“Your wife,” interrupted Ada, with bitter scorn, “I am not your wife, thank fortune, neither did I ever aspire to be, and I have yet to see the man whom I would for a moment think of marrying.”
There was not the slightest cause for this speech, but Ada was angry; and, as if to exasperate her still more, Richard coolly asked, “Didn’t you think of marrying Herbert Langley when you engaged yourself to him?”
He had heard the whole story at Meadow Brook, but this was the first time he had hinted it to Ada, who turned very pale and without another word left the room, going back to Cedar Grove, where for three weeks she pouted and cried alternately. At the end of that time, however, she concluded it better to “make up” so she wrote a note to us both, asking my pardon for her rudeness and begging my husband to forgive her for the many falsehoods she had told concerning her engagement with Herbert, which she now frankly confessed. Of course we forgave her, and as she was not one who remembered anything long, she soon began to visit us as of old, though she no longer sat on my husband’s knee, or wound her arms around his neck. His rebuke did her good, and she profited by it, while the fact that he was fully aware of the deception she had practised tended to humble her, and on rainy days, when Richard was necessarily away from home, I found her quite an agreeable companion.
Thus the winter and spring passed away, and my mother’s letters began to grow urgent for my return, but for various reasons Richard did not think it advisable for me to under take so long a journey, and as Sunny Bank was all the world to me, I very cheerfully consented to wait until another season ere I visited my New England home. About this time I was again seized with my olden desire for authorship, induced in a measure by my knowing how much Mrs. Lansing reverenced anything which savored of a book-writer. To be an authoress, then, and make her proud to own me as her sister, was a subject over which I grew pale and “nervous,” Richard said, while the negroes called me “fidgety” and wondered “what done ailded Miss Rose.” At last, after many wakeful nights and restless days, after sick headaches, nervous headaches, and all kind of headaches, the plan was marked out for a story. I would be the heroine myself and give to the world as much of my history as I thought proper, and if I failed—if no railroad, steamboat, or stagecoach passenger ever pointed me out as “the woman who wrote that book,” or if my publishers “respectfully declined” another bearing my signature, I thought I should still have the satisfaction of knowing I had tried to benefit the world, and I felt almost sure that in Meadow Brook at least there were people stupid enough to buy my book and possibly to like it, just because little Rosa Lee, who used to climb fences and hunt hen’s eggs with them in her childish days, had written it. So, one sunny morning in June, when my husband had left me to be gone for two weeks, I shut myself up in my room, donned a loose wrapper, tucked back my curls, opened my writing desk, took out a quire of foolscap, and had just written “MEADOW BROOK,” when the bell rang and Bertha announced “a lady in the parlor.” With a deep sigh, as I thought how “WE writers disliked to be disturbed,” I arranged my curls, resumed my cambric morning gown, and went down to receive my visitor, telling her that I was very well, that the weather was very warm, that I expected to be very lonely without my husband, that her bonnet was very pretty, that I didn’t think negroes as annoying and hateful as she did, after which she took her leave; and I went back to my room, this time locking the door and writing the first chapter of my book before the bell rang for dinner.
To Bertha I imparted my secret, reading to her each page as I wrote it, and though she was not, perhaps, the most appreciating auditor one could have, she was certainly the most attentive and approving. It is true she objected to my describing myself as such a homely child. “Jest tell de truffe and done wid it,” she said; whereupon I assured her that I had told the truth, and then she suggested that in order to make amends for my ugliness I should represent myself as having been “peart like and smart.” So, if the reader thinks I have made myself too precocious, the fault is chargeable to Bertha, for I did it to please her!
For two weeks I wrote, scarcely allowing myself a moment’s rest, and Bertha, who, when she saw how it wore upon me, began at last to expostulate. “Thar wasn’t no ’casion,” she said, “to kill myself, when thar was heaps ’o niggers kickin’ round under foot, and if miss ’sisted on writin’ a book, why didn’t she make some dem lazy critters do it for her!”
At the end of two weeks Richard returned, asking me as he looked in my face “what was the matter, and how I had spent my time?”
Before I could answer, Bertha, who was quite incensed against my book, said, “she’s done writin’ a spellin’ book, or somethin’, and sits up ’most all night. I tell her how ’twill kill her, but she pay no ’tention!”
The secret was out, and with many blushes I plead guilty, and producing my manuscript, watched Richard while he read it. Over the first chapter, where he thought I was going to die, he cried—or that is, tears came to his eyes; the third he skipped partially, the next entirely, and the next and the next (I hope the reader has not done likewise); but when he found Dr. Clayton he read every word, his forehead tying itself up in knots, which, however, cleared away the moment he came upon himself at the theatre, though I believe he didn’t feel much complimented by my description of his personal appearance!
There, just as he was introduced, the story ended, and fortunate was it for me that it did so, for he declared I should not write another word after I got through with him; and I promised that I wouldn’t, mentally resolving that it should be some time before I reached that point. This then, my reader, is the reason why I said no more of him, when first I presented him to your notice, but left him for a while in mystery. I knew Richard was anxious to hear what did become of himself, and I fancied that if I wrote considerable before I said anything very definite of him, he would be more likely to let me finish the book, as he would not wish me to waste so much paper for nothing! And the sequel proved that I was right. Regularly each day I wrote, Richard always stopping me the moment he thought I was tired, and invariably breaking me off in the wrong place, so if there should be any parts of my story which do not join together smoothly, you may know it was there that Richard took my pen from my hand, or hid the inkstand.