Chapter VII: Part I (1)

There are women at whom, after the first meeting, you forget to glance a second time, they seem to be such indifferent creations, such imperfect sketches of an idea to be fulfilled farther on in a clearer type, but who, met once more and yet again, suddenly take you captive in bonds. You find the sallow cheek to be but polished ivory, the heavy eye loaded with fire, the irregular features chords of a harmony whose whole is perfect; you find that this is the type itself; while in every gesture, every word, every look, the soul is shed abroad, and the fascination is what neither Campaspe, nor Jocasta, nor even Aspasia herself held in fee. For you, she has blossomed into the one beauty of the world; you hear her, and the Sirens sing in vain; she touches you, and makes you the slave beneath her feet.

Such a one was Éloise Changarnier.

There was iron of the old Huguenot blood in her veins; late American admixture had shot a racy sparkle through it; convent-care from her tenth to her sixteenth year had softened and toned the whole into a warm, generous life; and underneath all there slumbered that one atom of integral individuality that was nothing at all but a spark: as yet, its fire had never flashed; if it ever should do so, one might be safe in prophesying a strange wayward blaze.

In one of her earliest summers her widowed mother had died and bequeathed her sole legacy, a penniless orphan, to the care of the survivor in an imperishable friendship, Disbrowe Erne. A childless, thriftless, melancholy man, Mr. Erne had adopted her into his inmost heart, but out of respect to his friend had suffered her to retain her father's name, and had thoughtlessly delayed rendering the adoption legal. One day it was found too late to remedy this delay; for Mr. Erne died, just a year after Éloise's return from the distant Northern convent whither at ten years old she had been despatched, when, wild and witching as a wood-brier, there had been found nothing else to do with her. There her adopted father had visited her twice a year in all her exile, as she deemed it, sometimes taking up his residence for several months in the neighborhood of the nunnery; and a long vacation of many weeks she had every winter spent at home with him on the rich and beautiful plantation poetically known as The Rim, because, seen from several of the adjacent places, it occupied the whole southern horizon. The last vacation, however, she had passed with her adopted father travelling in France, whither some affairs called him; but, of all the splendid monuments and records of civilization that she saw, almost the only thing that had impressed itself distinctly upon her memory, through the chicanery of chances, was that once in a cathedral-choir she had seen the handsome, blonde-hued, Vandyck face of a gentleman with dreaming eyes looking at her from a gallery-niche with the most singular earnestness. So at sixteen she found that the nuns had exhausted their slender lore, and had nothing more to teach her; and after her brief travels, she returned home for a finality, and there had dallied a twelvemonth, lapped in the Elysium of freedom and youth. Every want anticipated, every whim gratified, servants prostrate before her, father adoring her,--the year sped on wings of silent joy, and left her a shade more imperious than it met her. Launched into society, wealthy and winning, Éloise counted, too, her lovers; but she spurned them so gayly that her hard heart became a proverb through all the region round, wherever the rejected travelled. It is true that Mr. Erne had often expressed his film of dissatisfaction with the conventual results, and had planned an attack on matters of more solid learning; but, tricksy as a sprite, Éloise had escaped his designs, broken through his regulations, implored, just out of shackles, a year's gambol in liberty, and had made herself too charming to be resisted in her plea; and if, feeling his health fail, he had at first insisted,--in the fear that there might be left but brief opportunity for him to make her pleasure, he yielded. Nevertheless, with the best outlay in the world, plantation-life is not all a gala, and there were, it must be confessed, certain ennuisome moments in which Éloise made inroads on her father's library, chiefly in wild out-of-the-way veins, all which, however, romantic, unsystematic, and undigested, did nothing towards rendering her one whit more independent of the world in time of future trial.

One afternoon, just reëntering the house from some gay farewell of friends, she found her father sitting in the hall, and she stood tiptoing in the door-way while smiling at him, with a fragrant vine half twisted in her dark drooping hair, the heat making her cheek yet paler, and the great blue-green eyes shining at him from under the black straight brows, like aquamarine jewels. Mr. Erne leaned forward in the chair, with hands clasped upon his knees, and eyes upbent.

"Éloise! Éloise!" he cried in a piercing voice, then grew white, and fell back in the cushions.

The girl flew to him, took the head upon her shoulder, caressed the deathly face, warmed the mouth with her own.

"Child!" he murmured, "I thought it was your mother!"

And by midnight, alone, and in the dark, he died, and went to find that mother.

As for Éloise, she was like some one made dumb by a thunderbolt. Her garden had become a desert. Ice had fallen in her summer. Death was too large a fact for her to comprehend. She had seen the Medusa's head in its terror, but not in its loveliness, and been stricken to stone. At length in the heart of that stone the inner fountains broke,--broke in rains of tempestuous tears, such gusts and gushes of grief as threatened to wash away life itself; and when Éloise issued from this stormy deep, the warmth and the wealth of being obscured, the effervescence and bubble of the child destroyed, feeling like a flower sodden with showers, if she had been capable of finding herself at all, she would have found herself a woman.

Among Mr. Erne's disorderly papers, full of incipient schemes, sketches, and schedules of gold-mining, steam-companies, and railways to the nebulæ in Orion, was discovered after his death a scrap witnessed by two signatures. The owner of one of these signatures was already dead, and there were no means to prove its genuineness. The other was that of a young man who had just enough of that remote taint in his descent which incapacitates one, in certain regions, from bearing witness. It was supposed that Mr. Erne had some day hurriedly executed this paper in the absence of his lawyer, as being, possibly, better than no paper at all, and he had certainly intended to have the whole matter arranged legitimately; but these are among the things which, with a superstitious loitering, some men linger long before doing, lest they prove to be, themselves, a death-warrant.

