The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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During the next term, the friendship grew and strengthened. Everett's
influence was working for good, and Barclay was in earnest addressing
himself to study. He accompanied Everett to his home at the long
vacation. And it ought to have surprised nobody who was acquainted with
the _rationale_ of such affairs, that the principal event of that golden
holiday-summer was the falling in love with each other of Everett's
sister and Everett's friend. Agnes was the only daughter and special
pride of a rich and well-born man. Barclay was of plebeian birth, with
nothing in the world to depend on but his own talents, which he had
abused, and the before-named patrimony, which was already nearly
exhausted. It will at once be seen that there could hardly be a more
felicitous conjunction of circumstances to make everybody miserable by
one easy, natural step; and the step was duly taken. Of course, the
young people fell in love immediately,--Everett, the Dreamer, looking on
with a sort of reverent interest that was almost awe; for the very
thought of love thrilled him with a sense of new and strange
life,--unknown, unguessed of, as heaven itself, but as certain, and
hardly less beautiful. So he watched the gradual progress of these two,
who were passing through that which was so untrodden a mystery to him.
If he ever thought about their love in a more definite way, it was--oh,
the Visionary!--to congratulate himself and everybody concerned. He saw
nothing but what was most happy and desirable in it all. He knew no one
so worthy of Agnes as Barclay, whom, in spite of all his faults, he
believed to be one of the noblest and greatest of men; and he felt sure
that all that was wanting to complete and solidify his character was
just this love for a good, high-souled woman, which would arouse him to
energy and action, sustain and encourage him through all difficulties,
and make life at once more precious and more sacred.

Unfortunately, other members of the family, who were rational beings,
and looked on life in a practical and sensible manner, were very
differently affected by the discovery of this attachment. In brief,
there ensued upon the _eclaircissement_ much storm on one side, much
grief on the other, and keen pain to all,--to none more than to Everett.
Our Visionary's heart swelled hotly with alternate indignation and
tenderness, as he knew his friend was forbidden the house, heard his
father's wrathful comments upon him, and saw his bright sister Agnes
broken down by all the heaviness of a first despair. You may imagine his
passionate denunciation of the spirit of worldliness, which would, for
its own mean ends, separate those whom the divine sacrament of Love had
joined together. No less easily may be pictured the angry, yet
half-compassionate reception of his vehemence, the contemptuous wave of
the hand with which the stern old banker deprecated discussion with one
so ignorant of the world, so utterly incapable of forming a judgment on
such a question, as his son. His mother sat by, during these scenes,
trembling and grieved. It was not in her meek nature to take part
_against_ either husband or son. She strove to soothe, to soften each in
turn,--with but little effect, it may be added. For all he was so gentle
and so loving, Everett was not to be persuaded or influenced in this
matter. He took up his friend's cause and withstood all antagonism,
resisted all entreaties to turn him from his fealty thereto.

Ay, and he bore up against what was harder yet to encounter than all
these. Charles Barclay's was one of those natures which, being
miserable, are apt to become desperate. To such men, affliction seems to
be torture, but no discipline. But our humanity perceives from a level,
and therefore a short-sighted point of view. We may well be thankful
that the Great Ruler sees above and around and on all sides the
creatures to be governed, the events to be disposed.

Charles Barclay went to London. One or two brief and most miserable
letters Everett received from him,--then _all_ a blank silence.
Everett's repeated appeals were unanswered, unnoticed. It might have
been as if Death had come between and separated these lovers and
friends, except that by indirect means they learned that he was alive
and still in London. At length came more definite tidings, and the
brother and sister knew that this Charles Barclay, whom they loved so
well, had plunged into a reckless life, as into a whirlpool of
destruction,--that he was among those associates, of high rank socially,
of nearly the lowest morally, whom he had formerly known at college.
Here was triumph for the prudent father,--desolation to the loving
woman,--and to Everett, what? Pain, keen pain, and bitter anxiety,--but
no quailing of the heart. He had too much faith in his friend for that.

He went after him to London,--he penetrated to him, and would not be
denied. He braved his assumed anger and forced violence; he had the
courage of twenty lions, this Visionary, in battling with the devils
that had entered into the spirit of his friend. The struggle was fierce
and lengthened. Love conquered at last, as it always does, could we so
believe. And during the time of utter depression into which the
mercurial nature then relapsed, Everett cheered and sustained him,--till
the young man's soul seemed melted within him, and the surrender to the
good influence was as absolute as the resistance had been passionate.

