Elsie Venner

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> Elsie Venner


At a period of life when many have been living on the capital of their
acquired knowledge and their youthful stock of sensibilities until their
intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were
at twenty, Dudley Veneer was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul
than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his
present years. He had entered that period which marks the decline of men
who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a
man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life
will carry him rapidly downward. At this time his inward: nature was
richer and deeper than in any earlier period of his life. If he could
only be summoned to action, he was capable of noble service. If his
sympathies could only find an outlet, he was never so capable of love as
now; for his natural affections had been gathering in the course of all
these years, and the traces of that ineffaceable calamity of his life
were softened and partially hidden by new growths of thought and feeling,
as the wreck left by a mountainslide is covered over by the gentle
intrusion of the soft-stemmed herbs which will prepare it for the
stronger vegetation that will bring it once more into harmony with the
peaceful slopes around it.

Perhaps Dudley Veneer had not gained so much in worldly wisdom as if he
had been more in society and less in his study. The indulgence with
which he treated his nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the
habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded with a person with
Dick's questionable story and unquestionable physiognomy. But he was
singularly unsuspicious, and his natural kindness was an additional
motive to the wish for introducing some variety into the routine of
Elsie's life.

If Dudley Veneer did not know just what he wanted at this period of his
life, there were a great many people in the town of Rockland who thought
they did know. He had been a widower long enough, "--nigh twenty year,
wa'n't it? He'd been aout to Spraowles's party,--there wa'n't anything
to hender him why he shouldn't stir raound l'k other folks. What was the
reason he did n't go abaout to taown-meetin's 'n' Sahbath-meetin's, 'n'
lyceums, 'n' school 'xaminations, 'n' s'prise-parties, 'n' funerals,--and
other entertainments where the still-faced two-story folks were in the
habit of looking round to see if any of the mansion-house gentry were
present?--Fac' was, he was livin' too lonesome daown there at the
mansion-haouse. Why shouldn't he make up to the Jedge's daughter? She
was genteel enough for him, and--let's see, haow old was she?
Seven-'n'itwenty,--no, six-'n'-twenty,--born the same year we buried our
little Anny Marl".

There was no possible objection to this arrangement, if the parties
interested had seen fit to make it or even to think of it. But "Portia,"
as some of the mansion-house people called her, did not happen to awaken
the elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met her once in a
while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand
style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite
so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her
speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more
joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice,
which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so
bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked into her eyes
all that he could not tell, in less time than it would have takes him to
discuss the champion paper of the last Quarterly with the admirable
"Portia." Heu, quanto minus! How much more was that lost image to him
than all it left on earth!

The study of love is very much like that of meteorology. We know that
just about so much rain will fall in a season; but on what particular day
it will shower is more than we can tell. We know that just about so much
love will be made every year in a given population; but who will rain his
young affections upon the heart of whom is not known except to the
astrologers and fortune-tellers. And why rain falls as it does and why
love is made just as it is are equally puzzling questions.

The woman a man loves is always his own daughter, far more his daughter
than the female children born to him by the common law of life. It is
not the outside woman, who takes his name, that he loves: before her
image has reached the centre of his consciousness, it has passed through
fifty many-layered nerve-strainers, been churned over by ten thousand
pulse-beats, and reacted upon by millions of lateral impulses which bandy
it about through the mental spaces as a reflection is sent back and
forward in a saloon lined with mirrors. With this altered image of the
woman before him, his preexisting ideal becomes blended. The object of
his love is in part the offspring of her legal parents, but more of her
lover's brain. The difference between the real and the ideal objects of
love must not exceed a fixed maximum. The heart's vision cannot unite
them stereoscopically into a single image, if the divergence passes
certain limits. A formidable analogy, much in the nature of a proof,
with very serious consequences, which moralists and match-makers would do
well to remember! Double vision with the eyes of the heart is a
dangerous physiological state, and may lead to missteps and serious
falls.

