Papa's own girl: A novel

Miss Delano had persuaded Clara to defer her business in Boston until the next day, and spend the intervening hours with her. “Albert seldom dines at home,” she had said, “and he comes in, generally, late at night; so you will not run much risk of meeting him.” Clara replied that she believed she could meet him without the slightest discomfiture, and would even like to prove it. While they were speaking the street door opened, and a minute after Dr. Delano entered the presence of Clara and his sister. He showed unmistakable signs of confusion when Clara rose and greeted him with the simple friendliness of a common acquaintance. At dinner he spent most of the time looking at Clara. She was gay and chatty, handsomer than she had ever been. Was this the woman who had, as it were, clung weeping to his feet, imploring the return of his lost love? Was this smiling, happy woman, who sat facing him, discussing the dinner with excellent appetite, and coolly talking of extending business operations, the same soft, dependent, adoring creature who had slept in his arms and lived only in the sunlight of his smiles and caresses? He could scarcely believe it. Certainly he had never known her, then. This could not be his wife: it was a grander presence, an imperial, commanding woman, the glance of whose strong eyes, his own could hardly support. She inspired him with something like awe; and just in proportion as she seemed unapproachable, did the desire to approach her increase. Clara noticed the interest she excited in him, but she read his heart like an open book; she saw not love, not tenderness and regret, but the hope of conquest. Had she read tenderness there, her triumph would have been robbed of all its worth. This triumph was much to her. This man had used her most helpless fondness as a weapon against her, and had met her despairing tenderness with that mocking, superior calmness that only indifference can create. It was sweet to her to be able to meet his gaze proudly, to smile upon him, while her eyes said plainly, “You are nothing to me now.”

During the evening Clara kept close beside Miss Charlotte. Dr. Delano was vexed that he could get no moment alone with her. Of course he could have asked for a private interview. Clara expected that he would; but he could not bring himself to do this, and the only other alternative was to go boldly to her room, after she retired. This he decided to do. It was characteristically marital and wholly cowardly, though very natural to such men as Albert Delano. Not two minutes, therefore, after Clara entered her room, she heard a well-known step approaching. The instinct of the slave for self-defence caused her quickly and noiselessly to slide the bolt of her door. The act was hardly accomplished when he knocked softly.

“Well?” with the rising inflection, was the only answer.

“May I come in, Clara? I wish to see you.”

“No, Albert, you cannot see me here.”

“Why?”

Clara felt the blood mount to her cheeks at his want of pride.

“I feel a repugnance to the idea of seeing you here. Is not that enough?”

“Oh, do not be unreasonable,” he replied, concealing his anger, but not his impatience; and with this he turned the knob. Up to this moment Clara had secretly reproached herself for bolting her door, not daring in her heart to really believe that he could be guilty of the baseness of forcing himself upon her. All fear of being unjust to him, now vanished like tissue in a furnace. She answered, with forced composure, “Go down into the library, and I will join you there. You cannot see me here, Dr. Delano.” He could not possibly mistake her meaning, and he went without a word. “She shall pay for these airs,” he said to himself as he retreated, determining to play the part of the impassioned lover, which he believed she would never be able to resist. He thought he knew her weakness; but his calculation was all wrong, since he failed to see that her weakness had been her strength of love; but now her strength was in the weakness of that love, and she was no longer the potter’s clay in his hands that she had once been. The moment she confronted him in the library he was conscious of her power, and felt that no acting could deceive her. For a moment she stood silently looking at him, and then she said, in a slow, measured tone, “I have had some hard thoughts of you, Albert, but I never believed you could be guilty of such baseness, as trying to force yourself upon me when I had told you you were not desired.”

“Permit me to say that I have never had any hard thoughts of you, and could not believe you would ever apply such a term to me. It does not strike me as a crime to wish to see my wife in her room.”

“I am not your wife, and you know it; nor are you my husband.”

“The law would hold a different opinion; and, allow me to add, a somewhat less sentimental one.”

