Tag Archives: Victorian short story

“To Let” – An April Fool’s Day Prank: 1873

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TO LET.

I should like to describe my hero as a young and gallant cavalier of this nineteenth century, with the beauty of an Apollo and the wisdom of a sage, but truth compels me to that Rupert Smithson, in spite of his fine Christian appellation, was neither one or the other. His nephew and namesake, who was called by the bosom of his family Rupert the Second, said that his Uncle Rupert was a crusty old bachelor, and I hammer my brains in vain for a more fitting description.

A crusty old bachelor he undoubtedly was, more than fifty years of age, with grizzled hair, heavy gray beard, and a rough voice and manner. It is very true that he was always careful to keep the crustiest side of nature on the surface, and had been discovered in the act of committing several deeds of charity and kindness, that belied utterly his habitual surly tone and abrupt manner. Twenty years before, when the gray hair was nut-brown and clustered in rich curls over the broad white forehead, when the brown eye shown with the fire of ambition, the clear voice was true and tender, Rupert Smithson had given his whole loyal heart to Katie Carroll, neighbor and friend, little sweetheart from childhood.

Urged by love as well as by ambition, he had left his home, in a small Western town, and gone to New York to win a name and fortune to lay at Katie’s feet. The fortune and fame as a successful merchant came to him, but when he returned to Katie he found she had left her home also, to become the wife of a wealthy pork dealer in Cincinnati.

Nobody told Rupert of treachery to the pretty Katie, of letters suppressed, of slanders circulated, and parental authority stretched to the utmost in favor of the wealthy suitor. He had no record of the slow despair that crept over the loving heart, when the pleading letters were answered, of the dull apathy that yielded at last, and gave a way the hand of the young girl, when her heart seemed broken.

All that the young, ardent lover knew was the one bitter fact that the girl he loved faithfully and fondly was false to her promise, the wife of another. He spoke no word of bitterness, but returned to the home he hoped was his stepping-stone, and a life of loneliness.

Ten years later, when his sister, with her son and daughter, came to live in New York for educational advantages, Rupert the First was certainly what his saucy nephew called him, a crusty old bachelor. Yet into that sore, disappointed heart Katie’s desertion had so wounded, the bachelor uncle took with warm love and great indulgence his nephew and niece, bright, handsome children of ten and twelve, who, childlike, imposed upon his good nature, rioted over his quiet, orderly house, his staid housekeeper declared they were worse than a pair of monkeys, caressed him stormily moment, and pouted over some refusal for a monstrous indulgence the next, and treated as bachelor uncles must expect to be treated by their sister’s children.

“Rupert was so set in his fidgety old bachelor ways,” she said, “that it would be positive cruelty to disturb him.”

Probably young Rupert and Fannie did not consider their bright young faces disturbers of their uncle’s tranquility, but it is quite certain that out of school hours, No. 49, their uncle’s house, saw them as frequently as No. 43, where their mother resided.

With the intuitive perception of children they understood that the abrupt, often harsh voice, the surly words, and the demonstrative manner, covered a heart that would have made any sacrifice for their sakes, that loved them with as true a love as their own dead father could have given them.

As they outgrew childhood, evidences of affection ceased to take the form of dolls and drums, and cropped out in Christmas checks, in ball dresses and boquets, a saddle horse, and various other delightful shapes, till Rupert came of age, when he was taken from college into his uncle’s counting house and a closer intimacy than ever was cemented between the young life and the one treading the downward path to old age.

There had been a family gathering at Mrs. Kimberly’s one evening in the month of March, and a conversation had arisen upon the traditional customs and tricks of the 1st of April.

“Senseless, absurd tricks,” Rupert Smithson had called them in his abrupt, rough way, fit only to amuse children or idiots.

“O, pshaw, Uncle Rupert!” said Fannie, saucily, “you played April fool tricks too when you were young.”

“Never! Never could see any wit or sense in them. And what’s more, Miss Fannie, I was never once caught by any of the shallow deceits.”

“Never made an April fool?”

“Never, and never will be,” was the reply. “There child, go play me that last nocturn you learned. It suits me. I hate sky-rocket music, but that is the dreamy, lazy air, and I like it.”

“The idea of your liking anything dreamy and lazy,” said Mrs. Kimberly. “I thought you were all energy and activity.”

“When I work,” was the reply; “but when I rest, I want rest.”

“Uncle Rupert, broke in Rupert, suddenly, ” what will you bet I can’t fool you next week?”

“Bah! The idea of getting to my age to be fooled by a boy like you.”

“Then you defy me?”

“Of course I do.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Fore-warned is fore-armed. But come, stop chatting, I want my music.”

