Papa's own girl: A novel

Not long after Clara left her mother and Miss Marston, she rapped very softly on Susie’s door, not wishing to wake her if sleeping, and thus oblivious for the time, to her misery. Thinking it was Dinah, Susie bade the knocker come in. She was trying to dress herself, and sat by her glass brushing her long light hair. Perceiving the happy sister of Dan, resplendent in her youth and beauty, Susie buried her face with her pretty round arms, and wept softly. Clara approached her, and patted her white shoulder, saying, “Poor Susie! I have come to comfort you in your trouble. I know all about it, and I am so sorry, but I blame my brother far more than I do you;” at the mention of Dan, Susie sobbed aloud. “He is so cruel to you after all your loving him.”

“Don’t blame him too much,” sobbed Susie. “He could not help it. If I were handsome and educated like Miss Marston, he would love me always; but it is so hard. I wonder why I cannot die. Every hour is harder and harder to bear.”

Clara’s tender heart was profoundly touched. This was the first time she had ever been brought face to face with real anguish, and she found it more terrible than any romance had ever pictured it. She reproached herself for ever thinking even for one moment of consequences, in view of so plain a question of duty as trying to comfort this poor girl in every possible way. Yet she hardly knew what to say or do in the presence of such agony. She felt the necessity, however, of saying something, and inspiration and hope came as soon as she saw her words had any effect. “Don’t give way so, dear child, I beg you. Remember what papa says, ‘Grief cannot last forever.’ Time will soften it all away, and if you live a noble life after this, as I am confident you will, you will have good and true friends. See how papa is going to stand by you; and I am also, if you will let me.”

“If I will let you!” repeated Susie, raising her head. “What a good angel you are! I am not good enough to deserve so much kindness.”

“Why, do you know, I think you are. I don’t think any of the family but papa appreciate your sweetness and goodness. Now I want to tell you that Miss Marston will never marry Dan. She would never dream of such a thing. There is an idol in her heart enshrined, which no common man could displace; but that is a little secret, and I only tell it to reassure you. You are not going to sink down under this misfortune like a common-spirited girl. Do you know I admire you so much for refusing to be saved by Dan as a charity on his part? I’ve been thinking of it all day. You can win him back if you will; I’m sure of it, and the way to do it is to show him that he is not important enough for a woman to die for—not important enough to destroy your happiness for all time either. I tell you there is nothing so sure to win the love of men as to force them to admire our strength and independence. The clinging vines become very disagreeable and burdensome to the oaks after a time.” Clara said all this smiling cheerfully, and not in a patronizing “I am holier than thou” way at all. This won Susie’s heart, and gave her a first impulse of hope.

“Oh, how good you are, Miss Forest. You come like warm sunlight into a cold dungeon, and I bless you with all my soul. And how selfish I am to let you stand all this time.” And Susie rose and begged Clara to be seated, and excuse her while she finished dressing. Clara was struck with the delicacy of feeling in this poor girl, and especially by her good manners; and every minute in her presence increased her faith in her natural worth. “If I had only been here,” she said to herself, “I would have helped her to study and be interested in something in the universe besides Dan, and this would never have happened.” Then a new thought struck her suddenly, and she said, “What you want now is distraction from the one subject that worries you. What do you say to commencing to study seriously, and making me your teacher?”

“Oh, I will do anything in the world, and you shall never regret—” she said, but broke down before she could finish, after a moment adding, “never regret helping poor Susie. No one ever cared for me but Dan, and it was natural that I should love him too well——”

“Don’t think of him just now any more,” said Clara. “Of course it was natural. It is too bad that you have had so little chance for education, but we will make up for lost time.” Clara remembered the delight she had often experienced when, finding a pot-flower drooping, she had given it water, and waited to see it slowly lift up its limp foliage, as if in gratitude to the beneficent hand that came to its relief. How much grander the pleasure in raising up a sorrow-burdened human soul, she thought; and life seemed to have more scope and meaning to her from that hour. She entered enthusiastically into her plan of teaching Susie, and was delighted at the quick response it met.