“Was it ever our mutual understanding that we were husband and wife, simply because of the ceremony of marriage?” asked Clara, growing more calm as her excitement increased.

“Our mutual understanding had not, nor has it now, any power to annul the fact.”

“Then let it be annulled as soon as possible. I have heretofore been very indifferent whether you got a divorce or not; but, in Heaven’s name, wait no longer, since you take so low a view of what constitutes marriage. I have deserted you, you know,” she said, with a bitter smile, “and that is ground for a divorce.”

“The complaint is already filed,” he answered, “but I think I shall stay the proceedings.”

“Suppose you do me the honor to consult me in the premises.”

“I beg your pardon, Madam Delano. Will you favor me with your opinion on this subject?”

“You cannot irritate me by your mocking tone. I have learned that existence, and even happiness, is possible without your caresses.”

“So it seems, madam; and if it will do your pride any good, I will add that I am very sorry for the fact.”

“I should be glad to know for a certainty, that you are sorry for the fact. It is not pride, Albert,” she continued, in a gentler voice, “but the sense of justice, which makes me wish you to confess that you cheated me, when you gave your love in return for mine. You never loved me grandly—never comprehended how you were loved by me. I never left you because of your infidelity; and for months I tried to reawaken in you something of the tenderness for which I was almost dying. I would have you admit this. Why should there be any misunderstanding? Why should we quarrel like the vulgar, because we are no longer lovers? I can never forget what you have been to me, and would remain your friend under all circumstances.”

It seemed to dawn upon Dr. Delano’s mind that the woman for whom he had thrown this pearl away, was very small beside her; but there was nothing of the hero in his nature. He felt a momentary self-contempt at the retrospect of his own conduct—at the cold, dictatorial letters he had returned for Clara’s impassioned appeals; but he had gone too far for anything now but a temporary reconciliation. He had already committed himself to marriage with Ella, as soon as the divorce was granted. Of this fact Clara was ignorant.

“I can scarcely believe that it is you, Clara, standing there and discussing our future friendship so coolly,” he said.

“No; you think my natural place is at your feet. Love makes us infinitely humble, infinitely dependent. Oh, Albert! you never saw anything but the surface of things. I could not make you understand how I have mourned my dead illusions. When I first knew that my heart had cast off its anchorage in yours, I could have died from grief, only grief does not kill the strong. Sleep but renewed my strength to suffer, as I suffer now—not for the return of your love—I have outlived all desire, all need for that—but from very pity for myself, thinking of the long, long agonies I have endured;” and Clara hid her face in the arm that rested on the mantel-piece and sobbed. This was the supreme moment Albert had desired. He did not believe her own explanation of her sorrow. He approached her triumphantly, and put his arm around her and spoke gentle words.

“Thank you,” she said, releasing herself and smiling upon him. “You are very kind to try to comfort me. It is over now;” and as he tried to hold her, she gave him a chilling reproach—“Have you not understood what I have been saying to you, Albert?”

“Oh, it is not true, darling; you have not ceased to care for me.”

“I care for you only as a friend. I told you I had outlived all my illusions, just as positively as you had, when after a few months of marriage you were wholly drawn to Ella. Let us preserve our mutual regard by the utmost candor. We cannot deceive each other, and any attempt to do so is an outrage upon truth and honesty. There is nothing left of our mutual passion but a cold and bare skeleton, which we can never clothe with the flesh and fire of life, do what we will. I would not see you humiliate yourself;” and not wishing for a reply, she turned quickly and left him. He stood gazing after her as if dazed. At last he knew beyond question that this woman was beyond his reach. He had once called her love a “suffocating warmth,” but even now, he could not see how far she was above him, through her fervid sentiment of the passion of love, and her grander idealization of its object, which had made her faithful, not from any sense of duty or consistency, but from necessity. To him, love was a luxury like rare wine, which might be substituted, when wanting, by an ordinary quality. To Clara, love was her religion—the one necessity of her higher life; and when its object failed, her imagination constructed an ideal upon which her exuberant fondness lavished itself in thought, for she never dreamed of the folly of common souls, who satisfy the heart with stones when it asks for bread.

