The Linwoods Read online

  “Go on, Effie,” cried Jasper; “if fortune is cross, I’ll give her wheel a turn.”

  “Ah, the wheel turns but too fast—a happy youth is uppermost.”

  “So far, so good.”

  “An early marriage.”

  “That may be weal, or may be wo,” said Jasper; “weal it is,” he added, in mock heroic; “but for the dread of something after.”

  “An early death!”

  “For me, Effie? Heaven forefend!”

  “No, not for you; for here you are again a leader on a battle-field—the dead and dying in heaps—pools of blood—there’s the end on’t,” she concluded, shuddering, and throwing down the cards.

  “What, leave me there, Effie! Oh, no—death or victory!”

  “It may be death, it may be victory; it is not given to me to see which.”

  Jasper, quite undaunted, was on the point of protesting against a destiny so uncertain, when a deepdrawn sigh from Bessie attracted the eyes of the group, and they perceived the colour was gone from her cheeks, and that she was on the point of fainting. The windows were thrown open—Effie 18produced a cordial, and she was soon restored to a sense of her condition, which she attempted to explain, by saying she was apt to faint even at the thought of blood!

  They were now all ready, and quite willing to bid adieu to the oracle, whose responses not having been entirely satisfactory to any one of them, they all acquiesced in Bessie’s remark, that “if it were ever so right, she did not think there was much comfort in going to a fortune-teller.”

  Each seemed in a more thoughtful humour than usual, and they walked on in silence till they reached the space, now the park, then a favourite play-ground for children, shaded by a few locusts, and here and there an elm or stinted oak. Leaning against one of these was the fine erect figure of a man, who seemed just declining from the meridian of life, past its first ripeness and perfection, but still far from the decay of age. “Ah, you runaways!” he exclaimed, on seeing the young people advancing. “Belle, your mother has been in the fidgets about you for the last hour.”

  “Jupiter might have told her, papa, that we were quite safe.”

  “Jupe truly! he came home with a rigmarole that we could make nothing of. I assured her there was no danger, but that assurance never quieted any woman. Herbert, can you tell me what these boys are about? they seem rather to be at work than play.”

  “What are you about, Ned?” cried Herbert to a young acquaintance.

  “Throwing up a redoubt to protect our fort,” and he pointed as he spoke to a rude structure of poles, bricks, and broken planks on an eminence, at the extremity of the unfenced ground.

  “And what is your fort for, my lad?” asked Mr. Linwood.

  “To keep off the British, sir.”

  19“The British! and who are you?”

  “Americans, sir!”

  A loud huzzaing was heard from the fort—“What does that mean?” asked Mr. Linwood.

  “The whigs are hanging a tory, sir.”

  “The little rebel rascals!—Herbert!—you throwing up your hat and huzzaing too!”

  “Certainly, sir—I am a regular whig.”

  “A regular fool!—put on your hat—and use it like a gentleman. This matter shall be looked into—here are the seeds of rebellion springing up in their young hot bloods—this may come to something, if it is not seen to in time. Jasper, do you hear any thing of this jargon in your schools?”

  “Lord bless me! yes, sir; the boys are regularly divided into whigs and tories—they have their badges and their passwords, and I am sorry to say that the whigs are three to one.”

  “You are loyal then, my dear boy?”

  “Certainly, sir, I owe allegiance to the country in which I was born.”

  “And you, my hopeful Mr. Herbert, with your huzzas, what say you for yourself?”

  “I say ditto to Jasper, sir—I owe allegiance to the country in which I was born.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Herbert—don’t be a fool, even in jest—I hate a whig as I do a toad, and if my son should prove a traitor to his king and country, by George, I would cut him off for ever!”

  “But, sir,” said the imperturbable Herbert, “if he should choose between his king and country—”

  “There is no such thing—they are the same—so no more of that.”

  “I am glad Herbert has his warning in time,” whispered Isabella to Bessie.

  20“But it seems to me he is right for all,” replied Bessie.

