“If my father had not done justice to Tina in his will,” said Harry, “I should have done it. My sister should not have gone to any man a beggar.”
“I know that, my dear,” said Miss Mehitable, “but still it is a pleasure to think that your father did it. It was a justice to your mother’s memory that I am glad he rendered.”
And when is this marriage to take place?” said I.
“Mr. Davenport wants to carry her away in June,” said Miss Mehitable. “That leaves but little time; but he says he must go to join the English Embassy, certainly by midsummer, and as there seems to be a good reason for his haste, I suppose I must not put my feelings in the way. It seems now as if I had had her only a few days, and she has been so very sweet and lovely to me. Well,” said she, after a moment, “I suppose the old sweetbrier-bushes feel lonesome when we cut their blossoms and carry them off; but the old thorny things must n’t have blossoms if they don’t expect to have them taken. That ‘s all we scraggly old people are good for.”
CHAPTER XLIII.
WHAT OUR FOLKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
AT home, that evening, before the great open fire, still the same subject was discussed. Tina’s engagement to Ellery Davenport was spoken of as the next most brilliant stroke of luck to Harry’s accession to the English property. Aunt Lois was all smiles and suavity, poor dear old soul! How all the wrinkles and crinkles of her face smoothed out under the influence of prosperity! and how providential everything appeared to her!
“Providence gets some pay-days,” said an old divine. Generally speaking, his account is suffered to run on with very lax attention. But when a young couple make a fortunate engagement, or our worldly prospects take a sudden turn to go as we would, the account of Providence is gladly balanced; praise and thanksgiving come in over-measure.
For my part, I could n’t see the Providence at all in it, and found this looking into happiness through other people’s eyes a very fatiguing operation.
My grandfather and grandmother, as they sat pictured out by the light of a magnificent hickory fire, seemed scarcely a year older; but their faces this evening were beaming complacently; and my mother, in her very quiet way, could scarcely help triumphing over Aunt Lois. I was a sophomore in Cambridge, and Harry a landed proprietor, and Tina an heiress to property in her own right, instead of our being three poor orphan children without any money, and with the up-hill of life to climb.
In the course of the evening, Miss Mehitable came in with Ellery Davenport and Tina. Now, much as a man will dislike the person who steps between him and the lady of his love, I could not help, this evening, myself feeling the power of that fascination by which Ellery Davenport won the suffrages of all hearts.
Aunt Lois, as usual, was nervous and fidgety with the thought that the call of the splendid Mr. Davenport had surprised them all at the great kitchen-fire, when there was the best room cold as Nova Zembla. She looked almost reproachfully at Tina, and said apologetically to Mr. Davenport, “We are rough working folks, and you catch us just as we are. If we ‘d known you were coming, we ‘d have had a fire in the parlor.”
“Then, Miss Badger, you would have been very cruel, and deprived us of a rare enjoyment,” said he. “What other land but our own America can give this great, joyous, abundant home-fire? The great kitchen-fire of New England,” he added, seating himself admiringly in front of it, “gives you all the freshness and simplicity of forest life, with a sense of shelter and protection. It ‘s like a camp-fire in the woods, only that you have a house over you, and a good bed to sleep in at hand; and there is nothing that draws out the heart like it. People never can talk to each other as they do by these great open fires. For my part,” he said, “I am almost a Fire-worshipper. I believe in the divine properties of flame. It purifies the heart and warms the affections, and when people sit and look into the coals together, they feel a sort of glow of charity coming over them that they never feel anywhere else.”
“Now, I should think,” said Aunt Lois, “Mr. Davenport, that you must have seen so much pomp and splendor and luxury abroad, that our rough life here would seem really disagreeable to you.”
“Quite the contrary,” said Ellery Davenport. “We go abroad to appreciate our home. Nature is our mother, and the life that is lived nearest to nature is, after all, the one that is the pleasantest. I met Brant at court last winter. You know he was a wild Indian to begin with, and he has seen both extremes, for now he is Colonel Brant, and has been moving in fashionable society in London. So I thought he must be a competent person to decide on the great question between savage and civilized life and he gave his vote for the savage.”
“I wonder at him,” said my grandmother.
“Well, I remember,” said Tina, “we had one day and night of savage life – don’t you remember, Harry? – that was very pleasant. It was when we stayed with the old Indian woman, – do you remember? It was all very well, so long as the son shone; but then when the rain fell, and the wind blew, and the drunken Indian came home, it was not so pleasant.”
“That was the time, young lady,” said Ellery Davenport, looking at her with a flash in his blue eyes, “that you established yourself as housekeeper on my premises! If I had only known it, I might have picked you up then, as a waif on my grounds.”
“It ‘s well you did not,” said Tina, laughing; “you would have found me troublesome to keep. I don’t believe you would have been as patient as dear old Aunty, here,” she added, laying her head on Miss Mehitable’s shoulder. “I was a perfect brier-rose, – small leaves and a great many prickles.”
“By the by,” said Harry, “Sam Lawson has been telling us, this morning, about our old friends Miss Asphyxia Smith and Old Crab.”
“Is it possible,” said Tina, laughing, “that those creatures are living yet? Why, I look back on them as some awful pre-Adamite monsters.”
“Who was Miss Asphyxia?” said Ellery Davenport. “I have n’t heard of her.”
“O, ‘t was a great threshing-machine of a woman that caught me between its teeth some years ago,” said Tina. “What do you suppose would ever have become of me, Aunty, if she had kept me? Do you think she ever could have made me a great stramming, threshing, scrubbing, floor-cleaning machine, like herself? She warned Miss Mehitable,” continued Tina, looking at Ellery and laughing shyly, “that I never should grow up to be good for anything; and she spoke a fatal truth, for, since she gave me up, every mortal creature has tried to pet and spoil me. Dear old Aunty and Mr. Rossiter have made some feeble attempts to make me good for something, but they have n’t done much at it.”
“Thank Heaven!” said Ellery Davenport. “Who would think of training a wild rose? I sometimes look at the way a sweet-brier grows over one of our rough stone walls, and think what a beautiful defiance it is to gardeners.”
“That is all very pretty to say,” said Tina, “when you happen to be where there are none but wild roses; but when you were among marchionesses and duchesses, how was it then?”
For answer, Ellery Davenport bent over her, and said something which I could not hear. He had the art, without seeming to whisper, of throwing a sentence from him so that it should reach but one ear; and Tina laughed and blushed and dimpled, and looked as if a thousand little graces were shaking their wings around her.
