Chapter V

The following morning, as Mrs. Tower and Jessie were sitting in the library, with Emilie Jones and her brother, a servant brought in an awkwardly folded and hastily written note, and presenting it to Jessie, informed her that the bearer waited in the hall for a reply. Jessie opened the unsealed paper and read:

“Miss Lincoln,—The buttons on my traveling dress, which you made, do not give me any satisfaction. This is for you to come to Mrs. Varley’s this afternoon, directly after dinner, and alter them, and I shall expect you to make no extra charge for it.

“Elizabeth Tyler.

“P. S. Mrs. Varley’s family would be willing to employ you on my recommendation.”

The color went and came in Jessie’s cheek, as she read the deliberate insult the writer evidently intended.

“What is it, Jessie?” said Emilie, whose electrical sympathy was instantly roused, “any thing more from those abominable Tylers? Pray let me see?” Mrs. Tower looked over Emilie’s shoulder as she read. “What insolence! Jessie Lincoln, if I were only a man, I am sure I should avenge your insult in single combat! Why, brother, are you a man, and will you see a lady treated like that?” she continued with thrilling emphasis, throwing the note disdainfully out of her hands.

“Yes, sister, I hope I am a man,” replied the young naval officer, “but not quite so hot-headed and reckless a man as you would have made. If you were on board our vessel, I fear we might have our hands full to keep you out of ‘affairs of honor!’ Miss Lincoln, I presume,” he continued, laying down the note, while a flush slowly crept to his forehead, “has wisdom enough to manage with the contempt it deserves, so very contemptible an assault!”

“I will reply to it, Jessie,” said Mrs. Tower, as she sat down before her writing-table and wrote:⁠—

“Mrs. Tower takes the liberty to decline for Miss Lincoln, the proposition Miss Tyler has seen fit to make, as the change in Miss Lincoln’s circumstances and prospects renders any further intercourse with Miss Tyler unbefitting entirely. That intercourse is therefore at an end.”

Jessie begged that any thing so like retaliation, might not be sent, as Miss Tyler was unquestionably instigated by the Varleys, who were too cowardly to assail her only through a tool.

“It becomes me, Jessie, to vindicate the honor of my family, and I feel justified in checking such effrontery, and foiling it with its own weapons,” insisted Mrs. Tower.

“Yes, yes indeed!” said Emilie. “I’m glad of it, Mrs. Tower, and I only wish I had the inditing of the reply. It would scorch like a flame, I’m sure it would, every word of it. Do, please charge me with the delivery of the missive, Mrs. Tower! my fingers ache for the commission, and I’ll add an oral appendix on my own hook!”

“O, no, Emilie,” replied Mrs. Tower, smiling; “I appreciate your generous intention, but I fear your enthusiasm and indignation might spoil your embassy.”

Meantime the whole Varley family were indulging in boisterous exultation over Elizabeth’s “capital trick, to show a mantuamaker girl that she was out of her reckoning when she sailed into their latitude—she did not belong with them, no how you could fix it;” for it must be humiliating, indeed, to be ordered to such paltry service after deceiving such wealthy and important people into showing her some distinguished civilities. Charlotte said she “guessed it would convince Mr. Style that there was something to choose between an heiress and a servant!” Mrs. Tyler simpered from behind her porcelain, that “it would learn people to know their places—and one might lose some custom by such a fraud on society—the matter would not stop in a corner!” Annette declared it was “too good.” Mrs. Varley echoed, as usual, the respective opinions, as they came from the mint, and Adelaide gleefully suggested that it “might taste a little bitter to Mrs. Tower’s palate, as she made such a prodigious favorite of the girl. For her part, she expected Mrs. Tower would import a colony of chimney-sweeps, to give brilliancy to society there, she was so much the patron of the ‘lower classes!’ ”

But the reply came far sooner than it was looked for, and exultation speedily changed hands with consternation. What could it mean? “Change in her circumstances and prospects!” What possible interpretation could be applied to that? Charlotte fell into hysterics, and screamed she “knew it could mean nothing less than that Jessie Lincoln was engaged to Mr. Style!” and to complete the excitement, she actually fainted away.

“Good gracious me!” stormed Miss Tyler, almost choking with passion, “I should like to know what ‘change of circumstances and prospects,’ can license an impertinent, presuming, poverty-pinched hussy of a dress-maker to withdraw her acquaintance from a lady of my position in the fashionable world! Mother, did we tear ourselves from the importunities of our city friends, and patronize these Varleys, for such insulting treatment as this? Mrs. Varley, we did not know you lived among Hottentots, or we should have refused to come here, in the face of all your urgency, every soul of you!”

