Evenings at Donaldson Manor
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Maria J. McIntosh >> Evenings at Donaldson Manor
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CHAPTER VI.
The entertainment of the evening gave its character to our conversation
on the following morning. It was a conversation too grave for
introduction into a work intended only to aid in the entertainment of
festive hours: it commenced with the English "poor-laws," and ended with
a discussion of the tenure of property in that land, and the wisdom of
our own republican fathers in abolishing entails--a subject affording a
fair opportunity to us Americans, to indulge a little in that
self-glorification which we are accused of loving so well.
"What a curious book would a 'History of Entails' be!" exclaimed Mr.
Arlington, "how full of the romance of life!"
"Romance!" ejaculated Annie.
"Yes, romance; for under this system, the poor man, whose life seemed
doomed to one unbroken struggle with fortune, for the necessaries of
existence, finds himself, by some unexpected casualty, the possessor of
rank, and of what seems to him boundless wealth."
"Ah, yes!" said I, "but you have given us only the bright side of the
picture. To make room for this stranger, whose only connection with the
house of which he has so unexpectedly become the head is probably that
preserved in genealogical tables, the daughters of the house, or their
children it may be, reared in luxury, must go forth to a life of
comparative privation. I met, some years ago, in one of my visits to the
Far West, a young Englishman, who--but I will read you the story of his
life, as I wrote it out soon after parting with him."
"Have you a picture of him, Aunt Nancy?" asked Robert Dudley.
"Yes, Robert," I replied with a smile, "but you must have patience, for
I shall neither show the picture nor tell the story till evening."
When we were assembled in the evening, Annie, with much ceremony, led me
to the high-backed arm-chair, which she called the Speaker's Chair, and
placed before me the small travelling desk, in which she knew my
manuscripts were kept. I unlocked it, and soon found the scroll of which
I was in search.
"But the picture, Aunt Nancy--where is the picture?" cried the eager
Robert.
"Here it is," I cried, as I loosened the ribbon with which the
manuscript was bound together, and produced a small engraving; a fancy
subject, however, rather than an actual portrait, and of no general
interest. The print was eagerly caught by Robert, and handed around the
circle, with exclamations of, "How handsome!" "What an exquisite
picture!" Mr. Arlington looked at it a moment, then, with a smiling
glance at me, handed it, without a word of comment, to Col. Donaldson.
"The impertinent puppy!" ejaculated the Colonel, "engrossed with his
hawk and his hound, and wearing such an insolent air of self-absorption
in the presence of a lady" (for the artist had introduced a lovely young
maiden in the scene). "Poor girl!" continued the Colonel; "if she were
in any way connected with him, I am not surprised that she should look
so sad and reproachful."
Mr. Arlington's smiling glance was again turned on me; and I met it with
a hearty laugh.
"Indeed, Aunt Nancy," said the Colonel, who seemed strangely annoyed at
my laughter, "I think your friend does you little credit, and I can
only hope that he had some of these lordly airs drubbed out of him at
the West."
As Col. Donaldson spoke he threw down the engraving which he had held,
and pushed his chair from the table.
"I assure you, sir," I replied, "my friend has as few lordly airs as it
is possible to conceive in one born to such lordly circumstances. It was
not my intention to impose on you that picture as an actual likeness of
him--though had you ever seen him I might easily have done so, as it
really resembles him very much in his personal traits."
"Well, I am glad he did not sit for this picture," said Col. Donaldson;
"now I can listen to your story with some pleasure."
"Thank you; you must first take some reflections suggested to me by the
incidents I have here narrated. Of the character of these reflections,
you will form some conception from the title I have given to the tale
into which I have interwoven them. I have called it
"LIFE IN AMERICA."
"Men and Manners in America" was the comprehensive title of a book
issued some fifteen or twenty years ago, by a gentleman from Scotland,
to whom, we fear, Americans have never tendered the grateful
acknowledgments he deserved for his disinterested efforts to teach
them to eat eggs properly, and to give due time to the mastication of
their food. This benevolently instructive work was the precursor of a
host of others on the same topics, and others of a kindred character.
America has been the standard subject for the trial essays of European
tyros in philosophy, political economy, and book-making in general.
Society in America has been presented, it would seem, in all its
aspects--religious, educational, industrial, political, commercial, and
fashionable. Our schools and our prisons, our churches and our theatres,
have been in turn the subject of investigation, of unqualified censure,
and of scarcely less unqualified laudation.
