Marian Grey

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Does he wish it?” asked Marian, timidly; and her guardian replied, “He has known you but little of late, but when he sees you here at home, and learns how gentle and good you are, he cannot help loving you as you deserve.”

“Yes he can,” answered Marian with childish simplicity. “No man as handsome as Frederic ever loved a girl with an ugly face, and I heard him tell Will Gordon, when he spent a vacation here, that I was a nice little girl, but altogether too freckled, too red-headed, and scrawny, ever to make a handsome woman,” and Marian’s voice trembled slightly as she recalled a speech which had wrung from her many tears.

To this remark Col. Raymond made no reply—for he too, had cause to doubt Frederic’s willingness to marry a girl who boasted so few personal charms as did Marian Lindsey then. Rumors, too, he had heard, of a peerlessly beautiful creature, with raven hair and eyes of deepest black, who at the north kept his son a captive to her will. But this could not be; Frederick must marry Marian, for in no other way could the name of Raymond be saved from a disgrace, or the vast possessions he called his be kept in the family, and he was about to speak again when a heavy tread in the hall announced the approach of some one, and a moment after, Aunt Dinah, the housekeeper, appeared. “She had come to sit up with her marster,” she said, “and let Miss Marian go to bed, where children like her ought to be.”

At first Marian objected, for though scarcely conscious of it herself, she was well enough pleased to sit where she was and hear her guardian talk of Frederic and of what she had no hope would ever be; but when Aunt Dinah suggested to her that sitting up so much would make her look yellow and old, she yielded, for Frederic was a passionate admirer of beauty, and she well knew that she had none to lose. Kissing her guardian good night, she hurried to her chamber, but not to sleep, for the tumult of thought which her recent conversation had awakened kept her restless and wakeful. Under ordinary circumstances she would have wondered what the wrong could be at which Col. Raymond had hinted, but now she scarcely remembered it, or if it occurred to her at all, she instantly dismissed it from her mind as some trivial thing which the weak state of her guardian’s mind magnified into a serious matter.

Thirteen years before our story opens, Marian had embarked with her father on board a ship which sailed from Liverpool to New York. Of that father she remembered little save that he was very poor, and that he talked of his poverty as if it were something of which he was proud. Pleasant memories, though, she had of an American gentleman who used often to take her on his lap, and tell her of the land to which she was going; and when one day her father laid him down in his berth, with the fever as they said, she remembered how the kind man had cared for him, holding his aching head and watching by him till he died;—then, when it was all over, he had taken her upon his knee and told her she was to be his little girl now, and he bade her call him father—telling her how her own dead parent had asked him to care for her, who in all the wide world had no near relative. Something, too, she remembered about an old coarse bag, which had troubled her new father very much, and which he had finally put in the bottom of his trunk, throwing overboard a few articles of clothing to make room for it. The voyage was long and stormy, but they reached New York at last, and he took her to his home—not Redstone Hall, but an humble farm-house on the Hudson, where he had always lived. Frederic was a boy then—a dark-haired handsome boy of eleven, and even now she shuddered as she remembered how he used to tease and worry her. Still he liked her, she was sure—and the first real grief which she remembered was on that rainy day when, with an extra pull at her long curls, he bade her good-by and went off to a distant boarding school.

Col. Raymond, her guardian, was growing rich, and people said he must have entered into some fortunate speculation while abroad, for, since his return, prosperity had attended every movement; and when, six months after Frederic’s departure, he went to Kentucky and purchased Redstone Hall, then rather a dilapidated building, Mrs. Burt, his housekeeper, had wondered where all his money came from, when he used to be so poor. They had moved to Kentucky when Marian was five and a half years old—and now, after ten years’ improvement, there was not in the whole county so beautiful a spot as Redstone Hall, with its terraced grounds, its graveled walks, its plats of grass, its grand old trees, its creeping vines, its flowering shrubs and handsome park in the rear. And this was Marian’s home;—here she had lived a rather secluded life, for only when Frederic was with them did they see much company, and all the knowledge she had of the world was what she gleaned from books or learned from the negress Dinah, who, “having lived with the very first families,” frequently entertained her young mistress with stories of “the quality,” and the dinner parties at which her presence was once so indispensable. And Marian, listening to these glowing descriptions of satin dresses, diamonds and feathers, sometimes wished that she were rich, and could have a taste of fashion. To be sure, her guardian bought her always more than she needed—but it was not hers, and without any particular reason why she should do so, she felt that she was a dependent and something of an inferior, especially when Frederic came home with his aristocratic manners, his graceful mustache, and the soft scent of perfumery he usually carried with him. He was always polite and kind to Marian, but she felt that there was a gulf between them. He was handsome; she was plain—he was rich; she was poor—he was educated, and she—alas, for Marian’s education—she read a great deal, but never yet had she given herself up to a systematic course of study. Governesses she had in plenty, but she usually coaxed them off into the woods, or down by the river, where she left them to do what they pleased, while she learned many a lesson from the great book of nature spread out so beautifully before her. All this had tended to make and keep her a very child, and it was not until her fourteenth year that any thing occurred to develop the genuine womanly qualities which she possessed.

