Papa's own girl: A novel

As soon as Clara recovered her strength somewhat, she visited Susie daily, and spent a great deal too much time with her, to please Mrs. Forest. One day she found her in her conservatory, where the sashes were all raised, busily planting young tube-rose plants in pots. “These,” said Susie, “must not flower until December;” and she spoke as though the fate of worlds depended upon her success. “If you never go back, Clara, we will build up a great florist business. We will not only sell flowers, but shrubs, and shade-trees, and evergreens. See these little junipers and spruces,” she added, leading Clara to the garden; “they grow just perfectly. Oh, if I only had a thousand dollars! but I shall make quite a little sum this winter;” and so she ran on detailing her hopes and plans, and as she talked, she stooped among brilliant beds of verbenas, and with her scissors commenced the most merciless onslaught, cutting off every flower, and even all the stalks for some inches. Clara uttered an exclamation at the devastation.

“You see I may fail with my tube-roses, but I am sure of these. By cutting back the plants, and making the earth soft and rich about them, I force splendid cutting that will root easily, and make nice plants for winter flowering. I have a cooler spot in my conservatory for verbenas.”

“Why, Susie, how much you know about the subject!” said Clara, admiringly, as Susie went on with her work.

“I know a little about botany, you see, and I learned a great many practical details at Anderson’s. You’ve no idea how kind he was and is to me. He has engaged to buy every tube-rose, orange-blossom, camellia, violet, and white-rose I can produce from October to April. I shall send my first orange-blossoms in a few days. At Christmas every camellia will bring fifty cents. I shall get forty-five if he retails them at fifty. I only had thirty last winter, but I ought to have at least fifty this coming winter, and the next winter, oh, Clara! I can have ten times that number easily; but I want some one to help me. Mrs. Buzzell is growing old, and cannot do as much of the house-work as she did, and I must not neglect my flowers.”

“Why should I not come with you?” asked Clara, enthusiastically. “Susie, I have an ‘impression,’ as the spiritualists say, that this is a heaven-appointed way for you and me to work out our salvation together. I can sell my watch, if necessary, though I would hate to do it. It is an elegant chronometer, given me by father Delano. I am crazy to work, Susie. Can I not do something now? Why should these fine verbenas lie here to rot, and here you have sweet-mignonette by the yard, all in blossom!”

“If I only had a place in the city for little bouquets, not the conventional style, but sweet little ones for the hair and to wear at the breast;” and while she was speaking, she took a spray of scarlet-verbena, set it around with mignonette and a bordering of apple-geranium leaves. “They ought to bring ten cents at this season—at least five.”

“Why, Susie, they could be sold by the thousand. I believe Miss Galway, my dressmaker, could dispose of any number. Let us set to work at once and make up a hundred of them, and you take them to her to-morrow, with a letter from me. I have her confidence, and can count on her assent. Nothing will be lost anyway, if we fail.” Susie seized the opportunity, and the work commenced. A layer of thirty just covered the bottom of the basket Susie provided—a very ugly basket, that came from the florist’s with Neapolitan violet roots. Five layers, one hundred and fifty bouquets, were ready before Clara left, and the next morning, at ten o’clock, were actually on sale in Miss Galway’s window, labeled “ten cents each.” Susie returned in high spirits. She had found Miss Galway charming. Two of the bouquets had been sold in five minutes. “Oh, Clara!” she exclaimed, “if I had only known, I could have kept her supplied all summer.” At the end of three days, Miss Galway wrote, enclosing twelve dollars, the balance after deducting commission. “The last of the flowers, Miss Galway said, had been sold toward evening, on the Common, by her little sister, who was anxious to sell more.” They had pleased Miss Galway’s customers, especially because of the rare fragrance of the geranium. Susie sent more, but the stock soon diminished, for she had not counted on this new market. The apple-geranium became precious, and new plans commenced to mature in Susie’s ever-active brain.

