A watch-key. A novel

Front matter

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Chapter I

In all the realm of the commonplace, can anything more commonplace be conceived of than a watch-key? A ring now, or a bracelet, or almost any other trinket, can be easily impressed into the service of sentiment; but a watch-key is hopelessly prosaic — purely utilitarian. The one whose history I propose o make my theme, was, perhaps, the most unpretentious piece of jewelry in the establishment in which we find it when our story opens. Beside it lay rings of every description, eloquent of sweet betrothals, of happy bridals, of tender partings ; lockets, between whose jeweled lids would one day repose the images of loved dead faces, with locks of treasured hair from foreheads hidden away under coffin-lids. Oh ! the tears that would one day be shed, the kisses that would one day be pressed upon those cold, insensate things! One could imagine it all. But a watch key ! One could scarcely imagine anything less calculated to have a history.

“Watch-keys, if you please.”

The speaker was a strikingly handsome young man, but so undersized as to be necessarily effeminate looking. A clean-shaven face added to his almost girlish appearance. “ Pretty enough to be a v/oman,” was the rather equivocal compliment which had often been passed upon him. Good-looking he certainly was, but no reader of countenance would ever call his a good face, for, in spite of all

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that Nature had done for it in the way of features and coloring, it was yet stamped with the insignia of character — was the face of a thoroughly selfish man. And your thoroughly selfish man is a rara avis, a being outside the rank and file of ordinary humanity — all the pessimistic philosophers of the nineteenth century to the contrary notwithstanding. Selfish, the average human animal may be, as regards his attitude towards the world in general ; but how rare is the man who has not some dearer self, some wife, or child, or friend, or love, for whom he would willingly labor, and suffer if need be. Society would disintegrate in less than a decade, and every man’s hand be against every other man’s, but for this beautiful cement of brotherly and fatherly and neighborly love which binds us so closely together. We see its operation upon even the coarsest natures. That rough mechanic, who has been verbally abusing his hod-carriers all day, and who has just wrangled with his employer over a matter of fifty cents in their settlement, stops at a toy-shop on the way home and invests a part of his hard earnings in a doll, whose wonderful feat of opening and shutting her eyes will bring delight to a little maid who watches for him at the door of his humble home. His hard features relax at thought of that fond meeting. Self retreats into the background, and this alter ego takes its place.

Poor indeed is the man who has not some such possession ; whose heart shrines no idol but Self ; who knows not the luxury of loving.

The man we have under discussion was just such an one. He lived for self, and self alone, and yet this was his wedding-day. Even now his bride-elect was waiting to receive him ; and yet he lingered, carelessly tossing over the keys which the jeweler’s clerk laid down before

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him on the counter, trying one after another upon his watch, until he succeeded in finding one which fitted it.

“ Tliis will do, I think,” he said at last, pushing the others aside. “ What is the price of it ? ”

“ One dollar,” said the obsequious clerk. “ Can I show you anything else?”

“ One dollar ! ” How they must have laughed — the grim Fates! How they must often laugh, as we poor fore-doomed mortals toy, all unknowing, with our destiny, like children upon the brink of a precipice unheeded in their play.

It was the work of a moment for a bright gold dollar and this insignificant bit of metal to exchange hands — the one being transferred to the jeweler’s coffers, the other attached to the watch-chain of his customer.

An hour later, that customer was leaving Richmond, Va., on the South Carolina bound train, in the companionship of a lady whose pretty, piquant face attracted the attention of almost everybody on the cars.

“A runaway couple. I’ll bet anything,” said one astute young gentleman, as he ogled the handsome pair through his pince-nez glasses, “ and bound for South Carolina, too, I’ll warrant, for that girl is a minor and couldn’t marry without her parents’ consent.”