It was one of Tina’s great charms that she was never for a moment at rest. In this she was like a bird, or a brook, or a young tree, in which there is always a little glancing shimmer of movement. And when anything pleased her, her face sparkled as a river does when something falls into it. I noticed Ellery Davenport’s eyes followed all these little motions as if he had been enchanted. O, there was no doubt that the great illusion, the delicious magic, was in full development between them. And Tina looked so gladly satisfied, and glanced about the circle and at him with such a quiet triumph of possession, and such satisfaction in her power over him, that it really half reconciled me to see that she was so happy. And, after all, I thought to myself as I looked at the airy and spirituel style of her beauty, – a beauty that conveyed the impression of fragility and brilliancy united to the highest point, – such a creature as that is made for luxury, made for perfume and flowers and jewelry and pomp of living and obsequious tending, for old aristocratic lands and court circles, where she would glitter as a star. And what had I to offer, – I, a poor sophomore in Harvard, owing that position to the loving charity of my dear old friend? My love to her seemed a madness and a selfishness, – as if I had wished to take the evening star out of the heavens and burn it for a household lamp. “How fortunate, how fortunate,” I thought to myself,” that I have never told her! For now I shall keep the love of her heart. We are friends, and she shall be the lady of my heart forever, – the lady of my dreams.”
I knew, too, that I had a certain hold upon her; and even at this moment I saw her eye often, as from old habit, looking across to me, a little timidly and anxiously, to see what I thought of her prize. She was Tina still, – the same old Tina, that always needed to be approved and loved and sympathized with, and have all her friends go with her, heart and hand, in all her ways. So I determined to like him.
At this moment Sam Lawson came in. I was a little curious to know how he had managed it with his conscience to leave his domestic circle under their trying circumstances, but I was very soon satisfied as to this point.
Sam, who had watched the light flaring out from the windows, and flattened his nose against the window-pane while he announced to Hepsy that “Mr. Davenport and Miss Mehitable and Tiny were all a goin’ into the Deacon’s to spend th’ evenin’,” could not resist the inexpressible yearning to have a peep himself at what was going on there.
He came in with a most prostrate air of dejection. Aunt Lois frowned with stern annoyance, and looked at my grandmother, as much as to say, “To think he should come in when Mr. Davenport is making a call here!”
Ellery Davenport, however, received him with a patronizing cheerfulness, – “Why, hulloa, Sam, how are you?” It was Ellery Davenport’s delight to start Sam’s loquacity and develop his conversational powers, and he made a welcoming movement toward the block of wood in the chimney-corner. “Sit down,” he said,– “sit down, and tell us how Hepsy and the children are.”
Tina and he looked at each other with eyes dancing with merriment.
“Wal, wal,” said Sam, sinking into the seat and raising his lank hands to the fire, while his elbows rested on his knees, “the children ‘s middlin – Doctor Merrill ses he thinks they ‘ve got past the wust on ‘t, – but Hepsy, she ‘s clean tuckered out, and kind o’ discouraged. An’ I thought I ‘d come over an’ jest ask Mis’ Badger ef she would n’t kind o’ jest mix ‘er up a little milk punch to kind o’ set ‘er up agin.'”
“What a considerate husband!” said Ellery Davenport, glancing around the circle with infinite amusement.
My grandmother, always prompt at any call on her charity was already half across the floor toward her buttery, whence she soon returned with a saucepan of milk.
“I ‘ll watch that ‘ere, Mis’ Badger,” said Sam. “Jest rake out the coals this way, an’ when it begins ter simmer I ‘ll put in the sperits, ef ye ‘ll gin ’em to me. ‘Give strong drink ter him as is ready to perish,’ the Scriptur’ says. Hepsy ‘s got an amazin sight o’ grit in ‘er, but I ‘clare for ‘t, she ‘s ben up an’ down nights so much lately with them young uns thet she ‘s a ‘most clean wore out. An’ I should be too, ef I did n’t take a tramp now ‘n’ then to kind o’ keep me up. Wal, ye see, the head o’ the family, he hes to take car’ o’ himself, ’cause ye see, ef he goes down, all goes down. ‘The man is the head o’ the woman,’ ye know,” said Sam, as he shook his skillet of milk.
I could see Tina’s eyes dancing with mirthfulness as Ellery Davenport answered, “I ‘m glad to see, Sam, that you have a proper care of your health. You are such an important member of the community, that I don’t know what Oldtown would be without you!”
“Wal, now, Mr. Devenport, ye flatter me; but then everybody don’t seem to think so. I don’t think folks like me, as does for this one an’ does for that one, an’ kind o’ spreads out permiskus is appreciated allers. There ‘s Hepsy, she ‘s allers at me, a sayin’ I don’t do nothin’ for her, an’ yet there las’ night I wus up in my shirt, a shiverin’ an’ a goin’ round, fust ter one and then ter ‘nuther, a hevin’ on em up an’ a thumpin’ on their backs, an clarin’ the phlegm out o’ their thruts, till I wus e’en a ‘most fruz and Hepsy, she lay there abed scoldin’ ’cause I hed n’t sawed no wood thet arternoon to keep up the fire. Lordy massy, I jest went out ter dig a leetle sweet-flag root ter gin ter the boys, ’cause I wus so kind o’ wore out. I don’t think these ‘ere women ever ‘flects on men’s trials. They railly don’t keep count o’ what we do for ’em.”
“What a picture of conjugal life!” said Ellery Davenport glancing at Tina. “Yes, Sam, it is to be confessed that the female sex are pretty exorbitant creditors. They make us pay dear for serving them.”
“Jes’ so, jes’ so!” said Sam. “They don’t know nothin’ what we undergo. I don’t think Hepsy keeps no sort o’ count o’ the nights an’ nights I ‘ve walked the floor with the baby, whishin’ an’ shooin’ on ‘t, and singin’ to ‘t till my thrut wus sore, an’ then hed to git up afore daylight to split oven-wood, an then right to my blacksmithin’, jest to git a little money to git the meat an meal an’ suthin’ comfort’ble fur dinner! An’ then, ye see, there don’t nothin’ last, when there ‘s so many mouths to eat it up; an’ there ‘t is, it ‘s jest roun’ an’ roun’. Ye git a good piece o’ beef Tuesday an’ pay for ‘t, an’ by Thursday it ‘s all gone, an’ ye hev to go to work agin! Lordy massy, this ‘ere life don’t seem hardly wuth hevin’. I s’pose, Mr. Devenport, you ‘ve been among the gret folks o’ th’ earth, over there in King George’s court? Why, they say here that you ‘ve ben an’ tuk tea with the king, with his crown on ‘s head! I s’pose they all goes roun’ with their crowns on over there; don’t they?”
