Beauty and The Beast - Bayard Taylor (story read aloud .TXT) 📗

slip. When the shock and surprise was over all gradually became cheerful, and, as the matter was more calmly discussed, the first conjectured difficulties somehow resolved themselves into trifles.

It was the simplest and quietest wedding,—at home, on an August morning. Farmer Meadows then drove the bridal pair half-way on their journey, to the old country tavern, where a fresh conveyance had been engaged for them. The same evening they reached the farmhouse in the valley, and Jacob’s happy mood gave place to an anxious uncertainty as he remembered the period of deception upon which Susan was entering. He keenly watched his father’s face when they arrived, and was a little relieved when he saw that his wife had made a good first impression.

“So, this is my new housekeeper,” said the old man. “I hope you will suit me as well as your husband does.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” said she; “but you must have patience with me for a few days, until I know your ways and wishes.”

“Mr. Flint,” said Sally, “shall I get supper ready?” Susan looked up in astonishment at hearing the name.

“Yes,” the old man remarked, “we both have the same name. The fact is, Jacob and I are a sort of relations.”

Jacob, in spite of his new happiness, continued ill at ease, although he could not help seeing how his father brightened under Susan’s genial influence, how satisfied he was with her quick, neat, exact ways and the cheerfulness with which she fulfilled her duties. At the end of a week, the old man counted out the wages agreed upon for both, and his delight culminated at the frank simplicity with which Susan took what she supposed she had fairly earned.

“Jacob,” he whispered when she had left the room, “keep quiet one more week, and then I’ll let her know.”

He had scarcely spoken, when Susan burst into the room again, crying, “Jacob, they are coming, they have come!”

“Who?”

“Father and mother; and we didn’t expect them, you know, for a week yet.”

All three went to the door as the visitors made their appearance on the veranda. Two of the party stood as if thunderstruck, and two exclamations came together:

“Samuel Flint!”

“Lucy Wheeler!”

There was a moment’s silence; then the farmer’s wife, with a visible effort to compose herself, said, “Lucy Meadows, now.”

The tears came into Samuel Flint’s eyes. “Let us shake hands, Lucy,” he said: “my son has married your daughter.”

All but Jacob were freshly startled at these words. The two shook hands, and then Samuel, turning to Susan’s father, said: “And this is your husband, Lucy. I am glad to make his acquaintance.”

“Your father, Jacob!” Susan cried; “what does it all mean?”

Jacob’s face grew red, and the old habit of hanging his head nearly came back upon him. He knew not what to say, and looked wistfully at his father.

“Come into the house and sit down,” said the latter. “I think we shall all feel better when we have quietly and comfortably talked the matter over.”

They went into the quaint, old-fashioned parlor, which had already been transformed by Susan’s care, so that much of its shabbiness was hidden. When all were seated, and Samuel Flint perceived that none of the others knew what to say, he took a resolution which, for a man of his mood and habit of life, required some courage.

“Three of us here are old people,” he began, “and the two young ones love each other. It was so long ago, Lucy, that it cannot be laid to my blame if I speak of it now. Your husband, I see, has an honest heart, and will not misunderstand either of us. The same thing often turns up in life; it is one of those secrets that everybody knows, and that everybody talks about except the persons concerned. When I was a young man, Lucy, I loved you truly, and I faithfully meant to make you my wife.”

“I thought so too, for a while,” said she, very calmly.

Farmer Meadows looked at his wife, and no face was ever more beautiful than his, with that expression of generous pity shining through it.

“You know how I acted,” Samuel Flint continued, “but our children must also know that I broke off from you without giving any reason.

A woman came between us and made all the mischief. I was considered rich then, and she wanted to secure my money for her daughter. I was an innocent and unsuspecting young man, who believed that everybody else was as good as myself; and the woman never rested until she had turned me from my first love, and fastened me for life to another. Little by little I discovered the truth; I kept the knowledge of the injury to myself; I quickly got rid of the money which had so cursed me, and brought my wife to this, the loneliest and dreariest place in the neighborhood, where I forced upon her a life of poverty. I thought it was a just revenge, but I was unjust. She really loved me: she was, if not quite without blame in the matter, ignorant of the worst that had been done (I learned all that too late), and she never complained, though the change in me slowly wore out her life. I know now that I was cruel; but at the same time I punished myself, and was innocently punishing my son. But to HIM there was one way to make amends. `I will help him to a wife,’ I said, `who will gladly take poverty with him and for his sake.’ I forced him, against his will, to say that he was a hired hand on this place, and that Susan must be content to be a hired housekeeper. Now that I know Susan, I see that this proof might have been left out; but I guess it has done no harm. The place is not so heavily mortgaged as people think, and it will be Jacob’s after I am gone. And now forgive me, all of you,—Lucy first, for she has most cause; Jacob next; and Susan,—that will be easier; and you, Friend Meadows, if what I have said has been hard for you to hear.”