By this paper, in so many words, Disbrowe Erne left to Éloise Changarnier all the property of which he died possessed. An old friend of her father's in the neighborhood assured her that the only relatives were both distant, distinguished, and wealthy, unlikely to present any claims, and that she would be justified in fulfilling her father's desire. And so, without other forms, Éloise administered the affairs of The Rim,--waiting until the autumn to consult the usual lawyer, who was at present in England.

There had reigned over the domestic department of The Rim, for many years, a person who was the widow of a maternal cousin of Mr. Erne's, and who, when left destitute by the death of this young cousin, had found shelter, support, and generous courtesy beneath the roof of her late husband's kinsman. It was on the accession of this person, who was not a saint, that Éloise had become so ungovernable as to require the constraint of a nunnery. Mrs. Arles was a dark and quiet little lady, with some of the elements of beauty which her name suggested, and with a perfectly Andalusian foot and ankle. These being her sole wealth, it was, perhaps, from economy of her charms that she hid the ankle in such flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls beneath, disdained to distort the classic features, and graved no wrinkles on the smooth, rich skin with any lavish smiling. She went about the house, a self-contained, silent, unpleasant little vial of wrath, and there was ever between her and Éloise a tacit feud, waiting, perhaps, only for occasion to fling down the gage in order to become open war. Mrs. Arles expected, therefore, that, so soon Éloise should take the reins in hand herself, she would be lightly, but decisively shaken off,--for the old friend had mentioned to Mrs. Arles that Mr. Erne's will left Éloise heir, as she had always supposed it would. She was, accordingly, silently amazed, when Éloise, softened by suffering, hoped she would always find it convenient to make a home with herself, and informed her that a certain section of the farm had been measured off and allotted to her, with its laborers, as the source of a yearly income. This delicacy, that endeavored to prevent her feeling the perpetual recurrence of benefits conferred, touched the speechless Mrs. Arles almost to the point of positive friendliness.

The plantation was one of those high and healthy spots that are ever visited by land- and sea-breezes, and there Éloise determined to stay that spring and summer; for this ground that her father had so often trod, this air that had given and received his last breath, were dear to her, and just now parting with them, for ever so short a time, would be but a renewal of her loss. As she became able to turn her energy to the business requiring attention, she discovered at last her sad ignorance. Dancing, drawing, music, and languages were of small avail in managing the interior concerns and the vexatious finance of a great estate. The neighbors complained that her spoiled and neglected servants infected theirs, and that her laxity of discipline was more ruinous in its effects than the rigor of Blue Bluffs. But she just held out to them her helpless little hands in so piteous and charming a way that they could not cherish an instant's enmity. If she tried to remedy the evil complained of, she fell into some fresh error; take what advice she would, it invariably twisted itself round and worked the other way. The plantation, always slackly managed, saw itself now on the high road to destruction. Let her do the very best in her power, she found it impossible to plan her season's campaign, to carry it out, to audit her accounts, to study agricultural directions, to preserve the peace, to keep her fences in order, to attend to the sick, to rule her household and her spirit, to dispose of her harvest, and to bring either end of the thread out of the tangled skein of her affairs.

Perhaps there could have been really no better thing for Éloise than the diversion from her sorrow which all this perplexity necessarily in some degree occasioned.

As for Mrs. Arles, so soon as Éloise had begun to move about again, she had taken herself off on a long-promised visit to the West, and was but just returning with the October weather.

Éloise, worn and thin, and looking nearly forty, as she had remarked to herself that morning in the brief moment she could snatch for her toilet, welcomed the cool and quiet little Mrs. Arles, who might _be_ forty, but looked any age between twenty and thirty, with affectionate warmth, and made all the world bestir themselves for her comfort. It is only justice to the owner of the little Andalusian foot to say that in her specific domain things immediately changed for the better. But that was merely within-doors, and because she tightened the reins and used the whip in a manner which Éloise could not have done, if the whole equipage tumbled to pieces about her ears.

Mrs. Arles had been at home a week or so; the evening was chilly with rain, and a little fire flickered on the hearth. Mrs. Arles sat on one side of the hearth, with her tatting in hand; Éloise bent above the papers scattered over a small table.

"See what it is to go away!" said Éloise, cheerily. "It's like light in a painting, as the Sisters used to say,--brings out all the shadows."

"Nobody knew how indispensable I was," said the other lady, with the fragment of expression in the phantom of a smile.

"How pleasant it is to be missed! I _did_ miss you so,--it seemed as if one of the four sides of the walls were gone. Now we stand--what is that word of Aristotle's?--four-square again. Now our universe is on wheels. Just tell me how you tamed Hazel so. She has conducted like a little wild gorilla all summer,--and here, in the twinkling of an eye, she goes about soberly, like a baptized Christian. How?"

"By a process of induction."

"You don't mean"--

"Oh, no. Nothing of the kind. I didn't touch her. I sent her into my room, and told her to take down that little riding-switch hanging over the mantel"--

"What,--the ebony and gold?"

