Peculiar: A Tale of the Great Transition

“Wed not for wealth, Emily, without love,—’tis gaudy slavery; nor for love without competence,—’tis twofold misery.”—Colman’s Poor Gentleman.

It is a small and somewhat faded room in an unpretending brick house in one of the streets that intersect Broadway, somewhere between Canal Street and the Park. A woman sits at a writing-table, with the fingers of her left hand thrust through her hair and supporting her forehead, while in her right hand she holds a pen with which she listlessly draws figures, crosses, circles and triangles, faces and trees, on the blotting-paper that partly covers a letter which she has been inditing.

A window near by is open at the top. March, having come in like a lion, is going out like a lamb. A canary-bird, intoxicated with the ambrosial breath and subduing sunshine of the first mild day of spring, is pouring forth such a Te Deum laudamus as Mozart himself would have despaired of rivalling. Yesterday’s rain-storm purified the atmosphere, swept clean the streets, and deodorized the open gutters, that in warm weather poison with their effluvium the air of the great American metropolis.

On the wall, in front of the lady at the table, hangs a mirror. Look, now, and you will catch in it the reflection of her face. Forty? Not far from it. Perhaps four or five years on the sunny side. Fair? Many persons would call her still beautiful. The features, though somewhat thin, show their fine Grecian outline. The hair is of a rich flaxen, the eyes blue and mild, the mouth delicately drawn, showing Cupid’s bow in the curve of the upper lip, and disclosing, not too ostentatiously, the whitest teeth.

Her dress is significant of past rather than present familiarity with a fashionable wardrobe. If she ever wore jewels, she has parted with all of them, for there is not even a plain gold ring on her forefinger. Her robe is a simple brown cashmere, not so distended by crinoline as to disguise her natural figure, which is erect, of the average height, and harmoniously rounded. We detect this the better as she rises, looks a moment sorrowfully in the glass, and sighs to herself, “Fading! fading!”

There is a gentle knock at the door, and to her “Come in,” an old black man enters.

“Good morning, Toussaint,” says the lady; “what have you there?”

“Only a few grapes for Madame. They are Black Hamburgs, and very sweet. I hope Madame will relish them. They will do her good. Will she try some of them now?”

“They are excellent, Toussaint. And what a beautiful basket you have brought them in! You must have paid high for all this fruit, so early in the season. Indeed, you must not run into such extravagances on my account.”

“Does Madame find her cough any better?”

“Thank you, Toussaint, I do not notice much change in it as yet. Perhaps a few more mild days like this will benefit me. How is Juliette?”

“Passablement bien. Pretty well. May I ask—ahem! Madame will excuse the question—but does her husband treat her with any more consideration now that she is ill?”

“My good Toussaint, I grieve to say that Mr. Charlton is not so much softened as irritated by my illness. It threatens to be expensive, you see.”

“Ah! but that is sad,—sad! I wish Madame were in my house. Such care as Juliette and I would take of her! You look so much like your mother, Madame! I knew her before her first marriage. I dressed her hair the day of her wedding. People used to call her proud. But she was always kind to me,—very kind. And you look like her so much! As I grow old I think all the more of my old and early friends,—the first I had when I came to New York from St. Domingo. Most of them are dead, but I find out their children if I can; and if they are sick I amuse myself by carrying them a few grapes or flowers. They are very good to indulge me by accepting such trifles.”

“Toussaint, the goodness is all on your side. These grapes are no trifle, and you ought to know it. I thank you for them heartily. Let me give you back the basket.”

“No, please don’t. Keep it. Good morning, Madame! Be cheerful. Le bon temps reviendra. All shall be well. Bon jour! Au revoir, Madame!”

He hurries out of the room, but instantly returns, and, taking a leaf of fresh lettuce out of his pocket, reaches up on tiptoe and puts it between the bars of the bird-cage. “I was nigh forgetting the lettuce for the bird,” says he. “Madame will excuse my gaucherie.” And, bowing low, he again disappears.