The next morning Dr. Delano breakfasted in his room, and Clara and Miss Charlotte had a long confidential talk over their coffee in the luxuriant morning-room of the latter. Clara told her friend of the scene between her and Albert.

“I have long given up hoping for a reconciliation,” said Charlotte, “though it would be a great comfort to me. When he marries Ella, I shall quit the house, though where I shall go is uncertain. Maybe,” she added, smiling, “I shall yet go to live in that Oakdale Social Palace. Nothing would irritate Albert so much, for he hates the count, though it would be difficult to say why. I have always been deeply attached to him. He is the most honorable man toward women I have ever met, and the charm in his friendship is, that he never misunderstands you. This is why his friendship is better than the love of ordinary men.”

During the conversation Clara asked her if she thought Ella really loved Albert.

“No,” said Miss Charlotte, decidedly. “She is too selfish to know what love means; but in her way she is fond of him, and will keep her empire over him, by her coquetry with other men, principally. You lost your power over him simply by loving him with too much devotion. He fretted a good deal at first because you did not return to him. I told him you would never return, for you had ceased to love him. Upon that he showed me your letters. He could not bear any one to think him incapable of doing just what he pleased with you. Those were the first genuine love-letters I ever saw. I cried over them like a child; and my deeper esteem for you dates from that time. They showed so unmistakably that you cared nothing for Albert’s position or wealth. I had not counted on so high a virtue, and could not understand why he should be so worshipped for his gracious self alone; though, of course, he is a very elegant man, and most women find him irresistible.”

Clara was rather silent. She was thinking of Albert’s vanity in showing her passionate letters, simply to prove his power—to say virtually, “You see her heart is under my feet.” There was something so indelicate, so coarse in this, that it almost made her hate the thought of him.

While the ladies lingered over their coffee, Albert was in the library walking up and down, fuming. He had worked himself into a very unenviable state. He had not slept well during the night. It was a new experience to be shut out from this superb woman, who was but a little while ago so caressingly fond of him, so sensitive to his slightest attentions. It was a humiliation that he could not endure with equanimity, and when a little later she entered the library, a scene occurred impossible to describe. Clara, with the fresh information of his engagement to Ella, was amazed at the state he was in. In his anger, he threw off every rag of decent reticence on the subject of his feelings, and said, without shame, that there was no reason why they should deny themselves the pleasure of being together, simply because they were not so ineffably sentimental as they had been. As he spoke, he was conscious of outraging all Clara’s high sense of refinement, and he even enjoyed it as a kind of revenge.

“Stop there! Dr. Delano,” she exclaimed, with furious indignation. “You compel me to despise you utterly. You talk to me of pleasure in what the soul can have no part. Oh, shame! shame! Until now I have never known you. Your peers are not honorable and chaste women, but those who may barter their favors, like merchandise, for wealth or social position.”

“I am a physician,” he said, “and don’t pretend to understand so much about soul as you do. I have found that, as a general thing, men are men, and women are women. The natural functions exist, and demand their natural play quite independent of any bosh about soul.”

Clara was never so amazed in her life. She was too excited to move from the spot, and she gave vent to her horror of his baseness in most unmeasured terms, ending a volley of eloquence with a fervent expression of gratitude that there had been no children to perpetuate such moral degradation.

“Children?” he sneered. “You need not count on their advent in your case, under any circumstances. Children are born of the body, not of the soul, or you might be the mother of an army of phantoms—the only kind you will ever have. That I can promise you as a physician.”

“I despise your wisdom as a physician,” retorted Clara, her face crimson. “You should have only brutes for patients. Children, in my opinion, are not well born, who are not the offspring of the soul as well as of the body. I have not the slightest fear that, if I should ever—.” Clara stopped short, angry with herself that she should lower herself to answer at all.

