Her eyes followed him sullenly. He was but one remove from—a darkey. Never had he appeared so irredeemably ugly, awkward and illiterate; never acted so altogether and exasperatingly vulgar, horrid and abominable, and yet she pondered deeply on his words. Their effect upon her surprised even herself. Can an unschooled man be wise? Ah, Mell! wisdom is not curbed by rhetoric, nor ruled by grammar. The respicere finem of the unlettered appears oftentimes to be jure divino.
After a while Mell wiped away the very last tear of agonized pride, which hung like a dewdrop on her long curling lashes. The gall and wormwood of her present feelings were somewhat abated. She knew what she was going to do.
“I’ll get out of this!” exclaimed Mell, speaking to herself in particular, and into space at large. “Get out of it, the very first chance.”
Get out of what, Mell? This humdrum life of little cares and big trials? this uncongenial association with an overworked and sickly old mother (once as pretty as yourself, Mell) and an ill-favored, ill-mannered and illiterate old father?
Is that what Mell intends to get out of?
Yes, and she means to do it in the easiest possible way, according to her own conception of the matter. Other girls may find it necessary to work their way, by a long and tedious process, out of disagreeable surroundings, but she will do it with one brilliant master-stroke—coûte qu’il coûte.
Put a placard on pretty Mell; proclaim her in the market place; hawk the news upon the street corners; inscribe it on the pages of the great Book up yonder!
To unite her destinies with some being—not divinely, blessing and being blessed—not vitally, loving and being loved; not necessarily a being affectionately responsive and, therefore, fitted to become the sharer of her joy and the assuager of her grief, but simply some being of masculine endowment serving in the capacity of a latch-key, through whose instrumentality 258 she can gain admission into the higher worldly courts, for whose untasted delights her whole nature panted, is henceforth, until accomplished, the end and aim of Mellville Creecy’s existence.
Ho, there! all ye buyers, come this way!
Here’s a woman for sale!