Pretty, saucy, mirth-loving Fannie. with her dancing black eyes and brilliant smile, did not look like a very promising interpreter of dreamy, lazy music, but once her hands touched the keys of the grand pianoforte, the whole nature seemed to merge into the sounds she created. Merry music made dancing elves of her fingers as they flew over the notes; dreamy music drew a mask of hushed beauty over her face. and her great black eyes would dilate and seem to see far away beauties as the room filled with the sweet, low cadences.

She would look like an inspired Joan of Arc when grand chords rolled out under her hands in majestic measures, and sacred music transformed her beauty into something saintly. When once the rosewood case closed, Saint Cecilia became pretty, winsome Fannie Kimberly again.

There were few influences that could soften the outer crust of manner in Rupert Smithson, but he would hide his face away when Fannie played, ashamed of the tears that started, or smiles that hovered on his lips as the music pierced down into that warm, loving heart he had tried to conceal with cynical words and looks.

So, when the first chords of the nocturn melted softly into silence, the old bachelor stole away and left the house, bidding no one farewell. They were accustomed to his singular ways, and no one followed him, but Mrs. Kimberly sighed as she said:

“Rupert gets more odd and crusty every year.”

“But he is so good,” Fannie said, leaving her piano stool with a twirl that kept it spinning around giddily.

“Why don’t he get married?” asked Rupert. “It is a downright shame to have that splendid house shut up year after year, excepting just the few rooms Uncle Rupert and Mrs. Jones occupy.”

“I mean to ask him,” said Fannie, impulsively.

“No, no!” said Mrs. Kimberly, hastily, ” never speak of that to your uncle, Fannie, Never!”

“But why not?”

“I never told you before, but your uncle was engaged years ago, and there was some trouble. I never understood about it exactly, for I was married and left Wilton the same year that Rupert came to New York. But this I do know; the lady after waiting three or four years, married, and Rupert has never been the same man since. I am quite sure he was very much attached to her, and that you would wound him, Fannie, if you jested about marriage.”

“But I don’t mean to jest at all. I think he would be ever so much happier if he had some one to love, and some one to love him in return. It must be dreadfully lonesome in that large house with no companion but Mrs. Jones, who is 100 years old, I am certain.”

“He ought to marry her,” said Rupert, “she always calls him ‘dearie.'”

“Don’t, children, jest about it any more,” said their mother, “and be sure you never mention the subject to your uncle.”

The first of April was a clear, rather cold day, the air bright and snapping, and the sky all treacherous smiles as became the coquettish month of sunshine and showers.

Uncle Rupert, finishing his lonely breakfast, thought to himself: “I must be on the lookout to-day for Rupert’s promised trick! He won’t find it so easy as he imagines to fool his old uncle. Who’s there?” The last two words in answer to a somewhat timid knock upon the door.

It was certainly not easy to astonish Rupert Smithson, but his eyes opened with an unmistakable expression of amazement as the door opened to admit a tall, slender figure in deep mourning, and a low, very sweet voice asked:

“Is this the landlord?

“The—the–what?”

“I called about the house, sir.”

“What house? Take a seat”–suddenly recalling his politeness.

“Is not this No. 49 W__ place?”

“Certainly it is.”

“I have been looking out for some time for a furnished house suitable for boarders, sir, and if I find this one suits me, and the rent is not too high ”

“But__,” interrupted the astonished bachelor.

“O, I hope it is not taken. The advertisement said to call between 8 and 9, and it struck 8 as I stood on the door step.”

“O, the advertisement. Oh no. Master Rupert. This is your doings, is it? will you let me see the advertisement, madam?”

“You have the paper in your hand, sir,” she said, timidly. “I did not cut it out.”

“O, you saw it in the paper,” and he turned to the list of houses to let.

Sure enough there it was.

“To let, furnished–three story, brown-stone front, basement.” and rather a full description of the advantages of the premises, with the emphatic addition, “call only between 8 and 9 A. M.”

“So as to be sure I am at home, the rascal,” said Rupert Smithson, laying aside the paper.

“I am sorry, madam,” he said, ” that you have had the trouble of calling upon a useless errand.”

“Then it is taken?” said a very disappointed voice, and the heavy crape veil was lifted to show a sweet, matronly face, framed in that most saddest of all badges, a widow’s cap.

“Well, no,” said the perplexed bachelor, “it is not exactly taken.”

“Perhaps you object to boarders?”

“You want to take boarders?” he answered, thinking how ladylike and gentle she looked, and wondered if she had long been a widow.

“Yes, sir; but I would be very careful about the reference.”

“Have you ever kept boarders before?”

“No, sir. Since my husband died, six years ago–he failed in business, and brought on a severe illness by mental anxiety–my daughter and myself have been sewing, but we have both been in ill health all winter, and I want to try some way of getting a living that is less confining. I have kept house several years, but I have no capital to furnish, so we want to secure a house furnished like this one, if possible.”