“If you should ever marry a soul, you mean you would prove very prolific,” he said; but even he was conscious of going too far, and he added, “but I am sorry my temper has made me say rude things to you, Clara. I am really ashamed of myself, but I know you will not forgive me. But no matter now. One thing you forget. The divorce I get from you, not you from me, remember that. I shall be free to marry, ‘as though the defendant were actually dead,’ but the defendant will ‘not be free to marry until the plaintiff be actually dead;’ so the document will read, madam,” and with these words, he left the library just as Miss Charlotte entered. She asked him if he would be in at dinner. “I shall try hard to do so,” he said. “I would not deprive madam of the pleasure of her husband’s presence. Ta! ta! mon ange,” and he actually kissed his hand to Clara, who stood staring at him as at a monster. When the door closed behind him she told Charlotte all he had said.

“What then does a divorce mean?” asked Charlotte. “How can you remain bound to him, when he marries another wife. It is not common sense.”

“No,” answered Clara. “It is not common sense; it is law, it seems;” and she poured forth a storm of indignant protest against laws made by men without the consent of women. Miss Charlotte replied:

“I wish I could see some of my friends, who say they have all the rights they want, standing exactly in your place. It is enough to make women insane with rage. Such injustice! such barbarous tyranny. My doubts are all gone. The women’s-rights agitators are right. Don’t be surprised if you find me hereafter a ‘shrieker,’ as the press insultingly calls those women,” and looking at herself in the glass over the mantel-piece, she added, laughing, “See! an old maid, somewhat over thirty-five, tall, spare, with a thin, prominent nose. I should grace any suffrage platform in the land.” Clara smiled, but she was too sad to enjoy the pleasantry of Miss Charlotte, and soon after took her leave, and dispatching with all speed the business of the flower firm, she was glad to get home to Susie, in whose never-failing sympathy she found a rest, which grew more and more to her with the experiences of life.

In a few days Von Frauenstein returned, and Min had her promised ride. It was quite a long one, and part of the course was through the fine grove of the Kendricks, which joined the doctor’s fruit orchard; and the Forest family, by the invitation of the Kendricks, always used it as freely as if it were their own. On this occasion Leila Forest was leisurely sauntering through the central avenue with a book in her hand. She looked up with a beaming face when the count stopped his horse and greeted her; but seeing the child, whom she readily recognized, her countenance fell. He did not appear to notice this, and asked her if she would not join him in the ride. She declined with girlish stateliness. He divined her motive instantly, and said, “Miss Leila, I think you do not know this young lady by my side. Permit me to introduce you to Mademoiselle von Frauenstein, my adopted daughter.”

“Ah!” was all that Leila’s amazement could find for expression, and the count bowed gravely and drove on.

“She don’t like Minnie, does she, Paul? But Linnie does. Linnie comes to see auntie, and she kisses me too.”

“Does she? Paul will remember that.”

When Leila reached home, she told her mother of the meeting in the grove. Mrs. Forest was not inclined to believe the adoption of Minnie anything but pleasantry on the count’s part, but she said it was very unwise to refuse the count’s invitation to ride with him.

“Why, mamma!” exclaimed Leila, “of course I wanted to go; but I thought you would never approve of it. I think he’s horrid to make so much of that little crazy imp.”

“She is nothing but a baby,” said Mrs. Forest. “The count has certainly a right to choose his acquaintances. My dear, I fear you did a very unwise thing”—thrown away your chances, she would have said, if she had expressed her thought exactly. Leila was puzzled. This was a new phase of her mother’s character, or new, at least, to her, and she replied, a little sourly, “Of course he has a right to choose his acquaintances; but supposing he had been riding with the child’s mother? Why, I should have felt insulted if he had recognized me.”

“Oh, now you are merely foolish. He would not do such a thing.”

“Why not? The child is no better than the mother, is she?” Mrs. Forest assumed an icy silence.