"What have I done, what am I," he would oftentimes say, "that I should
be saved and sustained and _loved_ by you, Everett?" For, truly, he
looked on him as no less than an angel, whom God had sent to succor him.
It was one of those problems the mystery of which is most sacred and
most sweet. In proportion as the erring man needed it, Everett's love
grew and deepened and widened, and his influence strengthened with it
almost unconsciously to himself. He was too humble to recognize all that
he was to his friend.

Meanwhile, imagine the turmoil at home, in respect of Everett's absence,
and the errand which detained him. No disguise was sought. The son wrote
to his mother frankly, stating where he was, and under what
circumstances. He received a missive from his father of furious
remonstrance; he replied by one so firm, yet so loving withal, that old
Mr. Gray could not choose but change his tone to one of angry
compassion. "The boy believes he's doing right. Heaven send him a little
sense!" was all he could say.

But there came a yet more overwhelming evidence of Everett's utter
destitution of that commodity. A mercantile appointment was offered to
Charles Barclay in one of the colonies, and Everett advanced the large
sum necessary to enable his friend to accept it. To do this, he
sacrificed the whole of what he possessed independently of his father,
namely, a legacy left to him by his uncle, over which he had full
control. It must be years before he could be repaid, of course,--it
might be never! But, rash as was the act, he could not be hindered from
doing it. His father raged and stormed, and again subsided into gloomy
resignation. Henceforth he would wonder at nothing, for his son was mad,
unfit to take part in the world. "A mere visionary, and no man," the
hapless parent said, whenever he alluded to him.

When Everett returned, Charles Barclay was on his way to Canada,
vigorously intent on the new life before him. Agnes drew strength and
comfort from the steadfast look of her brother's eyes, as he whispered
to her, "Don't fear. Trust God, and be patient." The blight fell away
from her, after that. If she was never a light-hearted girl again, she
became something even sweeter and nobler. They never talked together
about him, for the father had forbidden it; and, indeed, they needed
not. Openly, and before them all, Everett would say when he heard from
his friend. And so the months passed on.

Then came the era in our Visionary's life,--an era, indeed, to such as
he!--the first love. First love,--and last,--to him it was nothing less
than fateful. It was his nature to be steadfast and thorough. He could
no more have _transferred_ the love that rose straightly and purely from
the very innermost fire of his soul than he could have changed the soul
itself. Not many natures are thus created with the inevitable necessity
to be constant. Few among women, fewer yet among men, love as Everett
Gray loved Rosa Beauchamp.

When they became aware of this love, at his home, there ensued much
marvelling. Mr. Gray cordially congratulated himself, with wonder and
pleasure, to think that actually his mad boy should have chosen so
reasonably. Captain Gray, home on leave, observed that Old Everett
wasn't such a flat as he seemed, by Jove! to select the daughter of an
ancient house, and a wealthy house, like the Beauchamps of Hollingsley.
The alliance was in every way honorable and advantageous. The family was
one of the most influential in the county; and a lady's being at the
head of it--for Sir Ralph Beauchamp had died many years before, when his
eldest son was but a child, and Lady Beauchamp had been sole regent over
the property ever since--made it all the pleasanter. Everett, if he
chose, might be virtual master of Beauchamp; for the young baronet was
but a weak, good-natured boy, whom any one might lead. Everett had
displayed first-rate generalship. "These simple-seeming fellows are
often deeper than most people," argued the soldier, wise in his
knowledge of the world; "you may trust them to take care of themselves,
when it comes to the point. Everett's a shrewd fellow."

The father rubbed his hands, and was delighted to take this view of the
case. He should make something of his son and heir in time. Often as he
had regretted that Richard was not the elder, on whom it would rest to
keep up the distinction and honor of the family, he began to see an
admirable fitness in things as they were. Everett was, after all, better
suited for the career that lay before him, in which he trusted he would
not need that knowledge of mankind and judgment on worldly matters that
were indispensable to those who had to carve their own way in life. "It
is better as it is," thought the father, unconscious that he was echoing
such an unsubstantial philosophy as a poet's.