And so it was. Pretty, romantic Florence Lydia Mason (that was the name on the big Saratoga in the baggagecar) had cut adrift from the home and friends of her childhood, to marry this acquaintance of a few weeks’ standing, who insisted upon having their relations with each other kept “ a dead secret ; ” and she was willing enough, poor child. It was so much more romantic, this clandestine tour and marriage, to the humdrum, commonplace way of marrying at home, with everybody knowing

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everything about it. There was a touch of adventure about the whole proceedings that delighted this devourer of sensational novels. She was a veritable heroine at last, and a heroine with a secret ; that was the most delightful part of the whole proceedings. How she would laugh in her sleeve at being introduced as Miss Mason, when she had been entitled to another name and prefix for weeks or more perhaps ! And what an altogether charming thing the eclaircisseinent would be, when she informed her friends and relatives how she had fooled them all !

She was not to return home immediately. The programme (gotten up by the groom-elect) was for her to take a position as governess, which had been offered her by a lady living in the mountains of Virginia, at whose home he would make occasions to visit her, at intervals, until such time as their marriage could be made public. Thus friends at home could be satisfied as to her whereabouts.

A pleased smile flitted athwart the girl’s pretty face as she mentally congratulated herself upon the completeness of all the arrangements. A very pretty face it was, and one that was eloquent of all sweet possibilities ; one could easily imagine this face the nucleus of a happy home; it seemed made, in its soft loveliness, for the caresses of little lips and the clasp of little fingers ; an imaginative eye- could see the happy wife and mother down the vista of the years ; it was the uppermost suggestion of the face. Just as the lovely, unfolding bud foreshadows the full-blown rose, did this girlish face foreshadow all beautiful possibilities of tenderness and peace. But we have all heard of the canker in the bud — have all seen the trail of that deadly worm which sometimes preys upon the rose’s heart until its last petal has faded and

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fallen away. Alas ! for this pretty human rose — the canker-worm of an inordinate vanity was at its root! Admiration was the breath of this woman’s life; she was one of those pretty mendicants for masculine favor who, in some sort, importune every man they meet for that alms of adulation upon which they subsist, and without which constant stimulus life is meaningless to them. Not a healthy moral regimen that, but one that sometimes leads to dire result's. It had, in this instance, led Florence Lydia Mason away from parents and home, at the instigation of this comparative stranger, who had wooed, and now proposed to marry her, under the rose.

Very impatient he seemed under the general scrutiny to which they were subjected.

“ We seem to be the target of everybody’s eyes,” he said, a little testily. “ We might as well have labeled ourselves ‘runaway couple’ before we started.”

“ Yes,” answered the girl, with a conscious blush, “ they have found us out, and, do you know, I have been thinking — ”

“ What?”

“ That perhaps it would have been better if we had had just one confidant. In case of an accident or anything — ”

“ What sort of an accident ?”

“ Oh ! nothing. Only there might be a railroad collision — ”

“ Or an earthquake or a cyclone,’' supplemented her companion, laughing. “Well, they will have to occur speedily, if they expect to separate us, for we shall be man and wife in less than twenty minutes. We get off at the next station,” he added, lowering his voice. “ The magistrate who is to marry us — ”

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“ Yorkville!” yelled the conductor, drowning the rest of the sentence, just as the train slackened its pace preparatory to stopping at the station.

A carriage was in waiting for the matrimonially-inclined pair, and they were soon bowling pleasantly along over the smooth country road, en route for the residence of one Henry Lewis, Esq., who served his countrymen and countrywomen in the capacity of justice of the peace.

His residence was soon reached, all preliminaries arranged, and in almost less time than it takes to chronicle the facts, Lydia Mason and the man for whom she had deserted home and friends were made one in the holy bonds of matrimony. The only witnesses of this marriage, besides the officiating magistrate, were his wife and daughter. Twenty-four hours later he fell dead of heart disease. Three months later they emigrated to the far West, leaving no traces behind them, and four months

later the court-house of L county, with all its records,

was burned to the ground. Strange trinity of circumstances !

The newly-wedded pair returned immediately to Yorkville, there to await the arrival of the evening train, which was to convey them — whither it concerns us not just here to know.