Mrs. Varley and her four conscious daughters, vituperated, apologized, and appeased, as well as their own choler would permit, the excited and wrathful visiters, who declared “they would leave the house and the town immediately, and spread the story as far as the newspapers would carry it, and that was everywhere!” But it was finally suggested by the daring Adelaide, that her mother should go to Mrs. Tower, clothed with all the terror of their united resentment, and demand a satisfactory explanation. Especially was she commissioned to discover if possible what sudden “change in circumstances and prospects,” had set Jessie Lincoln upon such a pinnacle over the heads of everybody.

“I declare, girls,” said Mrs. Varley to her daughters, in secret session, before she started on her errand, “I do feel like pizon about this affair! I am half skart out of my wits at such a breeze between us and Mrs. Tower! I wish to the mercy we had never seen these mischief-making Tylers! As if them that touches porcupines mustn’t expect the quills! Or them that insults, to be insulted back again. I don’t believe they are half so rich and uppercrust as they pretend—and then they make such a sight of trouble! Besides, you know what I told you I surmised about Mrs. Tower. If it is so, she will be sure to let me and other people know it, if she hasn’t already!”

The girls all looked doubtfully at each other.

“I wish in my heart these Tylers would go,” said Annette, “for of all the conceited trumpery old sights that ever I saw, Mrs. Tyler is the foremost.”

“I cannot express my detestation of Liz,” interrupted Adelaide. “She is as false and cunning as the very old snake himself, and bad as I am, I do think she is worse!”

Charlotte had come to life enough by this time to mention Miss Tyler’s flirtation with Mr. Style, when she was checked by Adelaide with,

“Hush! she is coming—it’s said somebody is always at hand when you are talking about him!”

“O, do go quick, Mrs. Varley! Havn’t you got ready yet? I’m terribly impatient for that woman’s apology;” said Miss Tyler, as she unceremoniously opened the door and thrust in her face. “But what are you talking about with closed doors? Us, I presume! You look caught, every one of you,” and Miss Tyler turned up her disdainful nose, as if there would be no further amity till she heard a disclaimer of that offence.

“O, no, no, Lizzie, my dear!” supplicated Mrs. Varley, in her blandest and most conciliatory tone. “Pray come right in, love, and cheer up these poor disconsolate creatures while I am gone. Bring my hat and parasol, Adelaide. Shameful, isn’t it, to drag a body out in this briling sunshine, on such business?”

“We were saying,” remarked Adelaide, as she handed the bonnet and parasol to her mother, “how much we do despise these deceitful kind of upstarts, who pretend to be so much more than they really are!”

“It is the tendency of our American institootions,” replied Elizabeth, in a tone more pacific, but very affectedly sage, as she settled herself indolently into a rocking-chair. “They encourage upstarts! You don’t see nothing of this kind in England. For my part, I think it devolves on the higher classes to—to—hem—” she found herself unexpectedly wading beyond her depth, and unfortunately afloat in the high flown piece of wisdom she had started to express. Charlotte hastened to the rescue, in a very luminous climax to Miss Tyler’s halting proposition.

“To let them know,” she interposed.

“Yes, to let them know!” replied Elizabeth, with clinching emphasis.

Meanwhile Mrs. Varley was sailing majestically along the street toward Mrs. Tower’s residence. Her face was very brazen, but there was a trembling and apprehension in her heart, which communicated itself to her body, and her hand shook nervously as she twitched the door-bell.

“Is Mrs. Tower in?” she said to the servant who opened the door, in a very sharp and insolent voice—and before he had time to reply, she added, “go and tell her that Mrs. Varley wishes to speak with her alone.”

In a few minutes Mrs. Tower entered the drawing-room, her countenance and carriage as placid as if never a breath had disturbed her. A cold and haughty bow was the response she received to her polite and polished greeting. Mrs. Varley seemed entirely at a loss for her next measure—she was confused—exceedingly confused, but the sternness of her coarse features softened not a shadow. Mrs. Tower inquired for the health of her family.

“Yes, ma’am! it becomes you to ask, I should think,” retorted Mrs. Varley, very bitterly. “Did you write this note, ma’am?” and she advanced toward Mrs. Tower with the offending document.

“I did, indeed, Mrs. Varley,” replied Mrs. Tower, as she just glanced at the note, and gave it back to Mrs. Varley.

“Ah, you did! and you seem very cool and indifferent about it, too, as if it was a small matter to insult a genteel family like mine, just because we wont have any thing to do with the lower clashes, nor uphold you in it,” said Mrs. Varley, losing all control of herself, and swelling her tones as she grew angrier and angrier, to the keen and wiry pitch peculiar to the voice of an excited woman. “I’ll thank you to tell me what it means?”