"Yes. And to whip all the flies out of the air with it. It makes a monstrous whizzing. There's no such thing as actual experience for these imps of the vivid nerves. And when she came down I looked at her, and asked her how she liked the singing. Her conduct now leads me to believe that she has no desire to hear the tune again."

The hearer winced a trifle before lightly replying,--

"Well, _I_ might have sent her forever, and all the result would have been the switch singing about my own shoulders, probably."

"That is because she knows you would never use it. As for me,--Hazel has a good memory."

Éloise gave a half-imperceptible shiver and frown; but, clearing her brow, said,--

"If Hazel had my accounts here, they would tame her. I will put all my malcontents through a course of mathematics. You do so well everywhere else, Mrs. Arles, that I've half the mind to ask you to advise me here. Little Arlesian, come over into Macedonia!"

"What is the matter?"

"Oh, it's only an inversion of the old problem, If the ton of coal cost ten dollars, what will the cord of wood come to? Now, if one bale"--

"But coal doesn't cost ten dollars," replied Mrs. Arles, with admirable simplicity.

"Now, if one bale of Sea-Island"--

"Oh, my dear, I know nothing at all about it. Pray, don't ask me."

"Well," said Éloise, after a moment's wondering pause, in which she had taken time to reflect that Mrs. Arles's corner of the estate was carried on faultlessly, "it is too bad to vex you with my matters, when you have as much as you can do in the house, yourself,"--and relapsed into what she called her Pythagorean errors.

"Did you know," said Mrs. Arles, after a half-hour's silence, "that Marlboro' has returned?"

"Marlboro'?" repeated Éloise, hesitatingly.

"Marlboro' of Blue Bluffs."

"Oh, yes. And five's eleven. No," said Éloise, absently and with half a sigh. "I've never seen him, you know,--he's been in Kamtschatka and the Moon so long. How did you know?"

"Hazel told me. Hazel wants to marry his Vane."

"His what?"

"Not his weathercock. Vane, his butler."

"That is why she behaved so. Dancing quicksilver. Then, perhaps, he'll buy her. What a relief it would be!"

"Marlboro' is a master!" said Mrs. Arles, emphatically.

There was a good deal in the ensuing pause. For Éloise, in her single year, had not half learned the neighborhood's gossip.

"A cruel man. Then it's not to be thought of. We shall have to buy Vane. Though how it's to be done"--

"I didn't say he was a cruel man. He wouldn't think of interfering with an ordinance of his overseers. I esteem his thoroughness. He has ideas. But I might have said that he is a remarkable man."

"There'll be some pulling of caps soon, Hazel said to-day, in her gibberish. I couldn't think what she meant."

"Blue Bluffs is a place to be mistress of. He's a woman-hater, though, Mr. Marlboro',--believes in no woman capable of resisting him when he flings the handkerchief, should he choose, but believes in none worth choosing."

"We shall have to invite him here, Mrs. Arles," said Éloise, mischievously, "and show him that there are two of us."

"That would never do!"

"Oh, I didn't mean so. Of course, I didn't mean so. How could I see any one else sitting in"--And there were tears in her eyes and on her trembling tones.

"My dear," said Mrs. Arles, "I am afraid, _apropos_ of nothing at all, that you have isolated yourself from all society for too long a time already."

Just here Hazel entered and replenished the hearth, stopping half-way, with her armful of brush, to coquet an instant in the mirror, and adjust the scarlet love-knot in her curls.

"There's a carriage coming up the avenue, Miss," said she, demurely. "One of the boys"--

"What one?" asked Mrs. Arles.

"Vane," answered Hazel,--carmine staining her pretty olive cheek. "He ran before it."

"Who can it be, at this hour?" said Éloise, half rising, with the pen in her hand, and looking at Mrs. Arles, who did not stir.

As she spoke, there was a bustle in the hall, a slamming door, a voice of command, the door opened, and a stranger stood among them, surveying the long antique room with its diamonded windows flickering in every pane, and the quaint hearth, whose leaping, crackling, fragrant blaze lighted the sombre little person sitting beside it, and sparkled on the half-bending form of that strange dark-haired girl, with her aquamarine eyes bent full on his. He was wrapped, from head to foot, in a great sweeping brigand's cloak, and a black, wide-brimmed hat, that had for an instant slouched its shadow down his face, hung now in his gloved hand. Dropping cloak and hat upon a chair with an invisible motion, he advanced, an air of surprise lifting the heavy eyebrows so that they strongly accented the contrast in hue between the lower half of his face, tanned with wind and sun, and the wide, low brow, smooth as marble itself, and above which swept one great wave of dark-brown hair. Altogether, it was an odd, fiery impression that he made,--whether from that golden-brown tint of skin that always seems full of slumbering light, or from the teeth that flashed so beneath the _triste_ moustache whenever the haughty lips parted and unbent their curve, or whether it were a habit the eyes seemed to have of accompanying all his thoughts with a play of flame.

"Really," said he,--and it may have been a subtile inner musical trait of his tone that took everybody's will captive,--"I was not aware"--making a long step into the room, with a certain lordly bearing, yet almost at a loss to whom he should address himself. "I am Earl St. George Erne. May I inquire"--

"My name is Éloise Changarnier," said its owner, drawing herself up, it being incumbent on her to receive him.

He bowed, and advanced.

"Mrs. Arles, then, I presume,--my cousin Disbrowe Erne's cousin. I expected to find you here."

Mrs. Arles, after a hurried acknowledgment, slipped over to Éloise.