A delightful drive they had on their way to the station, albeit neither of them was talkative. A strange taciturnity seemed to have fallen upon them both. They looked away from each other’s faces to the fairer face of Nature, which, illumined with the sunset glory, beamed its summer evening benediction upon the world. “O foolish mortals!” it seemed to say, “be wise. Suspend your stir and strife, your mad, blind rushing after the gods of this world, and learn of me a lesson of repose.”

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II

What an unspeakable calm there is about a summer evening sunset, and what an unspeakable sadness too ! The whole earth is weary ; it has panted under the noonday’s sun and fainted beneath its rays ; its vigor is spent, and the languor of supreme exhaustion is upon it ; the triumphs and defeats of the day alike are over ; its feverish toil is past, and the guardian angel of Rest breathes his Benedicite upon the air. Heaven is very near us at such an hour. We can almost catch the echo of the angels’ songs, can almost feel the rushing of their wings.

But, alas ! for this ill-starred husband and wife, their meditations were by no means heavenly in nature. She was thinking — poor, pretty, vain thing — of the admiring attention which her piquante face had attracted during the course of the day’s travel ; and he was thinking — epicurean that he was — of nothing but the present hour. He had married this pretty face because it was pretty, and he fancied it for the time being. It was his present caprice. That was the beginning and ending of the matter with him. The future had no existence for this young man. The present horizoned his mental vision always.

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CHAPTER IL

What a camera-obscura view of the great world one obtains through the lens of life in a little country town! In the great bustling city life is all on the surface. One sees it all at a first glance — the din, and bustle, and stir, and strife; the mad race after wealth ; the feverish struggle for pre-eminence in church, or state, or social circle; the envy, the jealousies, the triumphs, the defeats, which are all incidents of the oft-repeated history of the ever-beginning, never-ending warfare of Ego versus the world.

But how different the atmosphere of a quiet little country town ! What an air of Arcadian simplicity about everything, a cosmopolitan would think; how quiet, how tame, how uneventful life must be in such a place. But tarry awhile. Sir Stranger. Put your eye to the lens of this small camera, and you will see therein reflected the same hopes, and fears, and passions, the same loves, and hates, and conflicts which go to make up life in the great world. That human nature is the same everywhere and in all ages, is a proverb almost too trite for repetition ; but it is as true as trite. One everywhere finds the devotee of Mammon, the demagogue who lives but in the echo of the world’s applauses, the disappointed self-seeker who has gall and wormwood upon his lips and deadliest hatred in his heart for the man who has been more fortunate than he ; and — thank God for the reverse picture — one also finds everywhere those sweet and lovely domestic graces, which go far towards redeeming human nature from the imputation of universal depravity. One sees everywhere the patient, laborious father whose life is a tread-

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mill of care for the little lives dependent upon him, but who has almost lost sight of the fact in the great love he bears them ; the self-sacrificing mother who lives entirely by proxy ; the self-constituted Sister of Charity who divines a neighbor’s needs by instinct, and always happens in the right place at the right time, yet never dreams that she is anything beyond the commonplace, but goes on diffusing the fragrance of her beautiful life on all around her, as simply and unconsciously as the flowers she so much resembles. One finds them all everywhere. It is the old, old story of the wheat and the tares, which this human soil of ours has brought forth in all the ages.

But to return to our story, which has shifted its scenes from the bustling city of Richmond, Va., to the quiet little village of Milledgeville, some hundred or more miles distant. Like most other Southern towns and villages, since our disastrous civil war, it was noticeably lacking in evidences of wealth. Its people were mostly well-to-do, but affluence was a thing of the past. The war had swept over it like a flood, and slavery and bank stock were not the only things engulfed ; the old open handed,’ openhearted hospitality of ante-bellum times had gone under likewise; nobody kept open house any more; no one was able to do it, with one exception. Mrs. Susan Golding, a rich and childless widow lady, was the fairy godmother of Milledgeville; she it was who, mindful of her own youth, gave theyoung people of that placean experienceof amusements and festivities which would otherwise have been to them a tradition ; she threw open her spacious parlors, and spread her bountiful table for their entertainment with a frequency and generosity which excited their liveliest gratitude. Is it necessary to add that she was the social

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autocrat of the place? No one thought of dissenting from her opinion upon any subject ; she was Milledgeville’s supreme court of appeals. There was nothing arbitrary, however, about her rule ; it was the sceptre of love that she wielded, the crown of affection that she wore in her beautiful old age.