“Precisely what it says,” replied Mrs. Tower, in a low, calm voice; “but what do you mean by the ‘lower classes?’ ”

“I mean all mantymakers, and servants, and tradespeople, and everybody that works for a livin’,” quickly responded Mrs. Varley—she was fortified on that point. “I’d have you to know that my family is too rich and high up in the world to have any thing at all to do with them sort of folks, whatever yours may be, Mrs. Tower! But I know one’s bringing up has a great deal to do with one’s genteelety—it don’t set easy on everybody!”

“A very pertinent remark, Mrs. Varley,” replied Mrs. Tower, with an effort to repress a smile. “I conclude you do not embrace your visiters in your catalogue of the ‘lower classes?’ ”

“No, indeed! that’s what I don’t! they are very wealthy, and fashionable, and high-bred people, and know all the richest and fashionablest people in the city of New York; and what’s more, they know how to resent an affront as well as some other folks—I guess you will find out.”

“I must take the liberty to correct one of your statements, madam,” replied Mrs. Tower. “Mr. Tyler, the husband and father of your visiters, rents his hardware store in New York of the business agent of my adopted daughter and heiress, Miss Jessie Lincoln, to whom I have given my estates in that city. And, moreover, he is so deeply indebted for borrowed capital, to support the extravagance of his wife and daughter, that every farthing he possesses would not liquidate his debt. So much for the wealth and independence of the tradesman’s family. As to the fashionable part of the story, without any arrogance I may assert that my acquaintance for years has included the first and wealthiest families in New York, and I venture to affirm that in those circles Mrs. Tyler and her designing daughter were never so much as heard of!”

Mrs. Varley began to look crestfallen.

“Well,” she rejoined, “I don’t know but it may be so, but I have no reason to think it is. At any rate, they don’t hug up mantymakers, and take ’em out visiting with them!”

“Mrs. Varley,” replied Mrs. Tower, rising from her chair and assuming a moral majesty before which her narrow-souled assailant quailed, “I acknowledge it is exasperation which prompts to the disclosure of another truth, which may sound rather painfully to your pride. I deplore the occasion, but you have really driven me to it, in order to vindicate the dignity of my family, which you have willfully wounded. Mrs. Varley, you were a servant in my father’s house—you contracted a vicious and disgraceful marriage with a servant in a large gambling establishment in the city of Baltimore, where we then resided, and when you ran away with your husband—my casket of jewels went with you! I saw you take it, but I forebore to expose you to my father, because I pitied your sin and folly, and I knew the severity of his sense of justice and injury would pursue you without mercy, so he died in ignorance of your crime. You lived in degradation and poverty for years and years, and I have seen those fastidious daughters of yours, now so sensitive lest they should be contaminated by contact with what you are pleased to call the “lower classes,” ragged and hungry in the streets of C., while I lived in that city with my departed husband. And more than once have I carried food and clothing to the miserable abode you called your home. Do you remember your own almost mortal illness when the cholera scourged that city? Some fortunate stakes at the gaming-table subsequently put Mr. Varley in possession of considerable sums of money, and the diligent pursuit of the same vicious business for many successful years, has put you and your family in possession of an independent fortune. For these facts I can refer you to authorities if you will. Now, have I read this chapter of your private history correctly?”

Mrs. Varley turned every imaginable color as the relation proceeded—pale, red, speckled and spotted. She was utterly confounded for a moment, and then she exclaimed, as she seized Mrs. Tower’s passive hand in both her own.

“Josepha Gordon! I have sometimes thought it must be the same!”

“Josepha Gordon was my maiden name,” replied Mrs. Tower, calmly yet sorrowfully watching the whirlwind in poor Mrs. Varley’s soul. “Twenty years, and bitter sorrows, have wrought more changes in me than fortune has in you, Cynthia Varley. But have I spoken truly?”

Mrs. Varley could scarcely reply; she sunk down upon the sofa completely overcome. Mortification and deep humiliation seemed to paralyze her faculties. Tears, and sobs, and groans, right pitiful to witness followed. One moment a storm of furious passion rose in her bosom, and the next a torrent of tears poured over her cheeks.

“It is all true,” she stammered at length; “but O don’t, for mercy’s sake, don’t expose us! It would be our ruin, our utter ruin, and I am sure I have suffered enough already. I will restore your jewels fourfold,” and she began nervously working at a magnificent diamond that sparkled on her bosom.