“Well, no, not precisely,” said Ellery Davenport “I think they rather mitigate their splendors when they have to do with us poor republicans, so as not to bear us down altogether.”
“Jes’ so,” said Sam, “like Moses, that put a veil over ‘s face ’cause th’ Israelites could n’t bear the glory.”
“Well,” said Ellery Davenport, “I ‘ve not been struck with any particular resemblance between King George and Moses.”
“The folks here ‘n Oldtown, Mr. Davenport, ‘s amazin’ curus to hear the partic’lars ’bout them grand things ‘t you must ha’ seen; I ‘s a tellin’ on ’em up to store how you ‘d ben with lords ‘n’ ladies ‘n’ dukes ‘n’ duchesses, ‘n’ seen all the kingdoms o’ the world, an’ the glory on ’em. I told ’em I did n’t doubt you ‘d et off ‘m plates o’ solid gold, an’ ben in houses where the walls was all a crust o’ gold ‘n’ diamonds ‘n’ precious stones, ‘n’ yit ye did n’t seem ter be one bit lifted up nor proud, so ‘t yer could n’t talk ter common folks. I s’pose them gret fam’lies they hes as much ‘s fifty ur a hunderd servants, don’t they?”
“Well, sometimes,” said Ellery Davenport.
“Wal, now,” said Sam “I sh’d think a man ‘d feel kind o’ curus, – sort o’ ‘s ef he was keepin’ a hotel, an’ boardin’ all the lower classes.”
“It is something that way, Sam,” said Ellery Davenport. “That ‘s one way of providing for the lower classes.”
“Jest what th’ Lord told th’ Israelites when they would hev a king,” said Sam. “Ses he, ‘He ‘ll take yer daughters to be confectioners ‘n’ cooks ‘n’ bakers, an’ he ‘ll take the best o’ yer fields ‘n’ yer vineyards ‘n’ olive-yards, an’ give ’em to his sarvints, an’ he ‘ll take a tenth o’ yer seed ‘n’ give ’em ter his officers, an’ he’ll take yer men-sarvints ‘n’ yer maid-sarvints, ‘n’ yer goodliest young asses, an’ put ’em ter his works.”
“Striking picture of monarchical institutions, Sam,” said Ellery Davenport.
“Wal, now, I tell ye what,” said Sam, slowly shaking his shimmering skillet of milk, “I should n’t want ter git inter that ere’ pie, unless I could be some o’ the top crust. It ‘s jest like a pile o’ sheepskins, –’s only the top un lies light. I guess th’ undermost one ‘s squeezed putty flat.”
“I ‘ll bet it is, Sam,” said Ellery Davenport, laughing.
“Wal,” said Sam, “I go for republics, but yit it ‘s human natur’ ter kind o’ like ter hold onter titles. Now over here a man likes ter be a deacon ‘n’ a cap’n ‘n’ a colonel in the military ‘n’ a sheriff ‘n’ a judge, ‘n’ all thet. Lordy massy, I don’t wonder them grand English folks sticks to their grand titles, an’ the people all kind o’ bows down to ’em, as they did to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image.”
“Why, Sam,” said Ellery Davenport, “your speculations on politics are really profound.”
“Wal,” said Sam, “Mr. Davenport, there ‘s one pint I want ter consult ye ’bout, an’ thet is, what the king o’ England’s name is. There ‘s Jake Marshall ‘n’ me, we ‘s argood that pint these many times. Jake ses his name is George Rix, – R-i-x, – an’ thet ef he ‘d come over here, he ‘d be called Mr. Rix. I ses to him, ‘Why, Jake, ‘t ain’t Rix, it ‘s Rex, an’ ‘t ain’t his name, it ‘s his title, ses I, – ’cause the boys told me thet Rex was Latin ‘n’ meant king; but Jake ‘s one o’ them fellers thet allers thinks he knows. Now, Mr. Devenport, I ‘d like to put it down from you ter him ’cause you ‘ve just come from the court o’ England an’ you ‘d know.”
“Well, you may tell your friend Jake that you are quite in the right,” said Ellery Davenport. “Give him my regards, and tell him he ‘s been mistaken.”
“But you don’t call the king Rex when ye speak to ‘im, d’ yer?” said Sam.
“Not precisely,” said Ellery Davenport.
“Mis’ Badger,” said Sam, gravely, “this ‘ere milk ‘s come to the bile, ‘n’ ef you ‘ll be so kind ‘s to hand me the sperits ‘n’ the sugar. I ‘ll fix this ‘ere. Hepsy likes her milk punch putty hot.”
“Well, Sam,” said my grandmother, as she handed him the bottle, “take an old woman’s advice, and don’t go stramming off another afternoon. If you ‘d been steady at your blacksmithin’, you might have earned enough money to buy all these things yourself, and Hepsy ‘d like it a great deal better.”
“I suppose it ‘s about the two hundred and forty-ninth time mother has told him that,” said Aunt Lois, with an air of weary endurance.
“Wal, Mis’ Badger,” said Sam, “‘all work an’ no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ ye know. I hes to recreate, else I gits quite wore out. Why, lordy massy, even a saw-mill hes ter stop sometimes ter be greased. ‘Tain’t everybody thet ‘s like Sphyxy Smith, but she grits and screeches all the time, jest ’cause she keeps to work without bein’ ‘iled. Why, she could work on, day ‘n’ night, these twenty years, ‘n’ never feel it. But, lordy massy, I gits so ‘xhausted, an’ hes sech a sinking ‘t my stomach, ‘n’ then I goes out ‘n’ kind o’ Injunin’ round, an’ git flag-root ‘n’ wintergreen ‘n’ spruce boughs ‘n’ gensing root ‘n’ sarsafrass ‘n’ sich fur Hepsy to brew up a beer. I ain’t a wastin’ my time ef I be enjoyin’ myself. I say it ‘s a part o’ what we ‘s made for.”
“You are a true philosopher, Sam,” said Ellery Davenport.
