XXV Brought Face to Face With My Fate
The promised visit to Powhatan was paid in July.
“How happily the days of Thalaba went by!”
I said over the strangely musical line to myself scores of times in the two months of my stay in the dear old county. “Homestead,” the home of the D.’s, was never more beautiful, and the days were full of innocent fun, and junketings without number. College and University boys were at home, and city people were flocking to the country. There were walks, drives, “dining-days,” early and late horseback parties, setting out from one hospitable house before sunrise, and breakfasting at another ten or twelve miles away; or, better yet, leaving home at sunset, and pacing, cantering, and galloping (women never rode trotting horses) along highroad and plantation lane to a house, buried in ancestral woods, in the very heart of the county, for supper, returning by the light of the harvest moon, as fresh as when we set forth. With no premonition that this was to be the most eventful summer and autumn of my hitherto tranquil life, I gave myself up, wholly and happily, to the influences that sweetened and glorified it.
Late in August I resolved rather suddenly to go home. My sister was in Boston; my father would not leave his business for so much as a week; my mother and the younger children ought to be in the country. Since she would not resign my father to what she spoke of as “Fate and servants,” I would throw my now rejuvenated body into the breach, abide by the stuff and her husband and sons, while she took a sadly needed rest with old friends in Nottoway County.
Recollecting how persistently I clung to the decision in the face of a tempest of protest, my own heart in secret league with the protestants, I acknowledge with humble gratitude the guidance of the “moving finger that writes” out the destinies we think to control for ourselves.
The glow of the halcyon summer had not passed from my spirit when I wrote to my late hostess two days after my return:
“Richmond, August 29th, 1854.
“My Own Friend,—I said ‘I will write next week,’ but it suits my feelings and convenience to write this morning.
“In the first place, my heart is so full of happiness that it overflows upon and toward everybody that I love, and don’t you dear Homesteadians—yourself and Powhie, especially—come in for a share?
“Mrs. Noble was very pleasant, but the journey was a bit tedious. It always is! Richmond looked enchanting when at last the spires and chimneys appeared upon the horizon, and my sweet home was never so pretty before.
“Mother had planned an agreeable surprise, and not told me that the painters had been at work elsewhere than in my room. So the freshly painted shutters and the white window-facings and cornices, contrasted with the gray walls, were doubly beautiful, because not expected. Then Percy came tumbling down the steps, clapping his hands and shouting in glee, and Alice’s bright smile shone upon me at the gate, and mother left company in the parlor to give me four kisses—and all I could say was, ‘I have had such a pleasant visit, and now I am so glad to see you all!’
“Father could not be coaxed to bed that night until one o’clock, although mother reminded him that he had a headache.
“‘Never mind! Daughters don’t come home every night!’
“‘But this one will be tired out!’
“‘Well, she may sleep late to-morrow morning.’
“He doesn’t know how lazy I have grown of late.
“I am surprised to find vegetation so luxuriant here. My inquiries concerning the ’late drought’ are answered by a stare of amazement. Rain has been abundant in this region. In our garden the vegetables and grape-vines grow rank and tall. And as for flowers! There were seven bouquets in the parlor, smiling and breathing a welcome. Last night I received one per rail from Horace Lacy (bless his soul!), and Herbert to-night brought up another and a magnificent, when he came to his late supper.
“Mother had delicious peaches for supper the night I got back, but advised me to ‘eat them sparingly, at first.’ Yesterday I forgot her caution, and I think I am the better for the lapse. Peaches, watermelons, apples, sweet potatoes, etc., were liberally patronized by us all. The cholera ‘scare’ seems to be over. Doctor Haxall advised the members of our family to make no change in their diet while they continued well, and they have prospered wonderfully under his regimen....
“I wish I had time to tell you of some queer letters I found waiting for me. Father would not forward them, ‘for fear of annoying me.’ They are meant to be complimentary, one requesting ‘some particulars of your birthplace, education,’ etc. ‘Wish he may get them!’
“Now, dear, forgive this egotistical scrawl—written as fast as fingers can scratch—but just seat yourself and tell me exactly what you have been doing, saying, and thinking since I left; how our pet, Powhie (the dear old scamp!), is thriving; and the state of your mother’s health, also the news from The Jungle.
“Our Heavenly Father bless and love you, my darling!”
We packed my mother and her younger children off to the country the first of September, and rejoiced unselfishly that they had escaped the fervid heats of the following week. Our house was deliciously cool by comparison with the sultriness of the outer world. The thick walls and lofty ceilings kept the temperature at an equable and comfortable point. We breakfasted early, and by nine o’clock the day was my own—or six consecutive hours of it.
In unconscious imitation of Charlotte Brontë, who began Jane Eyre while The Professor was “plodding his weary round from publisher to publisher,” I had begun another book by the time Alone was turned over to the tender mercies of Mr. Morris’s “reader.” I finished the first draught on the forenoon of September 11th, having wrought at it with the fierce joy in work that ever comes to me after a season of absolute or comparative idleness.
I was very weary when the last word was written:
“Alma was asleep!”
I read it aloud to myself in the safe solitude of my shaded library. I had not heard then that Thackeray slapped his thigh exultantly after describing the touch of pride Becky felt in her husband’s athletic pummelling of her lover. I could have understood it fully at that instant.
“Thackeray, my boy, that is a stroke of genius!” cried the great author, aloud, in honest pride.
The small woman writer sat wearily back in her chair, and said—not murmured: “I flatter myself that is a neat touch!”
Then I found that my head ached. Moreover, it had a strange, empty feeling. I compared it to a squeezed sponge. I likewise reminded myself that I had not been out of the house for two days; that my father had shaken his head when I told him it was “too hot for walking,” warning me that I “must not throw away the good the country had done for me.” He would ask me, at supper-time, if I had taken the admonition to heart.