The story of Emily Bute Charlton may be briefly told. Her mother, Mrs. Danby, was descended from that John Bradshaw who was president of the court which tried Charles the First, and who opposed a spirited resistance to the usurpation of Cromwell in dissolving the Parliament. Mrs. Danby was proud of her family tree. In her twentieth year she was left a widow, beautiful, ambitious, and poor, with one child, a daughter, who afterwards had in Emily a half-sister. This first daughter had been educated carefully, but she had hardly reached her seventeenth year when she accepted the addresses of a poor man, some fifteen years her senior, of the name of Berwick. The mother, with characteristic energy, opposed the match, but it was of no use. The daughter was incurably in love; she married, and the mother cast her off.

Time brought about its revenges. Mr. Berwick had inherited ten acres of land on the island of Manhattan. He tried to sell it, but was so fortunate as to find nobody to buy. So he held on to the land, and by hard scratching managed to pay the taxes on it. In ten years the city had crept up so near to his dirty acres that he sold half of them for a hundred thousand dollars, and became all at once a rich man. Meanwhile his wife’s mother, Mrs. Danby, after remaining fourteen years a widow, showed the inconsistency of her opposition to her daughter’s marriage by herself making an imprudent match. She married a Mr. Bute, poor and inefficient, but belonging to “one of the first families.” By this husband she had one daughter, Emily, the lady at whose reflection in the mirror we have just been looking.

Emily Bute, like her half-sister, Mrs. Berwick, who was many years her senior, inherited beauty, and was quite a belle in her little sphere in Philadelphia, where her family resided. Her mother, who had repelled Berwick as a son-in-law in his adversity, was too proud to try to propitiate him in his prosperity. She concealed her poverty as well as she could from her daughter, Mrs. Berwick, and the latter had often to resort to stratagem in order to send assistance to the family. At last the proud mother died; and six months afterwards her firstborn daughter, Mrs. Berwick, died, leaving one child, a son, Henry Berwick.

Years glided on, and Mr. Bute had hard work to keep the wolf from the door. He was one of those persons whose efforts in life are continual failures, from the fact that they cannot adapt themselves to circumstances,—cannot persevere during the day of small things till their occupation, by gradual development, becomes profitable. He would tire of an employment the moment its harvest of gold seemed remote. Forever sanguine and forever unsuccessful, he at last found himself reduced, with his daughter, to a mode of life that bordered on the shabby.

In this state of things, Mr. Berwick, like a timely angel, reappeared, rich, and bearing help. He was charmed with Emily, as he had formerly been with her half-sister. He proposed marriage. Mr. Bute was enchanted. He could not conceive of Emily’s hesitating for a moment. Were her affections pre-engaged? No. She had been a little of a flirt, and that perhaps had saved her from a serious passion. Why not, then, accept Mr. Berwick? He was so old! Old? What is a seniority of thirty years? He is rich,—has a house on the Fifth Avenue, and another on the North River. What insanity it would be in a poor girl to allow such a chance to slip by!

Still Emily had her misgivings. Her virginal instincts protested against the sacrifice. She had an ideal of a happy life, which certainly did not lie all in having a freestone house, French furniture, and a carriage. She knew the bitterness of poverty; but was she quite ready to marry without love? Her father’s distresses culminated, and drove her to a decision. She became Mrs. Berwick; and Mr. Bute was presented with ten thousand dollars on the wedding-day. He forthwith relieved himself of fifteen hundred in the purchase of a “new patent-spring phaeton” and span. “A great bargain, sir; splendid creatures; spirited, but gentle; a woman can drive them; no more afraid of a locomotive than of a stack of hay; the carriage in prime order; hasn’t been used a dozen times; will stand any sort of a shock; the property of my friend, Garnett; he wouldn’t part with the horses if he could afford to keep them; his wife is quite broken-hearted at the idea of losing them; such a chance doesn’t occur once in ten years; you can sell the span at a great advance in the spring.”

This urgent recommendation from “a particular friend, entirely disinterested,” decided Bute. He bought the “establishment.” The next day as he was taking a drive, the shriek of a steam-whistle produced such an effect upon his incomparable span, that they started off at headlong speed, ran against a telegraph-pole, smashed the “new patent-spring phaeton,” threw out the driver, and broke his neck against a curb-stone; and that was the end of Mr. Bute for this world, if we may judge from appearances.

Emily’s marriage did not turn out so poorly as the retributions of romance might demand. But on Mr. Berwick’s death she followed her mother’s example, and married a second time. She became Mrs. Charlton. Some idea of the consequences of this new alliance may be got from the letter which she has been writing, and which we take the liberty of laying before our readers.