"I have heard your father speak of him," she murmured. "They had business-relations. He is Mr. Erne's legal heir, in default of sufficient testament, I believe. He must have come to claim the property."

"He!" said Éloise, with sublime scorn. "The property is mine! My father left such commands!"

"But he can have no other reason for being here. Strange the lawyer didn't write! He is certainly at home again."

"I have not had time to open the mail to-day; it lies in the hall. Hazel! the mail-bag."

And directly afterward its contents were before her.

She hurriedly shifted and reshifted the letters of factors and agents, and broke the seal of one, while Earl St. George Erne deliberately warmed his long white hands at the blaze, and, supposing Éloise Changarnier to be a guest of the lonely Mrs. Arles, wondered with some angry amusement at her singular deportment.

Mrs. Arles was right. The letter in Éloise's hand, which had been intended to reach her earlier, was from their old lawyer, but lately returned from England. In it he informed her that the scrap of paper on the authority of which she had assumed control of the property was worthless,--and that not only was Earl St. George Erne the heir of his cousin, but that some three years previously he had lent that cousin a sum of money sufficient to cover much more than the whole value of The Rim, taking in payment only promissory notes, whose indorser was since insolvent. This sum--as Mr. Erne the elder had been already unfortunate in several rash speculations--had been applied towards lifting a heavy mortgage, and instituting improvements that would enable the farm soon to repay the debt in yearly instalments. Added to this was the fact that Earl St. George Erne, who had passed many years away from home upon Congressional duties, had lately met with a severe reverse himself, and had now nothing in the world except this lucky inheritance from his cousin, and into this he had been inducted by all legal forms. This had transpired during the lawyer's absence, (that person wrote,) as otherwise some provision might have been made for Miss Changarnier,--and not being able to meet with Mr. St. George Erne, he had learned the facts from others. Meantime she would see, that, even if her father left to her all he died possessed of, he died possessed of nothing.

The idea that anybody should dare to controvert her father's will flared for a moment behind Éloise's facial mask, and illumined every feature. Then her eye fell upon the mass of papers with the inextricable confusion of their figures. An exquisitely ludicrous sense of retributive justice seized her, heightened, perhaps, by some surprise and nervous excitement; she fairly laughed,--a little, low bubble of a laugh,--swept her letters into her apron, and, with the end of it hanging over her arm, stepped towards Mr. St. George, and offered him her hand. He thought she was a crazy girl. But there was the hand; he took it, and, looking at her a moment, forgot to drop it,--an error which she rectified.

"It seems, then, that you are the owner of The Rim," said she. "I had been dreaming myself to be that very unfortunate person,--a nightmare from which you wake me. The steward will show you over it to-morrow. You will find your exchequer in the escritoire-drawer in the cabinet across the hall. You will find the papers and accounts on that table, and I wish you joy of them!"

So saying, after her succinct statement, she vanished.

Mrs. Arles lingered a moment to wind up her tatting. St. George, who had at first stood like a golden bronze cast immovably in an irate surprise, then shook his shoulders, and stepped towards the table and carelessly parted the papers.

"Remarkable manuscript," said he, as if just then he could find nothing else to say. "Plainer than type. A purely American hand. Is it that of the young lady?"

"Miss Changarnier? Yes."

"She was apparent heiress?"

"Yes."

"What does she expect to become of her?"

"How can I tell?"

"You can conjecture."

"She has not yet begun to consider, herself, you see."

"She has other property?"

"None."

"Ah! A fine thing, usurping!"

Mrs. Arles did not reply.

And then, in a half-angry justification, he exclaimed,--

"I didn't know there was such a person in the world! I could not come immediately on Erne's death. I was ill, and I was busy, and I let things wait for me. Why did no one write?"

"No one knew there was such a person as _you_. At least, no one supposed it signified."

"Signified! The Rim was my father's as much as it was Disbrowe Erne's father's. Disbrowe Erne's father entrapped mine, and got the other half. It was the old story of Esau's pottage, with thrice the villany. My father made me promise him on his death-bed, that, come fair means, The Rim should be mine again. I was twenty, Erne was fifty. Fair means came. Nevertheless, if I had known how things stood, I might have broken the promise,--who knows?--if at that moment I had happened to possess anything else in the world but my wardrobe, and sundry debts, and this!"

He opened, as he spoke, a purse that had seen service, and from his lordly height and supreme indifference, scattered its contents on the projecting top of the fireplace. They were two old pieces of ringing Spanish silver, a tiny golden coin of Hindostan, a dime, and a pine-tree shilling.

"Marlboro' won my last dollar," said he.

"Marlboro'?" said Mrs. Arles.

"What do you know of Marlboro'?"

"He lives over here at Blue Bluffs."

"The Devil he does!"

Mr. St. George Erne glanced at the dark little woman sitting before him. No smile softened her face, no ray had lighted it; she only intelligently observed, and monosyllabically answered him. She was a study,--might also be convenient; the place would be ennuisome; somebody must sit at the head of his table. He threw his purse into the fire.

"Mrs. Arles," he said, "it is decidedly necessary, that, to conduct my house, there should be in it a female relative,--an article I do not possess. Will you take the part, and remain with me on the same terms as with my Cousin Erne?"

Mrs. Arles had intended to propose such an arrangement herself, and, after a brief pause for apparent consideration, replied affirmatively, not thinking it worth while to tell him that the section of the farm, with its laborers, set apart for her benefit, was a device of Éloise's, and not one of anterior date.