Whether Dudley Veneer would ever find a breathing image near enough to
his ideal one, to fill the desolate chamber of his heart, or not, was
very doubtful. Some gracious and gentle woman, whose influence would
steal upon him as the first low words of prayer after that interval of
silent mental supplication known to one of our simpler forms of public
worship, gliding into his consciousness without hurting its old griefs,
herself knowing the chastening of sorrow, and subdued into sweet
acquiescence with the Divine will,--some such woman as this, if Heaven
should send him such, might call him back to the world of happiness, from
which he seemed forever exiled. He could never again be the young lover
who walked through the garden-alleys all red with roses in the old dead
and buried June of long ago. He could never forget the bride of his
youth, whose image, growing phantomlike with the lapse of years, hovered
over him like a dream while waking and like a reality in dreams. But if
it might be in God's good providence that this desolate life should come
under the influence of human affections once more, what an ecstasy of
renewed existence was in store for him! His life had not all been buried
under that narrow ridge of turf with the white stone at its head. It
seemed so for a while; but it was not and could not and ought not to be
so. His first passion had been a true and pure one; there was no spot or
stain upon it. With all his grief there blended no cruel recollection of
any word or look he would have wished to forget. All those little
differences, such as young married people with any individual flavor in
their characters must have, if they are tolerably mated, had only added
to the music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted into some
perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole
harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had inflicted on him;
nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge
was smooth. Such wounds must heal with time in healthy natures, whatever
a false sentiment may say, by the wise and beneficent law of our being.
The recollection of a deep and true affection is rather a divine
nourishment for a life to grow strong upon than a poison to destroy it.

Dudley Venner's habitual sadness could not be laid wholly to his early
bereavement. It was partly the result of the long struggle between
natural affection and duty, on one side, and the involuntary tendencies
these had to overcome, on the other,--between hope and fear, so long in
conflict that despair itself would have been like an anodyne, and he
would have slept upon some final catastrophe with the heavy sleep of a
bankrupt after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! some new affection might
perhaps rekindle the fires of youth in his heart; but what power could
calm that haggard terror of the parent which rose with every morning's
sun and watched with every evening star,--what power save alone that of
him who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leaving after him only the
ashes printed with his footsteps?




CHAPTER XXI.

THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.

There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely
condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with
that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people
thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good
folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari',"
and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.
And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various
ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the
preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin
with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little
chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept
himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.

Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get
him out of his study, which had, for the most part, proved failures. It
was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at the
Colonel's. But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the
consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him
to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had any
fancy for them, he had politely declined.

Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea
sociably, with a few friends, at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of the
Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known as
Major Rowens. Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising
officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his waistband
was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows, the
militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest
sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say,
spreading, to be General.

Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits which help a man
to eminence in the branch of public service referred to. He ran to high
colors, to wide whiskers, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin
common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,--never found in the Brahmin
caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know
what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button
which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion surface
shows you what to look for. He had the loud gruff voice which implies
the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with
bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy
limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He
had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that
step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something
fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes
gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had no
objection, either, to holding the reins in a wagon behind another kind of
horse,--a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his shoulder;
and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at the hock, who
commonly walked or lounged along in a lazy trot of five or six miles an
hour; but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling up alongside, or a
brandy-faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off a fast nag, and
threw his dust into the Major's face, would pick his legs up all at once,
and straighten his body out, and swing off into a three-minute gait, in a
way that "Old Blue" himself need not have been ashamed of.

For some reason which must be left to the next generation of professors
to find out, the men who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also for,
let a long dash separate the brute creation from the angelic being now to
be named,--for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no possible
doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse trots before
two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of muliebrity, with
shapes to her, and eyes flying about in all directions.

Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland Fusileers, had
driven and "traded" horses not a few before he turned his acquired skill
as a judge of physical advantages in another direction. He knew a neat,
snug hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep chest, a close
ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man in the town. He was not to be
taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed cattle, without any go to
them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet by the "gaanted-up,"
long-legged animals, with all their constitutions bred out of them, such
as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with their plated trappings.

Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in the selection of
the mate with whom he was to go in double harness so long as they both
should live, we need not stop to question. At any rate, nobody could
find fault with the points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he offered
the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The Van must have been crossed
out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette, with hair and eyes
black enough for a Mohawk's daughter. A fine style of woman, with very
striking tints and outlines,--an excellent match for the Lieutenant,
except for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow. She was
evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so well as in deep black,
with jet ornaments.

The man who should dare to marry her would doom himself; for how could
she become the widow she was bound to be, unless he could retire and give
her a chance? The Lieutenant lived, however, as we have seen, to become
Captain and then Major, with prospects of further advancement. But Mrs.
Rowens often said she should never look well in colors. At last her
destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was vindicated.
Major Rowens got overheated galloping about the field on the day of the
Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the
common report,--at any rate, something which stopped him short in his
career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her
normal condition of widowhood.

The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very
shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven
hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with
every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone
with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black
gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath
which a small foot showed itself from time to time, clad in the same hue
of mourning. Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her
eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete. Gray's Elegy
was not a more perfect composition.

Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her
condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain
circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for
instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified
exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character, should
happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him happy was
to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again for his
sake,--why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the sacrifice. By
a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was now living in
Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the
sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it
looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close,
and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there
was nobody in the entry,--just to see how it looked, she had taken out an
envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Manilla Veneer. It made her
head swim and her knees tremble. What if she should faint, or die, or
have a stroke of palsy, and they should break into the room and find that
name written! How she caught it up and tore it into little shreds, and
then could not be easy until she had burned the small heap of pieces--

But these are things which every honorable reader will consider imparted
in strict confidence.