“ None knew her but to love her,

None named her but to praise.”

But with all the great love and reverence it bore her, Milledgeville remembered that she was mortal, and, so remembering, surmised, often and variously, as to what testamentary disposition she would make of her fortune. “ Who will be Mrs. Golding’s heir?” was a question often put, and never satisfactorily answered, by the gossips of Milledgeville. There were no lack of candidates for the position among her own and her husband’s relatives : there were the Masons, eight in number, who were prominent claimants, and one of whom, Florence Lydia, she had educated and partially reared ; then, there were the Clavering boys, Tillet and Tunstal, nephews of her own, to whom she was warmly attached, and to whom she always' affectionately alluded as “ my boys.” One of them had made his home entirely with her for years, and the other, although claiming a home with his parents in an adjoining county, yet spent three-fourths of his time at “Aunt Susan’s.”

They were the beaux, par excellence, of Milledgeville society — Mrs. Golding’s bo3’s. Only one of them was in Milledgeville when our story opens — Tillet Clavering. Tunstal had been absent some weeks on a business trip, but was expected shortly.

A letter he had just written to his aunt from Richmond, and whose contents had transpired, in some one of

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*5 the many unaccountable ways that things do manage to get out in a small place like Milledgeville, was being excitedly discussed by a circle of ladies, who had convened in the Methodist parsonage for the purpose of getting up a church fair. The business proper of the meeting had been quite suspended by the animated discussion of this letter.

“ It is the most unaccountable thing I ever heard of in my life,” Mrs. Talons was saying. She was the news emporium of Milledgeville, this lady, and was known among some of the facetiously-disposed young people as the “ Daily Chronicle.” “It is the most unaccountable thing I ever heard of in my life,” she repeated, “that Lydia Mason should go off, in this way, without a word of warning to her aunt. What she wanted to go at all for puzzles me. She certainly didn’t need to do it. Mrs. Golding always was opposed to her teaching school, even here at home ; and to go way up in the mountains, without even consulting her aunt on the subject ! ”

Here Mrs. Talons paused to take breath.

“I don’t think she has written to Mrs. Golding yet,” she added presently. “Tunstall Clavering saw her in Richmond — she was visiting the Bakers there, you know — and learned of her determination for the first time. He writes his aunt that she left Richmond Tuesday for Bath.”

The lady paused to note the effect of this tremendous announcement.”

“ Has there been any difficulty between her and Mrs. Golding?” suggested one of the other ladies. “Lydia is very high-tempered, you know.”

“ Yes, but L3^dia knows who to be high tempered with,” said Mrs. lalons impressively. “ She has too much sense to cut her own throat with Mrs. Golding in that way;

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she is more likely to have quarreled with the boys, I think.”

“ Mrs. Golding wants to marry her to one of them, so it is rumored,” said the lady who had answered Mrs. Talons before.

“To which one?” queried that lady, scoring a mental item for her columns. “ I hadn’t heard of that before. To which one of the boys does Mrs. Golding want to marry Lydia ? ”

“ I don’t suppose it makes any difference to her. Her idea, you know, is to combine the heirship. Whichever one marries Lydia will get the lion’s share of Mrs. Golding’s property.”

“ You are very much mistaken about that.”

The lady who spoke at this juncture merits more than a passing notice. She had the air of one who feels herself the observed of all observers. Her smallest observations were made in that oracular tone which seemed to say, “ Listen, all ! I, Mrs. Lavinia Bragg, have spoken.” Therefore it was, that, when she made the commonplace observation, “You are very much mistaken about that,” the words seemed no longer commonplace, but were invested with a dignity and majesty befitting their high source.