“Keep the jewels, Mrs. Varley. I do not need them, neither will I accept what you have so long called your own,” said Mrs. Tower mildly. “I know not what remorseful visitings have struggled in your heart, but if they had wrought a moral renovation there, I would have left this painful story in oblivion, and spared you so much humiliation. Believe me, Mrs. Varley, money is not the true criterion in estimating respectability or character, as you seem to judge. That man is poor indeed who only possesses heaps of shining gold, though so great he cannot count their value—but the wealth garnered in the heart, the gems of virtue set around the immortal soul, are the only imperishable riches, which are the legitimate and justifiable ambition of an imperishable nature. I will keep your secret sacredly, as I have kept it these many years that we have been neighbors and acquaintances. I will only exhort you to remember, madam, that there is nothing dishonorable in honest, laborious, physical industry—the working with one’s hands. The fact that my beloved Jessie toiled to provide for the comfort of her sick and indigent parents, and discharged with her own noble efforts all their pecuniary obligations, only renders her more admirable in my estimation, and worthier to receive the inheritance I feel honored to bestow upon her. Hereafter she will be recognized as my own daughter.”

Mrs. Varley was perfectly subdued. The character of the lady she had come armed to annihilate, stood out sublimely before her, in contrast with her own conscious duplicity and assumption—humbled and silenced she rose to go, with very much the feeling of an arrogant general vanquished and routed, and forced into a disgraceful and disordered retreat.

My pen is unequal to the description of the scene at Mrs. Varley’s own house, when she at length reached home, and detailed to her daughters the whole story, and relieved the suspense of her guests, by so much of it as related to themselves. Mrs. Tyler and Elizabeth decided to leave in the first train the next morning, bearing with them any thing but the cordiality and good wishes of their hostess and her five daughters, who gave the “metropolitan friends” definitely to understand that they regarded themselves most scandalously imposed upon, by the shabbiest of pretenders, and that any further acquaintance would be unthought of, which complimentary farewells the guests fiercely retorted.

Mrs. Varley very shortly concluded that the health of her family, which, in truth, had suffered somewhat by their unexpected defeats, required journeying; and in a few days the house was closed, the servants discharged, and the household had departed, rumor said to spend the winter in Cuba. And not long after the citizens of N. were very much astonished by an advertisement in the papers, stating that “the entire establishment lately occupied by Mrs. Cynthia Varley, deceased, would be sold at public auction on such a day—house, grounds, furniture, plate, horses and carriages, etc., and that the sale must be positive, for cash.” Subsequently the melancholy report was confirmed, that Mrs. Varley and her fair and beautiful Charlotte were taken with violent fever on their journey southward, and had both died. The fate of the survivors remained in mystery, as the administrator of the estate had no liberty to communicate their place of residence, or their future intentions. No doubt they chose some fashionable resort, and I fear became the prey of fortune-hunters.

Mrs. Tyler, on her return to New York, found not only that her husband was bankrupt, and his affairs in a state of irretrievable ruin, but his mind also was a perfect wreck, fluctuating between idiocy and insanity, but its coloring always that of the most hopeless depression. Jessie Lincoln’s bounty long supported him at a lunatic asylum, while his wife and Elizabeth managed to support themselves by the proceeds of a small millinery shop.

The revolution of a few years brought some interesting changes over the society of N. Jessie Lincoln, the faithful and dutiful daughter, became the beloved and lovely wife of—“The Rev. Mr. Style of course!” cries my hasty reader. “Who ever read a story where the hero and heroine were not finally married? it is an event to be fully anticipated.” Then, indeed, is my tale a novel one. Be not too confident in coming to conclusions, because precedents happen to be in their favor.

Jessie Lincoln became the beloved and lovely wife of Lieutenant George Jones! I do not know but she would have married Mr. Style, if, like too many others, he had not lingered in the vestibule of the temple of Hymen till another hand lighted the torch, and proudly stood beside her at the altar. The heart of Jessie Lincoln was irrevocably given, with all its wealth of love to the young naval officer, and the minister was left to regret his too confident and presumptuous delay when regrets were unavailing. But Jessie was a “mourning bride”—for only a few weeks after her marriage, her noble and beloved patroness sickened and died, leaving Jessie and her husband the proprietors of her tasteful and elegant mansion, and the principal heirs to her estate.

“But did Mr. Style—such a fine young man, and so royally gifted, consign himself to a gloomy celibacy, and live and die a bachelor—‘which being interpreted,’ is half a man?”

Nay, reader, I’ll hasten to tell you that Emilie Jones, that wild, hair-brained, passionate, but truly generous and high-minded Emilie, learned lessons of gentleness and piety, and married—because they mutually and earnestly loved—the young clergyman of the church of N.; and by bequest of Mrs. Tower, the beautiful residence of the Varleys became the village manse, and their lovely home!