The subject thus dissected, put together, and dissected again, has
not been able to restrain some wincing and an occasional outcry,
when the scalpel has been held by a more than usually unskilful
hand--demonstrations of sensibility which have occasioned apparently as
much disapprobation as surprise in the anatomists. We flatter ourselves
that there is peculiar fitness in the metaphor just used, for the outer
form only of American life has been touched by these various writers.
Its spirit, that which gives to it its peculiar organization, has evaded
them as completely as the soul of man evades the keenest investigations
of the dissecting room. Even of the seat of the spirit--of the point
whence it sends forth its subtle influences, giving activity and
direction to every member--of the HOMES of America, they have little
real knowledge. The anatomist--the reader will pardon the continuation
of a figure so illustrative of our meaning--the anatomist knows that not
only can he never hope to lay his finger upon the principle of life, but
that ere he can pry into those cells in which its mysterious processes
are evolved, they must have been dismantled of all that could have
guided him to any certain deductions respecting its nature and mode of
action. And seldom is the eye of the stranger, never that of the
professed bookmaker, suffered to rest upon our homes till they have
undergone changes that will as completely baffle his penetration. Nor is
this always designedly. It is from a delicate instinct which shrinks
from subjecting its most sacred and touching emotions to the rude gaze
and ruder comment of the world.
We have been led to these observations by certain events of which we
have lately become informed, and which we would here record, as
illustrative of some peculiarities of social life in America, and
especially of the new development of character manifested by women under
the influence of these peculiarities.
The ringing of bells, the firing of cannon, the huzzaing of the
assembling multitude on the announcement in London of the victory of
Waterloo, must have seemed a bitter mockery to many a heart, mad with
the first sharp agony of bereavement. "The few must suffer that the many
may rejoice," say the statesman and the warrior while they plan new
conquests. It may be so, but we have at present to do with the
sufferings of the few.
On the list of the killed in that battle appeared the name of Horace
Danforth, Captain in the 41st Regiment of Infantry. It was a name of
little note, but there was one to whom it was the synonyme of all that
gave beauty or gladness to life; and ere the bells had ceased to sound,
or the eager crowd to huzza, her heart was still. With her last
quivering sigh had mingled the wail of a new-born infant.
Thus was Horace Maitland Danforth ushered into life. He had been born at
the house of his maternal uncle, Sir Thomas Maitland, and as his mother
had been wholly dependent on this gentleman, and his father had been a
soldier of fortune, leaving to his son no heritage but his name, he
continued there, as carefully reared and tenderly regarded as though he
had been the heir to Maitland Park and to all its dependencies. Though
Sir Thomas had, for many years after the birth of his nephew intended to
marry, it was an intention never executed, and when Horace attained his
twenty-first birthday, his majority was celebrated as that of his
uncle's heir, and as such he was presented by Sir Thomas Maitland to his
assembled tenantry. Soon after this event, the Baronet obtained for his
nephew a right to the name and arms of Maitland--a measure to which,
knowing little of his father's family, Horace readily consented. Sir
Thomas Maitland died suddenly while yet in the prime of life, and was
succeeded by Sir Horace, then twenty-four years of age. In the
enjoyments of society, of travel, and of those thousand luxuries, mental
and physical, which fortune secures, three years passed rapidly away
with the young, handsome, and accomplished Baronet.
One of the earliest convictions of Horace Maitland's life had been, that
the refining presence of woman was necessary to the perfection of
Maitland Park, and when Sir Thomas said to him, "Marry, Horace--do not
be an old bachelor like your uncle"--though he answered nothing, he
vowed in the inmost recesses of his heart that it should not be his
fault if he did not obey the injunction. Yet to the world it seemed
wholly his own fault that at twenty-seven he had not given to Maitland
Park a mistress, and even he himself could not attribute his continued
celibacy to the coldness or cruelty of woman; for, in truth, though he
had "knelt at many a shrine," he had "laid his heart on none." If hardly
pressed for his reason, he might have said with Ferdinand,--
"For several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she own'd,
And put it to the foil."
