CHAPTER XI. — CRISIS.
The result of this interview of my rival with the mother of Julia, was afforded me by the latter. The mother had already given her consent to his suit—that of Julia alone was to be obtained; and to this end the arts of the suitor and the mother were equally devoted. Her refusal only brought with it new forms of persecution. Her steps were haunted by the swain, to whom Mrs. Clifford gave secret notice of all her daughter's intentions. He was her invariable attendant at church, where I had the pain constantly to behold them, in such close proximity, that I at length abandoned the customary house of worship, and found my pew in another, where I could be enabled to endure the forms of service without being oppressed by foreign and distracting thoughts and fancies.
Of the progress of the suit I had occasional intelligence from Julia herself, whom I had, very reluctantly on her part, persuaded to meet me at the house of a female relative and friend, who favored our desires and managed our interviews. Brief were these stolen moments, but oh, how blissful! The pleasures they afforded, however, were almost wholly mine. The clandestine character of our meetings served to deprive her of the joy which they otherwise might have yielded; and the fear that she was not doing right, humbled her spirit and made her tremble with frequent apprehensions.
At length Mrs. Clifford suspected our interviews, and detected them. We had a most stormy scene on one occasion, when the sudden entrance of this lady surprised us together, at the house of our friend. The consequence of this was, a rupture between the ladies, which resulted in Julia's being forbidden to visit the house of her relative again. This measure was followed by others of such precaution, that at length I could no longer communicate with her, or even seek her, unless when she was on her way to church. Her appearance then was such as to awaken all my apprehensions. Her form, always slender, was become more so. The change was striking in a single week. Her face, usually pale and delicate, was now haggard. Her walk was feeble, and without elasticity. Her whole appearance was wo-begone and utterly spiritless. Days and weeks passed, and my heart was filled with hourly-increasing apprehensions. I returned to the familiar church, but here I suffered a new alarm. That sabbath the family pew was unoccupied. While I trembled lest something serious had befallen her, I was called on by the family physician. This gentleman had been always friendly. He had been my father's physician, and had been his friend and frequent guest; he knew my history, and sympathized with my fortunes. He now know the history of Julia's affections. She had made him her confidante so far, and he brought me a letter from her. She was sick, as I expected. This letter was of startling tenor:—
“Save me, Edward, if you can. I am now willing to do as you proposed. I can no longer endure these annoyances—these cruel persecutions! My mother tells me that I must submit and marry this man, if we would save ourselves from ruin. It seems he has a claim against the estate for professional services; and as we have no other means of payment, without the sale of all that is left, he is base enough to insist upon my hand as the condition of his forbearance. He uses threats now, since entreaties have failed him. Oh, Edward, if you can save me, come!—for of a certainty, I can not bear this persecution much long and live. I am now willing to consent to do what Aunt Sophy recommended. Do not think me bold to say so, dear Edward—if I am bold, it is despair which makes me so.”
I read this letter with mingled feelings of indignation and delight—indignation, because of the cruelties to which the worthless mother and the base suitor subjected one so dear and innocent delight, since the consent which she now yielded placed the means of saving her at my control. The consent was to flight and clandestine marriage, to which I had, with the assistance of our mutual friend, endeavored to persuade her, in several instances, before.
The question now was, how to effect this object, since we had no opportunities for communication; but, before I took any steps in the matter, I made it a point of duty to deprive the infamous attorney, Perkins, of his means of power over the unhappy family. I determined to pay his legal charges; and William Edgerton, at my request, readily undertook this part of the business. They were found to be extortionate, and far beyond anything either warranted by the practice or the fee bill. Edgerton counselled me to resist the claim; but the subject was too delicate in all its relations, and my own affair with Perkins would have made my active opposition seem somewhat the consequence of malice and inveterate hostility. I preferred to pay the excess, which was done by Edgerton, rather than have any further dispute or difficulty with one whom I so much despised. Complete satisfaction was entered upon the records of the court, and a certified discharge, under the hand of Perkins himself—which he gave with a reluctance full of mortification—was sent in a blank envelope to Mrs. Clifford. She was thus deprived of the only excuse—if, indeed, such a woman ever needs an excuse for wilfulness—for persecuting her unhappy daughter on the score of the attorney.