“Wal,” said Sam, “I look at it this ‘ere way, – ef I keep on a grindin’ and a grindin’ day ‘n’ night, I never shell hev nothin’, but ef I takes now ‘n’ then an arternoon to lie roun’ in the sun, I gits suthin’ ‘s I go ‘long. Lordy massy, it ‘s jest all the comfort I hes, kind o’ watchin’ the clouds ‘n’ the birds, ‘n’ kind o’ forgettin’ all ’bout Hepsy ‘n’ the children ‘n’ the blacksmithin’.”
“Well,” said Aunt Lois, smartly, “I think you are forgetting all about Hepsy and the children now, and I advise you to get that milk punch home as quick as you can, if it ‘s going to do her any good. Come, here ‘s a tin pail to put it into. Cover it up and do let the poor woman have some comfort as well as you!”
Sam received his portion in silence, and, with reluctant glances at the warm circle, went out into the night.
“I don’t see how you all can bear to listen to that man’s maundering!” said Aunt Lois. “He puts me out of all sort of patience. ‘Head of the woman’ to be sure! when Hepsy earns the most of what that family uses, except what we give ’em. And I know exactly how she feels; the poor woman is mad with shame and humiliation half the time at the charities he will accept from us.”
“O come, Miss Lois,” said Ellery Davenport, “you must take an aesthetic view of him. Sam ‘s a genuine poet in his nature, and poets are always practically useless. And now Sam ‘s about the only person in Oldtown, that I have seen, that has the least idea that life is meant, in any way, for enjoyment. Everybody else seems to be sword in hand, fighting against the possibility of future suffering, toiling and depriving themselves of all present pleasure, so that they may not come to want by and by. Now I ‘ve been in countries where the whole peasantry are like Sam Lawson.”
“Good gracious!” said Aunt Lois, “what a time they must have of it!”
“Well, to say the truth, there ‘s not much progress in such communities, but there is a great deal of clear, sheer animal enjoyment. And when trouble comes, it comes on them as it does on animals, unfeared and unforeseen, and therefore unprovided for.”
“Well,” said my grandmother, “you don’t think that is the way for rational and immortal creatures to live?”
“Well,” said Ellery Davenport, “taking into account the rational and immortal, perhaps not; but I think if we could mix the two races together it would be better. The Yankee lives almost entirely for the future, the Italian enjoys the present.”
“Well, but do you think it is right to live merely to enjoy the present?” persisted Aunt Lois.
“The eternal question!” said Ellery.” After all, who knows anything about it? What is right, and what is wrong? Mere geographical accidents! What is right for the Greenlander is wrong for me; what is right for me is wrong for the Hindoo. Take the greatest saint on earth to Greenland, and feed him on train oil and candles, and you make one thing of him; put him under the equator, with the thermometer at one hundred in the shade, and you make another.”
“But right is right and wrong is wrong,” said Aunt Lois, persistently, “after all.”
“I sometimes think,” said Ellery Davenport, “that right and wrong are just like color, mere accidental properties. There is no color where there ‘s no light, and a thing is all sorts of colors according to the position you stand in and the hour of the day. There ‘s your rocking-chair in the setting sun becomes a fine crimson, and in the morning comes out dingy gray. So it is with human actions. There ‘s nothing so bad that you cannot see a good side to it, nothing so good that you cannot see a bad side to it. Now we think it ‘s shocking for our Indian tribes, some of them, to slay their old people; but I ‘m not sure, if the Indian could set forth his side of the case, with all the advantages of our rhetoric, but that he would have the best of it. He does it as an act of filial devotion, you see. He loves and honors his father too much to let him go through all that horrid process of draining out life drop by drop that we think the thing to protract in our high civilization. For my part, if I were an Indian chief, I should prefer, when I came to be seventy, to be respectfully knocked on the head by my oldest son, rather than to shiver and drivel and muddle and cough my life out a dozen years more.”
“But God has given his commandments to teach us what is right,” said Aunt Lois. “‘Honor thy father and mother.”
“Precisely,” said Ellery; “and my friends the Sioux would tell you that they do honor their fathers and mothers by respectfully putting them out of the way when there is no more pleasure in living. They send them to enjoy eternal youth in the hunting-grounds of the fathers, you know.”
“Positively, Ellery,” said Tina, “I sha’ n’t have this sort of heathen stuff talked any longer. Why, you put one’s head all in a whirl and you know you don’t believe a word of it yourself. What ‘s the use of making everybody think you ‘re worse than you are?”
“My dear,” said Ellery, “there ‘s nothing like hearing all that can be said on both sides of subjects. Now there ‘s my good grandfather made an argument on the will, that is, and forever will remain, unanswerable, because he proves both sides of a flat contradiction perfectly; that method makes a logic-trap out of which no mortal can get his foot.”
“Well,” said my grandmother, “Mr. Davenport, if you ‘ll take an old woman’s advice, you ‘ll take up with your grandfather’s good resolutions, and not be wasting your strength in such talk.”
“I believe there were about seventy-five – or eighty, was it? – of those resolutions,” said Ellery.
“And you would n’t be the worse for this world or the next if you ‘d make them yourself,” said my grandmother.
“Thank you, madam,” said Ellery, bowing, “I ‘ll think of it.”
“Well, come,” said Tina, rising, “it ‘s time for us to go; and,” she said, shaking her finger warningly at Ellery Davenport, “I have a private lecture for you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, with a shrug of mock apprehension; “the preaching capacities of the fair sex are something terrific. I see all that is before me.”
They bade adieu, the fire was raked up in the great fireplace, all the members of the family went their several ways to bed, but Harry and I sat up in the glimmer and gloom of the old kitchen, lighted, now and then, by a sputtering jet of flame, which burst from the sticks. All round the large dark hearth the crickets were chirping as if life were the very merriest thing possible.
“Well, Harry,” I said, “you see the fates have ordered it just as I feared.”
“It is almost as much of a disappointment to me as it can be to you,” said Harry. “And it is the more so because I cannot quite trust this man.”
“I never trusted him,” said I. “I always had an instinctive doubt of him.”
“My doubts are not instinct,” said Harry, “they are founded on things I have heard him say myself. It seems to me that he has formed the habit of trifling with all truth, and that nothing is sacred in his eyes.”
“And yet Tina loves him,” said I. “I can see that she has gone to him heart and soul, and she believes in him with all her heart, and so we can only pray that he may be true to her. As for me, I can never love another. It only remains to live worthily of my love.”