Quite unconscious of the reason, Rupert Smithson was finding it very pleasant to talk to this gentle little widow about her plans, and as she spoke, was wondering if it would not make an agreeable variety in his lonely life to let her make her experiment of keeping a boarding house upon the premises Seeing his hesitation, she said, earnestly,

“I think you will be satisfied with my references, sir. I have lived in one house and have worked for one firm for six years, and if you require it, I can obtain letters from my husband’s friends in Cincinnati.”

“Cincinnati?”

“He was pretty well known there, Perhaps you have heard of him, John Murray, ___street?”

“John Murray!” Rupert Smithson looked searchingly into the pale face that was so pleadingly raised to his gaze. Where was the rosy cheeks, the dancing eyes, the laughing lips that he pictured as belonging to John Murray’s wife? Knowing now the truth, he recognized the face before him, the youth all gone, and the expression sanctified by sorrow and long suffering.

“You have children?” he said, after a long silence.

“Only one living, a daughter, seventeen years old. I have buried all the others.”

“I will let you have the house on one condition,” he said, his lip trembling a little as he spoke.

She did not answer. In the softened eyes looking into her own, in the voice suddenly modulated to a tender sweetness, some memory was awakened, and she only listened with bated breath and dilating eyes.

“On one condition, Katie,” he said, “that you come to it as my wife, and its mistress. I have waited for you over twenty years, Katie.”

It was hard to believe, even then, though the little widow let him caress her, and sobbed upon his breast.

This gray-haired, middle-aged man was so unlike the Rupert she had believed false. Even after the whole past was discussed, and Rupert knew how he had been wronged, but not by Katie, it was hard to believe there might be years of happiness still in store for them.

Rupert Smithson didn’t put in an appearance at his counting house that day, and Rupert the Second went home to his dinner in rather an uneasy state of mind regarding that April fool trick of his.

“I must run over and see if I have offended beyond all hope of pardon,” he said, as he rose from the table.

But a gruff voice behind him arrested his steps.

“So, so; you have advertised my house to let,” said his uncle, but spite of his efforts he failed to look very angry.

“How many old maids and widows applied for it?” inquired the daring young scapegrace.

“I don t know. After the first application my housekeeper told the others the house was taken.

“Taken!”

“Yes, I have let it upon a life lease. too.”

Here he opened the door.

“My wife!”

Very shy, blushing and timid “my wife” looked in her slate-colored dress and bonnet, as her three-hours’ husband led her in.

After a moment’s scrutiny Mrs. Kimberly cried: “It is Katie Carroll!”

“Katie Smithson!” said the bridegroom, with immense dignity, “and my daughter, Winifred.”

There was a new sensation, as a pretty blonde answered this call, but a warmer welcome was never given than was accorded to these by their new relatives, and to this day Uncle Rupert will not acknowledge that he got the worst of the joke when his nephew played him an April fool’s trick by advertising his house to let.

The Elk County [PA] Advocate 9 October 1873: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  April Fool’s Pranks followed well-worn paths: sending merchants with loads of goods to unsuspecting householders; insulting signs stuck to a stranger’s coat; coins glued to the side-walk; and, of course, advertising an occupied house to let.

The author used a full stock of Victorian popular literature cliches: the husband who failed in business, went into a Decline and died; the broken-hearted widow whose children are all in the grave, save one; the suppressed letters to separate devoted lovers; and the crusty old bachelor with a heart of gold. All that is missing is the villainous nobleman and the lisping child. Never mind–Rupert the Second and saucy, mirth-loving Fannie have been cast in the juvenile roles, sans lisp.  Mrs Daffodil assumes that the author was paid by the word; hence the lengthy and altogether unnecessary description of Fanny’s musical talents.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The Model Millionaire

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The Model Millionaire

Unless one is wealthy, there is no good in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie Erskine never realized. Poor Hughie! Intellectually, we must admit, he was not of much importance. He never said either a brilliant or an ill-natured thing in his life. But, then, he was wonderfully good-looking, with his crisp, brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his gray eyes. He was as popular with men as he was with women, and he had every accomplishment except that of making money. His father had bequeathed him his cavalry sword, and a “History of the Peninsular War,” in fifteen volumes. Hughie hung the first over his looking-glass, put the second on a shelf between Ruff’s Guide [to the Turf] and Bailey‘s Magazine [of Sports and Pastimes], and lived on two hundred a year that an old aunt allowed him.

He had tried everything.  He had gone on the Stock Exchange for six months; but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and bears? He had been a tea merchant for a little longer, but had soon tired of pekoe and souchong. Then he had tried selling dry sherry. That did not answer. Ultimately he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession.