He who after the death of his uncle continued to urge Sir Horace most on
the subject of matrimony, was the one of all the world who might have
been supposed least desirous to see him enter into its bonds. This was
Edward Maitland, a distant cousin, somewhat younger than himself, to
whom he had been attached from his boyhood, and who had been saved by
his generosity from many of those painful experiences to which a very
narrow income would otherwise have subjected him. It had more than once
been suggested to Edward Maitland, that should his cousin die
unmarried, he might not unreasonably hope to become his heir, as he was
supposed to be uncontrolled by any entail in the disposal of his
property, and had few nearer relations than himself, and none with whom
he maintained such intimate and affectionate intercourse. Nor could
Edward Maitland fail to perceive that his own value in society was in an
inverse ratio to the chances of the Baronet's marrying, as a report of
an actual proposal on the part of the latter had more than once
occasioned a visible declension in the number and warmth of his
invitations. These considerations appeared, however, only to stimulate
the young man's activity in the search of a wife for his cousin. Had he
been employed by a marriage broker with a prospect of a liberal
commission, he could hardly have been more indefatigable.
"Well, Horace," exclaimed the younger Maitland, as the two sat loitering
over a late London breakfast one morning, "how did you like the lady to
whom I introduced you last evening?"
A smile lighted the eyes of Sir Horace as he replied, "Very much,
Ned--she is certainly intelligent, and has read and thought more than
most ladies of her age."
"She will make a capital manager, I am sure."
"And an agreeable companion," added Sir Horace.
"And a good wife--do you not think so, Horace?"
"She doubtless would be to one who could fancy her, Ned; for me her
style is a little too _prononce_."
"Well, really, Horace, I cannot imagine what you would have. One woman
is too frivolous--another wants refinement--one is too indolent and
exacting--and when you can make no other objection, why her style is a
little too _prononce_"--the last words were given with ludicrous
imitation of his cousin's tone. "If an angel were to descend from heaven
for you, I doubt if you would be suited."
"So do I," replied Horace, with a gay laugh at his cousin's evident
vexation.
And thus did he meet all Edward's well-intended efforts. The power of
choice had made him fastidious, and his life of luxury and freedom had
brought him no experiences of the need of another and gentler self as a
consoler. But that lesson was approaching.
A call from his lawyer for some papers necessary to complete an
arrangement in which he was much interested, had sent Sir Horace to
Maitland Park, in the midst of the London season, to explore the yet
unfathomed recesses of an old _escritoire_ of Sir Thomas. He had been
gone but two days when Edward received the following note from him,
written, as it seemed, both in haste and agitation:--
"Come to me immediately on the receipt of this, dear Edward. I have
found here a paper of the utmost importance to you as well as to me.
Come quickly--take the chariot and travel post.
"Yours, H. D. MAITLAND."
In less than an hour after the reception of this note Edward Maitland
was on the road: and travelling with the utmost expedition, he arrived
at Maitland Park just as the day was fading into dusky eve.
"How is Sir Horace?" he asked of the man who admitted him.
"I do not think he seems very well, sir. You will find him in the
library, Mr. Edward--shall I announce you, sir?"
"No;" and with hurried steps and anxious heart Edward Maitland trod the
well-known passages leading to the library.
When he entered that room, Sir Horace was standing at one of its windows
gazing upon the landscape without, and so absorbed was he that he did
not move at the opening of the door. Edward spoke, and starting, he
turned towards him a face haggard with some yet untold suffering. He
advanced to meet his cousin, and with an almost convulsive grasp of the
hand, said, "I am glad you have come, Edward,"--then, without heeding
the anxious inquiries addressed to him by Edward, he rang the bell, and
ordered lights in a tone which caused them to be brought without a
moment's delay. As soon as the servant who had brought them had left the
room, Horace resumed: "Now, Edward, here is the paper of which I wrote
to you; read it at once."
Agitated by his cousin's manner, Edward took the old stained paper from
him without a word, and seating himself near the lights, began to read,
while Sir Horace stood just opposite him, eyeing him intently. In a very
few minutes Edward looked up with a puzzled air and said, "I do not
understand one word of it. What does it all mean, Horace?"
"It means that you are Sir Edward Maitland--that you are master
here--and that I am a beggar."
"Horace, you are mad!" exclaimed the young man, starting from his chair,
with quivering limbs and a face from which every trace of color had
departed.