CHAPTER XLIV.
MARRIAGE PREPARATIONS.
AND now for a time there was nothing thought of or talked of but marriage preparations and arrangements. Letters of congratulation came pouring in to Miss Mehitable from her Boston friends and acquaintances.
When Harry and I returned to college, we spent one day with our friends the Kitterys, and found it the one engrossing subject there, as everywhere.
Dear old Madam Kittery was dissolved in tenderness, and whenever the subject was mentioned reiterated all her good opinions of Ellery, and her delight in the engagement, and her sanguine hopes of its good influence on his spiritual prospects.
Miss Debby took the subject up energetically. Ellery Davenport was a near family connection, and it became the Kitterys to make all suitable and proper advances. She insisted upon addressing Harry by his title, notwithstanding his blushes and disclaimers.
“My dear sir,” she said to him, “it appears that you are an Englishman and a subject of his Majesty; and I should not be surprised, at some future day, to hear of you in the House of Commons; and it becomes you to reflect upon your position and what is proper in relation to yourself; and, at least under this roof, you must allow me to observe these proprieties, however much they may be disregarded elsewhere. I have already informed the servants that they are always to address you as Sir Harry, and I hope that you will not interfere with my instructions.”
“O certainly not,” said Harry. “It will make very little difference with me.”
“Now, in regard to this marriage,” said Miss Debby, “as there is no church in Oldtown, and no clergyman, I have felt that it would be proper in me, as a near kinswoman to Mr. Davenport, to place the Kittery mansion at Miss Mehitable Rossiter’s disposal, for the wedding.”
“Well, I confess,” said Harry, blushing, “I never thought but that the ceremony would be performed at home, by Parson Lothrop.”
“My dear Sir Harry!” said Miss Debby, laying her hand on his arm with solemnity, “consider that your excellent parents, Harry and Lady Percival, were both members of the Established Church of England, the only true Apostolic Protestant Church, – and can you imagine that their spirits, looking down from heaven, would be pleased and satisfied that their daughter should consummate the most solemn union of her life out of the Church? and in fact at the hands of a man who has never received ordination?”
It was with great difficulty that Harry kept his countenance during this solemn address. His blue eyes actually laughed, though he exercised a rigid control over the muscles of his face.
“I really had not thought about it at all, Miss Debby,” he said. “I think you are exceedingly kind.”
“And I ‘m sure,” said she, “that you must see the propriety of it now that it is suggested to you. Of course, a marriage performed by Mr. Lothrop would be a legal one, so far as the civil law is concerned; but I confess I always have regarded marriage as a religious ordinance, and it would be a disagreeable thing to me to have any connections of mine united merely by a civil tie. These Congregational marriages,” said Miss Debby, in a contemptuous voice, “I should think would lead to immorality. How can people feel as if they were married that don’t utter any vows themselves, and don’t have any wedding-ring put on their finger? In my view, it ‘s not respectable; and, as Mrs. Ellery Davenport will probably be presented in the first circles of England, I desire that she should appear there with her wedding-ring on, like an honest woman. I have therefore despatched an invitation to Miss Mehitable to bring your sister and spend the month preceding the wedding with us in Boston. It will be desirable for other reasons, as all the shopping and dressmaking and millinery work must be done in Boston. Oldtown is a highly respectable little village, but, of course, affords no advantages for the outfit of a person of quality, such as your sister is and is to be. I have had a letter from Lady Widgery this morning. She is much delighted, and sends congratulations. She always, she said, believed that you had distinguished blood in your veins when she first saw you at our house.”
There was something in Miss Debby’s satisfied, confiding faith in everything English and aristocratic that was vastly amusing to us. The perfect confidence she seemed to have that Harry Percival, after all the sins of his youth, had entered heaven ex officio as a repentant and glorified baronet, a member of the only True Church, was really naïve and affecting. What would a church be good for that allowed people of quality to go to hell, like the commonalty? Sir Harry, of course, repented, and made his will in a proper manner, doubtless received the sacrament and absolution, and left all human infirmities, with his gouty toes, under the family monument, where his body reposed in sure and certain hope of a blessed and glorious resurrection. The finding of his children under such fortunate circumstances was another evidence of the good Providence who watches over the fortunes of the better classes, and does not suffer the steps of good Churchmen to slide beyond recovery.
There were so many reasons of convenience for accepting Madam Kittery’s hospitable invitation, it was urged with such warmth and affectionate zeal by Madam Kittery and Miss Debby, and seconded so energetically by Ellery Davenport, to whom this arrangement would secure easy access to Tina’s society during the intervening time, that it was accepted.
Harry and I were glad of it, as we should thus have more frequent opportunities of seeing her. Ellery Davenport was refurbishing and refurnishing the old country house, where Harry and Tina had spent those days of their childhood which it was now an amusement to recall, and Tina was as gladly, joyously beautiful as young womanhood can be in which, as in a transparent vase, the light of pure love and young hope has been lighted.
“You like him, Horace, don’t you?” she had said to me, coaxingly, the first opportunity after the evening we had spent together. What was I to do? I did not like him, that was certain; but have you never, dear reader, been over-persuaded to think and say you liked where you did not? Have you not scolded and hushed down your own instinctive distrusts and heart-risings, blamed and schooled yourself for them, and taken yourself sharply to task, and made yourself acquiesce in somebody that was dear and necessary to some friend? So did I. I called myself selfish, unreasonable, foolish. I determined to be generous to my successful rival, and to like him. I took his frankly offered friendship, and I forced myself to be even enthusiastic in his praise. It was a sure way of making Tina’s cheeks glow and her eyes look kindly on me, and she told me so often that there no person in the world whose good opinion she had such a value for, and she was so glad I liked him. Would it not be perfectly abominable after this to let sneaking suspicions harbor in my breast?
Besides, if a man cannot have love, shall he therefore throw away friendship? and may I not love with the love of chivalry, – the love that knights dedicated to queens and princesses, the love that Tasso gave to Leonora D’Este, the love that Dante gave to Beatrice, love that hopes little and asks nothing?
I was frequently in at the Kittery house in leisure hours, and when, as often happened, Tina was closeted with Ellery Davenport, I took sweet counsel with Miss Mehitable.