To make matters worse, he was in love. The girl he loved was Laura Merton, the daughter of a retired colonel, who had lost his temper and his digestion in India, and had never found either of them again. Laura adored him, and he was ready to kiss her shoestrings. They were the handsomest couple in London, and had not a pennypiece between them. The colonel was very fond of Hughie, but not hear of any engagement.

“Come to me, my boy, when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own, and we will see about it,” he used to say; and Hughie looked very glum on those days, and had to go to Laura for consolation.

One morning, as he was on his way to Holland Park, where the Mertons lived, he dropped in to see a great friend of his, Alan Trevor. Trevor was a painter. Indeed, few people escape that nowadays. But he was also an artist, and artists are rather rare. Personally, he was a strange, rough fellow, with a freckled face and red hair.

However, when he took up the brush he was a real master, and his pictures were eagerly sought after. He had been very much attracted by Hughie at first, it must be acknowledged, entirely on account of his good looks. “The only people a painter should know,” he used to say, “ are people who are bête and beautiful, people who are an artistic pleasure to look at and an intellectual repose to talk to. Dandies and darlings rule the world.” However, after he got to know Hughie better, he liked him quite as much for his bright, buoyant spirits and his generous, reckless nature, and had given him the permanent entrée to his studio.

When Hughie came in he found Trevor putting the finishing touches to a wonderful life-size picture of a beggar-man. The beggar himself was standing on a raised platform in a corner of the studio. He was a wizened old man, with a face like wrinkled parchment, and a most piteous expression. Over his shoulders was flung a coarse brown cloak, all tears and tatters; his thick boots were patched and cobbled, and with one hand he leant on a rough stick, while with the other he held out his battered hat for alms.

“ What an amazing model!” whispered Hughie, as he shook hands with his friend.

“An amazing model?” shouted Trevor, at the top of his voice ; “I should think so ! Such beggars as he are not to be met with every day. A trouvaille, mon cher; a living Velasquez! My stars! what an etching Rembrandt would have made of him !”

“ Poor old chap!” said Hughie; “how miserable he looks! But I suppose, to you painters, his face is his fortune.”

“Certainly,” replied Trevor; “you don’t want a beggar to look happy, do you?”

“How much does a model get for sitting?” asked Hughie, as he found himself a comfortable seat on the divan.

“A shilling an hour.”

“And how much do you get for your picture, Alan?”

“Oh, for this I get a thousand.”

“Pounds?”

“Guineas. Painters, poets and physicians always get guineas.”

“Well, I think the model should have a percentage,” said Hughie, laughing; “they work quite as hard as you do.”

“Nonsense, nonsense! Why, look at the trouble of laying on the paint alone, and standing all day long at one’s easel! It’s all very well, Hughie, for you to talk, but I assure you that there are moments when Art approaches the dignity of manual labor. But you mustn‘t chatter; I’m very busy. Smoke a cigarette and keep quiet.”

After some time the servant came in, and told Trevor that the framemaker wanted to speak to him.

“Don‘t run away, Hughie,” he said, as he went out, “I will be back in a moment.”

The old beggar-man took advantage of Trevor‘s absence to rest for a moment on a wooden bench that was behind him. He looked so forlorn and wretched that Hughie could not help pitying him, and he felt in his pockets to see what money he had. All he could find was a sovereign and some coppers.

“Poor old fellow,” he thought to’ himself, “he wants it more than I do, but it means no hansoms for a fortnight;” and he walked across the studio and slipped the sovereign into the beggar’s hand.

The old man started, and a faint smile flitted across his withered lips.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, in a foreign accent.

Then Trevor arrived, and Hughie took his leave, blushing a little at what he had done. He spent the day with Laura, got a charming scolding for his extravagance, and had to walk home.

That night he strolled into the Palette Club about eleven o’clock, and found Trevor sitting by himself in the smoking-room drinking hock and seltzer.

“Well, Alan, did you get the picture finished all right?’ he said, as he lit his cigarette.

“Finished and framed, my boy!” answered Trevor; “and, by-the-by, you have made a conquest. That old model you saw is quite devoted to you. I had to tell him all about you—who you are, where you live, what your income is, what prospects you have——”

“My dear Alan,” cried Hughie, “I shall probably find him waiting for me when I go home. But of course you are only joking. Poor old beggar! I wish I could do something for him. I think it is dreadful that any one should be so miserable. I have got heaps of old clothes at home-do you think he would care for any of them ? Why, his rags were falling to bits.”

“But he looks splendid in them,” said Trevor. “I wouldn’t paint him in a frock coat for anything. What you call rags I call romance. What seems poverty to you is picturesqueness to me. However, I’ll tell him of your offer.”

“Alan,” said Hughie, seriously, “you painters are a heartless lot.”

“An artist’s heart is his head,” replied Trevor ; “ and, besides, our business is to realize the world as we see it, I not to reform it as we know it. A chacun son metier. And now tell me how Laura is. The old model was quite interested in her.”