By the death of a distant relative, a little unfortunate blind girl was left to Colonel Raymond’s care, and was immediately taken to Redstone Hall, where she became the pet of Marian, who loved nothing in the whole world as dearly as the poor blind Alice. And well was that love repaid; for to Alice Marian Lindsey was the embodiment of everything beautiful, pure and good. Frederic, on the contrary, was a kind of terror to the little Alice. “He was so precise and stuck up,” she said; “and when he was at home Marian was not a bit like herself.” To Marian, however, his occasional visits to Redstone Hall were sources of great pleasure. To look at his handsome figure, to listen to his voice, to anticipate his slightest wish and minister to his wants so quietly that he scarcely knew from whom the attention came, was happiness for her, and when he smiled upon her, as he often did, calling her “a good little girl,” she felt repaid for all she had done. Occasionally, since her guardian’s illness, she had thought of the future when some fine lady might come to Redstone Hall as its mistress, but the subject was an unpleasant one, and she always dismissed it from her mind. In her estimation, there were few worthy to be the wife of Frederic—certainly not herself—and when the idea was suggested to her by his father, she regarded it as an utter impossibility. Still it kept her wakeful, and once she said softly to herself, “I could love him so much if he would let me, and I should be so proud of him, too.” Then, as she remembered the remark she had heard him make to his college friend, she covered her face with her hands and whispered, sadly, “Oh, I wish I wasn’t ugly.” Anon, however, there came stealing over her the thought that in the estimation of others she was not as plain as in that of Frederic Raymond. Every body seemed to like her, and if she were hideous looking they could not. Alice, whose darkened eyes had never looked upon the light of day, and who judged by the touch alone, declared that she was beautiful, while old Dinah said that age would improve her as it did wine, and that in time she would be the handsomest woman in all Kentucky.

Never before had Marian thought so much of her personal appearance—and now, feeling anxious to know exactly what her defects were, she arose, and lighting the lamp, placed it upon her dressing bureau—then throwing a shawl around her shoulders, she sat down and minutely inspected the face which Frederic Raymond called so homely. The features were regular enough, but the face was very thin—“scrawny,” Frederic had said, and the cheek bones were plainly perceptible. This might be the result of eating slate-stones; Dinah, who knew everything, said it was, and mentally resolving thereafter to abjure everything of the kind, Marian continued her investigations. It did not occur to her that her complexion was surpassingly fair, nor yet that her eyes were of a most beautiful blue, so intent was she upon the freckles which dotted her nose and a portion of her face. Slate-stones surely had nothing to do with these, and she knew of no way of remedying this evil—unless, indeed, poulticing should do it.—She would consult Dinah on the subject, and feeling a good deal of confidence in the negress’ judgment, she passed on to what she considered her crowning point of ugliness—her hair! It was soft, luxuriant and curly, but alas, it bore the color which, though accounted beautiful in Mary Stuart’s time, has long since been proscribed by fashion as horrid and unbecoming. Turn which way she would, or hold the lamp in any position she chose, it was still red—a dark, decided red—and the tears came to Marian’s eyes as she recalled the many times when, as a boy, Frederic taunted her with being a “red-head” or a “brick-top,” just as the humor suited him. Suddenly she remembered that among her treasures was a lock of her mother’s hair, and opening a rosewood box she took from it a shining tress which she laid upon the marble top of her bureau, and then bent down to admire its color, a beautiful auburn, such as is rarely seen—and which, when seen, is sure to be admired.

“And this was my mother’s,” she whispered, smoothing caressingly the silken hair. “I must resemble her more than my father, who my guardian says was dark. I wish I was like her in everything, for I believe she was beautiful,” and into the mind of the orphan girl there crept an image of a bright-haired, sweet-faced woman, whose eyes of lustrous blue looked lovingly into her own—and this was her mother. She had seen her thus in fancy many a time, but never so vividly as to-night, and unconsciously she breathed the petition, “Let me look like her some day, and I shall be content.”

The gray morning light was by this time stealing through the window, and overcome with weariness and watching, Marian fell asleep, and when, two hours later, old Dinah came in to wake her, she found her sitting before the glass, with the lamp still burning at her side, and her head resting on her arms, which lay upon the low bureau.