Hitherto the tone in which Sir Horace had spoken, the alternate flush
and pallor on his face, and the shiver that occasionally passed over his
frame, had shown him to be fearfully excited; but as Edward became
agitated, all these signs of emotion passed away, and with wonderful
calmness taking the paper in his hand, he commenced reading that part of
it which explained its purpose. This was to secure the descent of the
baronetcy of Maitland and the property attached to it in the male line.
Having made Edward Maitland comprehend this purpose, Sir Horace drew
towards him a genealogical table of their family, and showed him that he
was himself the only living descendant in a direct line through an
unbroken succession of males from the period at which this entail was
made.
"And now, Edward," he said in conclusion, "I am prepared to give up
every thing to you. That you have so long been defrauded of your rights
has been through ignorance on my part, and equal ignorance, I am
convinced, on the part of my uncle. You know he paid little attention to
business, leaving it wholly to his agents. I have often heard him
express a wish to examine the papers in the old _escritoire_ in which I
found this deed, saying that they had been sent home by old Harris when
he gave up his business to his nephew--the old man writing to my uncle,
that as they consisted of leases that had fallen in, or of antiquated
deeds, they were no longer of any value except as family records. It was
a just Providence that led me to that _escritoire_, to search for the
missing title-deeds of the farm I was about to sell."
Edward Maitland had sunk into his chair from sheer inability to stand,
and for several minutes after his cousin had ceased speaking, he still
sat, with his elbows resting on the table before him, and his face
buried in his clasped hands. At length looking up, he said, "Horace, let
us burn this paper and forget it."
"Forget! that is impossible, Edward."
"Why?--why not live as we have done? You speak of defrauding me, but
what have I wanted that you had? Has not your purse been as my own? Your
home--has it not been mine? It shall be so still. We shall share the
fortune, and as to the title, you will wear it more gracefully than I."
"Dear Edward! Such proof of your generous affection ought to console me
for all changes, and it shall. I will confess to you that I have
suffered, but it is past. My people----" his voice faltered, his chest
heaved, and turning away he walked more than once across the room before
he resumed--"they are mine no longer--but you will be kind to them,
Edward, I know."
"Horace, you will drive me mad!" cried Edward Maitland. "Promise, I
conjure you, promise me to say nothing more of this."
He threw himself as he spoke into his cousin's arms with an agitation
which Horace vainly sought to soothe, until he promised "to _speak_" no
further on this subject at present to any one. Satisfied with this
promise, and exhausted by the emotions of the last hour, Edward soon
retired to his own room. It was long before he slept, and had he not
been in a distant part of the house, he would have heard the hurried
steps with which, for many an hour after he was left alone, Sir Horace
Maitland continued to pace the floor of the dimly lighted library. The
clock was on the stroke of three when he seated himself and began the
following letter:
DEAR EDWARD:--I must go, and at once. I cannot without the loss of
self-respect continue to play the master here another day, neither can I
live as a dependent within these walls--no, not for an hour. Do not
attempt to follow me, for I will not see you. I will write to you as
soon as I arrive at my point of destination--I know not yet where that
will be. Feel no anxiety about me. I shall take with me a thousand
pounds, and will leave an order for Decker to receive from you and hold
subject to my draft whatever sum may accrue from the sale, at a fair
valuation, of Sir Thomas Maitland's personal property, which he had an
undoubted right to will as he pleased, the amount of the mesne rents
expended by me during the last three years having been deducted
therefrom. Do not attempt to force favors upon me, Edward--I cannot bear
them now. Such attempts would only compel me to cut myself loose from
you and your affection--the one blessing that earth still holds for me.
My trunks have been packed two days, for my first resolve was to go
from this place and from England. I shall take the chariot in which you
came down and fresh horses, but I will send them back to you from
London.
God bless you, Edward. I dare not speak of my feelings to you now, lest
I should lose the strength and self-command I need so much. God bless
you.
H. D. MAITLAND.
Stealthily did Sir Horace move through the wide halls and ascend the
lofty stairs of this home of his life, feeling at every step the rushing
tide of memory conflicting with the sad thought that he was treading
them for the last time. Having reached his sleeping apartments, he rang
a bell which he knew would summon his own man. Rapidly as the man moved,
the time seemed long to him ere the summons was obeyed, and he had given
the necessary orders to have the carriage prepared and the trunks
brought down as soon as possible, "and as quietly," he added, "as he did
not wish to disturb Mr. Edward, who had retired to bed late."