Meanwhile Mrs. Forest was anxious. Clara’s attention was being called away from the one string her mother constantly kept harping on—the reconciliation. Dr. Forest, however, encouraged the firm of “Dykes and Delano,” as he called it, and promised to put some money into the “concern.” He was delighted at Clara’s first successful idea. “What a thoroughly woman’s way of doing things,” he said. “No man would ever have had the cheek to impress a dressmaker into the flower business. Go on; you two women have good business notions, and you are sure of success.” Mrs. Forest heard these encouragements with inward pain, and finally, when she could not endure the silence of Clara’s husband any longer, she wrote to him herself. Her letter was a masterpiece of shallow tact. What he read very plainly “between the lines,” was, that he had only to whistle for Clara, and she would fly to him like a submissive spaniel; though Mrs. Forest had by no means intended to make him too confident. She had dwelt long upon the duty to society devolving upon married people, and upon the necessity of circumspect conduct in husbands. The answer came immediately, and was a triumph to Mrs. Forest, who lost no time in bringing the matter up before the doctor and Clara. That day Clara had felt wretched, and had kept her room. She had suffered one of those inevitable relapses, which all those who have “loved and lost” can perfectly understand. It is one of the tricks Love plays us, to leave an impress of his own divine beauty in the heart, through whatever form he has gained entrance there. Clara had been mourning her dead for months, and the agony had only returned on that day, as it had often returned before. The worst of it had been endured, when her father came in in the afternoon. “To-day is a bad day for you, darling, I see. Life is a grasshopper, isn’t it?” This was one of his distortions of the text, “The grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail.”

When Mrs. Forest came in, an hour later, Clara was lying on the lounge and the doctor was reading to her. Mrs. Forest, feeling in a very complaisant mood, and not wishing to present immediately the subject of Albert’s letter, sat down to her sewing, and begged the doctor to go on reading. He finished some ten pages of a critique on Heat as a Mode of Motion, by Professor Tyndall.

“Well, I call that ponderous,” said Mrs. Forest, greatly relieved when the reading ended. “Do you really find anything interesting in that, Clara?”

“Certainly I do, mamma dear. Why do you ask?”

“Well, it seems to me positive affectation. I can’t believe you understand that explanation of expansion by heat.”

“But I do. I have read the original carefully. See!” and taking a lot of spools from her mother’s work-basket, she piled them up compactly, their sides all parallel. “Now imagine these spools the atoms of iron, for example, as they lie when the iron is cold. Now a motion is set up among these atoms. That motion is heat, and it changes the relative position of the atoms in this way, or something like it, only I can’t make them stand; but don’t you see, if I pile them so that their corners only touch, they will occupy more space?”

“Well, yes. I think I see it somewhat mistily; but where did you read this and other ponderous books like it? I think I remember you devoting your time to novels, quite as naturally as other girls.”

“Oh, I read a great deal at Stonybrook. We had a blue-stocking society, only we called it The Bas Bleu Club. We met every Saturday morning, and darned our stockings to the accompaniment of such reading as this, and the girl who read, got her own stockings darned that day for nothing. One of our obligations was to let nothing pass until we thoroughly comprehended it, and sometimes the matter would be so ponderous, as you say, and our interruptions so numerous, that we got over scarcely a page at a sitting; but we learned a great deal in that way; even our crude guesses at the author’s meaning often led to the truth, and our circuitous wandering had a comical charm about it.”

“And how many young ladies could be induced to spend their time so seriously?”

“We commenced with over sixty, dwindled down to about twenty, and kept that number very steadily. Miss Marston was the only teacher whom we ever invited to join us. One of her tricks deceived us for a long time. This was to pretend ignorance, and get the other Bas Bleus to enlighten her. When we found her out, we revenged ourselves by assuming that she knew nothing, and so explained everything elaborately.”

“A secret society, no doubt,” said the doctor.

“Oh, yes. We were sworn to the deepest secrecy. We were required to swear by the ‘unholeyness of our stockings;’ and when any candidate blushed and hesitated, there was a roar, and we mercifully changed the oath to the ‘un-hole-y-ness of our future stockings.’”

“And pray, which way did you swear, my dear?”

“Now, mamma dear, that is personal,” said Clara, laughing. “When the session was over, the stockings all nicely mended, and our heads well crammed with scientific nuts for future digestion, the Bas Bleus gave way to the most unrestrained jollity. Miss Marston was perfectly charming, and the greatest romp among us. Often, the next Monday in class, listening to her demonstration of problems in trigonometry, we could hardly believe that this grave personage was the Bas Bleu who had actually rolled on the carpet with us in the exciting exercise known as cat’s cradle. But I’m sure no one ever peached, and I don’t think she would have cared if any one had.”

“No,” said the doctor. “Those who have real dignity are never afraid of losing it.”