  So arbitrarily do circumstances mould opinions. Isabella seemed like one who might have been born a rebel chieftainess, Bessie as if her destiny were passive obedience.

  We have thus introduced some of the dramatis personæ of the following volumes to our readers. It may seem that in their visit to Effie, they prematurely exhibited the sentiments of riper years—but what are boys and girls but the prototypes of men and women—time and art may tinge and polish the wood, but the texture remains as nature formed it.

  Bessie Lee was an exotic in New-York. The history of her being there was simply this. New-England has, from the first been a favourite school for the youth from the middle and southern states. Mr. Linwood sent Herbert (who had given him some trouble by early manifesting that love of self-direction which might have been the germe of his whiggism) to a Latin school in a country town near Boston. While there, he boarded in the family of a Colonel Lee—a most respectable farmer, who had acquired his title and some military fame in the campaign of forty-five against the French. Herbert remained a year with the Lees, and he returned the kindness he received there with a hearty and lasting affection. Here was his first experience of country life, and every one knows how delightful to childhood are its freedom, exercises, and pleasures, in harmony (felt, long before understood) with all the laws of our nature. When Herbert returned he was eloquent in his praises of Bessie—her beauty, gayety (then the excitability of her disposition sometimes appeared in extravagant spirits), her sweetness and manageableness; a feminine quality that he admired the more from having had to contend with a contrary disposition in his sister Isabella, who, in all their childish competitions, had manifested what our Shaker friends would call 21a leading gift. Isabella’s curiosity being excited to see this rara avis of Herbert (with her the immediate consequence of an inclination was to find the means of its gratification), she asked her parents to send for Bessie to come to New-York, and go to school with her. Mrs. Linwood, a model of conjugal nonentity, gave her usual reply, “just as your papa says, dear.” Her father seldom said her nay, and Isabella thought her point gained, till he referred the decision of the matter to her aunt Archer.

  “Oh dear! now I shall have to argue the matter an hour; but never mind, I can always persuade aunt at last.” Mrs. Archer, as Isabella had foreboded, was opposed to the arrangement—she thought there would be positive unkindness in transplanting a little girl from her own plain, frugal family, to a luxurious establishment in town, where all the refinements and elegances then known in the colony were in daily use. “It is the work of a lifetime, my dear Belle,” she said, “to acquire habits of exertion and self-dependance—such habits are essential to this little country-girl—she does not know their worth, but she would be miserable without them—how will she return to her home, where they have a single servant of all-work, after being accustomed to the twelve slaves in your house?”

  “Twelve plagues, aunt! I am sure I should be happier with one, if that one were our own dear good Rose.”

  “I believe you would, Belle, happier and better too; for the energy which sometimes finds wrong channels now, would then be well employed.”

  “Do you see no other objection, aunt, to Bessie’s coming?” asked Isabella, somewhat impatient at the episode, though she was the subject of it.

  “I see none, my dear, but what relates to Bessie herself. If her happiness would on the whole be diminished by her coming, you, my dear generous Belle, would not wish it.”

  22“No, aun
t—certainly not—but then I am sure it would not be—she will go to all the schools I go to—that I shall make papa promise me—and she will make a great many friends and—and—I want to have her come so much. Now don’t, please don’t tell papa you disapprove of it—just let me have my own way this time.”

  “Ah, Belle, when will that time come that you do not have your own way?”

  Isabella perceived her aunt would no longer oppose her wishes. The invitation was sent to Bessie, and accepted by her parents; and the child’s singular beauty and loveliness secured her friends, one of the goods Isabella had predicted. She did not suffer precisely the evil consequences Mrs. Archer rationally anticipated from her residence in New-York, yet that, conspiring with events, gave the hue (bright or sad?) to her after life. Physically and morally, she was one of those delicate structures that require a hardening process—she resembled the exquisite instrument that responds music to the gentle touches of the elements, but is broken by the first rude gust that sweeps over it. But we are anticipating.

  “There is a history in all men’s lives,

  Figuring the nature of the times deceased;

  The which observed, a man may prophesy,

  With a near aim, of the main chance of things,

  As yet not come to life.”

