“He actually followed Herbert to the front door to supplicate—Herbert declares, ‘with tears in both eyes’—that he would at least tell him if his information was ‘authentic, or if it might not be that he was trying to scare him?’ Herbert excused himself upon the plea of pressing business, but invited him to ‘drop into the office some time if he would have further particulars.’
“Our plot works to a charm. The reverend swain sets out ‘this very week’ for Powhatan, and ‘means to have the matter settled.’ So, look out for him!
“All this rigmarole is strictly true. No boy of seventeen was ever more angrily jealous or desperate. You may, if you like, let the Montrosians into the fun, but, until the matter is settled, don’t let the key pass into other hands.
“Isn’t it glorious? Two bald heads ducking and ogling to one fortunate damsel—their bleared eyes looking ‘pistols for two, coffee for one!’ at each other? What an entrancing interruption to the monotony of a life that, until now, has flowed as gently as a canal stream over a grade of a foot to a mile?”
I remark, en passant, what will probably interest not a living creature of this generation—to wit, that neither of the competitors won the amiable woman they made ridiculous by their wintry wooing. She returned a kindly negative to both bachelor and widower, and died, as she had lived, the beloved maiden “Auntie” of numerous nieces and nephews.
Before transcribing other passages from the same letter—one of unusual length even for that epistolary age—I must retrace my steps to pick up the first thread of what was in time to thicken into a “cord of stronger twine.”
When I was sixteen I began to write a book. It was a school-girl’s story—a picture crudely done, but as truthful as I could make it—of what was going on in the small world I thought large, and every personage who figured in it was a portrait. In that book I lived and moved, and had my inmost being for that year. I spoke to nobody of what I was doing. The shrinking from confiding to my nearest and dearest what I was writing, was reluctance unfeigned and unconquerable in the case of this, my best-beloved brain-child. None of my own household questioned me as to what went on in the hours spent in my “study,” as the corner, or closet, or room where I planted myself and desk, was named. We had a way of respecting one another’s eccentricities that had no insignificant share in maintaining the harmony which earned for ours the reputation of a singularly happy family.
I was allowed to plan my day’s work, so long as it did not impinge upon the rights or convenience of the rest. Directly after breakfast, I called my two willing little pupil-sisters to their lessons. The rock and shoals of threatened financial disaster that menaced our home for a while, were safely overpast by now. We were once more in smooth water, and sacrifices might be remitted. I continued to teach my little maids for sheer love of them, and of seeing their minds grow. Both were bright and docile. Alice had an intellect of uncommon strength and of a remarkably original cast. It was a delight to instruct her for some years. After that, we studied together.
Our “school-time” lasted from nine until one. I never emerged from the study until three—the universal dinner-hour in Richmond. If visitors called, as often happened, my mother and sister excused me. In the afternoon we went out together, making calls, or walking, or driving. In the evening there was usually company, or we practised with piano and flute, and, as Herbert grew old enough to join our “band,” he brought in his guitar, or we met in “the chamber,” and one read aloud in the sweet old way while the others wrought with needle and pencil and drawing-board. This was the routine varied by occasional concerts and parties. Now and then, I got away from the group and wrote until midnight.
In 1853 the Southern Era, a semi-literary weekly owned and run by the then powerful and popular “Sons of Temperance,” offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best temperance serial of a given length. I had written at sixteen, and recast it at eighteen, a story entitled “Marrying Through Prudential Motives,” and sent it secretly to Godey’s Magazine. It bore the signature of “Mary Vale”—a veiled suggestion of my real name. For four years I heard nothing of the waif. I had had experiences enough of the same kind to dishearten a vain or a timorous writer. It was balm to my mortified soul to reflect that nobody was the wiser for the ventures and the failures.