“I have so longed to learn. I have tried to study grammar alone, but it is very difficult to get on. I fear you will find me so ignorant that you will give up in despair. I know so little of books; but I can read, and write too, but I am a dreadful poor speller though. Dan used to laugh at me so.”

“Did he? Why he was a perfect blockhead himself in school, and forever at the foot of the spelling class.”

“Why, Miss Forest! I thought he was a beautiful writer and speller,” said Susie, wondering if this could be so.

“Have you any of his letters?” asked Clara, laughing and thinking it would be a good stroke of policy to show Susie that her tyrant was not quite omnipotent in wisdom.

Susie produced from the bottom of a well-worn paper box, whose corners, both of box and cover, had been carefully sewed together, a package of letters, and handed it confidently to Clara, who took out one at random, which was written while Dan was in the peddling business. It ran thus:

“My Darling Susie: I have gone all over this one horse town of Boilston to-day, and have sold a peice of red coton velvit for a safer covering and some pins and matches and that is all. To-morrow I shall be in Marlboro and expect to do a big business. I have not written to the governer yet because I want to show him I can live and succede to, away from home, so dont tell whear I am til I come back whitch will be next weak. Thear is a pretty little house here for sail and I mean to buy it as soon as I get money enough. How would you like it as a present? Only I shall expect you to take me as a purmanent border and I may be a very dyspeptic one and hard to pleas.”

There was much more about the cottage, and many expressions of tenderness and anxiety because he thought Susie did not fully return his love. Clara sighed as she refolded the letter, to think that one of her sex should be so deficient in culture as to take this effusion as a masterpiece of composition; but it revealed the fact that Dan had loved Susie sincerely in his way, and made her look very leniently upon Susie’s inordinate faith in him.

“Are there any mistakes in that?” asked Susie, seeing that Clara was silent.

“Yes, dear; plenty of them,” she answered, regretting her determination to destroy any of the poor child’s illusions; but she had committed herself to it, and so she pointed out the errors consecutively, beginning with “peice” in the first line, and then she said, “You see, if he had any serious education himself, he would not laugh at your mistakes in spelling. Only ignoramuses are vain about small accomplishments. I do not doubt in the least that your own letters were superior to this.”

“Oh, I think not; but you can see for yourself. He gave them to me to keep, because he is always going about. He always keeps my last till I write again, and then returns it for me to keep—I mean he always did do so—but he will never write me again,” she said, struggling with her emotion, as she gave Clara one of her letters to Dan. Clara read with quiet interest, forgetting all thought of the orthography in the simple eloquence expressed in every sentence. Tears came into her eyes as she read the closing paragraphs, “but I must not sit up later though I could never wish to stop. It is so sweet to know where you are and to send you words of love and then so much more sweet to know that you care for them. I must be up early to help your mother who is so kind to me. I keep thinking all the day that sometime she may come to like me and be willing that I should be your wife though I know I am not worthy of so high an honor. Your family would be ashamed of mine, Dan. This is a hard thought, but it is not my fault, and I mean to be good and true always. I read all the time I can get, and try to improve all I can. Do not laugh at my spelling, dearest. Remember I never went to school steadily but two months in my life. When we are together you will teach me, and I shall show you how seriously I can study. Good-night, dearest one. I kiss you in my thoughts and all my love and all my life are yours forever.”

“Oh, how blind your love has made you, Susie. Why, this letter is eloquent. If my brother had been capable of understanding your generous sensibility, he would rather have sought to learn of you, than to have presumed to be your teacher. There are errors in orthography, but not half so many as there are in his; besides the sentiment of yours is noble, and that of his is not. You spell beautiful with two ll’s, and there are one or two other errors; but I believe they are all from studying Dan’s ridiculous style. You write a pretty hand, and your head, as papa says, is an excellent one. There is nothing to hinder your getting a fair education. I will teach you the Latin and Greek words from which ours are made up, also rhetoric, and history, and geography, and we will study botany together. You will be charmed with botany. I have all the text-books, and I want you to commence even to-morrow, so that you can have no time to brood over your miseries. I know you won’t do as silly girls do who, when persecuted for falling one step, think they may as well go quite down to perdition. Remember, you are not really degraded in my eyes, and I want you to take me into your heart as a true friend.”