But the possession of this document effected no sort of change in her conduct. She pursued her victim with the same old tenacity. It was not to favor Perkins that she strove for this object: it was to baffle ME. That blind heart, which misguides all of us in turn, was predominant in her, and rendered her totally incapable of seeing the cruel consequences to her daughter which her perseverance threatened. Julia was now so feeble as scarcely to leave her chamber; the physician was daily in attendance; and, though I could not propose to make use of his services in promoting a design which would subject him to the reproach of the grossest treachery, yet, without counsel, he took it upon him plainly to assure the mother that the disorder of her daughter arose solely from her mental afflictions. He went farther. Mrs. Clifford, whose garrulity was as notorious as her vanity and folly, herself took occasion, when this was told her, to ascribe the effect to me; and, with her own coloring, she continued, by going into a long history of our “course of wooing.” The doctor availed himself of these statements to suggest the necessity of a compromise, assuring Mrs. Clifford that I was really a more deserving person than she thought me, and, in short, that some concessions must be made, if it was her hope to save her daughter's life.
“She is naturally feeble of frame, nervous and sensitive, and these excitements, pressing upon her, will break down her constitution and her spirits together. Let me warn you, Mrs. Clifford, while yet in season. Dismiss your prejudices against this young man, whether well or ill founded, and permit your daughter to marry him. Suffer me to assure you, Mrs. Clifford, that such an event will do more toward her recovery than all my medicine.”
“What, and see him the master of my house—he, the poor beggar-boy that my husband fed in charity, and who turned from him with ingratitude in his moment of difficulty, and left him to be despoiled by his enemies? Never! never! Daughter of mine shall never be wife of his! The serpent! to sting the hand of his benefactor!”
“My dear Mrs. Clifford, this prejudice of yours, besides being totally unfounded, amounts to monomania. Now, I know something of all these matters, as you should be aware; and I should be sorry to counsel anything to you or to your family which would be either disgraceful or injurious. So far from this young man being ungrateful, neglectful, or suffering your husband to be preyed on by enemies, I am of opinion that, if his counsel had been taken in this late unhappy business, you would probably have been spared all of the misery and nearly one half of the loss which has been incurred by the refusal to do so.”
“And so you, too, are against us, doctor? You, too, believe everything that this young man tells you?”
“No, madam; I assure you, honestly, that I never heard a single word from his lips in regard to this subject. It is spoken of by everybody but himself.”
“Ay! ay! the whole town knows it, and from who else but him, I wonder? But you needn't to talk, doctor, on the subject. My mind's made up. Edward Clifford, while I have breath to say 'No,' and a hand to turn the lock of the door against him, shall never again darken these doors!”
The physician was a man of too much experience to waste labor upon a case so decidedly hopeless. He knew that no art within his compass could cure so thorough a case of heart-blindness, and he gave her up; but he did not give up Julia. He whispered words of consolation into her ears, which, though vague, were yet far more useful than physic.
“Cheer up, my daughter; be of good heart and faith. I AM SURE that there will be some remedy provided for you, before long, which will do you good. I have given the letter to your aunt, and she promises to do as you wish.”
It may be said, en passant, that the billet sent to me had been covered in another to my female friend and Julia's relative; and that the doctor, though not unconscious of the agency of this lady between us, was yet guilty of no violation of the faith which is always implied between the family and the physician. He might SUSPECT, but he did not KNOW; and whatever might have been his suspicions, he certainly did not have the most distant idea of that concession which Julia had made, and of the course of conduct for which her mother's persecutions had now prepared her mind.