"Will you not take breakfast, sir, before you set out?" asked the man.
"No, John. Let the carriage follow me. I shall walk on. Be quick, and
make no noise."
A faint streak of light was just beginning to appear in the east, when
the heretofore master of that lordly mansion went out into a world which
held for him no other home. ACCIDENT, as short-sighted mortals name
events controlled by no human will, decided whither he should direct his
course from London. He had called at his lawyer's--the already mentioned
"nephew of old Harris"--determined to communicate his discovery to him,
perhaps with some faint hope of learning that the entail had been in
some way set aside, before Sir Thomas had ventured to make his sister's
son his heir. Mr. Decker was not in his rooms, and sitting down to wait
for him he took up mechanically the morning paper that lay on his table.
The first thing on which his eye rested was the advertisement of a steam
packet about to sail from Liverpool for America.
"America; the very place for me. I shall meet no acquaintances there,"
was the thought which flashed through his mind. Another glance at the
paper of the day and hour of the packet's sailing, an examination of his
watch, an impatient look from the window up and down the street, and
again he mused, "I have not a moment to spare, and if I wait for Decker
I may be kept for hours, and so lose the packet; and why should I wait?
Have I not seen the deed? This indecision is folly."
The result of these reflections was a note rapidly written to Mr.
Decker, stating his discovery of the deed of entail, his consequent
surrender of all claim to the property to Edward Maitland, and his
determination to quit England immediately. All arrangements respecting
the settlement of his claims on the estate, and the claims of the
present proprietor upon him, he left to Sir Edward and Mr. Decker,
empowering the latter to receive and retain for his use and subject to
his order, whatever, on such a settlement, should appertain to him.
This note was left on Mr. Decker's table, and in one hour after leaving
his office Horace Maitland was advancing to Liverpool with the rapidity
of steam. The packet waited but the arrival of the train in which he was
a passenger, to leave the shores of England. With what bitterness he
watched those receding shores, while memory wrote upon his bare and
bleeding heart the record of joys identified with them, and fading like
them for ever from his life, let each imagine for himself, for to such
emotions no language can do justice.
A voyage across the Atlantic is now too common an event to stay, even
for a moment, the pen of a narrator. From Boston, Horace--no longer Sir
Horace--wrote to his cousin as follows--
DEAR EDWARD--Here I am among the republicans, with whom I may flatter
myself I have lost nothing by sinking Sir Horace Maitland into plain Mr.
Danforth. Such is now my address, assumed not from fear that in this
distant quarter of the world I shall meet any to whom the name of
Maitland is familiar but because much of which I do not desire to be
reminded is associated with that came. I said to you when leaving my
home, dear Edward, "Do not fear for me." I can now repeat this with
better reason. The first stunning shock of the change to which I was so
suddenly subjected has been borne. My past life already seems to me as a
dream from which I have been rudely but effectually awakened. I am now
first to begin life in reality.
The accident which determined me to seek these shores was a happy one. I
cannot well dream here where all around me is active, vigorous life. We
are accustomed in England to think of the American shores as the Ultima
Thule in a western direction, but when we reach these shores we find
that the movement is still west. The daily papers are filled with
accounts of persons migrating west, and thither am I going. "The world
is all before me where to choose" the theatre of my new life--my life of
work---and I would have it far from the blue sea, out of hearing of the
murmur of the waves that lave my island home. I will go where the wide
prairies sweep away on every side of the horizon--where every link with
other lands will be severed, and America below and Heaven above
constitute my universe. "You will find no society at the West," has been
said to me. This is another attraction to that region. I would work out
my destiny in solitude. I desire to travel without company, and have
made my arrangements accordingly. I have purchased three substantial
horses for a little more than one hundred pounds, and have engaged a
shrewd, active lad as groom, valet, and he seems to think, companion,
at about two pounds per month. A very light carriage, sometimes driven
by my servant and sometimes by myself, will transport the moderate
wardrobe which I shall deem it necessary to take with me to the
outermost verge of civilization and good roads, where leaving carriage
and wardrobe, or at least all of the latter which may not be borne by a
led-horse, I shall penetrate still further into the old forests of this
New World. I long to be alone with "Nature's full, free
heart"--perchance, there, my own may beat as of yore.
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