Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/Lost and Won
Lost and Won.
Written for the Evening Gazette.
By Mary A. Lowell.
“and believe that, with all this, I still love you, and that nothing on earth should part us, except the entire unsuitableness of your education, to the station which as my wife you ought to be able to hold.”
The above sentence was part of a latter written by Walter Hamilton, a proud and rich Southerner, to his wife.
One year before, he had met Arabella Rowe at the Springs. She was beautiful, beyond what he had ever before seen, and the impossible Southern heart was touched and conquered at once. She was so different too from the dashing, showy, talkative belles, who frequent public resorts! While they were striving, by every act of coquetry, to attract Walter Hamilton’s attention to themselves, he was gazing with undisguised admiration on the small figure of Arabella, as it reclined on a pile of cushions, with the floating drapery of soft white muslin around it, and the pale golden hair lying in heavy masses on the white shoulders.
The little beauty did not stir under that long gaze, though the fringes of the blue eyes drooped a little. To the casual observer, she did not seem to notice his look; but one interested to learn her thoughts, might have seen that she lost not a single glance of the large, brown eyes that were fixed upon her; and yet that the consciousness did not make her lose the beautiful repose that characterized her countenance. It was repose only. There was neither brilliancy nor intellect very strongly marked in Arabella’s face; but there was perfect beauty of form and coloring. The languid grace of her figure did not borrow any thing from her dress, the material of which was only the softest and simplest drapery. Not a ribbon or ornament was added to its childlike simplicity. It lay about her in soft folds, guiltless of starch or whale-bone, and equally innocent of lace or embroidery. The white hands which were folded above it, were undecorated by a single ring; and altogether her appearance presented a grateful contrast to the over dressed and highly ornamented figures that were floating around the windows of the interminable drawing-room.
Now and then, men would pause, and look carelessly over to the spot where this strange figure was reposing, and remark to some upon her unusual appearance; and by and by, the novelty would attract them nearer. Walter Hamilton felt that he would have gladly screened her from the common gaze. He felt that she was a creature that should be taken away from the breath of the crowd, and placed in some pure shrine, where one alone could worship unseen.
In a moment, his thoughtful care had removed a small stand on which a large vase of the most exquisite flowers was placed, directly in front of her couch; thus hiding her from every gaze but his own. Her eyes thanked him by a quick, raised motion, and were cast down instantly.
Had there been no one in the room, Walter would have declared his admiration at once. He had seen enough of brilliant and richly attired women of the order called fascinating; and to his warm, impulsive nature, this quiet beauty came like the pure snows of the North, stealing with delicious coolness over his senses.
He felt that his declaration ought to be made to suck a being under the soft midnight on the silvery sands of the sea shore, or in the quiet woods from whence sunlight was excluded. But all this could not be waited for; so in that luxuriously decorated room, and under the blazing gaslight, Walter Hamilton asked her to become his wife, and with a scarcely perceptible rising of color into a faint flush of the pure cheek, and the slightest motion of the eyelids, she accepted him.
This was while the last lingering footstep of the gayer part of the company was heard in the upper end of the room, and ere that step was heard on the stairs, the lovers had left the room.
Full of a delicious consciousness of being beloved for the first time, Arabella retired to her room. She looked back upon the past, and could hardly believe that she was the same being then, who figured so differently in the present. In the quiet country town in which she had lived, not a sound of love or admiration ever met her ear. She had heard herself called quiet, languid, unimpressible and cold hearted; but never beautiful or interesting. The set with which she had sometimes mingled, admired the garish and showy style of dress, manners, and appearance; and Arabella’s plain white dresses were always subjects of mirth, as being an affectation of simplicity, which they were slow to appreciate.
Her mother had one trait not common to her situation in life, a perfect taste in adapting the costume to the individual figure. Arabella’s dress was always beautifully fitted by her mother’s own hands; and the undoubted cheapness of the material, and the absence of any decoration, rendered it possible, even under their limited resources, for her to be amply supplied with the freshest and whitest.
