he talk about? He is one of the most agreeable gossips I ever met,--knows everybody and everything. He has at his finger-ends the history of all who were belles in my time, and" (complacently) "I find that few have done better than I, while some, with all their opportunities, chose very crooked sticks."

"You are right, mamma. It seems to me that neither of us half appreciates papa. He works right on so quietly and steadily, and yet he is not a machine, but a man."

"Oh, I appreciate him. Nine out of ten that he might have married would have made him no end of trouble. I don't make him any. Well, after talking about the people we used to know, Mr. Lanniere began a tirade against the times and the war, which he says have cost him a hundred thousand dollars; but he took care in a quiet way to let me know that he has a good many hundred thousands left. I declare, Marian, you might do a great deal worse."

"Do you not think I might do a great deal better?" the young girl asked, with a frown.

"I have no doubt you think so. Girls will be romantic. I was, myself; but as one goes on in life one finds that a million, more or less, is a very comfortable fact. Mr. Lanniere has a fine house in town, but he's a great traveller, and an habitue of the best hotels of this country and Europe. You could see the world with him on its golden side."

"Well, mamma, I want a man,--not an habitue. What's more, I must be in love with the man, or he won't stand the ghost of a chance.

So you see the prospects are that you will have me on your hands indefinitely. Mr. Lanniere, indeed! What should I be but a part of his possessions,--another expensive luxury in his luxurious life?

I want a man like papa,--earnest, large-brained, and large-hearted,--who, instead of inveighing against the times, is absorbed in the vital questions of the day, and is doing his part to solve them rightly.

I would like to take Mr. Lanniere into a military hospital or cemetery, and show him what the war has cost other men."

"Why, Marian, how you talk!"

"I wish I could make you know how I feel. It seems to me that one has only to think a little and look around in order to feel deeply.

I read of an awful battle while coming up in the cars. We have been promised, all the spring, that Richmond would be taken, the war ended, and all go on serenely again; but it doesn't look like it."

"What's the use of women distressing themselves with such things?"

said Mrs. Vosburgh, irritably. "I can't bear to think of war and its horrors, except as they give spice to a story. Our whole trouble is a big political squabble, and you know I detest politics. It is just as Mr. Lanniere says,--if our people had only let slavery alone all would have gone on veil. The leaders on both sides will find out before the summer is over that they have gone too far and fast, and they had better settle their differences with words rather than blows. We shall all be shaking hands ana making up before Christmas."

"Papa doesn't think so."

"Your father is a German at heart. He has the sense to be practical about every-day affairs and enjoy a good dinner, but he amuses himself with cloudy speculations and ideals and vast questions about the welfare of the world, or the 'trend of the centuries,'

as he said one day to me. I always try to laugh him out of such vague nonsense. Has he been talking to you about the 'trend of the centuries'?"

"No, mamma, he has not," replied Marian, gravely; "but if he does I shall try to understand what he means and be interested. I know that papa feels deeply about the war, and means to take the most effective part in it that he can, and that he does not think it will end so easily as you believe. These facts make me feel anxious, for I know how resolute papa is."