  23CHAPTER II.

  “This life, sae far’s I understand,

  Is a’ enchanted fairy-land,

  Where pleasure is the magic wand,

  That, wielded right,

  Makes hours like minutes, hand in hand,

  Dance by fu’ light.”–BURNS.

  As soon as Mr. Linwood became aware of his son’s whig tendencies, he determined, as far as possible, to counteract them; and instead of sending him, as he had purposed, to Harvard University, into a district which he considered infected with the worst of plagues, he determined to retain him under his own vigilant eye, at the loyal literary institution in his own city. This was a bitter disappointment to Herbert.

  “It is deused hard,” he said to Jasper Meredith, who was just setting out for Cambridge to finish his collegiate career there, “that you, who have such a contempt for the Yankees, should go to live among them; when I, who love and honour them from the bottom of my heart, must stay here, play the good boy, and quietly submit to this most unreasonable paternal fiat.”

  “No more of my contempt for the Yankees, Hal, an’thou lovest me,” replied Jasper; “you remember Æsop’s advice to Crœsus at the Persian court?”

  24“No, I am sure I do not. You have the most provoking way of resting the lever by which you bring out your own knowledge on your friend’s ignorance.”

  “Pardon me, Herbert; I was only going to remind you of the Phrygian sage’s counsel to Crœsus, to speak flattery at court, or hold his tongue. I assure you, that as long as I live among these soidisant sovereigns, I shall conceal my spleen, if I do not get rid of it.”

  “Oh, you’ll get rid of it. They need only to be seen at their homes to be admired and loved.”

  “Loved!”

  “Yes, loved; to tell you the truth, Jasper,” Herbert’s honest face reddened as he spoke, “it was something of this matter of loving that I have been trying for the last week to make up my mind to speak to you. You may think me fool, dunce, or what you please; but, mark me, I am serious—you remember Bessie Lee?”

  “Perfectly! I understand you—excellent!”—

  “Hear me out, and then laugh as much as you like. Eliot, Bessie’s brother, will be your classmate—you will naturally be friends—for he is a first-rate—and you will naturally—”

  “Fall in love with his pretty sister?”

  “If not forewarned, you certainly would; for there is nothing like her this side heaven. But remember, Jasper, as you are my friend, remember, I look upon her as mine. ‘I spoke first,’ as the children say; I have loved Bessie ever since I lived at Westbrook.”

  “Upon my soul, Herbert, you have woven a pretty bit of romance. This is the very youngest dream of love I ever heard of. Pray, how old were you when you went to live at farmer Lee’s?”

  “Eleven—Bessie was six—I stayed there two years; and last year, as you know, Bessie spent with us.”

  “And she is now fairly entered upon her teens; you have 25nothing to fear from me, Herbert, depend on’t. I never was particularly fond of children—there is not the slightest probability of my falling into an intimacy with your yeoman friend, or ever, in any stage of my existence, getting up a serious passion for a peasant girl. I have no affinities for birds of the basse cour. My flight is more aspiring—‘birds of a feather flock together,’ my dear fellow, and the lady of my love must be such a one as my lady aunts in England and my eagle-eyed mother will not look down upon. So a truce to your fears, dear Herbert. Give me the letter you promised to your farmer, scholar, friend; and rest assured, he never shall find out that I do not think him equal in blood and breeding to the King of England, as all these Yankees fancy themselves to be.”

  Herbert gave the letter, but not with the best grace. He did not like Jasper’s tone towards his New-England friends. He half wished he had not written the letter, and quite, that he had been more frugal of his praise of Jasper. With the letter, he gave to Jasper various love-tokens from Isabella and himself for Bessie. The young men were saying their last parting words, when Herbert suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot! Isabella sent you a keepsake,” and he gave Jasper a silk purse, with a dove and olive-branch prettily wrought on it.