When, therefore, their richest neighbor, Mrs. Houston, pitying the lonely life of the young girl, and waking up to the scene of her marvellous beauty, invited Arabella to accompany her to the Springs, there was absolutely nothing for Mrs. Rowe’s ever active hands to perform, but to pack up the requisite quantity of her favorite muslins, the whitest and most delicate straw hat, braided by herself, and tied with snowy ribbon, and with the simple mantilla and a pair of bottines that Cinderella might have worn almost painfully, she dressed the languid beauty, and saw her depart, with such hopes as sometimes come unconsciously to the heart of an ambitious mother, even of Mrs. Rowe’s limited world-knowledge.
How well were those hopes realized when Mrs. Houston wrote her of her daughter’s engagement to the rich Southerner! “Only do not let him go to your home, my dear Mrs. Rowe,” wrote Mrs. Houston. “These Southern gentlemen are so fastidious, and live so luxuriously, that it will not do. I will arrange to keep Arabella at the Springs, and the wedding shall be performed here under my direction. As it will look better for you to come, you can do so, and as you are just my height and size, I wish you would do me the favor to take from the wardrobe in my chamber, of which my servants will give you the key, the dress which will best suit your excellent taste. You need not say that I want it for you, but let them think I need it here.”
Mrs. Houston’s intentions seemed so kind and neighborly, that Mrs. Rowe could not refuse them; and when she arrived, her perfectly lady-like appearance delighted her fastidious friends. Mrs. Houston, who loved her for her good qualities, dexterously covered all her deficiencies of speech and breaches of conventional manners; and everything seemed to be conducted with the utmost deference to the usages of etiquette.
The wedding took place, early in the Autumn, and, with the last warm breeze of the rich Indian summer, Walter Hamilton and his beautiful bride departed for his Southern home.
If Arabella could have been surprised out of her habitual quietude, it would have been at the rich magnificence of her new abode. Everything that art could devise was gathered in profusion that knew no bound. Alas! not one of the invaluable paintings—not the most rare or valuable of the costly and classic statuary were understood or appreciated by the bride for whom Walter had gathered this profusion. She stood amidst the noblest works of the pencil and the rarest creations of the chisel, passionless, expressiolessless, and with an air that showed her perfect want of interest in their exhibition.
“Perhaps she likes books better,” thought her husband, as he led the way to the library. Not the perfect construction of this room, its deep windows, filled with delicious orange trees, and shaded still farther by magnificent green curtains, lined with white silk, and supported by cornices of the richest and most elaborate designs, each representing a separate history on its enamelled surface; not the Turkish carpet, on which the heaviest footfall gave back no sound; the sparkling fountain which showered over into a marble basin, where two exquisitely sculptured doves were seeming to drink, and, hardest of all to Walter, not the vast collection of rare books, which he had hoped would, most of all, charm her—none of these elicited a single expression of sympathy with his taste or intellect.
“Perhaps, after all,” he said to himself, “I might as well have married this statue,” turning to the beautiful figure of Egeria, that stood near him. “Can it be that this lovely bride of mine, can be so utterly soulless as she seems?”
In vain Walter tried to think that the poor child was fatigued or ill. True, she did fade a little from the fervid heat of the Southern air, which had not yet lost its summer temperature, and it was not often that he found her, except as she lay on a pile of the richest cushions, which his love had heaped beside the orange shaded window of the library, where he loved to read; but it was painful to him to read to her passages of exquisite beauty and have no response from her lips.
When they had been married about two months, Waltar’s youngest sister made them a visit. She was a dark, and almost plain girl, with little of personal advantages of shape or feature to boast of; but with the most cultivated and diffusive intellect. In her own right, she was a poet, a painter and a sculptor, and in each of these she excelled. Among her brother’s most highly and justly valued treasures, were a volume of exquisite poetry, a few fine paintings, and a sculptural head of Miranda in “The Tempest.”
With her, Walter could sympathize strongly. Their natures were alike strong, appreciative, and enthusiastic; and, compared with Eulalie Hamilton, Arabella seemed tamer and less impressible than before. Walter had already begun to tire of the doll he had married; and Eulalie’s almost sarcastic remarks upon his choice, did not fail to deepen the new sensation which he experienced.