“Young ladies’ schools of to-day are very different, I think, from those of my time,” said Mrs. Forest. “The teachers I used to know never descended from their dignity pedestal, and if they had I don’t think they would have been able to get back again with the grace of Miss Marston.” Here Mrs. Forest inquired particularly about the late visit of that lady to the White Mountains, and this lead easily to the object Mrs. Forest had nearest at heart. The doctor sat very quiet while she urged Clara in the most earnest way, to make up her mind to be reconciled to her husband. “You do not feel as I do in this matter,” she said, appealing to the doctor. “I do so wish you did.”

“If I could feel it to be for the best, Fannie, I would use every effort in my power to bring about a reconciliation.”

“Then why do you not do it?” Mrs. Forest asked, brightening up suddenly.

“Because, simply, I can’t believe it for the best.” Mrs. Forest’s countenance fell. Clara sighed but said nothing while her mother talked of Dr. Delano, wondering why she spoke so confidently of his sentiments toward his wife. Mrs. Forest urged the natural goodness and uprightness of Albert, his anxiety for his wife’s return, the blessedness of forgiveness, and then the terrible evils that would result if idle tongues were not made to cease their gossiping.

“Have I not been taught,” replied Clara, wearily, “to avoid doing wrong, not from fear of punishment, but from the love of right, and faith in the beneficent results of a wise course—to defy all scandal, if only I was sure of being guided by my best feelings?”

“Our feelings are a blind guide,” said Mrs. Forest, reproachfully. “That is your father’s teaching, and I must confess I don’t see the good effects of it.”

“One good effect was going contrary to your advice, mother dear, and befriending Susie Dykes.”

“The end is not yet,” said Mrs. Forest, sententiously, and apparently much occupied with her sewing. “I believe such latitudinarian sentiments weakened your chances of gaining the permanent respect of your husband. Had you firmly insisted at first that you would not have that ill-regulated Miss Wills in your house, your husband would have honored you all the more for it.”

“I never should have dreamed of such a policy,” said Clara, very earnestly. “If we had gone and settled in the Desert of Sahara immediately after marriage, where Albert had never seen any woman but me, to be sure, he might not have changed; but I am not proud of a love that I cannot hold against all the flirts in the world. Miss Wills has certainly a greater charm for Albert than I have, and I wish her joy of her conquest. I’ve cried out about all the tears there are, as Susie said of Dan, and I mean to be sensible, and see if I cannot live without a husband who is the lover of another woman. I mean to go into the flower business with good, true-hearted Susie Dykes.”

Mrs. Forest let her sewing drop, but seeing it was not wise to oppose Clara on two points at once, she returned to Albert. He was, she said, very anxious to atone for the past. He could never be happy as he was. He had no deep regard for any one but his wife. Here Mrs. Forest unfolded a letter. Clara’s heart beat violently. “Oh, if he does really want me! if he does really love me!” cried she. “Convince me only of that, and I will fly to him. I will humbly ask his forgiveness, and devote every hour of my life to making him happy.”

“Well, well, do let us hear what he says,” said the doctor, impatiently, seeing with alarm the excited condition of Clara. Amid the most perfect silence, Mrs. Forest smoothed out her letter and commenced:

“My Dear Mrs. Forest:—You cannot doubt that I regret as much as you do, the step my wife has taken, and I appreciate the sympathy you kindly offer.

“In my opinion, Mrs. Delano is entirely unjustifiable in so rash a movement. A wife should trust her husband until she has absolute proof of his infidelity. Mrs. Delano will not pretend that she has any such proof, though I admit indiscretion on my part. Tell her, if she will return at once, before any more mischief is wrought by idle tongues, I shall forgive her leaving me, and endeavor hereafter to avoid causes of trouble between us. Until she returns there is nothing more for me to say or do in the premises.

“Accept, dear madam, assurances of my profound respect.

When Mrs. Forest ended, Clara was lying with her face to the wall, her hand pressed tightly over her heart. Dr. Forest, looking intently into vacancy, was whistling a low melancholy air. Clara turned her head, and as their eyes met, gravity sat on both faces like a pall; but only for an instant, and then both simultaneously burst into laughter; but Clara’s tears flowed at the same time, and her whole frame was convulsed hysterically.

“Fannie,” said the doctor, alarmed at Clara’s condition, “your letter is too tragic, by far. Go quick and get me some brandy, and have Dinah bring a hot foot-bath.”