And so the first days of Everett's love were as cloudless and divinely
radiant as a summer dawn. But events were gathering, like storm-clouds,
about the house of Gray. Disaster, most unforeseen, was impending over
this family. For Mr. Gray, though, as we have said, a practical and
matter-of-fact man, and having neither sympathy nor patience with
"visionary schemes or ideas," had yet, as practical men will do,
indulged in divers speculations during his life, in one of which he had
at last been induced to embark to the utmost extent. Of course, it
seemed safe and reasonable enough, even to the banker's shrewd eyes;
but, nevertheless, it proved as delusive and destructive as any that
ever led a less worldly man astray. The fair-seeming bubble burst, and
the rich man of one day found himself on the morrow virtually reduced to
beggary. All he had had it in his power to risk was gone, and
liabilities remained to the extent of twice as much. The crash came, the
bank stopped payment, and the unhappy man was stricken to the dust. He
never lifted up his head again. The shrewd man of the world utterly
succumbed beneath this blow of fate; it killed him. Old Mr. Gray died of
that supposed disease, a broken heart,--leaving a legacy of ruin, or
the alternative of disgrace, to his heir.

The reins of government thus fell into Everett's hands. "The poor Grays!
it's all over with them!" said the pitying world. And, indeed, the way
in which the young man proceeded to arrange his father's affairs savored
no less of the Visionary than had every action of his life theretofore.
Captain Gray, who hastened home from his gay quarters in Dublin, on the
disastrous news reaching him, found his brother already deeply engaged
with lawyers, bills, and deeds.

"You know, Richard, there is but one thing to be done," he said, in his
usual simple, earnest way; "we must cut off the entail, and sell the
property to pay my father's debts. It is a hard thing to do,--to part
with the old place; but it would be worse, bitterer pain and crueler
shame, to hold it, with the money that, whatever the worldly code of
morality may say, is not _ours_. There must be no widows and orphans
reduced to poverty through us. Thank God, there will be enough produced
by the sale of the estate to clear off every liability,--to the last
shilling. You feel with me in this matter?" he went on, confidently
appealing to his brother; yet with a certain inflection of anxiety in
his voice. It would have wounded Everett cruelly, had he been
misunderstood or rebuffed in this. "You have your commission, and Uncle
Everett's legacy, and the reversion of my mother's fortune, which will
not be touched. This act of justice, therefore, can injure no one."

"Except yourself,--yourself, old fellow," said Richard, moved, in spite
of his light nature. He grasped his brother's hand. "It's a noble thing
to do; but have you considered how it will affect your future? You, with
neither fortune nor profession,--how do you propose to live? And your
marriage,--the Beauchamps will never consent to Rosa becoming the wife
of a--a"----

"Not a beggar, Richard," Everett said, smiling, "if that was the word
you hesitated about; no, I shall be no beggar. I have plans for my own
future;--you shall know of them. Our marriage will, of course, be
delayed. I must work, to win a home and position for my wife." He
paused,--looked up bravely,--"It is no harder fate than falls to most
men. And for Rosa,--true love, true woman as she is, she helps me, she
encourages me in all I do and purpose."

Captain Gray shrugged his shoulders. "Two mad young people!" he thought
to himself. "They never think of consequences, and it's of no use
warning them, I suppose."

No. It would have been useless to "warn" or advise Everett against doing
this thing, which he held to be simply his duty. And it was the
characteristic of our Visionary, that, when he saw a Duty so placed
before him, he knew no other course than straightly to pursue it,
looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, unprevented by
obstacles, and fearless of consequences.

So in this case. His brother advised a temporizing course,--to mortgage
the estate, for instance, and pay a moiety of the debts. It was surely
all that could be expected from a man who had not actually incurred
them. And then he might still be the nominal owner of Hazlewood,--he
might still marry Rosa.

"While, if you do as you propose," argued the Captain, "(and you know,
of course, old fellow, I fully appreciate your noble and honorable
feeling in the matter,) you ruin your own hopes; and I can't see that a
fellow is called upon to do _that_, as a point of filial duty. What are
you to do? that's the thing. It isn't as though you had anything to fall
back upon, by Jove! It's a case of beggaring yourself"----

"Instead of beggaring other people," Everett said. "No, Richard,--I
cannot see either the justice or the wisdom of what you propose. I will
not cast the burden on other shoulders. As my father's representative, I
must abide the penalty of his mistake,--and I only. I cannot rest while
our name is as the catchword of ruin and misery to thousands around us,
less able to bear both, perhaps, than I, who am young and strong,--able
to work both with head and hands."

"But think of Rosa!" said his brother. "How do you get over _that_?
Isn't her happiness worth some consideration?"