There were a great many artists and literary people gathered at Walter’s house, one evening, in compliment to Eulalie, whose associations were all centred in that class. Brightly the sparkles of wit and sentiment showered amidst the group that hovered around the plain but interesting girl, whose dark eyes absolutely flashed with the keen enjoyment of the hour. There was a rich glow mantling on her swarthy cheek, and on her lip there was a smile that told of the triumph of intellect above mere beauty. The interest with which she was regarded deepened the flush, and before the evening was over she was positively radiant!
Walter turned his look of gratified pride in his sister to the half recumbent form of Arabella. There was a wearied look in her eyes, that fully betrayed her want of interest in the scene; and he could not but notice the forced and constrained politeness of those around, which they felt compelled to pay to the wife of their host, nor how eagerly they turned away to catch the sparkle of genius from the lips of Eulalie.
Not the discontented expression on her husband’s countenance, not the sarcasm of Eulalie’s look, roused the beauty from her inaneness, when the party was over. She drooped the white eyelid over the soft orbs that turned wearily, to their repose and Walter, ashamed of her, before the flash of his sister’s eyes, gave a deep and almost hopeless sigh to the memory of the being, of which Arabella, he once thought, was the realization of his brightest ideal.
Had Arabella possessed a loving nature, he could have found some solace for the deep pain which came upon him. But she was cold as an icicle, and seemed wrapt solely in the thought of her own ease and repose. That she was merely amiable, was no praise; for her wishes were anticipated, and every attention heaped upon her in unmeasured profusion. To Eulalie, who, sustained by a force of character, and a vigor of frame, unusual to the Southern ladies, her lassitude and want of energy seemed almost contemptible; and yet she treated her with a softness and consideration, which nothing but her situation as her brother’s wife could have demanded from the intellectually haughty Eulalie.
Still, the sister could not always command, even before Walter, her contempt at Arabella’s deficiencies of education, feeling as she did, that any woman of common talent could overcome any natural defect of that sort, in those days of easy appliances for educational progress; and once or twice, she had hinted to her the expediency of her learning, at least the alphabet of some science or other, or of perfecting herself, at any rate in her own language.
Arabella did not know how absolutely ignorant she really was. She looked upon her husband and his sister as intellectual monsters; and the idea of following them, even at a distance, never entered her head. Her common language, was strangely defective, although the best of it was, that she did not often speak at all. When she did, her words grated harshly on Walter’s fine ear, more especially since Eulalie had come with her “wells of purest English, undefiled.”
Yes, Walter Hamilton had been tired of his doll-wife, and almost wished that he had been a wiser man than to make mere beauty the object of his worship.
Will he, can he, be pardoned if, in some moments of unutterable weariness, he thought seriously, of separation? Not to abandon her to the poverty from which he had taken her;—for Walter was a man of generous feelings, and he would have gladly parted with half his fortune, nay more, to give her the only happiness she seemed to covet—ease and repose.
Again and again, the idea occurred to him; but how to broach the subject to his unconscious wife? He put the thought from him, but it returned and each time with fuller force.
|At last, after she had committed some glaring breach of etiquette, in presence of one of his most discriminating friends, and had shown a most vexatious disregard of language, in the presence of a lady who was correct even to preciseness in her own speech, he asked her one day, if she would like to go for a few months to a beautiful country seat which he owned on the Susquehanna river.
She raised her eyes, for a moment, to his face, and seeing an expression there for which she could not account, she hesitated to answer.
“Alone, Walter?”
“Not alone, if you desire company, Arabella. For myself, I must stay here—but I believe that your habits will be better suited to Bellevue than to Charleston. You till be well attended there, and all your wants will be supplied as long as you wish to stay. Should you ever feel inclined to study, that will be the best place. It would be my wish that you should do so: still, I would have you consult your own pleasure. When you are tired of staying there, I will change your abode at once.”
“Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Hamilton. I shall be ready whenever you choose.”