  “Oh, you savage!” exclaimed Jasper, “had you forgotten this!” He pressed it to his lips. “Dear, dear Belle! I kiss your olive-branch—we have had many a falling-out, but thus will they always end.” Then slipping a ring from his finger, on which was engraven a heart, transfixed by an arrow—“Beg Isabella,” he said, “to wear this for my sake. It is a pretty bauble, but she’ll not value it for that, nor because it has been worn by all our Capulets since the days of good Queen Bess, as my aunt, Lady Mary, assured me; but perhaps she will care for it for—pshaw.” He dashed off an honest tear—a servant announced that his uncle was awaiting him, and cordially embracing Herbert, they parted.

  26As Herbert had expected, Eliot Lee and Meredith were classmates, but not, as he predicted, or at least not immediately, did they become friends. Their circumstances, and those habits which grow out of circumstances, were discordant. Meredith had been bred in a luxurious establishment, and was taught to regard its artificial and elaborate arrangement as essential to the production of a gentleman. He was a citizen “of no mean city,” though we now look back upon New-York at that period, with its some eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, as little more than a village. There was then, resulting from the condition of America far more disparity between the facilities and refinements of town and country than there now is; and even now there are young citizens (and some citizens in certain illusions remain young all their lives) who look with the most self-complacent disdain on country breeding. Prior to our revolution, the distinctions of rank in the colonies were in accordance with the institutions of the old world. The coaches of the gentry were emblazoned with their family arms, and their plate with the family crest. If peers and baronets were rara aves, there were among the youths of Harvard “nephews of my lord,” and “sons of Sir George and Sir Harry.” These were, naturally, Meredith’s first associates. He was himself of the privileged order and, connected with many a noble family in the mother country, he felt his aristocratic blood tingle in every vein. A large property, which had devolved to him on the death of his father, was chiefly vested in real estate in America, and his guardians, with the consent of his mother, who herself remained in England, had judiciously decided to educate him where it would be most advantageous for him finally to fix his residence.

  The external circumstances—the appliances and means of the two young men, were certainly widely different. Eliot Lee’s parentage would not be deemed illustrious, according 27to any artificial code; but graduated by nature’s a
ristocracy (nature alone sets a seal to her patents of universal authority), he should rank with the noble of every land. And he might claim what is now considered as the peculiar, the purest, the enduring, and in truth the only aristocracy of our own. He was a lineal descendant from one of the renowned pilgrim fathers, whose nobility, stamped in the principles that are regenerating mankind, will be transmitted by their sons on the Missouri and the Oregon, when the stars and garters of Europe have perished and are forgotten.

  Colonel Lee, Eliot’s father, was a laborious New-England farmer, of sterling sense and integrity—in the phrase of his people, “an independent, fore-handed man;” a phrase that implies a property of four or five thousand dollars over and above a good farm, unencumbered with debts, and producing rather more than its proprietor, in his frugal mode of life, has occasion to spend. Eliot’s mother was a woman of sound mind, and of that quick and delicate perception of the beautiful in nature and action, that is the attribute of sensibility and the proof of its existence, though the possessor, like Eliot’s mother, may, from diffidence or personal awkwardness, never be able to imbody it in graceful expression. She had a keen relish of English literature, and rich acquisitions in it; such as many of our ladies, who have been taught by a dozen masters, and instructed in half as many tongues, might well envy. With all this, she was an actual operator in the arduous labours that fall to the female department of a farming establishment—plain farmer Lee’s plain wife. This is not an uncommon combination of character and condition in New-England. We paint from life, if not to the life: our fault is not extravagance of colouring.

  It is unnecessary to enter into the details of Eliot Lee’s education. Circumstances combined to produce the happiest results—to develop his physical, intellectual, and moral 28powers; in short, to make him a favourable specimen of the highest order of New-England character. He had just entered on his academic studies, when his father (as our friend Effie intimated in her dark soothsaying) was lost while crossing Massachusetts Bay during a violent thunder-storm. Fortunately, the good colonel’s forecast had so well provided for his heirs, that his widow was able to maintain the respectable position of his family without recalling her son from college. There, as many of our distinguished men have done, he made his acquisitions available for his support by teaching.