The farmer stood up like a man, took Samuel’s hand and his wife’s, and said, in a broken voice: “Lucy, I ask you, too, to forgive him, and I ask you both to be good friends to each other.”

Susan, dissolved in tears, kissed all of them in turn; but the happiest heart there was Jacob’s.

It was now easy for him to confide to his wife the complete story of his troubles, and to find his growing self-reliance strengthened by her quick, intelligent sympathy. The Pardons were better friends than ever, and the fact, which at first created great astonishment in the neighborhood, that Jacob Flint had really gone upon a journey and brought home a handsome wife, began to change the attitude of the people towards him. The old place was no longer so lonely; the nearest neighbors began to drop in and insist on return visits. Now that Jacob kept his head up, and they got a fair view of his face, they discovered that he was not lacking, after all, in sense or social qualities.

In October, the Whitney place, which had been leased for several years, was advertised to be sold at public sale. The owner had gone to the city and become a successful merchant, had outlived his local attachments, and now took advantage of a rise in real estate to disburden himself of a property which he could not profitably control.

Everybody from far and wide attended the sale, and, when Jacob Flint and his father arrived, everybody said to the former: “Of course you’ve come to buy, Jacob.” But each man laughed at his own smartness, and considered the remark original with himself.

Jacob was no longer annoyed. He laughed, too, and answered: “I’m afraid I can’t do that; but I’ve kept half my word, which is more than most men do.”

“Jake’s no fool, after all,” was whispered behind him.

The bidding commenced, at first very spirited, and then gradually slacking off, as the price mounted above the means of the neighboring farmers. The chief aspirant was a stranger, a well-dressed man with a lawyer’s air, whom nobody knew. After the usual long pauses and passionate exhortations, the hammer fell, and the auctioneer, turning to the stranger, asked, “What name?”

“Jacob Flint!”

There was a general cry of surprise. All looked at Jacob, whose eyes and mouth showed that he was as dumbfoundered as the rest.

The stranger walked coolly through the midst of the crowd to Samuel Flint, and said, “When shall I have the papers drawn up?”

“As soon as you can,” the old man replied; then seizing Jacob by the arm, with the words, “Let’s go home now!” he hurried him on.

The explanation soon leaked out. Samuel Flint had not thrown away his wealth, but had put it out of his own hands. It was given privately to trustees, to be held for his son, and returned when the latter should have married with his father’s consent. There was more than enough to buy the Whitney place.

Jacob and Susan are happy in their stately home, and good as they are happy. If any person in the neighborhood ever makes use of the phrase “Jacob Flint’s Journey,” he intends thereby to symbolize the good fortune which sometimes follows honesty, reticence, and shrewdness.

 

CAN A LIFE HIDE ITSELF?

 

I had been reading, as is my wont from time to time, one of the many volumes of “The New Pitaval,” that singular record of human crime and human cunning, and also of the inevitable fatality which, in every case, leaves a gate open for detection. Were it not for the latter fact, indeed, one would turn with loathing from such endless chronicles of wickedness. Yet these may be safely contemplated, when one has discovered the incredible fatuity of crime, the certain weak mesh in a network of devilish texture; or is it rather the agency of a power outside of man, a subtile protecting principle, which allows the operation of the evil element only that the latter may finally betray itself? Whatever explanation we may choose, the fact is there, like a tonic medicine distilled from poisonous plants, to brace our faith in the ascendancy of Good in the government of the world.

Laying aside the book, I fell into a speculation concerning the mixture of the two elements in man’s nature. The life of an individual is usually, it seemed to me, a series of RESULTS, the processes leading to which are not often visible, or observed when they are so. Each act is the precipitation of a number of mixed influences, more or less unconsciously felt; the qualities of good and evil are so blended therein that they defy the keenest moral analysis; and how shall we, then, pretend to judge of any one? Perhaps the surest indication of evil (I further reflected) is that it always tries to conceal itself, and the strongest incitement to good is that evil cannot be concealed. The crime, or the vice, or even the self-acknowledged weakness, becomes a part of the individual consciousness; it cannot be forgotten or outgrown. It follows a life through all experiences and to the uttermost ends of the earth, pressing towards the light with a terrible, demoniac power. There are noteless lives, of course— lives that accept obscurity, mechanically run their narrow round of circumstance, and are lost; but when a life endeavors to lose itself,—to hide some conscious guilt or failure,—can it succeed? Is it not thereby lifted above the level of common experience, compelling attention to itself by the very endeavor to escape it?