Mr. Perkins, though deprived of his lien upon Mrs. Clifford, by reason of his claim, did not in the least forego his intentions. His complaints and threatenings necessarily ceased—his tone was something lowered; but he possessed a hold upon this silly woman's prejudices which was far superior to any which he might before have had upon her fears. His hostility to me was grateful to the hate which she also entertained, and which seemed to be more thoroughly infixed in her after her downfall—which, as it has been seen, she ascribed to me; chiefly because of my predictions that such would be the case. In due proportion to her hate for me, was her desire to baffle my wishes, even though it might be at the expense of her own daughter's life. But a vain mother has no affections—none, at least, worthy of the name, and none which she is not prepared to discard at the first requisition of her dearer self. Her hate of me was so extreme as to render her blind to everything besides—her daughter's sickness, the counsel of the physician, the otherwise obvious vulgarity and meanness of Perkins, and that gross injustice which I had suffered at her hands from the beginning, and which, to many minds, might have amply justified in me the hostile feelings which she laid to my charge. In this blindness she precipitated events, and by her cruelty justified extremities in self-defence. The moment that Julia exhibited some slight improvement, she was summoned to an interview with Perkins, and in this interview her mother solemnly swore that she should marry him. The base-minded suitor stood by in silence, beheld the loathing of the maiden, heard her distinct refusal, yet clung to his victim, and permitted the violence of the mother, without rebuke—that rebuke which the true gentleman might have administered in such a case, and which, to forbear, was the foulest shame—the rebuke of his own decided refusal to participate in such a sacrifice. But he was not capable of this; and Julia, stunned and terrified, was shocked to hear Mrs. Clifford appoint the night of the following Thursday for the forced nuptials.
“She will consent—she shall consent, Mr. Perkins,” were the vehement assurances of the mother, as the craven-spirited suitor prepared to take his leave. “I know her better than you do, and she knows me. Do you fear nothing, but bring Mr—” (the divine) “along with you. We shall put an end to this folly.”
“Oh, do not, do not, mother, if you would not drive me mad!” was the exclamation of the destined victim, as she threw herself at the feet of her unnatural parent. “You will kill me to wed this man! I can not marry him—I can not love him. Why would you force this matter upon me—why! why!”
“Why will you resist me, Julia? why will you provoke your mother to this degree? You have only to consent willingly, and you know how kind I am.”
“I can not consent!” was the gasping decision of the maiden.
“You shall! you must! you will!”
“Never! never! On my knees I say it, mother. God will witness what you refuse to believe. I will die before I consent to marry where I do not give my heart.”
“Oh, you talk of dying, as if it was a very easy matter. But you won't die. It's more easy to say than do. Do you come, Mr. Perkins. Don't you mind—don't you believe in these denials, and oaths, and promises. It's the way with all young ladies. They all make a mighty fuss when they're going to be married; but they're all mighty willing, if the truth was known. I ought to know something about it. I did just the same as she when I was going to marry Mr. Clifford; yet nobody was more willing than I was to get a husband. Do you come and bring the parson; she'll sing a different tune when she stands up before him, I warrant you.”
“That shall never be, Mr. Perkins!” said the maiden solemnly, and somewhat approaching the person whom she addressed. “I have already more than once declined the honor you propose to do me. I now repeat to you that I will sooner marry the grave and the winding-sheet than be your wife! My mother mistakes me and all my feelings. For your own sake, if not for mine, I beg that YOU will not mistake them; for, if the strength is left me for speech, I will declare aloud to the reverend man whom you are told to bring, the nature of those persecutions to which you have been privy. I will tell him of the cruelty which I have been compelled to endure, and which you have beheld and encouraged with your silence.”
Perkins looked aghast, muttered his unwillingness to prosecute his suit under such circumstances, and prepared to take his leave. His mutterings and apologies were all swallowed up in that furious storm of abuse and denunciation which now poured from the lips of the exemplary mother. These we need not repeat. Suffice it that the deep feelings of Julia—her sense of propriety and good taste—prevailed to keep her silent, while her mother, still raving, renewed her assurances to the pettifogger that he should certainly receive his wife at her hands on the evening of the ensuing Thursday. The unmanly suitor accepted her assurances—and took leave of mother and daughter, with the expression of a simpering hope, intended chiefly for the latter, that her objections would resolve themselves into the usual maidenly scruples when the appointed time should arrive. Julia mustered strength enough to reply in language which brought down another storm from her mother upon her devoted head.
“Do not deceive Perkins—do not let the assurances of my mother deceive you. She does not know me. I can not and will not marry you. I will sooner marry the grave—the winding-sheet—the worm!”
Her strength failed her the moment he left the apartment. She sank in a fainting-fit upon the floor, and was thus saved from hearing the bitter abuse which her miserable and misguided parent continued to lavish upon her, even while undertaking the task of her restoration. The evident exhaustion of her frame, her increasing feebleness, the agony of her mind, and the possibly fatal termination of her indisposition, did not in the least serve to modify the violent and vexing mood of this most unnatural woman!