Crusoe in New York, and other tales

by Edward Everett Hale

Of course this last part was only his little joke. But Hester, dear child, how well I remember how pretty and how cheerful she seemed all that week, and how little any of us thought of what was to come! Hester was by no means a prude, and she was as happy as he. And the news lighted up all the village. Everybody knew it, from the canal-locks up to the mills, and everybody was glad. Horace Ray had a good place, and he and Hester Bryan could be married right away.

Four days that happy dream lasted; and even now Horace looks back on those four dream-days as days of unutterable joy and blessedness. He has a little portfolio which Hester herself made for him, and on the back of which she painted his own monogram. It lies among his choicest treasures, and is never handled but with the most dainty care. It contains every note she wrote him—five in all—as those blessed days went by. Them it contains—ah, the pity!—four little sunny songs which Horace wrote to her on four of those evenings, and which he sent to her on the four mornings, with the bunch of flowers which she found at the front-door as she threw it open. These the poor girl had to give back to him. And all this is tied with a bit of ribbon, which is stained yet by the moisture on the stems of the flowers it tied together,—a little bunch of roses which Hester gave to him. For, as you must hear, these four days came to an end.

Old Mr. Bryan came home—"old" he was called, in the fresh and active phrase of a young community, because he was older than John Bryan the miller.

In truth, our Mr. Bryan was forty-five. He came home—from no one knew where. He was in low spirits: that all men saw as he left the railroad station—the dépôt, as they called it. The boy who drove him to his home—that is, who drove the horse which dragged the wagon in which old Bryan was carried to his home—this boy, I say, did not dare allude to Horace's good news. Pretty Hester came running to meet him at the gate, fresh as a rose and glad as a sunbeam; but she saw that all was wrong. All the same, everything was pleasant and cheerful; the children were neat and nice in their best clothes, the supper was perfect, and no returning conqueror had ever a more happy welcome.

Before they slept, even to her downcast, not to say cross, father, Hester told her story,—her story and Horace's. But old Bryan took it very hardly. It was all nonsense, he said. She must not think of weddings. His was no house to be married from. He was ruined: those infernal Swartwouts and Dousterswivels, or whatever else may have been the names of the swindlers who had fooled him, had cleaned him out; and the sooner the town knew he was ruined, and the world, why, the better, he supposed. Poor old Bryan was really to be pitied this time. Often as he had fallen, he had never fallen so far; and it certainly seemed as if he had fallen into mud and slime so thick and so deep, in a bog so utterly without bottom, that for him there was no recovery.

"No time to talk of weddings." This was all old Bryan would say.

When Horace came to plead, it was no better. There was a time when old Bryan had liked Horace. If any man knew how to manage him, it was Horace. But now he was simply unmanageable, and too soon the reason appeared.

There was a St. Louis merchant whom Bryan had met at Columbus the winter when he represented the district in the Legislature. From the first they seemed to have been great friends. When our pretty Hester made her winter visit to Columbus, to stay with Mrs. Dunn, this de Alcantara saw her,—the Duke de Alcantara, the Columbus girls called him, mostly in joke, but partly in mystery; for it was whispered that he might be a duke in Spain if he chose to be. This was certain,—that he was very rich—very. Those who disliked him most—and some people disliked him very much—had to own that he was very rich. Black-haired he was, very dark of complexion, and, Horace said, and all the party of haters, odious in expression. But whether Horace would have said that, had the two not crossed each other's lines, who shall say? The truth is that Baltasar de Alcantara was a great diamond merchant.

And now the mystery appeared. Old Bryan said he could not talk of weddings, but soon enough he began to talk of one. Baltasar de Alcantara wanted to marry our Hester. This she had guessed at; but she had thought she had put a very summary end to it. She had said to him squarely, the last time she saw him, "Do you not know that I am engaged to be married, Mr. de Alcantara?" She had supposed that would be enough. She had not thought of the Oriental fashion of buying your wife; but Baltasar de Alcantara had. There must have been Eastern blood in him. Horace Ray, after he heard of the new proposal of marriage, said his rival had a nose which looked Eastern,—arched, but not Roman. However it was about the nose, the diamond merchant offered to buy our Hester. If she would marry him, or if old Bryan would make her marry him, he would lend old Bryan all the money he wanted, up to fifty thousand dollars, on his personal security; he would take at their face all old Bryan's worthless stock in the Green Bay Iron Company, and he would make old Bryan vice-president in the Cattaraugus and Tallahassee Railroad, of which he was a managing director. All this statement old Bryan repeated to our Hester.

Of course Hester refused point-blank. And then for six months—nay, ten—came awful times for her. Hard times had she seen in that house before, but nothing like these! Horace was banished first. She had to send back her engagement ring, and the letters and the songs I told you of. She had to promise not to meet him in the village, and she kept her promise; not to speak to him if she did meet him there. Then she could not go out anywhere. Then she was kept on bread and water, and the children too. Then there was this and that piece of furniture carried off to be sold at auction,—everything that was her mother's and that her mother prized. Then poor Hester fell sick, and almost died. As soon as she rallied at all, old Bryan began again. And then Hester capitulated. That horrid Duke de Alcantara came—he came after dark, and came in his own carriage all the way from the station at London. Our boys would have mobbed him, I believe. He came, and I am bound to say he behaved very well. He was not obtrusive. He was gentle and gentlemanly. And when he went away he put a ring on Hester's finger; and she did not throw it in his face, nor did she tear out his eyes.