“You don’t mean to say you talked to him about her?” said Hughie.

“Certainly I did. He knows all about the relentless colonel, the lovely damsel and the ten thousand pounds.”

“You told that old beggar all my private affairs?” cried Hughie, looking very red and angry.

“My dear boy,” said Trevor, smiling, “that old beggar, as you call him, is one of the richest men in Europe. He could buy all London to-morrow without overdrawing his account. He has a house in every capital, dines off gold plate, and can prevent Russia going to war when he chooses.”

“What on earth do you mean?” exclaimed Hughie.

“What I say,” said Trevor. “The old man you saw to-day was Baron Hausberg. He is a great friend of mine, buys all my pictures and that sort of thing, and gave me a commission a month ago to paint him as a beggar. Que voulez-vous? La fantaisie d’un millionnaire.’ And I must say he made a magnificent figure in his rags, or, perhaps, I should say in my rags; they are an old suit I got in Spain.”

“Baron Hausberg!” cried Hughie. “Good heavens! I gave him a sovereign!” and he sank into an armchair the picture of dismay.

“Gave him a sovereign !” shouted Trevor, and he burst into a roar of laughter. “My dear boy, you’ll never see it again. Son affaire c’est l’argent des autress.”

“I think you might have told me, Alan,” said Hughie, sulkily, “and not let me make such a fool of myself.”

“Well, to begin with, Hughie,” said Trevor, “it never entered my mind that you went about distributing alms in that reckless way. I can understand your kissing a pretty model, but your giving a sovereign to an ugly one —by Jove, no! Besides, the fact is that I really was not at home to-day to any one and when you came in I did not know whether Hausberg would like his name mentioned. You know he wasn’t in full dress.”

“What a duffer he must think me!” said Hughie.

“Not at all. He was in the highest spirits after you left; kept chuckling to himself and rubbing his old wrinkled hands together. I couldn’t make out why he was so interested to know all about you; but I see it all now. He’ll invest your sovereign for you, Hughie, pay you the interest every six months, and have a capital story to tell after dinner.”

“I am an unlucky devil,” growled Hughie. “The best thing I can do is to go to bed; and, my dear Alan, you mustn’t tell any one. I shouldn’t dare show my face in the row.”

“Nonsense! It reflects the highest credit on your philanthropic spirit, Hughie and—don’t run away. Have another cigarette, and you can talk about Laura as much as you like.”

However, Hughie wouldn’t stop, but walked home, feeling very unhappy, and leaving Alan Trevor in fits of laughter.

The next morning, as he was at breakfast, the servant brought him up a card, on which was written, “Monsieur Gustave Naudin, de la part de M. le Baron Hausberg.” “I suppose he has come for an apology,” said Hughie to himself; and he told the servant to show the visitor up.

An old gentleman with gold spectacles and gray hair came into the room, and said, in a slight French accent, “Have I the honor of addressing Monsieur Hugh Erskine?”

Hughie bowed.

“I have come from Baron Hausberg,” he continued. “The Baron-——”

“I beg, sir, that you will offer him my sincere apologies,” said Hughie.

“The Baron,” said the old gentleman, with a smile, “has commissioned me to bring you this letter;” and he handed Hughie a sealed envelope.

On the outside was written, “A wedding-present to Hugh Erskine and Laura Merton, from an old beggar,” and inside was a check for ten thousand pounds.

When they were married Alan Trevor was the best man, and the Baron made a speech at the wedding breakfast.

“Millionaire models,” said Alan, “are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still!”

Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, Oscar Wilde, 1891

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Ah, we all love a happy ending, particularly when it involves immense cheques bestowed upon the Deserving, who find themselves not only the Handsomest, but the Luckiest Couple in London. The Baron was perceptive enough not to offer young Hughie a job, recognising in him the spirit of Bertie Wooster and the Drones Club.

Mrs Daffodil first read this slight fiction in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly for 1887, where it was >ahem< published anonymously, not credited to Mr Wilde. Such “borrowings” seem to have been a fact of life in the management of a nineteenth-century newspaper or journal.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Miss Georgine’s Husband: A Gothic Tale, Part One

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MISS GEORGINE’S HUSBAND.

—Did I ever see a ghost? I don’t know just what you mean by a ghost, Miss Bessy, but if you mean the appearance of a person after I had seen him die with my own eyes, and laid him out with my own hands .’

I don’t exactly know about telling you the story. You see, it’s a true story, and a very solemn one, and I shouldn’t like to have it laughed at, or to have any one tell me I didn’t see what I did see. But you was always a pretty-behaved young lady, and you know I can’t refuse you anything, so if you will sit down quiet and take your work, I’ll tell you all about it, my dear.