"Thank you," said Mr. St. George Erne; "that being settled, will you have the kindness to order rooms prepared for me and my traps?"

Which Mrs. Arles disappeared to do.

It was early the next morning that Éloise knocked at Mrs. Arles's door.

"Good bye!" said she, looking in. "And good bye to The Rim! I don't suppose his Arch-Imperial Highness, Mr. Earl St. George Erne, will want to see my face immediately. I've only taken my clothes, as they'd be of no use to him, and"--

"Where are you going?" inquired Mrs. Arles from among her pillows, as quietly as if such an exodus were an every-day affair.

"To the Murrays',--till I can find something to do."

"What can you find to do?"

"I haven't the least idea," said Éloise, coming in and sitting down. "I've thought all night. I can't do anything. I can't teach; I can't sew; I can't play. I _can_ starve; can't I, Mrs. Arles?"

"You don't know that!"

"Well, I can be a nursery-governess, or I can sing in a chorus; I should make a very decent _figurante_, or I could go round with baskets. Perhaps I can get writing. There's one comfort: I sha'n't have anything more to do with Arabic numerals till the latest day I live, and needn't know whether two and two make four or five. I may remember, though, that two from two leave nothing!"

"Yes,--we are all equal to subtraction."

"So, good bye, Mrs. Arles," said Éloise, rising. "We've had pleasant times together, first and last. I dare say, I've tried you to death. You'll forgive me, and only remember the peaceful part. If I succeed, I'll write you. And if I don't, you needn't bother. I'm well and strong, and seventeen."

Mrs. Arles elaborated a faint smile, kissed Éloise's cheek, told her she would help her look about for something, rang for Hazel to close the door the careless girl left ajar as she went springing down-stairs, and arranged herself anew in the laced pillows that singularly became with their setting the creamy hue of her tranquil face.

But Éloise was keeping up her spirits by an artificial process that she meant should last at least as far as the Murrays'. Passing, on her way, the door of her father's cozy cabinet, the attraction overcame her, she turned the handle, only for a moment, and looked in. The place was too full of memories: yonder he had stood, and she remembered what he said; there he had sat and stroked her hair; here he had every night kissed her two eyes for pleasant dreams. The door banged behind her, and she was sitting on the floor sobbing with all her soul.

When the tornado had passed, Éloise rose, smoothed her dress, opened the window that the morning air might cool her burning eyes, then at length went to find a servant who would take her trunk to the Murrays', and passed down the hall.

As she reached the door of the long, antique room where last night's scene had passed, it opened, and Mr. St. George Erne came out.

"Good morning, Miss Changarnier," said he. "May I speak with you a moment?"

"Very briefly," said Éloise, loftily, for she was in an entirely different mood from that in which she had left him the night before.

The corner of a smile curled Mr. St. George Erne's mouth and the brown moustache above it. Éloise saw it, and was an inch taller. Then St. George did not smile again, but was quite as regnantly cool and distant as the Khan of Tartary could be.

"I glanced at the papers to which you referred me last evening," said he. "As you intimated, I perceive the snarl is hopeless. Were it for nothing else," he added, casting down the orbs that had just now too tremulous a light in them, "I should ask you to remain and assist me in unravelling affairs, for a few days. I intend, so soon as the way shall be clear, to set off half of the estate to you"--

"Sir, I do not accept gifts from strangers. I will be under no obligations. I hope to earn my own livelihood. The estate is yours; I will not receive a penny of it!"

"Pardon me, if I say that this is a rash and ill-considered statement. There is no reason why you should be unwilling, in the first place, to see justice done, and, after that, to respect your Adopted father's wish."

"My father could have wished nothing dishonest. He is best pleased with me as I am."

"Will it make any difference, if I assure you that the half of the estate under my plan of management will yield larger receipts than the whole of it did under your proprietorship?"

"Not the least," said Éloise, with a scornful and incredulous smile.

"You make me very uncomfortable. Let me beg you to take the matter into consideration. After a few days of coolness, you will perhaps think otherwise."

"After a thousand years I should think the same. I do not want your money, Sir. I thank you. And so, good bye."

"Where are you going?"

"Out into the world."

"What are you going to do?"

"That is certainly no affair of yours."

"How much money have you in that little purse?"

She poured its contents down where he had emptied his own purse on the previous evening, adding to those still remaining there some four or five small gold-pieces.

"Of course they are yours, Sir. I have no right to them!"

He brushed them indignantly all down together in a heap upon the hearth.

"You sha'n't have them, then!" said he, and ground them with his heel into the ashes.

"I can sell my mother's jewels!" said she, defiantly.

"I can confiscate them for the balance of the half-year's income of the estate!"

Éloise turned pale with pride and anger and fear and mastery.

"We are talking very idly," said St. George, then, softening his falcon's glance. "Pray excuse such savage jesting. I should like to share my grandfather's estate with you, the adopted child of his elder grandson. It looks fairly enough, I think."

"Talking very idly. I have assured you that I never will touch it. And if you want more, here I _swear_ it!"

"Hush! hush!"

"It's done!" said Éloise, exultantly, and almost restored to good-humor by the little triumph.

"And you won't reconsider? you won't break it? you will not let me beg you"--

"Never! If that is all you had to say, I shall bid you good-morning."

Mr. St. George was silent for a moment or two.