The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion house set, was among the most
genteel of the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting some of
the great people. In one of these visits she met a dashing young fellow
with an olive complexion at the house of a professional gentleman who had
married one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms from a distinguished
family before referred to. The professional gentleman himself was out,
but the lady introduced the olive-complexioned young man as Mr. Richard
Venner.

The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental meeting. Had
heard Mr. Venner's name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle was well,
and his charming cousin,--was she as original as ever? Had often admired
that charming creature he rode: we had had some fine horses. Had never
got over her taste for riding, but could find nobody that liked a good
long gallop since--well--she could n't help wishing she was alongside of
him, the other day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.

The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black
border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender foot
beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down; looked
at Mr. Richard, the very picture of artless simplicity,--as represented
in well-played genteel comedy.

"A good bit of stuff," Dick said to himself, "and something of it left
yet; caramba!" The Major had not studied points for nothing, and the
Widow was one of the right sort. The young man had been a little
restless of late, and was willing to vary his routine by picking up an
acquaintance here and there. So he took the Widow's hint. He should
like to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.

The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she could find any
horse in the village to suit her; but it was so kind in him! Would he not
call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her thank him again there?

Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the most of, and on the
strength of which she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number
of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of
note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's
clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve
and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he
can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody.
After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names:
Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she
had met him,--mansion-house breed,--but will come,--soft on Dick; Dudley
Venner,--take care of him herself; Elsie,--Dick will see to her,--won't
it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old Doctor,--he 's
always handy; and there's that young master there, up at the
school,--know him well enough to ask him,--oh, yes, he'll come. One,
two, three, four, five, six,--seven; not room enough, without the leaf in
the table; one place empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see,--Helen Darley,
--she 'll do well enough to fill it up,--why, yes, just the thing,
--light brown hair, blue eyes,--won't my pattern show off well against
her? Put her down,--she 's worth her tea and toast ten times over,
--nobody knows what a "thunder-and-lightning woman," as poor Major used
to have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those old-maidish
girls, with hair the color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a
teacup.

The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having overcome her
difficulties and arranged her party,--arose and stood before her glass,
three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of
the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow--and
to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with Helen Darley
as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and pyramidal,--if
these French adjectives may be naturalized for this one particular
exigency.

So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which had filled her
heart and had overflowed in surges of crape around her person had left a
deposit half an inch wide at the margin of her note-paper. Her seal was a
small youth with an inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche
Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of
the Widow's standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that she
would get the torch right-side up as soon as she had a chance. That was
after Dick had made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had got it
into her foolish head that she would marry that young fellow, if she
could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such a quadroon-looking
thing as that, she should like to know?

It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but whether they will
come or not is an open question, as it was in the case of the spirits of
the vasty deep. If the note issues from a three-story mansion-house, and
goes to two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state
of health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite
invitation. If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to
three-story ones, the former highly respectable person will very probably
find that an endemic complaint is prevalent, not represented in the
weekly bills of mortality, which occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms
of eminently desirable parties that they cannot have the pleasure of
and-so-forthing.

In this case there was room for doubt,--mainly as to whether Elsie would
take a fancy to come or not. If she should come, her father would
certainly be with her. Dick had promised, and thought he could bring
Elsie. Of course the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor
tired-out looking Helen, if only to get out of sight of those horrid
Peckham wretches. They don't get such invitations every day. The others
she felt sure of,--all but the old Doctor,--he might have some horrid
patient or other to visit; tell him Elsie Venner's going to be there,--he
always likes to have an eye on her, they say,--oh, he'd come fast enough,
without any more coaxing.

She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she was afraid of
Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor were
there to see to the girl; and then she should have leisure to devote
herself more freely to the young lady's father, for whom all her
sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.

It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her
table as she had now invited. Better have the plates set and see how
they will fill it up with the leaf in.--A little too scattering with only
eight plates set: if she could find two more people, now, that would
bring the chairs a little closer,--snug, you know,--which makes the
company sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why how
stupid! there was her good minister, the same who had married her, and
might--might--bury her for aught she anew, and his granddaughter staying
with him,--nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be
dangerous;--for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking
people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little
project she might happen to have on anybody's heart,--not she! It was
all right now; Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child; Elsie
was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,--poor
thing!--faded, faded,--colors wouldn't wash, just what she wanted to show
off against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only
come,--that was the great point.

"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the
breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."

It was one of "Elsie's days," as old Sophy called them. The light in her
eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and
wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her
father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this
determination,--and his own way of setting about it.