If there was a touch of wounded pride in her answer, Walter did not or would not perceive it—and the conversation ended.
That night when Arabella retired, a letter lay on the table in her dressing room, addressed to herself. It contained a number of plausible reasons for the separation, and ended with the words we have already quoted.
We have abundant testimony to the idea that when cold people are roused, it is to a much greater pitch of excitement than is ever betrayed by those who are habitually hasty and quick tempered. The fire which has lain dormant so long, blazes up suddenly into volcanic fury, and he who has watched for the calm inactivity and inertness of former days, would do well to fly from the burning sparks, that have smouldered for years.
So was it with Arabella. Walter’s letter opened up a new vein of feeling, and a corresponding energy. To resolve and to act, were the work of the same hour, and before the hour expired, she was on her way to the North. She scrupled not to take the money and valuables of which she was possessed. Walter had given her jewels of great value, which she had never worn. She had clung pertinaciously to her unornamented white muslins, which so well became the peculiar style of her beauty;—but she believed his gifts to be her own.
Taking with her a favorite servant, a black woman whom Walter had placed about her at her first coming home, she directed her to find means for travelling. The women, who was uncommonly intelligent and active, obeyed her, and at Philadelphia, she took lodgings, in order to give her mistress a breathing time, and enable her to pursue her plans. “The unsuitableness of her education.” This then was the bar between her and Walter Hamilton! She sat down, and for the first time in her life, she attempted to calculate her position, her resources, and the positive object which she had in view.
While she sat, absorbed in thought, now making and now rejecting her plan, her hostess, a mild, benevolent looking Quaker lady, entered her room.
Her friendliness of appearance won Arabella’s confidence; and before she had sat with her an hour, she had told her all, and wept her tears on the good lady’s shoulder.
“What is thy plan, my dear?” said her new friend, as she finished her narration.
“To put myself immediately to the severest study, and through that, to regain my husband’s heart.”
“That is right. I know several highly educated ladies who will be glad to become thy teachers.”
“Let me see them immediately,” said Arabella, and it was not long before they were introduced.
From that hour, she studied, scarcely giving herself time for necessary food and exercise. Her progress, at first slow and toilsome, was at length by judicious training, changed into rapidity.
In the severer studies, the difficulties seemed to give her a positive sense of enjoyment. In lighter walks of learning, she was less at home, but still progressed respectably. A course of reading was marked out for her, and she received every advantage from very extended acquaintance of her teachers with all branches of elegant literature.
She had never dreamed of possessing a talent for music;—she had been too indolent to sing even the simplest melodies, which she had lain for hours to hear Eulalie play; but Mrs. Withering and her sister suggested it to her, and whatever they thought best for her to pursue, she eagerly caught at the idea.
Still beautifully neat and simple in her dress, she charmed the Quaker ladies by her costume, so gracefully approaching their own, and indicating such purity of taste. Black Maria had plenty of work on her hands, however, in supplying her with the fresh dresses, which her new habits of writing were continually soiling; and she took pride and pleasure in renewing them.
As her education progressed, she altered in the new intelligence that diffused itself over her face. Eyes that were once drooping and languid, assumed a new expression, and lighted up with a beautiful radiance. Her color had deepened, and her form dilated; and one who knew her, in her less active days would not have recognized Arabella Rowe or Arabella Hamilton, in the strong and perfectly developed woman, who bore so little resemblance to the spoiled beauty of other years.
We cannot follow Arabella through the various stages of her new life. It is enough to say that she came out from the ordeal she had prescribed for herself, nobly and well.
It was the end of her year of probation, and the second from her marriage. With weeping and sorrow, she took leave of her beloved teachers. Strong and beautiful were the ties that bound her to them, and when she tore herself from their arms, she could not help wondering if her life would ever again show so bright a side as the last year had shown.