"I am greatly grieved," said he then. "I have done an evil thing unconsciously enough, and one for which there is no remedy, it seems. Until you mentioned your name last night, I was innocent of your existence. I had, indeed, originally heard of my cousin's educating some child, but our intercourse was so fragmentary that it made no impression upon me. I had entirely forgotten that there was such a person in the world, ungallant as it sounds. Afterwards,--last night, this morning,--I was so selfish as to imagine that we could each of us be very happy upon the half of such a property, until, at least, my affairs should right themselves. I was wrong. Whatever legal steps have been taken shall be recalled, and I leave you in full possession to-day and forever. 'The King sall ha' his ain again.'"

"Folderol!" said Éloise, turning her shoulder.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You may go where you please, and let all The Rim do the same,--go to dust and ashes, if it will! As for me, my hands are washed of it; if it isn't mine, I will not have it. Now let the thing rest! Besides, Sir," said Éloise, with a more gracious air, and forgetting her wicked temper, "you don't know the relief I feel! how free I am! no more figures! such a sad weight off me that I could fly! You would be silly to be such a Don Quixote as you threaten; it would do nobody any good, and would prove the ruin of all these poor creatures for whom you are now responsible. Don't you see?" said Éloise, taking a step nearer, and positively smiling upon him. "It isn't now just as you like,--you have a duty in the case. And as for me, good morning!"

And Éloise actually offered him her hand.

"One moment. Let me think."

And after her white flag of truce, there came a short cessation of hostilities.

"Very well," said Mr. St. George Erne at last, looking up, and shaking his strong shoulders like a Newfoundland dog coming out of the water. "Let it be. I have, then, one other idea,--in fact, one other condition. If I yield one thing, it is only right that you should yield another. It is this. I am entirely unaccustomed to doing my own writing. My script is illegible, even to myself. My amanuenses, my copyists, in Washington, have cost me a mint of money. I find there are none of the servants, of course, who write their names. I cannot afford, either, at present, to buy a clerk from Charleston. And on the whole, if it would be agreeable to you, I should be very glad if you would accept a salary,--such salary as I find convenient,--and remain as my accountant. You will, perhaps, receive this proposal with the more ease, as Mrs. Arles agrees to occupy the same position as formerly in the house."

Those horrible accounts! And a master! Who said Marlboro' was a master? What thing was Earl St. George Erne?--Yet too untaught to teach, too finely bred to sew, too delicate to labor, perhaps not good enough to starve,--

A quarter of an hour elapsed in dead silence.

Éloise threw back her head, and grew just a trifle more queenly, as she answered,--

"I thank you. I will stay, Mr. Erne."

The last word had tripped on her tongue; it had been almost impossible for her to give to another person her father's name, which she had never been allowed to wear herself.

He noticed her hesitation, and said,--

"You can call me St. George. Everybody does,--Mrs. Arles, the servants will. We have always been the St. Georges and the Disbrowes, for generations. Besides, if you had really been my cousin's child, you would naturally have called me so."

"If I had really been your cousin's child, Sir," said Éloise, with a flash, "I should not have been obliged to call you at all!"

This finished the business. Mr. St. George, who felt, that, in reality, he had only got his right again, who would gladly have given her back hers, who had only, in completest innocence and ignorance, made it impossible for her, in pride and honor, to accept it, who, moreover, very naturally considered his treatment of this handsome, disagreeable girl rather generous, and who had sacrificed much of his usually dictatorial manner in the conversation, felt also now that there was nothing more to do till she chose her ice should melt; and so he straightway let a frosty mood build itself up on his part into the very counterpart of hers. The resolution which he had just made, boyishly to abstract himself in secret, and leave her to fate and necessity and duty, faded. She deserved to lose. A haughty, ungovernable hussy! He would keep it in spite of her! How, under the sun, had his Cousin Disbrowe got along with her? Nevertheless, the salary which Mr. St. George had privately allotted to his accountant covered exactly one-half of his yearly income, whatever that contingent fund might prove to be; and, meantime, he did not intend to pay her a copper of it until they should become so much better friends that it would be impossible for her, with all her waywardness, to refuse it.

A bell sounded. Hazel came, and murmured something to Éloise. And thereupon, in this sweet and cordial frame of mind, they entered the breakfast-room, where Mrs. Arles awaited them behind a hissing urn,--and a cheery meal they had of it!

Mr. St. George passed a week in finding firm footing upon all the circumference of his property; by that time, clear and far-sighted as an eagle, he had seized on every speck of error throughout its wide mismanagement, and had initiated Éloise into a new way of performing old duties, as coolly as if no indignant word or thought had ever passed between them. And meanwhile, in place of their ancient warfare, but with no later friendship, Éloise and Mrs. Arles had tacitly instituted an offensive and defensive alliance against the common enemy. This the common enemy soon perceived, laughed at it a little grimly at first, then accepted it, as a kind of martyrdom expiatory of all previous sins, that a man must have against his grain two hostile women in the house, neither of whom had anything but the shadow of a claim upon him. Still, Earl St. George had his own plans; and by degrees it dimly dawned on his flattered intelligence that one of these women used her hostility merely as a feint towards the other.

* * * * *

TYPES.