Mrs. Bragg always felt herself upon a throne. She, also, had earned a sobriquet at the hands of the fun-loving young people of Milledgeville ; in certain circles she was never spoken of by any other name than the “ Presiding Elder.” There was one person in Milledgeville, however, that she was powerless to awe ; with all her majesty, she could never keep down the vivacious little “Chronicle.” Mrs. Talons “knew Lavinia Bragg by heart ; ” knew all the little subterfuges resorted to by

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that majestic lady to keep up appearances — to keep up a first class style of living on a second-class purse ; knew of all the little domestic infelicities so studiously ignored ; knew every jar of the household machinery, which it was the pride and pleasure of Mrs. Bragg to hold up to the public gaze as running entirely without friction. Hers was the ideal household ; no disturbances of any sort entered therein ; her servants were jewels ; her only child and daughter a paragon of filial affection, and her husband — the crowning glory of all — that pure and unadulterated piece of fiction, the perpetual lover.

Mrs. Talons’ expression of countenance when listening to this wholesale braggardism was truly edifying. No coat of armor less impenetrable than Mrs. Bragg’s self-complacency would have been proof' against the arrows of her significant glance. But Mrs. Bragg’s self-complacency was impenetrable; the keenest shafts of irony and sarcasm fell harmlessly away from its invulnerable surface.

She detected no lurking satire now in Mrs. Talons’ reply to her remark just recorded, “You are very much mistaken about that.”

“That may very easily be,” she (Mrs. Talons) replied, taking the conversation upon herself, as she almost always did. “That may easily be. IVe (emphasizing the pronoun) are all of us fallible. Do tell us all about it, now. You are Mrs. Golding’s privy counsellor, everybody knows.”

Now, the facts, with which everybody was acquainted, were these: It was Mrs. Bragg’s darling hope and ambition to be elected to the high post of Mrs. Golding’s bosom friend and confidant. She had toadied the old lady persistently and untiringly for years, without the

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shadow of a reward, except such as existed in her own imagination ; indeed, some of the very uncharitable were prone to believe that Mrs. Golding avoided her as she would the plague. That she was after one of Mrs. Golding’s boys for her daughter Ellen was an open secret. Everybody knew it and laughed about it. There was a repressed smile upon all faces when she spoke again :

“ Mrs. Golding has done quite enough for Lydia Mason. We have talked over the matter frequently. I told Mrs. Golding that, if I were in her place, I should make no further objection to Lydia’s maintaining herself. It is eminently proper that she should do so. As far as her marrying one of ‘ the boys ’ is concerned — that is simply preposterous.”

“ More preposterous things than that have happened,” said Mrs. Talons sententiously. “ It seems to me a very good way of adjusting all difficulties. The Masons and the Claverings have been pulling each other’s ears, for I don’t know how long, upon every possible pretext but the real one, which everybody knows is Mrs. Golding’s property — which shall come in for the biggest slice of that. I suspect the old lady has gotten tired of the wrangling, and thinks she will make this compromise, and spend the rest of her days in peace.”

“ These family feuds are so distressing, so unchristian,” said Mrs. Bragg virtuously. “ It is strange that people will indulge in them.”

“ Very strange, indeed,” said Mrs. Talons, with a whole dictionary of meaning in her voice. “ But stranger things than that happen every day. I have even heard of husbands and wives who were not on speaking terms — except in public,” she concluded, sotto voce.

But the poison-tipped arrow glanced harmlessly away.

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Mrs. Bragg preserved the same unruffled front. “ An earthquake wouldn’t startle that woman out of her self-complacency,” Tillet Clavering had been heard to remark upon one occasion. “ The opinion she has of herself is worth a fortune. I n^ver look at her but I think of those lines of Burns’ :

‘ O wad some power the giftie ’d gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! ’ ”

But to return to our sheep — as the French say.