Linnie, to whom her sister soon conveyed the intelligence of the meeting in the park, took a very different ground. “You did right, sis,” she said; “for if you had accepted the invitation against your sense of propriety, he would have read your mind like a book, and despised you for it, as he will now, no doubt, for your airs.”

“Well, that’s a comforting dilemma, I must say.”

“I don’t care, Leila. The truth is, Susie was not treated well, nor Clara either. I like Susie. I’ve been there, lately, ever so many times, though you needn’t tell mamma.”

“Goodness me! I thought so. You’re infected with the Forest radicalism too. I wonder what you’ll come to?”

“A sensible person, I think. I mean to. I would not have refused to ride with the count. I should respect any one he chose to honor. Now you are smitten with him; you can’t deny it. But I can tell you one thing: he’s just as radical as papa is.”

“Well, men don’t like radical women for wives. They never choose them; and if they do, they don’t like them long.”

“You mean Clara. Now, Miss Wisdom, I’ll give you a little file to gnaw: There are three Forest girls in the market, or will be when Dr. Delano gets his divorce; and if either of the three ever becomes the Countess Von Frauenstein, it will not be the least radical one.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want the honor.”

“No, I understand exactly how afflicted you would be, if he should ask you. Poor child! I hope you will be spared that blow!” And Linnie laughed in the most exasperating way.

Min was in a fever of delight during the ride. During the first part of it the count had given her a very charming version of Aladdin; and when he drove back to the town, he led her like a queen into the finest ice-cream saloon, and seating her in a chair, took his place opposite to her and said, as he removed his hat and gloves, “Now, my golden-haired mistress, what will you have? Remember, I am your Slave of the Lamp.”

“Well, my Slave of the Lamp,” she answered, gayly, “I should like some chocolate lady-fingers, and some strawberry ice-cream, and some cocoa-nut pie, and some almonds, and—”

“Mercy!” exclaimed the count, laughing. “If you eat all that, instead of taking you to the toy-shop for that doll, I shall have to stop at Simpson’s, the undertaker, and have you measured.”

“Well. Is that the way Slaves of the Lamp behave, I should like to know?”

“Now, Min,” said the count, “let us compromise. The Slave of the Lamp is terribly afraid of your auntie, and so he must not make you ill. You take the cream and the chocolate nougats, and the rest we will have put in the carriage, for home consumption when the Slave is gone.”

“All right!” said the little girl.

When they reached home it required the count, Clara, and Min combined to carry all her purchases into the house.

“Oh, auntie! auntie! See! I’ve got such a lovely singing-bird!” And she insisted, whatever became of her other treasures, on carrying the cage in herself.

“My child!” exclaimed Clara, amazed at the quantity of parcels and boxes, “Surely you have not begged all these from the count?”

“Why, don’t you know, auntie, he’s my Slave of the Lamp? Everything I want he has to get for me.”

“Be gracious to me, Mrs. Delano,” the count said, in his most winning voice. “You do not know how much pleasure I have taken in gratifying the caprices of this pet of yours. Do not chide us.”

“Oh, I will not,” answered Clara, smiling. “But what will become of Min, if another spoiler is added to the list?”

“Depend upon it,” replied the count, “those children have the best chance of being lovely in their lives, who are most caressed and loved in their early days. ‘Spoiled,’ is generally only an excuse for not studying children’s needs, just as parents deny them sugar on the ground that it is not good for them, when everybody knows they require it ten times as much as grown people.”

Clara offered no opposition, for these were her own opinions. She asked the count in, and conversed some time with him. It was a conversation full of charm to both of them, but Clara was at times troubled with a vexing, ever-recurring thought. Von Frauenstein, master of human nature as he was, studied in vain to get at the secret. At length he said: “There is something that vexes you, and you are half tempted to tell me about it; that is because you know me so little. Pardon what may seem a vanity, but I am sure you will come to trust me with your confidence. Nothing should be hurried, nothing forced, among friends. We have a right only to what we can win; and there are some prizes too infinitely precious to be lost by careless play.” He looked at her eyes a moment, and then asked her to play. “I feel certain,” he said, as the music ceased, “that you do not wish to sing for me. I have never heard your voice.”