You know, honey, I’m a very old woman, and when I was young I was a slave to old Judge Cleaveland, over on the Flats. There were slaves in York State then. I was born down in Maryland, but the Judge moved up to these parts when I was very small, and brought his servants with him. We were well enough treated. Judge Cleaveland was a hard, high-tempered man, and used to have awful ugly fits sometimes, but, like most folks of that kind, he could keep his temper well enough when it suited him, and he knew it was easy enough for his servants to run away if they didn’t like their treatment. When I was eighteen I married Zack Davis, the coachman, and after that we lived mostly in a house of our own. We were free by that time, and we bought a nice little log-house and some land for a garden, but we worked up at the house all the same.

The old Judge was a widower when he moved up here, but very soon he married a pretty young lady from the Mohawk Valley. She was only eighteen, and a sweet child as ever I saw. The Judge meant to be good to her, I guess, but she never seemed very happy. When the second little girl was born the Judge was dreadfully disappointed. I suppose he wanted a son, to inherit his great estate and keep up the family name. He never was the same to his wife after that. He was polite to her, especially before company, but he had a kind of cold, sneering way with her that I could see cut her to the heart. Her health failed, and she went home to her father’s house for a change, and there she died. The Judge seemed a good deal cast down by her death — more than I should have expected. I dare say some things came back to him when it was too late. After the funeral he shut up the house and went abroad. He was in foreign parts or down in New York for ten years and more. The young ladies, Miss Anna and Miss Georgine, stayed with their grandma some years, and then they were put to school in New York. All that time Zack and I lived in the old house, to take care of it. It was lonesome enough sometimes, especially in winter, but though I used to go all over the great rooms alone by day and by night, I never saw anything then — not a thing.

Well, when the young ladies were sixteen and seventeen, the Judge wrote and told me to clean up the rooms, and have everything ready, for he was coming home. His wild land was growing very valuable, and there was no one to see to it properly, and for that and other reasons he had decided to come home to the Flats to live. So at the time set they came, with loads of new furniture and carpets and what not, and a very nice widow lady for housekeeper. She had a son, an officer in the army and a very fine man, who would willingly have supported her, but she preferred to do for herself.

I expected to see Miss Anna the favorite, as she was the elder, and Miss Georgine had so disappointed her pa by not being a boy; but I soon found out it was the other way. Miss Anna was not pretty. She looked like her ma, and had just such a quiet, gentle way with her. She was afraid of her father, too, as her mother had been, and with some reason — and she was afraid of her sister. She didn’t care much for company, but liked best to sit down and sew or read. Miss Georgine was like her father, and had just his free, bold way. She wasn’t afraid of anything at all except that she should not be first in everything. She was very handsome, with regular features, and beautiful wavy black hair, and long curled eyelashes. I don’t know that I ever saw a handsomer girl, but for real goodness and truth she was no more to be compared to Miss Anna than a great red woodpecker is to a little sweet bluebird. She always contrived to get the best of everything, and if she got into any trouble or mischief, she generally made her father believe it was Miss Anna’s fault. She made a great show of openness and saying what she thought, but she didn’t think all she said, by a great deal.

When Miss Anna was about eighteen, Mrs. Gracie’s son came to visit his mother, and a very fine, sober, nice young man he was. Everyone liked him, especially the Judge, who could not make enough of him till he found that the captain and Miss Anna were taking to each other; then he began to cool off. Captain Gracie stayed at the tavern in the village, and called most every day to see his mother, and before he left he asked the Judge for Miss Anna. Then there was a time. The Judge went into one of his furious rages, ordered both mother and son out of the house, and shut Miss Anna up in her room. Miss Georgine was as bad as her father, and the way they treated that poor girl was shameful. But Miss Anna had got her spunk up, and she contrived — I never knew how —to send word to Captain Gracie. A few days after, when the Judge was out about his land, Captain Gracie drove up to the door, and asked for Miss Anna. She must have expected him, for she came down in her traveling-dress, and with her bag in her hand. Miss Georgine stormed and scolded and sent all ways for her father, but nobody could find him, and in fact I don’t think anybody tried. Miss Anna bade her sister a kind farewell and got into the carriage, and that was the last we saw of her for many a year. They were married that same day in the city, and went away wherever his regiment was. Captain Gracie sent her father his address and a copy of his marriage lines, but the Judge never took any notice; only he handed me the paper and told me to pack up her clothes and things and send them to her. I don’t approve of runaway matches as a general thing, but I can’t say I blamed Miss Anna one bit.