Mr. Samuel Weller, of facetious memory, has told us of the girl who, having learned the alphabet, concluded that it was not worth going through so much to get so little. This, to say the least of it, was disrespectful to Cadmus, and should be condemned accordingly. Authors have feelings, which even scholastic young maidens cannot be permitted to lacerate. I therefore warn the reader of this article against any inclination toward sympathy with the critical mood of that obnoxious female. My theme is not as lively as "Punch" used to be; but, on the other hand, it is not as dull as a religious novel. Patient investigation may find it really agreeable: good-nature will not find it a bore.

I propose, then, a half-hour's gossip concerning Types, Type-Setting, and the machinery connected with Printing, at the present time. It would, perhaps, be interesting to review in detail the printing-devices of the past; but that would be to extend unwarrantably the limits of this article. Enough that any sketch of the invention, manufacture, and use of types would illustrate the triumph of the labor-saving instinct in man, and thus confirm the scientific lesson of to-day,--that machinery must entirely supersede the necessarily slow processes of labor by hand. That it will at no distant day supersede those processes in the art of printing is, as you will presently see, a fixed fact.

Machinery now does nearly every sort of labor,--economizing health, strength, time, and money, in all that it does. We tread upon beautifully figured carpets that are woven by machinery from single threads. We wear clothes that are made by machinery at the rate of two thousand stitches a minute. We hear in every direction the whistle of the locomotive, which saves us almost incalculable time, in the safe and convenient transportation of our persons and our property. We read in our newspapers messages that are brought instantaneously, from points far as well as near, by a simple electric current, governed by machinery, which prints its thought in plain Roman characters, at a rate of speed defying the emulation of the most expert penman. These, among many illustrations of scientific progress, occur in our daily experience. Manufacture, agriculture, and commerce would yield us others quite as impressive. In all this we see that man is finding out and applying the economy of Nature, and thus that the world is advancing, by well-directed effort, toward a more natural, and therefore a happier civilization.

The labor-saving processes of mechanism as applied to Printing are in the highest degree advantageous and admirable. Once types were cast in moulds, such as boys use for casting bullets. Now they are turned out, with inconceivable rapidity, from a casting-machine worked by steam. Ink and paper, too, are made by machinery; and when the types are set, we invoke the aid of the Steam-Press, and so print off at least fifty impressions to each one produced under the old process of press-work by hand. Machinery, moreover, folds the printed sheets,--trims the rough edges of books,--directs the newspaper,--and does, in short, the bulk of the drudgery that used to be done by operatives, at great expense of time and trouble, and with anything but commensurate profit.

These are facts of familiar knowledge. They indicate remarkable scientific progress. But the great fact--by no means so well known--remains to be stated. It is only of late that machinery has been successfully employed in the most laborious and expensive process connected with the art of printing,--that, namely, of Composition. In this process, however, iron fingers have proved so much better than fingers of flesh, that it is perfectly safe to predict the speedy discontinuance, by all sensible printers, of composition by hand.

Composition--as probably the reader knows--is the method of arranging types in the proper form for use. This, ever since the invention of movable types,--made by Laurentius Coster, in 1430,--has been done by hand. A movement toward economy in this respect was, indeed, made some sixty years ago, by Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, inventor of the Stanhope Press, and of the process of stereotyping which is still in use. His plan was to make the type-shank thicker than usual, and cast two or more letters upon its face instead of one. This, his Lordship rightly considered, would save labor, if only available combinations could be determined; since, using such types, it would frequently happen that the compositor would need to make but one movement for two or three or even four letters. The desired economy, however, was not secured. Subsequent attempts at combinations were made in England, but all proved abortive. In the office of the London "Times," castings of entire words--devised, I think, by Sterling--were used, to a limited extent. It remained, however, for a New-York mechanic to make the idea of combination-type a practical success. Mr. John H. Tobitt, being a stenographer as well as a compositor, was enabled to make a systematic selection of the syllables most frequently occurring in our language; and thus it happens that his combinations have stood a practical test. His improved cases, with combination-type, were shown at the London Exhibition, in 1851, when a medal was awarded to the inventor. These cases have now been in use upwards of ten years, and have demonstrated a gain of twenty per cent over the ordinary method of composition. It should be mentioned that Mr. Tobitt's invention was entirely original with himself. When he made it, he had never heard of Earl Stanhope, nor of any previous attempt at this improvement.

It is evident, when we reflect upon the intricate construction of language, that this method of saving labor, though it may be made still more useful than at present, must always be restricted within a limited circle of operations. Nor would any number of combination-letters obviate the necessity of composition by hand. The printer would still be obliged to stand at the case, picking up type after type, turning each one around and over, and so arranging the words in his "stick." Every one knows this process,--a painfully slow one in view of results, although individual compositors are sometimes wonderfully expert. But it is only when a great many men labor actively during more hours than ought to be spent in toil, that any considerable work is accomplished by this method. The composing-room of a large daily paper, for instance, presents, day and night, a spectacle of the almost ceaseless industry of jaded operatives. The need of relief in this respect was long ago recognized. The attempt at combination-letters was not less a precursor of reform than an acknowledgment of its necessity. It remained for American inventive genius, in this generation, to conceive and perfect the greatest labor-saving device that has ever been applied to the art of printing,--the last need of the operative,--the Type-Setting Machine.

