At Last

CHAPTER I. — DEWLESS ROSES.

Mrs. Rachel Sutton was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster of marriageable age was an appeal—pathetic and sure—to the dear woman’s helpful sympathy, and her whole soul went out in compassion over such “nice” and an appropriated bachelors as crossed her orbit, like blind and dizzy comets.

Our bonnie widow had her foibles and vanities, but the first were amiable, the latter superficial and harmless, usually rather pleasant than objectionable. She was very proud, for instance, of her success in the profession she had taken up, and which she pursued con amore; very jealous for the reputation for connubial felicity of those she had aided to couple in the leash matrimonial, and more uncharitable toward malicious meddlers or thoughtless triflers with the course of true love; more implacable to match-breakers than to the most atrocious phases of schism, heresy, and sedition in church or state, against which she had, from her childhood, been taught to pray. The remotest allusion to a divorce case threw her into a cold perspiration, and apologies for such legal severance of the hallowed bond were commented upon as rank and noxious blasphemy, to which no Christian or virtuous woman should lend her ear for an instant. If she had ever entertained “opinions” hinting at the allegorical nature of the Mosaic account of the Fall, her theory would unquestionably have been that Satan’s insidious whisper to the First Mother prated of the beauties of feminine individuality, and enlarged upon the feasibility of an elopement from Adam and a separate maintenance upon the knowledge-giving, forbidden fruit. Upon second marriages—supposing the otherwise indissoluble tie to have been cut by Death—she was a trifle less severe, but it was generally understood that she had grave doubts as to their propriety—unless in exceptional cases.

“When there is a family of motherless children, and the father is himself young, it seems hard to require him to live alone for the rest of his life,” she would allow candidly. “Not that I pretend to say that a connection formed through prudential motives is a real marriage in the sight of Heaven. Only that there is no human law against it. And the odds are as eight to ten that an efficient hired housekeeper would render his home more comfortable, and his children happier than would a stepmother. As for a woman marrying twice”—her gentle tone and eyes growing sternly decisive—“it is difficult for one to tolerate the idea. That is, if she really loved her first husband. If not, she may plead this as some excuse for making the venture—poor thing! But whether, even then, she has the moral right to lessen some good girl’s chances of getting a husband by taking two for herself, has ever been and must remain a mooted question in my mind.”

Her conduct in this respect was thoroughly consistent with her avowed principles. She was but thirty when her husband died, after living happily with her for ten years. Her only child had preceded him to the grave four years before, and the attractive relict of Frederic Sutton, comfortably jointured and without incumbrance of near relatives, would have become a toast with gay bachelors and enterprising widowers, but for the quiet propriety of her demeanor, and the steadiness with which she insisted—for the most part, tacitly—upon her right to be considered a married woman still.

“Once Frederic’s wife—always his!” was the sole burden of her answer to a proposal of marriage received when she was forty-five, and the discomfited suitor filed it in his memory alongside of Caesar’s hackneyed war dispatch.

She had laid off crape and bombazine at the close of the first lustrum of her widowhood as inconvenient and unwholesome wear, but never assumed colored apparel. On the morning on which our story opens, she took her seat at the breakfast-table in her nephew’s house—of which she was matron and supervisor-in-chief—clad in a white cambric wrapper, belted with black; her collar fastened with a mourning-pin of Frederic’s hair, and a lace cap, trimmed with black ribbon, set above her luxuriant tresses. She looked fresh and bright as the early September day, with her sunny face and in her daintily-neat attire, as she arranged cups and saucers for seven people upon the waiter before her, instructing the butler, at the same time, to ring the bell again for those she was to serve. She was very busy and happy at that date. The neighborhood was gay, after the open-hearted, open-handed style of hospitality that distinguished the brave old days of Virginia plantation-life. A merry troup of maidens and cavaliers visited by invitation one homestead after another, crowding bedrooms beyond the capacity of any chambers of equal size to be found in the land, excepting in a country house in the Old Dominion; surrounding bountiful tables with smiling visages and restless tongues; dancing, walking, driving, and singing away the long, warm days, that seemed all too short to the soberest and plainest of the company; which sped by like dream-hours to most of the number.

Winston Aylett, owner and tenant of the ancient mansion of Ridgeley—the great house of a neighborhood where small houses and men of narrow means were infrequent—had gone North about the first of June, upon a tour of indefinite length, but which was certainly to include Newport, the lakes, and Niagara, and was still absent. His aunt, Mrs. Sutton, and his only sister, Mabel, did the honors of his home in his stead, and, if the truth must be admitted, more acceptably to their guests than he had ever succeeded in doing. For a week past, the house had been tolerably well filled—ditto Mrs. Sutton’s hands; ditto her great, heart. Had she not three love affairs, in different but encouraging stages of progression, under her roof and her patronage! And were not all three, to her apprehension, matches worthy of Heaven’s making, and her co-operation? A devout Episcopalian, she was yet an unquestioning believer in predestination and “special Providences”—and what but Providence had brought together the dear creatures now basking in the benignant beam of her smile, sailing smoothly toward the haven of Wedlock before the prospering breezes of Circumstance (of her manufacture)?

While putting sugar and cream into the cups intended for the happy pairs, she reviewed the situation rapidly in her mind, and sketched the day’s manoeuvres.

First, there was the case of Tom Barksdale and Imogene Tabb—highly satisfactory and creditable to all the parties concerned in it, but not romantic. Tom, a sturdy young planter, who had studied law while at the University, but never practised it, being already provided for by his opulent father, had visited his relatives, the Tabbs, in August, and straightway fallen in love with the one single daughter of his second cousin—a pretty, amiable girl, who would inherit a neat fortune at her parent’s death, and whose pedigree became identical with that of the Barksdales a couple of generations back, and was therefore unimpeachable. The friends on both sides were enchanted; the lovers fully persuaded that they were made for one another, an opinion cordially endorsed by Mrs. Sutton, and they could confer with no higher authority.