About this time Judge Cleaveland found out that he needed a clerk. or secretary as he called it; so he sent for Mr. Bogardus, a cousin of his wife’s, to come and live in his house and attend to his business. Mr. Bogardus was a fine, handsome man, about thirty, very grave and sober; but with beautiful manners—a real fine gentleman. The Judge made much of him in his pompous, condescending way. Miss Georgina began by being very cold and scornful, but she soon changed her tone when she found her cousin did not take any particular notice of it or of her, and began to be very polite to him. He had a fine voice, and played beautifully on the violin, and she used to ask him to sing and play with her, especially when they had company; but he almost always excused himself and would often stay in the library till midnight, writing or reading. He seemed like a smart man, and yet he never accomplished anything for himself. He was one of the unlucky ones, poor fellow.

But the more Mr. Bogardus kept out of Miss Georgine’s way, the more she courted him. That was her fashion. If there were ten men in the room and she had nine of them around her, she didn’t care anything about it till she got the tenth. She always had plenty of sweethearts, being such a beauty and a great heiress besides. Mr. Bogardus resisted a good while, but by and by l saw a change. He began to be more attentive to his cousin — to sing with her evenings, and sometimes to go out riding and walking with her. Miss Georgina was altered too. I never saw her so gentle and so — “lovable?” yes, that’s just the word, my dear! as she was that summer; and I thinks to myself, “My beauty, you ’re caught at last, but I wonder what your father will say.” For you see he looked on Mr. Bogardus only as a kind of upper servant, for all he was Mrs. Cleaveland’s own cousin.

The Judge didn’t seem to notice for a while, but by and by I think he got his eyes open. He went down to New York for a week or two, and when he came back, he called Mr. Bogardus and told him he had found him a fine position with a gentleman who was going out to Brazil to set up some kind of manufactures, — a place of great trust, and where he would make a fortune in no time. Mr. Bogardus was much pleased. He was always ready to take up any new notion, and he thought he should make himself rich directly. But Miss Georgine had a bad headache that day, and she wasn’t well for a week afterward.

The very day Mr. Bogardus left, I was sitting in my own door, and as I looked up I saw Miss Georgine walking across the field toward my house. I was rather surprised, for she wasn’t fond of walking, and almost always rode her pony wherever she wanted to go. She walked in a weary kind of way too, and when she came near, I saw she looked very pale. I got out the rocking-chair for her, and made much of her, but she sat down on a little stool and put her beautiful head in my lap, as her poor mother had done many a time, and says she, bursting out crying, .

“Oh, Aunt Dolly! My husband’s gone!”

Honey, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I couldn’t think what she meant at first, and thought she had got light-headed from being out in the sun.

“Child!” says I, “you don’t know what you are saying!”

“Yes I do—too well!” says she; and then she told me between her sobs that she and Mr. Bogardus had been privately married while her father was away, the day that they went down to the city together, and that they meant to keep it quiet till Mr. Bogardus made his fortune.

“I never meant to tell anybody,” says she, “but, Aunt Dolly, I couldn’t bear it all alone, and I knew I could trust you!”

Well, I could have wished she had chosen someone else, but I tried to comfort her as well as I could. Presently I said, “Ah, child, you can feel for your poor sister now!”

“That was very different!” says she, lifting up her head as proud as could be; “I haven’t disgraced myself as Anna did. My husband is a gentleman — not a servant’s son! ”

When she said that, Miss Bessy, I knew she had more yet to suffer.

Says I, “Miss Georgine, I shall never betray you, you may be sure, but you ought to tell your pa. Suppose he finds it out: what will he say, and what will you do? ”

“He won’t find it out!” says she, “and if he does, I shall know what to do.” But then she put her head down in my lap again, and oh, how she did cry! I couldn’t but pity her, though she showed such a wrong spirit; and I tried to tell her of a better comfort than mine, but she wouldn’t hear a word of that. She didn’t want any cant, she said. By and by I made her some tea and coaxed her to drink it and to eat a little, and when the sun got low, I walked home with her. She was always gentler with me after that, and whenever she got a letter from Mr. Bogardus she would come and tell me about it. I was on thorns for a while, and watched her as a cat watches a mouse; but everything went on as usual, and nobody but our two selves knew or mistrusted anything about the matter.

Miss Georgine got her letters pretty regular for about six months, and then they stopped, and she never had another. At first she pined a good deal, and l was afraid she was going into a decline; but presently I saw a change. Her old proud self came back, only harder and colder than before. She was handsomer than ever, and more fond of company and admiration. One day I ventured to ask her if she had heard any more of Mr. Bogardus.

Oh, how her eyes flashed as she said, “Never mention that man’s name to me again! He has shamed and deserted me!” says she.

“You don’t know that,” says I; “he may be dead.”

“He isn’t dead!” she answered. “My father heard he was married to a rich Spanish widow up at the mines.”

“I don’t believe it!” says I boldly. “It isn’t a bit like him.” For you see I had come to know him pretty well. I had nursed him in his sick turns, of which he had a good many, and though I didn’t approve of the secret marriage, I liked him and felt like standing up for him.