It was inevitable that this should come. The only wonder is that it did not come before. Perhaps, indeed, the idea was often conceived in the minds of skilful, though dreamy and timorous inventors, but not developed, for fear of opposition. And opposition enough it has encountered,--alike from inertia, suspicion, and conservative hostility,--since first it assumed a practical position among American ideas, some ten years ago. But I do not care to dwell upon the shadows. Turn we to the sunshine. There are two strong points in favor of the invention, which, since they cover the whole ground of argument, deserve at least to be stated. I assert, then, without the fear of contradiction before my eyes, that the Type-Setting Machine, besides being a universal benefactor, is, in a double sense, a blessing to the mechanic. It spares his physical health, and it stimulates his mental and moral activity. The first truth appears by sanitary statistics, which prove that the health of such artisans as the type-founder and such craftsmen as the printer has been materially improved by the introduction of mechanical aids to their toil. The second is self-evident,--seeing that there is a moral instructor ever at work in the mazes of ingenious and highly-wrought machinery. Those philosophers are not far wrong, if at all, who assert that the rectitude of the human race has gained strength, as by a tonic, from the contemplation of the severe, arrowy railroad,--iron emblem of punctuality, directness, and despatch.

In the interest, therefore, of education no less than health, it becomes imperative that machinery should be substituted for hand-labor in composition. At present, our printing-offices are by no means the sources whence to draw inspirations of order, fitness, and wholesome toil. On the contrary, they are frequently badly lighted and worse ventilated rooms, wherein workmen elbow each other at the closely set cases, and grow dyspeptic under the combined pressure of foul air and irritating and long-protracted labor. All this should be changed. With the composing-machine would come an atmosphere of order and cleanliness and activity, making work rapid and agreeable, and lessening the period of its duration. I know that working-men are suspicious of scientific devices. But surely the compositor need not fear that the iron-handed automaton will snatch the bread out of his mouth. To diminish the cost of any article produced--which is the almost immediate result of substituting machinery for hand-labor--is to expand the market for that article. The Sewing-Machine has not injured the sempstress. The Power-Press has not injured the pressman. The Type-Setting Machine will not injure the compositor. Skilled labor, which must always be combined with the inventor's appliances for aiding it, so far from dreading harm in such association, may safely anticipate, in the far-reaching economy of science, ampler reward and better health, an increase of prosperity, and a longer and happier life in which to enjoy it.

Let me now briefly sketch the history of type-setting machinery. This must necessarily be done somewhat in the manner of Mr. Gradgrind. I am sorry thus to tax the reader's patience; but facts, which enjoy quite a reputation for stubbornness, cannot easily be wrought into fancies. Color the map as you will, it is but a prosy picture after all.

Charles Babbage, of London, the inventor of the Calculating-Engine, first essayed the application of machinery to composition. His calculator was so contrived that it would record in type the results of its own computations. This was over forty years ago. At about the same time Professor Treadwell of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was bred a practical mechanic, turned his attention to this improvement, and ascertained by experiment the feasibility of the type-setting machine. But mechanical enterprise was then comparatively inactive in America, and nothing of immediate practical importance resulted from the Professor's experiments. Nor did greater success attend the efforts of Dr. William Church, of Vermont, a contemporary inventor, who constructed an apparatus for setting types, but failed to provide for their distribution. Subsequently, for a long time, the idea slumbered.

At length, about the year 1840, Mr. Timothy Alden, a printer, and a native of Massachusetts, conceived a plan for setting and distributing type, which has since been put into successful operation. Mr. Alden's workshop was, I believe, situated at the corner of Canal and Centre Streets, in New York city. There he labored in privacy, year after year, encountering all manner of difficulty and discouragement, till his great work was substantially completed. His invention was patented in 1857, but the studious and persevering inventor did not live to reap the fruits of the seed he had sown. Worn out with care and toil and long-suffering patience, he died in 1859, a martyr to scientific progress. His patent passed into the hands of his cousin, Mr. Henry W. Alden, who has since organized a company for the manufacture and sale of the Alden Machine.

In appearance, this machine resembles a circular table, having in its centre a wheel, placed horizontally, from the outer edge of which lines of type radiate, like spokes from an axle, to the distance of about one foot. Three-quarters of the circle is filled up by these lines. In front is a key-board, containing one hundred and fifty-four keys, by which the operator governs the action of the machine. The central wheel controls some forty "conveyors," half of which compose the types into language, while the other half distribute them, guided by certain nicks cut upon their sides, to their proper places, when no longer needed. Both operations may go on at the same time. The types, as they are composed, are fed out in a continuous line, at the left of the key-board. The operator then divides this line into proper lengths, and "justifies" it by hand. "Justifying," it should be stated, consists in placing spaces between the words, and making the lines of equal length. This machine is a very ingenious invention, and marks the first great step towards successful improvement in the method of Type-Setting.

Another machine, originated by Mr. William H. Mitchell, of Brooklyn, New York, was patented in 1853. In appearance it suggests a harp placed horizontally. In front is a key-board, in shape and arrangement not unlike that of a piano. Each key indicates a certain letter. The types employed are arranged in columns, nearly perpendicular. The touching of a key throws out a type upon one of a series of endless belts, graduated in length, from six inches up to three feet, which move horizontally towards the farther side of the machine, depositing the types in due order upon a single belt. This latter carries them, in uninterrupted succession, to a brass receiver, on which they stand ranged in one long line. This line is then cut into lengths and justified by hand. Mr. Mitchell's Distributing-Apparatus--which is entirely distinct from the Composing-Machine--is, substantially, a circular wheel armed with feelers, which latter distribute according to the nicks cut in the types.