I went off to my room, bathed, and dressed for a round of calls. This I proceeded to make, keeping on the shady side of the street. I called at three houses, and found everybody out. The sun was setting when I stood in front of my mirror on my return, and laid aside bonnet and mantle (we called it a “visite”). The red light from the west shot across me while I was brushing up the hair the hot dampness had laid flat. It struck me suddenly that I was looking rather well. I wore what we knew as a “spencer” of thin, dotted white muslin. It would be a “shirt-waist” to-day. It was belted at what was then a slim waist above a skirt of “changeable” silk. Herbert had said it “reminded him of a pale sunrise,” but there were faint green reflections among shimmering pinks. There must be somebody in the immediate neighborhood upon whom I might call while I was dressed to go out. A dart of self-reproach followed swiftly upon the thought.
My old and favorite tutor, Mr. Howison, had broken down in health two years after accepting a call to his first parish. An obstinate affection of the throat made preaching impracticable. At the end of a year of compulsory inaction, he resumed the practice of law in Richmond, and within another twelve months married the woman he had sought and won before his illness. They lived in a pleasant house upon the next street, so near that we often “ran around” to see each other. “Mary’s” younger sister had died during my absence from home, and as I reminded myself, now, I ought to have called before this.
Half a square from her door, I recalled that the young clergyman who was supplying Doctor Hoge’s pulpit while he was abroad, and whom I had heard preach last Sunday, was staying at the Howison’s. It was not right, in the eyes of the church, that he should go to a hotel, and since he would go nowhere except as a boarder, the Howisons had opened door and hearts to make him at home in his temporary charge. He had given us an interesting sermon on Sunday, and made a pleasing impression generally. I had not thought of him since, until almost at the gate of my friends’ house. Then I said, inly:
“Should the youthful divine be hanging about the porch or yard, I’ll walk on unconcernedly and postpone the call.”
Being familiar with the ways of young sprigs of divinity, and having over twenty blood-relatives who had the right to prefix their baptismal names by “The Reverend,” I had no especial fondness for the brand. Furthermore, three callow clerics and one full-fledged had already invited me to share parsonage and poverty with them. For all I had one and the same reply. It might be my predestined lot, as certain anxious friends began to hint, to live out my earthly days in single blessedness; and, if the ancient anti-race-suicide apostles were to be credited, then to lead apes in Hades for an indefinite period. I would risk the terrors of both states sooner than take upon me the duties and liabilities of a minister’s wife. Upon that I was determined.
The youthful divine was nowhere in sight. Nor did he show up during the half-hour I passed with the Howisons. They proposed walking home with me when I arose to go. Just outside the gate we espied a tall figure striding up the street, swinging his cane in very unclerical style. Mr. Howison stopped.
“Ah, Mr. Terhune! I was hoping you might join us.”
Then he introduced him to me. Of course, he asked permission to accompany us, and we four strolled abreast through the twilight of the embowered street. I had known the sister of Mr. Terhune, who, as the widow of Doctor Hoge’s most intimate friend, was a frequent visitor to Richmond. I asked civilly after her, and was answered as civilly. We remarked upon the heat of the day and the fine sunset; then we were at our gate, where my father and brother were looking out for me.
My escorts declined the invitation to enter garden and house; Mr. Howison passed over to me a big bunch of roses he had gathered from his garden and brought with him, and, having exchanged “Good-evenings,” we three lingered at the gate to admire the flowers. There was no finer collection of roses in any private garden in town than those which were the lawyer’s pets and pride. My face was buried in the cool deliciousness of my bouquet when, through the perfect stillness of the evening, we heard our new acquaintance say:
“Your friend, Miss Hawes, walks well.”
He had, as we had noticed on Sunday, a voice of marvellous compass, with peculiar “carrying” qualities. He had not spoken more loudly than his companions, and, having reached the corner of the street, he fancied himself beyond earshot. Every word floated back to us.
We laughed—all three of us. Then I said, deliberately:
“If that man ever asks me to marry him, I shall have to do it! I vowed solemnly, long ago, to marry the first man who thinks me handsome, if he should give me the chance. Let us hope this one won’t!”
“Amen!” responded my hearers, my father adding, “His cloth rules him out.”
It may have been a week later in the season that I was strolling down Broad Street in company with “Tom” Baxter, Mr. Rhodes’s chummiest crony. He had overtaken me a few squares farther up-town, and was begging me, in the naïve way most girls found bewitching, to take a turning that would lead us by an office where he was to leave a paper he had promised to deliver at that hour.
“Then,” he pursued, with the same refreshing simplicity of tone and look, “there will be nothing to hinder me from going all the way home with you.”
I refused point-blank, and he detained me for a minute at the parting of the ways, entreating and arguing, until I cut the nonsense short by saying that I had an engagement which I must keep without regard to his convenience, and walked on. Tom was an amusing fellow, and handsome enough to win forgiveness for his absurdities. I was smiling to myself in the recollection of the little farce, when I met, face to face, but not eye to eye—for we were both looking at the pavement—the man who had said that I walked well. He stepped aside hurriedly; the hand that swung the cane went up to his hat, and we went our separate ways.
That evening I was surprised to receive a call from our pastor pro tempore. He told me, months afterward, that he was homesick and lonely on that particular afternoon. At least two-thirds of the best people in the parish were out of town, and he found little to interest him in those he met socially.
“You smiled in such a genial fashion when we met on that blesséd corner that I felt better at once. The recollection of that friendly look gave me courage to call, out of hand.”
Whereupon, I brought sentimentality down on the run by asking if he had ever heard the negro proverb, “Fired at the blackbird and hit the crow”?
“That was Tom Baxter’s smile—not yours!”