“Never mention his name to me again, Dolly!” says she, and I didn’t for a long time, till the day came that I had to do it.

Well, the time went on, year after year in much the same way. Our folks spent the summers on their own estate, and the winters in New York or at the South with the Judge’s family, spending a deal of money and seeing a deal of fine company. It was nine years that very spring since Mr. Bogardus went away, when, after they had been home a couple of days, Miss Georgine rode over to see me. She brought me a fine gown and some other things from New York, and after she had showed them to me, says she, speaking proud and careless like, —

“Aunt Dolly, I want you to come up to the house next week, to make my wedding cake and keep house a while, because I am going to be married.”

Miss Bessy, I couldn’t believe my ears; and says I, “Miss Georgina, I don’t know as I quite understand you.”

“You are growing stupid, Dolly!” says she pettishly. “I’m going to be married to Mr. Philip Livingstone, and I want you to make the cake.”

I don’t know what made me, but I spoke right out. “Mrs. Bogardus,” says I, “have you told your pa and Mr. Livingstone about your first marriage?”

“How dare you call me by that name?” says she, and her eyes fairly blazed. “No, I have not told them and I shall not. You can, if you choose!” says she. “How much do you mean to ask me as the price of keeping the secret I was fool enough to tell you?”

Then I flared up. “Mrs. Bogardus,” says I, “there’s the door. Please walk out of it, and don’t come insulting a woman in her own house that thinks as much of herself as you do, if she is black! If that’s what you think of me, you may get someone else to make your cake! ” says I.

Well, she saw she had gone too far. Like her father, she could command her temper well enough when she chose, and she knew she couldn’t get any one to make such cake as mine, if she went down on her knees to them. Besides, I knew all the ways of the house, and they couldn’t do without me. So she came down and said she was sorry, and she did not mean anything, and so on, till she coaxed me round, and I promised to do all she wanted.

“But if it was the last word I ever spoke, I do say you ought to tell Mr. Livingstone,” says I. “What if Mr. Bogardus should come back some day?”

I knew I was doing right, but I felt sorry for her when I saw how pale she turned. long ago,” says she, “ and if he were not, it is nearly nine years since I heard from him, and that is enough to release me. But you’ll be glad to hear,” says she, “that I have coaxed my father to write to sister Anna, and ask her and her son to the wedding. You know she is a widow now, and there is no use in keeping up the quarrel any longer.”

So then I agreed to make the cake, and keep house for her father while she was away. They were coming back to spend the summer at home. But I didn’t feel happy. I knew she was doing wrong, and that harm would come of it.

The wedding went off nicely. Mr. Livingstone was a fine, handsome man, a good deal older than Miss Georgine. He looked good and sensible, and it was easy to see that he fairly worshiped his wife. My heart ached for both of them, because I knew as things were they never could be happy. You see I felt sure Mr. Bogardus wasn’t dead.

How did I feel sure? Well, it was just like this. Whenever any of my folks had died away from me, I had always seen them in my dreams that same night. I saw my own brother, who was drowned in the lake, and my aunt with her baby, and Miss Georgine’s mother. Now Mr. Bogardus was fond of me. He said once that l was more like a mother than any one had ever been to him, and I knew he wouldn’t die without coming to let me know.

Miss Anna, that was, and her boy were at the wedding and stayed a fortnight after. She wore her deep widow’s weeds, and looked thin and worn, but she had a sweet, placid, happy look, worth more than all her sister’s beauty. She told me that through all her trials, in sickness and loneliness, and losing her husband and her children, she had never regretted her marriage, not one minute.

The boy was a fine, manly fellow, the image of his father. The Judge took to him greatly, and wanted Mrs. Gracie to come home to live; but she excused herself and said she must take care of her husband’s mother, who was feeble and needed her. She told me privately that she didn’t think such a life would be good for her boy, and I dare say she was right.

The bride and bridegroom came home after a month and settled down with us for the summer, and the day she came home, I noticed a scared look in Miss Georgine’s face that I never saw there before.

That night I was sitting in my own house (and glad enough I was to get back to it), when someone knocked softly at the door. Zack opened it, and the minute he did so, he cried out, “Lord ’a’ mercy!” I jumped up, and then I thought surely I saw a ghost, but I didn’t. It was Mr. Bogardus himself, but oh how thin and pale, and with his beautiful hair white as snow!

“Will you take me in, Dolly?” says he. “I am sick to death, old friend, and I have come to die with you.”

[To be continued tomorrow at this link. Mrs Daffodil, who understands the impatience of some modern readers with the leisurely progress of nineteenth century fiction, assures those readers that there will be a ghost.]

Lucy Ellen Guernsey.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 34, 1874

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.