Susie at this knelt down beside Clara, and burying her head in her lap sobbed anew, but quickly raised her head, saying, “I am only crying now for joy, because God is so good in sending you to me. Never in this world shall I forget the blessed help and comfort you bring to me. You will go to a home of your own some day, and if you will have me, I will come and take all your cares. I will keep your house. I will learn to do everything; and oh! I shall love you to my dying day.”

“Dear, dear Susie!” said Clara, her own eyes full of tears as she bent down and kissed Susie tenderly. “You would pay me too generously for what gives me so much pleasure. I ask only that you will be happy and make the best of everything. Do not kneel before me.”

“Oh, let me, do! It is natural for me, when I see anything so good and beautiful as you are; but have you thought that others will not think of me as you do? I am afraid you will pay dearly for your goodness to poor Susie.”

“Have no fear. I despise cold, shallow-hearted people, and shall lose the love of none but them. Papa will love me better, and that is compensation enough for that which merits no compensation at all. His approbation is worth more than that of all the world without it.” Clara found Susie quite capable of appreciating the character of Dr. Forest, and that raised her at once higher in her estimation. She talked with her some time longer, and then rose to go; but just then she saw Susie’s face blanch and her limbs shake. She had forgotten how great a strain this long interview must have been to Susie in her weak condition, and quickly atoned for her oversight, first by bringing her a cordial, and then helping her to undress and put her to bed like a child. Susie submitted like a tired baby. Her eyes were greatly swollen with weeping, and for these Clara brought hot water, and laid a compress upon them, saying, “Hot water, you know, is better for inflammation. That’s what the new school says, and we belong to the new school. Papa is a radical, they say; so are we. We believe in love, not in hate; in happiness, not in misery;” and Clara kissed Susie and bade her good-bye, saying, “Now go to sleep, if you can. Rest perfectly quiet. Trust to me and papa, and all will be well. No, don’t say a word. I won’t be thanked and called an angel, for I am only a girl like you, and in your place you would be just as kind to me.”

Clara left Susie’s chamber in a most enviable frame of mind. She had experienced a new pleasure from her course toward Susie, and in her heart she wondered why all the world was not loving and kind, when to be so created such deep satisfaction. “I think I did right too,” she said to herself, “in instilling a little healthy poison into Susie’s mind about Dan. If she can see a few of his meannesses, perhaps she will suffer less from the ‘pangs of despised love.’” Still Clara was not quite sure that she was right in lowering Dan in Susie’s estimation. On general principles, she would have naturally opposed anything of the kind; but Susie’s restoration to peace of mind and usefulness was the one object to be gained. To this end her self-respect must be roused, which could hardly be effected while she considered herself Dan’s inferior intellectually. Clara determined to prove to Susie her own innate strength, and humble Dan by showing him what a pearl he had thrown away. This was a labor worthy of Clara, and she left Susie’s room feeling that she loved all the world better for the course she had taken, and her heart was so full of human sweetness that she poured it out on everybody; on Dinah, whom she helped for an hour or two in her household work; on her twin sisters, who were not inclined much, especially Leila, to sentiment. Clara helped them both with their piano practice, petted them, called them her darlings, and encouraged them in every way. Linnie was touched by Clara’s kindness, and when she left said to Leila:

“How sweet Clara is, isn’t she?”

“As honey and nectar,” replied Leila; “all of a sudden, too. I guess she’s experienced religion,” she added, with her clear, metallic laugh. Leila was like Dan in many ways. The spirit of devotion was apparently wholly wanting in her nature. She was one of those whose doubting was an offence to freedom of thought, and whom you would rather see canting bigots than supporters of any principle dear to you. The doctor came in some time before tea, and went directly to Susie’s room, where he remained a full half hour. The change that he perceived in Susie was a revelation to him of his daughter’s character that brought an infinite relief, and more than justified all his hopes of her. As he went down the family were going into the dining-room. Clara stood at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him. He drew her head down on his breast and caressed it fondly; then held it away with both hands, and looked searchingly into her splendid eyes. This scrutiny evidently revealed what he sought, for he said softly and slowly, dwelling fondly on each word, “Papa’s own girl;” and then they joined the family in the dining-room.