“We all stand outside now, Horace,” she said. “I remember when I had the hearing of all these thousand pretty little important secrets of the hour that now must all be told in another direction. Such is life. What we want always comes to us with pain. I wanted Tina to be well married. I would not for the world she should marry without just this sort of love; but of course it leaves me out in the cold. I would n’t say this to her for the world, – poor little thing, it would break her heart.”
One morning, however, I went down and found Miss Mehitable in a very excited state. She complained of a bad headache, but she had all the appearance of a person who is constantly struggling with something which she is doubtful of the expediency of uttering.
At last, just as I was going, she called me into the library. “Come here, Horace,” she said; “I want to speak to you.”
I went in, and she made a turn or two across the room in an agitated way, then sat down at a table, and motioned me to sit down. “Horace, my dear boy,” she said, “I have never spoken to you of the deepest sorrow of my life, and yet it often seems to me as if you knew it.”
“My dear Aunty,” said I, for we had from childhood called her thus, “I think I do know it, – somewhat vaguely. I know about your sister.”
“You know how strangely, how unaccountably she left us, and that nothing satisfactory has ever been heard from her. I told Mr. Davenport all about her, and he promised to try to learn something of her in Europe. He was so successful in relation to Tina and Harry, I hoped he might learn something as to her; but he never seemed to. Two or three times within the last four or five years I have received letters from her, but without date, or any mark by which her position could be identified. They told me, in the vaguest and most general way, that she was well, and still loved me, but begged me to make no inquiries. They were always postmarked at Havre; but the utmost research gives no clew to her residence there.”
“Well?” said I.
“Well,” said Miss Mehitable, trembling in every limb, “yesterday, when Mr. Davenport and Tina had been sitting together in this room for a long time, they went out to ride. They had been playing at verse-making, or something of the kind, and there were some scattered papers on the floor, and I thought I would remove them, as they were rather untidy, and among them I found – ” she stopped, and panted for breath – “I found THIS!”
She handed me an envelope that had evidently been around a package of papers. It was postmarked Geneva, Switzerland, and directed to Ellery Davenport.
“Horace,” said Miss Mehitable, “that is Emily Rossiter’s handwriting; and look, the date is only two months back! What shall we do?”
There are moments when whole trains of thought go through the brain like lightning. My first emotion was, I confess, a perfectly fierce feeling of joy. Here was a clew! My suspicions had not then been unjust; the man was what Miss Debby had said, – deep, artful, and to be unmasked. In a moment I sternly rebuked myself, and thought what a wretch I was for my suspicions. The very selfish stake that I held in any such discovery imposed upon me, in my view, a double obligation to defend the character of my rival. I so dreaded that I should be carried away that I pleaded strongly and resolutely with myself for him. Besides, what would Tina think of me if I impugned Ellery Davenport’s honor for what might be, after all, an accidental resemblance in handwriting.
All these things came in one blinding flash of thought as I held the paper in my hands. Miss Mehitable sat, white and trembling, looking at me piteously.
“My dear Aunty,” I said, “in a case like this we cannot take one single step without being perfectly sure. This handwriting may accidentally resemble your sister’s. Are you perfectly sure that it is hers? It is a very small scrap of paper to determine by.”
“Well, I can’t really say,” said Miss Mehitable, hesitating. “It may be that I have dwelt on this subject until I have grown nervous and my very senses deceive me. I really cannot say, Horace; that was the reason I came to you to ask what I should do.”
“Let us look the matter over calmly, Aunty.”
“Now,” she said, nervously drawing from her pocket two or three letters and opening them before me, “here are those letters, and your head is cool and steady. I wish you would compare the writing, and tell me what to think of it.”
Now the letters and the directions were in that sharp, decided English hand which so many well-educated women write, and in which personal peculiarities are lost, to a great degree, in a general style. I could not help seeing that there was a resemblance which might strike a person, – especially a person so deeply interested, and dwelling with such intentness upon a subject, as Miss Mehitable evidently was.
“My dear Aunty,” said I, “I see a resemblance; but have you not known a great many ladies who wrote hands like this?”
“Yes, I must say I have,” said Miss Mehitable, still hesitating, – “only, somehow, this impressed me very strongly.”
“Well,” said I, “supposing that your sister has written to Ellery Davenport, may she not have intrusted him with communications under his promise of secrecy, which he was bound in honor not to reveal?”
“That may be possible,” said Miss Mehitable, sighing deeply, “but O, why should she not make a confidante of me?”
“It may be, Aunty,” said I, hesitatingly, “that she is living in relations that she feels could not be justified to you.”
“O Horace!” said Miss Mehitable.
“You know,” I went on, “that there has been a very great shaking of old established opinions in Europe. A great many things are looked upon there as open questions, in regard to morality, which we here in New England never think of discussing. Ellery Davenport is a man of the European world, and I can easily see that there may be circumstances in which your sister would more readily resort to the friendship of such a man than to yours.”
“May God help me!” said Miss Mehitable.
“My dear Aunty, suppose you find that your sister has adopted a false theory of life, sincerely and conscientiously, and under the influence of it gone astray from what we in New England think to be right. Should we not make a discrimination between errors that come from a wrong belief and the mere weakness that blindly yields to passion? Your sister’s letters show great decision and strength of mind. It appears to me that she is exactly the woman to be misled by those dazzling, unsettling theories with regard to social life which now bear such sway, and are especially propagated by French literature. She may really and courageously deem herself doing right in a course that she knows she cannot defend to you and Mr. Rossiter.”
“Horace, you speak out and make plain what has been the secret and dreadful fear of my life. I never have believed that Emily could have gone from us all, and stayed away so long, without the support of some attachment. And while you have been talking I have become perfectly certain that it is so; but the thought is like death to me.”
“My dear Aunty,” I said, “our Father above, who sees all the history of our minds, and how they work, must have a toleration and a patience that we have not with each other. He says that he will bring the blind by a way they knew not, and ‘make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight’; and he adds, ‘These things will I do unto them, and will not forsake them.’ That has always seemed to me the most godlike passage in the Bible.”
Miss Mehitable sat for a long time, leaning her head upon her hand.
“Then, Horace, you would n’t advise me,” she said, after a pause, “to say anything to Ellery Davenport about it?”
“Supposing,” said I, “that there are communications that he is bound in honor not to reveal, of what use could be your inquiries? It can only create unpleasantness; it may make Tina feel unhappy, who is so very happy now, and probably, at best, you cannot learn anything that would satisfy you.”