And how had it passed with Walter Hamilton? Struck with horror at her sudden disappearance, he had never ceased to reproach himself with the cruel letter which had driven her from her rightful home. Nothing but the fact that she had taken Maria with her, could reconcile him to the idea of her leaving him. Had it been otherwise, he would at once, have entertained the belief that she had destroyed herself; but this fact had a cheering influence upon his mind. He began to think that she had returned home to her mother, and he made a journey to the East, for the purpose of finding out if she had done so. He returned disconsolate, for his former love had returned, when she was not longer near to annoy him by her mistakes and misapprehensions. The year passed in vain self-tormentings, and frequently in agony of mind that was perfectly intolerable. He abandoned all society, for the purpose of concealing his wife’s absence. Eulalie did not leave him, and together, they gave some plausible coloring to her continued “dislike of paying visits.”
One morning, after one of those wretched nights of sleeplessness, which Walter Hamilton so frequently endured, he mounted his horse at early dawn, and rode out to a solitary place in the suburbs of Charleston.
In a quiet, grassy spot, wet with the night dews of Autumn, he dismounted, and throwing the reins over Selim’s neck, he walked silently and sadly by his side. A small house, the only one in sight, was before him. The windows were open, and from within came the sound of a harp and the “voice of singing.”
He lingered, for the notes were singularly sweet and melodious. The music changed, and he recognized his favorite “Twilight Dews,” sung with a mournful sweetness, that penetrated his inmost soul. The strong man bowed his head and wept!
At the closing stanza,
“And still I wish the hour were near,
When, friends and foes forgiven,
The pains, the ills we’ve wept through here
May turn to smiles in Heaven.”
Walter Hamilton approached the window. It was shaded by orange trees, on which lingered a few late blossoms, and the harp stood between him and the singer. So slowly had he advanced that she did not perceive him, until he entered the room. At the first look, she fell prostrate. A woman, whom he had not before seen, in the dimness of the early morning, ran to her, and raised her from the floor, sprinkling her at the same time with a branch of the laurel which stood in a vase of water on the music stand. As the pale golden tresses swept back from her face, which lay, upturned in the faint morning light, he was reminded slightly of his lost wife. But he quickly rejected the idea; nor did he think of it again, until he looked up, and recognized Maria.
With a revulsion of feeling never before experienced by him, he assisted to restore her. A look of intelligence between him and the black woman, told him that it was indeed Arabella; and she revived to find herself in the arms of her husband.
There were smiles and tears over the little breakfast table in the cottage that morning, and Walter received his pardon with a rapture that almost made amends for the long days of absence. An hour after, she was clasped in the arms of Eulalie, while Walter gazed on her startling beauty, with an admiration beyond that of their first meeting.
It was not until many weeks had passed by, that the brother and sister discovered the full value of the treasure thus lost and won. As the three sat together, they were often struck with the deep thought and quick perception which characterized the conversation of Arabella. It showed them, that the spark had always existed with her, and only needed to be waked into being. Now it burned with something of that “divine afflatus” that they could so well share and appreciate.
One day, when Walter was going out, he went into the library to bid Arabella good morning. He found her coiled up in his great library chair, with her white muslin robe floating around it, and her golden ringlets lying over the volume in her lap.
“I was going to ride, Bella,” said her husband, “but you look so beautiful sitting there, that I have half a mind to stay and look at you.”
“You shall do no such thing, Walter. If you are going to ride, you shall let me have Selim, and I will go with you.”
“You ride, pretty one! Why how would you look, riding in that everlasting muslin? No, no, stay there, and let me read to you.”
She rose and left the room. When she returned, she was dressed in a beautiful cloth riding habit, with hat and plumes, and a slender stick in her hand. Never had she looked more gloriously lovely. Her tresses were looped up carefully, and there was a brilliant color on her cheek, as she gave him her hand to go down.
Her riding was exquisite. Not a gate nor a fence impeded her. Selim was sure footed, and she did not slack rein, until she had fairly distanced the slower pace of Walter’s brown cob.
“Is there any other accomplishment, my lady,” said Walter, when he joined her, “that you have acquired since I lost you? I am quite overwhelmed with the multitude of your perfections.” And as he lifted her from the saddle to the door step, where Eulalie stood admiringly, Walter whispered fondly, “My own sweet wife! my lost and won!”