The ladies at the parsonage were in the midst of the amiable conversation just recorded, when the door opened and another was added to their number. A tall, graceful lady in deep mourning came forward into the room, and, after the usual salutations, seated herself by a window overlooking the street.

“ What a beautiful day!” she said, throwing back her veil and disclosing a face which was beautiful, without the shadow of an excuse for it. What constituted Marian Herbert’s beauty, nobody could tell. Her features were not regular; she had no complexion to speak of; she was guilty of that unpardonable sin in a woman, red hair ; she was no longer young; and yet she was beautiful. Nobody denied her the palm. It was as if the beautiful soul shone through the transparent veil of the flesh, glorifying it, as spirit sometimes does glorify flesh. One thought instinctively, when looking at her, of attar of roses, the balm of a thousand flowers, and all other distillations sweet and rare. From what rare and pure ancestral flowers must this human attar of roses have been distilled! what an heredity must be hers! what generations of noble men and lovely women must be behind this most lovely woman in the ancestral line ! One felt all this instinctively ; and yet there was nothing pretentious

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about her. She had no more pronounced characteristic than a sweet and noble simplicity. Mannerism was impossible to her — she had no more need of it than the Venus de Medici had for drapery. She could afford to be seen as she was. Alas! for the few of us wjio can say that — who can afford to appear what we really are — who have no need of that mask of conventionality, which ofttimes hides behind it so much of hollowness and insincerity, of evil tempers and unholy dispositions! But, now and then, from out “the madding crowd,” shines forth a face which needs no mask. We recognize it at a glance; it preaches to us more eloquently than all the sermons from all the pulpits in the land. “ It is worth while,” it seems to say, “ to live up to one’s higher nature — to put away from heart and mind all that would soil or defile them ; and it is no dreamer’s utopian fancy — this high ideal ; it is possible — attainable.”

Marian Herbert had been preaching this unconscious sermon to all around her for years. The flowers she wore at her throat (she always wore flowers) exhaled no sweeter fragrance to the outward sense than their wearer did upon the moral atmosphere around her. People never talked scandal to Marian Herbert. She could tie even Mrs. Talons’ tongue. Her advent upon the present occasion turned the entire drift of conversation, the business of the meeting was at once entered upon, and gossip for awhile suspended.

When all preliminaries had been satisfactorily arranged, there was a general departure. Miss Herbert and Mrs. Bragg leaving together.

A greater contrast than the two ladies presented, as they walked beside each other down the quiet streets of Milledgeville, can scarcely be imagined. They were as

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diverse in person and bearing, as in character, as a slender, graceful water-lily and a gaudy peony. The comparison is not inapt as regards either of them. Marian Herbert resembled nothing more than a snowy-petaled lily, and Mrs. Bragg was a veritable human peony ; and yet the peony has its admirers and its uses. It is hardy, for one thing ; its brilliant, odorless blossoms flourish where flowers of a more delicate bloom wither and die.

The ladies parted at Mrs. Golding’s gate, Mrs. Bragg going in and Miss Herbert going on. She, too, stopped at the terminus of the street, entering a gate which led up to a large white frame house, which was almost lost to view among the tall trees which surrounded it.

She walked up the front steps and proceeded straight through the open hall-door without knocking ; from the hall she entered the family sitting-room, and, finding that unoccupied, wandered into the rear regions of the house, where she encountered a servant.

“ Why, Miss Marian, is that you ? ” the girl asked, looking up from the table at which she was sitting. “ Miss Sibyl is not in the house, but she is about the lot somewhere. I will go and find her.”

“ Never mind, Letty,” “ Miss Marian” answered considerately. “ I don’t want to stop you from your work. I will go back to the sitting room and wait for‘Tibby.’” This was Miss Herbert’s some-time pet name for her twin sister, Mrs. Sibyl Everett.

That lady failing to make her appearance immediately, Miss Herbert on her return to the sitting room took up from the centre-table a square of embroidery which was lying thereon, with silk and needles in convenient reach. Her deft fingers were soon busy among its intricacies of design, and a light footfall behind her was unheeded.