“Probably not,” said she, sighing.
“I can hand this envelope to him,” I said after a moment’s thought, “this evening, if you think best, and you can see how he looks on receiving it.”
“I don’t know as it will be of any use,” said Miss Mehitable, ‘but you may do it.”
Accordingly, that evening, as we were all gathered in a circle around the open fire, and Tina and Ellery, seated side by side, were carrying on that sort of bantering warfare of wit in which they delighted, I drew this envelope from my pocket and said, carelessly, “Mr. Davenport, here is a letter of yours that you dropped in the library this morning.”
He was at that moment playing with a silk tassel which fluttered from Tina’s wrist. He let it go, and took the envelope and looked at it carelessly.
“A letter!” said Tina, snatching it out of his hand with saucy freedom, – “dated at Geneva, and a lady’s handwriting! I think I have a right to open it!”
“Do so by all means,” said Ellery.
“O pshaw! there ‘s nothing in it,” said Tina.
“Not an uncommon circumstance in a lady’s letter,” said Ellery.
“You saucy fellow!” said Tina.
“Why,” said Ellery, “is it not the very province and privilege of the fair sex to make nothing more valuable and more agreeable than something? that ‘s the true secret of witchcraft.”
“But I sha’ n’t like it,” said Tina, half pouting, “if you call my letters nothing.”
“Your letters, I doubt not, will be an exception to those of all the sex,” said Ellery. “I really tremble, when I think how profound they will be!”
“You are making fun of me!” said she, coloring.
“I making fun of you? And what have you been doing with all your hapless lovers up to this time? Behold Nemesis arrayed in my form.”
“But seriously, Ellery, I want to know whom this letter was from?”
“Why don’t you look at the signature?” said he.
“Well, of course you know there is no signature, but I mean what came in this paper?”
“What came in the paper,” said Ellery, carelessly, “was, a neat little collection of Alpine flowers, that, if you are interested in botany, I shall have the honor of showing you one of these days.”
“But you have n’t told me who sent them,” said Tina.
“Ah, ha! we are jealous!” said he, shaking the letter at her. “What would you give to know, now? Will you be very good if I will tell you? Will you promise me for the future not to order me to do more than forty things at one time, for example?”
“I sha’ n’t make any promises,” said Tina; “you ought to tell me!”
“What an oppressive mistress you are!” said Ellery Davenport. “I begin to sympathize with Sam Lawson, – lordy massy, you dunno nothin’ what I undergo!”
“You don’t get off that way,” said Tina.
“Well,” said Ellery Davenport, “if you must know, it ‘s Mrs. Breck.”
“And who is she?” said Tina.
“Well, my dear, she was my boarding-house keeper at Geneva, and a very pretty, nice Englishwoman, – one that I should recommend as an example to her sex.”
“Oh!” said Tina, “I don’t care anything about it now.”
“Of course,” said Ellery. “Modest, unpretending virtue never excites any interest. I have labored under that disadvantage all my days.”
The by-play between the two had brought the whole circle around the fire into a careless, laughing state. I looked across to Miss Mehitable; she was laughing with the rest. As we started to go out, Miss Mehitable followed me into the passageway. “My dear Horace,” she said, “I was very absurd; it comes of being nervous and thinking of one thing too much.”
CHAPTER XLV.
WEDDING BELLS.
THE fourteenth of June was as bright a morning as if it had been made on purpose for a wedding-day, and of all the five thousand inauspicious possibilities which usually encumber weddings, not one fell to our share.
Tina’s dress, for example, was all done two days beforehand, and fitted to a hair; and all the invited guests had come, and were lodged in the spacious Kittery mansion.
Esther Avery was to stand as bridesmaid, with me as groomsman, and Harry, as nearest relative, was to give the bride away. The day before, I had been in and seen both ladies dressed up in the marriage finery, and we had rehearsed the situation before Harry, as clergyman, Miss Debby being present, in one of her most commanding frames of mind, to see that everything was done according to the Rubric. She surveyed Esther, while she took an approving pinch of snuff, and remarked to me, aside, “That young person, for a Congregational parson’s daughter, has a surprisingly distinguished air.”
Lady Widgery and Lady Lothrop, who were also in at the inspection, honored Esther with their decided approbation.
“She will be quite presentable at court,” Lady Widgery remarked. “Of course Sir Harry will wish her presented.”
All this empressement in regard to Harry’s rank and title, among these venerable sisters, afforded great amusement to our quartette, and we held it a capital joke among ourselves to make Esther blush by calling her Lady Percival, and to inquire of Harry about his future parliamentary prospects, his rent-rolls and tenants. In fact, when together, we were four children, and played with life much as we used to in the dear old days.
Esther, under the influence of hope and love, had bloomed out into a beautiful woman. Instead of looking like a pale image of abstract thought, she seemed like warm flesh and blood, and Ellery Davenport remarked, “What a splendid contrast her black hair and eyes will make to the golden beauty of Tina!”
All Oldtown respectability had exerted itself to be at the wedding. All, however humble, who had befriended Tina and Harry during the days of their poverty, were bidden. Polly had been long sojourning in the house, in the capacity of Miss Mehitable’s maid, and assisting assiduously in the endless sewing and fine laundry work which precedes a wedding.
On this auspicious morning she came gloriously forth, rustling in a stiff changeable lutestring, her very Sunday best, and with her mind made up to enter an Episcopal church for the first time in her life. There had, in fact, occurred some slight theological skirmishes between Polly and the High Church domestics of Miss Debby’s establishment, and Miss Mehitable was obliged to make stringent representations to Polly concerning the duty of sometimes repressing her testimony for truth under particular circumstances.
Polly had attended one catechising, but the shock produced upon her mind by hearing doctrines which seemed to her to have such papistical tendencies was so great that Miss Mehitable begged Miss Debby to allow her to be excused in future. Miss Debby felt that the obligations of politeness owed by a woman of quality to an invited guest in her own house might take precedence even of theological considerations. In this point of view, she regarded Congregationalists with a well-bred, compassionate tolerance, and very willingly acceded to whatever Miss Mehitable suggested.
Harry and I had passed the night before the wedding-day at the Kittery mansion, that we might be there at the very earliest hour in the morning, to attend to all those thousand and one things that always turn up for attention at such a time.
Madam Kittery’s garden commanded a distant view of the sea, and I walked among the stately alleys looking at that splendid distant view of Boston harbor, which seemed so bright and sunny, and which swooned away into the horizon with such an ineffable softness, as an image of eternal peace.