"It has been my thought, night and day, ever since," Everett said, in a
low voice. "It has come between me and what I felt to be the Right, more
than once. You don't know what that thought has been, or you would not
challenge it against me now."

"Well, well,--I only want you to look on all sides of what you are about
to do, and to count the cost beforehand."

Everett smiled quietly. As if "the cost" were not already counted, felt,
and suffered in that deep heart of his! But he said nothing.

"In the next place, what do you propose to do?" pursued his brother.
"Will you enter a profession? Can't say you're much adapted for a
lawyer; and perhaps you're too tender-hearted for a doctor, either. But
I remember, as a boy, you always said you should like to be a clergyman.
And, by Jove! when one comes to think of it, you've a good deal of the
cut of the village priest about you. What do you say to that?"

"Nothing. I have other plans." And Everett proceeded briefly to tell him
these. He had heard from Charles Barclay, now high in the confidence of
one of the leading mercantile firms of Montreal; and through him, he had
obtained the offer of an appointment in the same house.

Richard Gray listened to all this, with ill-concealed amusement
twitching the corners of his mouth. He thought the idea of his brother's
turning man-of-business one of the "richest" he had ever heard.

"With your hard head and shrewd notions, I should say you were likely to
make a sensation in the mercantile world," he observed. "It's a hopeful
scheme, altogether. Oh, hang it!" proceeding from sarcasm to
remonstrance, "that'll never do, Everett! You'll be getting into some
precious scrape or other. You're not the fellow for a merchant's office,
trust me. Now something in the way of a government appointment is much
more like it. A pleasant, poetical sort of sinecure,--there are lots of
them to be had. You just trundle down for an hour or two every day,
write letters, or poems, or whatever you like, with the official
stationery, and receive your salary quarterly. You _can't_ do any
mischief in a place like that. Now that's the sort of thing for you,--if
one could get hold of some of those fellows in power. Why!" brightening
with the sudden dash of an idea, "there are the Beauchamps themselves!
They've a legion of influential relatives. Couldn't they get you into a
snug berth? Oh, the Devil!"--for Everett's look was not to be
mistaken,--"if you bring your high-flown ideas of dignity and
independence into this plain, practical question of subsistence, it's
all up with you. Do you mean to tell me that you seriously think of this
Canada scheme?"

Everett assented.

"Have you informed Lady Beauchamp of your intention of becoming a
merchant's clerk? I should like to see her face when you tell her; she's
such a shrewd old soul; and when a woman _does_ take to the sharp and
worldly style of thing, it's the very deuse! Expect no indulgence in
that quarter."

"I don't ask it. Rosa, of course, cannot become my wife till I am able
to give her a worthy home. Her mother will not wish to cancel our
engagement in the mean time."

"The deuse she won't! Trust her!" the consolatory brother rejoined.
"Why, it will be her first natural step. The idea of her daughter
betrothed to a merchant's clerk is preposterous on the face of it. You
yourself must see _that_."

"No, I don't," Everett said, smiling.

"Oh, I suppose you intend to make a large fortune in a twelvemonth, and
then return and marry?"

"No,--but in ten years,--less than that, God helping me,--if I live, I
will return and marry Rosa."

"You don't say so? And poor little Rosa is to wait patiently for you all
that time! By Jove! a modest expectation of yours! It's a likely notion
that Miss Beauchamp will remain unmarried for ten years, because you
choose to go to Canada."

"She will never marry, if she does not marry me," Everett said, with
simple gravity. "It is not alone the outward sacrament of marriage that
sanctifies a union. The diviner and more vital consecration that binds
us together, it is too late, now, to seek to undo."

"Oh, hang it! It's of no use talking poetry to _me_. I don't understand
that sort of thing," Captain Gray frankly said. "I'll tell you
what,--it'll never do to take those transcendental ideas with you into
the world. All very well to poetize and maunder about in quiet
Hazlewood; but, by Jove! you'll find it won't do in practical life. Take
my word for it, if you go to Canada, long before the ten years are out,
Rosa Beauchamp will be wooed and won over again. 'Tisn't in nature that
it should be otherwise. In books, very likely, those sort of things
happen often enough,--but not in real life, my dear fellow, I assure
you. When you return, it will be to find her a thriving matron, doing
the honors of one of the neighboring mansions. Make up your mind to
_that_. Foresee your future, before you decide."