“You are a magician,” she replied. “You read my feelings so clearly that I sometimes almost tremble in your presence. I have not heard you sing yet, you know, and I much desire it.”

“Do you? That is very sweet. Let me try.” But when he had played the prelude to a song he stopped short. His hands dropped from the key-board. “I cannot,” he said, turning to her with eyes full of unspoken words. “I am under a spell. Will you send for Madam Susie, and let me talk business?” Clara assented, and a minute after Susie entered.

“Oh, madam,” he said, holding her hand, “I have the weight of Atlas on my shoulders;” and placing her in an arm-chair, he took a seat near her. Susie looked at him tenderly, like a divine little motherly soul as she was, and going to him, said, “You are tired. Now, make yourself perfectly at ease while you talk to me. I wish you would lie down on the sofa here, and light your cigar.”

“I wish I could,” he said; “but somehow I cannot lounge in a lady’s presence—not even when she desires it. It comes from my European breeding; but I will take a cigar, if it is not disagreeable to you.”

“Papa always smokes here,” said Clara, “so you need have no hesitation. We both rather like the odor of a nice cigar. I am very used to it, you know——”

Like a flash it entered the count’s mind that Dr. Delano was the cause of her preoccupation; and strange as it may seem, this was almost the first moment that he realized her position with regard to that man. He had never thought of her before as bound to any one, though he knew, of course, the fact of her marriage. He gave himself, however, no time to think of it, but commenced at once to “talk business,” as he had called it.

“You know,” he said, “the Social Palace is passed the Rubicon, and with me there is no turning back. To-morrow there will be fifty men at work on a temporary building for the brick-making. The chief of that part of the work, a man of immense executive ability, I sent here the day after I left. He is at the hotel, and has done good work since he was engaged. In three months we can commence the walls; but long before that, the subterranean air-galleries, cellars, sewers, and so forth, will be built. I have the general plan, which I brought from Guise, but as to details I am less fortunate; besides, you know I am to make this on a somewhat larger scale, though the original accommodates fifteen hundred. I put the limit at two thousand for this. I want you ladies and the doctor to go with me to-morrow and fix the exact location and position of the palace, the manufactories, the gardens and pleasure-grounds, and the nursery and conservatories.”

Susie’s eyes gleamed as he talked; when he paused, she jumped up and walked the floor in excitement. “Oh, this is glorious, Clara! See what a magnificent thing it is to have capital—no, not that, but to have the soul to use it nobly for the amelioration of honest, laboring people.”

“You want to kiss me, Madam Susie. I see it in your eyes,” the count said, laughing.

“That’s just my desire,” cried Susie; and coming beside him, she put her arms around his neck and kissed his forehead. In return, he kissed both her cheeks, saying, “You are my right-hand man, you know. I leave you this plan to-night, which you will study, and here is a magazine having a pretty full description of the original. In a short time I must go to Guise. I shall take Min, my daughter,” he added, gravely, as if there was no possibility of questioning his right, “and you must look about for a nurse to take charge of her. I should think Linnie would like that place; and understand, I have a special reason for hitting upon her. You will go—that is, you can, can you not? You see, Min must go, for I wish her to stay, if you are willing—not otherwise, of course; and as this is a business expedition, you must be totally relieved from nursery duties.”

Susie’s head fairly swam. “Yes, you can go as well as not,” said Clara. “It will do me good to work into your place. I will commence with new responsibilities at once, so I may be used to them. Young Page, the new assistant, is going to prove a great acquisition to us.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” said the count. “I must see him.”

“Can you not come back with us from the prospecting expedition, to-morrow?” asked Susie. “You and the doctor, and take lunch with us. We have taken Page right into the family, you know. He is really a nice young fellow—so well bred and modest.” The count accepted, and then bade the ladies good-morning.