As I stood there looking, I heard a light footstep behind me, and Tina came up suddenly and spattered my cheek with a dewy rose that she had just been gathering.
“You look as mournful as if it were you that is going to be married!” she said.
“Tina!” I said, “you out so early too?”
“Yes, for a wonder. The fact was, I had a bad dream, and could not sleep. I got up and looked out of my window, and saw you here, Horace, so I dressed me quickly and ran down. I feel a little bit uncanny, – and eerie, as the Scotch say, – and a little bit sad, too, about the dear old days, Horace. We have had such good times together, – first we three, and then we took Esther in, and that made four; and now, Horace, you must open the ranks a little wider and take in Ellery.”
“But five is an uneven number,” said I; “it leaves one out in the cold.”
“O Horace! I hope you will find one worthy of you,” she said. “I shall have a place in my heart all ready for her. She shall be my sister. You will write to me, won’t you? Do write. I shall so want to hear of the dear old things. Every stick and stone, every sweetbrier-bush and huckleberry patch in Oldtown, will always be dear to me. And dear old precious Aunty, what ever set it into her good heart to think of taking poor little me to be her child? and it ‘s too bad that I should leave her so. You know, Horace, I have a small income all my own, and that I mean to give to Aunty.”
Now there were many points in this little valedictory of Tina to which I had no mind to respond, and she looked, as she was speaking, with tears coming in her great soft eyes, altogether too loving and lovely to be a safe companion to one forbidden to hold her in his arms and kiss her, and I felt such a desperate temptation in that direction that I turned suddenly from her. “Does Mr. Davenport approve such a disposition of your income?” said I, in a constrained voice.
“Mr. Davenport! Mr. High and Mighty,” she said, mimicking my constrained tone, “what makes you so sulky to me this morning?”
“I am not sulky, Tina, only sad,” I said.
“Come, come, Horace, don’t be sad,” she said, coaxingly, and putting her hand through my arm. “Now just be a good boy, and walk up and down with me here a few moments, and let me tell you about things.”
I submitted and let her lead me off passively. “You see, Horace,” she said, “I feel for poor old Aunty. Hers seems to me such a dry, desolate life; and I can’t help feeling a sort of self-reproach when I think of it. Why should I have health and youth and strength and Ellery, and be going to see all the beauty and glory of Europe, while she sits alone at home, old and poor, and hears the rain drip off from those old lilac-bushes? Oldtown is a nice place, to be sure, but it does rain a great deal there, and she and Polly will be so lonesome without me to make fun for them. Now, Horace, you must promise me to go there as much as you can. You must cultivate Aunty for my sake; and her friendship is worth cultivating for its own sake.”
“I know it,” said I; “I am fully aware of the value of her mind and character.”
“You and Harry ought both to visit her,” said Tina, “and write to her, and take her advice. Nothing improves a young man faster than such female friendship; it ‘s worth that of dozens of us girls.”
Tina always had a slight proclivity for sermonizing, but a chapter in Ecclesiastes, coming from little preachers with lips and eyes like hers, is generally acceptable.
“You know,” said Tina, “that Aunty has some sort of a trouble on her mind.”
“I know all about it,” said I.
“Did she tell you?”
“Yes,” said I, “after I had divined it.”
“I made her tell me,” said Tina. “When I came home from school, I determined I would not be treated like a child by her any longer, – that she should tell me her troubles, and let me bear them with her. I am young and full of hope, and ought to have troubles to bear. And she is worn out and weary with thinking over and over the same sad story. What a strange thing it is that that sister treats her so! I have been thinking so much about her lately, Horace; and, do you know? I had the strangest dream about her last night. I dreamed that Ellery and I were standing at the altar being married, and, all of a sudden, that lady that we saw in the closet and in the garret rose up like a ghost between us.”
“Come, come,” said I, “Tina, you are getting nervous. One should n’t tell of one’s bad dreams, and then one forgets them easier.”
“Well,” said Tina, “it made me sad to think that she was a young girl like me, full of hope and joy. They did n’t treat her rightly over in that Farnsworth family, – Miss Mehitable told me all about it. O, it was a dreadful story! they perfectly froze her heart with their dreary talk about religion. Horace, I think the most irreligious thing in the world is that way of talking, which takes away our Heavenly Father, and gives only a dreadful Judge. I should not be so happy and so safe as I am now, if I did not believe in a loving God.”
“Tina,” said I, “are you satisfied with the religious principles of Mr. Davenport?”
“I ‘m glad you asked me that, Horace, because Mr. Davenport is a man that is very apt to be misunderstood. Nobody really does understand him but me. He has seen so much of cant, and hypocrisy, and pretence of religion, and is so afraid of pretensions that do not mean anything, that I think he goes to the other extreme. Indeed, I have told him so. But he says he is always delighted to hear me talk on religion, and he likes to have me repeat hymns to him; and he told me the other day that he thought the Bible contained finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be got from all other books put together. Then he has such a wonderful mind, you know. Mr. Avery said that he never saw a person that appreciated all the distinctions of the doctrines more completely than he did. He does n’t quite agree with Mr. Avery, nor with anybody; but I think he is very far from being an irreligious man. I believe he thinks very seriously on all these subjects, indeed.”
“I am glad of it,” said I, half convinced by her fervor, more than half by the magic of her presence, and the touch of the golden curls that the wind blew against my cheek, – true Venetian curls, brown in the shade and gold in the sun. Certainly, such things as these, if not argument, incline man to be convinced of whatever a fair preacher says; and I thought it not unlikely that Ellery Davenport liked to hear her talk about religion. The conversation was interrupted by the breakfast-bell, which rung us in to an early meal, where we found Miss Debby, brisk and crisp with business and authority, apologizing to Lady Widgery for the unusually early hour, “but, really, so much always to be done in cases like these.”
Breakfast was hurried over, for I was to dress myself, and go to Mr. Davenport’s house, and accompany him, as groomsman, to meet Tina and Harry at the church door.
I remember admiring Ellery Davenport, as I met him this morning, with his easy, high-bred, cordial air, and with that overflow of general benevolence which seems to fill the hearts of happy bridegrooms on the way to the altar. Jealous as I was of the love that ought to be given to the idol of my knight-errantry, I could not but own to myself that Ellery Davenport was most loyally in love.