Everett smiled, sadly, but trustfully. His brother's arguments neither
persuaded nor disturbed him. He stood very quiet and thoughtful.
Visionary-like, he saw pictures of the future, indeed,--but very
different from the one just drawn. He was not afraid.

And Captain Gray left him unconvinced and unmoved. It was not probable
the two brothers would see this matter in the same light. They stood on
different levels. They must be content to differ.

The next conference on the subject was between Everett and Lady
Beauchamp; and the mother of Rosa was, it must be admitted, a rather
formidable person to encounter in such wise. She was a busy, clever,
worldly woman,--kind-hearted, too, and with both a strong will and
strong affections. She was one of those people in whom even an astute
observer might often be deceived, by failing to give her credit for
certain good qualities which are commonly coexistent with
worldliness,--especially in a woman. There was a spice of something
better latent amid her shrewdness and hard-headed sagacity; the echo of
more generous aspirations lingered through all the noise of this earth's
Babel in her heart. And so, when she heard of Everett's resolve to pay
his father's debts by parting with the property, her better and higher
nature warmed to the young man; and though she protested against his
Quixotism, and frowned, and talked of prudence, and so forth, her busy
brain was, in fact, all the while setting itself to work for his
benefit. She was, in a way, fond of the young man. No woman is quite
insensible to that chivalrous deference which a Visionary like Everett
always manifests to womanhood, collective and individual. And though she
certainly held him to be rash, foolish, unfit to deal with the world,
"poetical," (a capital crime in her eyes,) and dreamy, she yet liked
him, and was glad to discover a plan whereby the objections to his
marriage with her daughter, under the present adverse circumstances,
might be smoothed away.

She was sitting at her big desk, strewn with accounts, in the
sober-looking library where she always spent her mornings, and she rose
to receive her prospective son-in-law, with an aspect serious and
business-like, yet not stern.

"Well, my dear Everett, what is all this that I hear about you? A very,
very sad affair, of course; but you must come and tell me how you intend
to act. Yes, yes,--I've heard something about it; but I don't quite
understand the state of the case. I want to have a talk with you."

And she leaned her comely face upon her plump, white hand, while gravely
listening to Everett's brief statement of what he had already done, and
what were his plans for the future.

"You will sell Hazlewood, pay your father's debts, and begin life on
your own account, by going to Canada and becoming a merchant's clerk!"
She then recapitulated his plans in a sharp, pitiless tone. "Very well!
and we have only to bid you good-bye and wish you success. Is it so? For
it appears to me that my daughter is left entirely out of your
calculations, and very properly so. You cannot, as a merchant's clerk on
a hundred a year, marry Rosa Beauchamp, I presume."

"No," Everett said, steadily, and holding her, as it were, with his
earnest eyes, "I cannot have Rosa for my wife till I am able to give her
a home worthy of her; but you will not refuse to sanction our engagement
during the years in which I shall work for that home?"

Lady Beauchamp tapped the table with her fingers in an ominous manner.

"Long engagements are most unsatisfactory, silly, not to say dangerous
things. They never end well. No man ought to wish so to bind a young
girl, unless he has a reasonable chance of soon being in a position to
marry her. Now I ask you, have _you_ such a chance? If you go to Canada,
it may be years before you return. Just look at the thing in a
common-sense light, and tell me, can you expect my daughter to wait an
indefinite time, while you go to seek and make your fortune?"

She looked at him with an air of bland candor, while thus appealing to
his "common sense." Everett's aspect remained unchanged, however, in its
calm steadfastness.

"I would not bind her," he said, "unless she herself felt it would be a
comfort and a help, in some sort, during the weary years of separation,
so to be bound. And that she does feel it, you know, Lady Beauchamp."

"My dear Sir, you are not talking reasonably," she rejoined,
impatiently. "A young girl like Rosa, in love for the first time, of
course wishes to be bound, as you say, to the object of her first love.
But it would be doing her a cruel injustice to take her at her word.
Surely you feel that? It is very true, she might not forget you for six
months, or more, perhaps. But, in the course of time, as she enters on
life and sees more of the world and of people, it is simply impossible
that she should remain constant to a dreamy attachment to some one
thousands of miles away. She would inevitably wish to form other ties;
and then the engagement that she desires to-day would be the blight and
burden of her life. No. I say it is a cruel injustice to let young
people decide for themselves on such a point. Half the misery in the
world springs from these mistakes. Think over the matter coolly, and you
will see it as I do."

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