FullReads

“‘A happy new year to you, Mr. Manners.’

“He forced a smile as he answered, ‘Amen!’

“Mrs. Dallas (who kindly chaperoned us) slept all the way home; and Miss Dallas and Harriet chatted about their partners. Once only they appealed to me. What first drew my attention was Mr. Manners’ name.

“‘Poor Mr. Manners!’ Harriet said; ‘I am afraid I was very rude to him. He had to console himself with you, eh, Dolly?–on the principle of love me love my dog, I suppose?’

“Am I so conceited that this had never struck me? And yet–but here comes Harriet, and I must put you away, dear diary. I blush at my voluminousness. If every evening is to take up so many pages, my book will be full at Midsummer! But was not this a red-letter day?”

Well may I blush, dear Nell, to re-read this girlish nonsense. And yet it contains not the least strange part of this strange story–poor Mr. Manners’ presentiment of evil. After this he called constantly, and we met him often in society; and, blinded by I know not what delusion, Harriet believed him to be devoted to herself, up to the period, as I fancy, when he asked me to be his wife. I was staying with the Tophams at the time. I believe that they had asked me there on purpose, being his friends. Ah, George! what a happy time that was! How, in the sweet days of the sweetest of summers, I laughed at your “presentiment”! How you told me that the joy had come, and, reminding me of my own sermon on the chequered nature of life, asked if the sorrow would yet tread it down. Too soon, my love! too soon!

Nelly! forgive me this outburst. I must write more calmly. It is sad to speak ill of a sister; but surely it was cruel, that she, who had so many lovers, should grudge me my happiness; should pursue George with such unreasonable malice; should rouse the senseless but immovable obstinacy of our poor brother against him. Oh, Eleanor! think of my position! Our father and mother dead; under the care of our only brother, who, as you know, dear Nell, was at one time feared to be a complete idiot, and had, poor boy! only so much sense as to make him sane in the eyes of the law. You know the fatal obstinacy with which he pursued an idea once instilled; the occasional fits of rage that were not less than insanity. Knowing all this, my dear, imagine what I must have suffered when angrily recalled home. I was forbidden to think of Mr. Manners again. In vain I asked for reasons. They had none, and yet a thousand to give me. When I think of the miserable stories that were raked up against him,–the misconstruction of everything he did, or said, or left undone,–my own impotent indignation, and my poor brother’s senseless rage, and the insulting way in which I was watched, and taunted, and tortured,–oh, Nelly! it is agony to write. I did the only thing left to me–I gave him up, and prayed for peace. I do not say that I was right: I say that I did the best I could in a state of things that threatened to deprive me of reason.

My submission did not produce an amount of harmony in the house in any way proportionate to the price I paid for it. Harriet was obliged to keep the slanders of my lover constantly in view, to quiet the self-reproach which I think she must sometimes have experienced. As to Edmund, my obedience had somewhat satisfied him, and made way for another subject of interest which was then engrossing his mind.

A man on his estate, renting a farm close to us, who was a Quaker, and very “strict” in his religious profession, had been for a long time grossly cheating him, relying, no doubt, on my poor brother’s deficient intellect. But minds that are intellectually and in reason deficient, are often endowed with a large share of cunning and caution, especially in monetary affairs. Edmund guessed, watched, and discovered; but when the proof was in his hands, his proceedings were characteristically peculiar. He did not discharge the man, and have done with it; he retained him in his place, but seemed to take a–let me say–insane delight in exposing him to the religious circle in which he had been a star, and from which he was ignominiously expelled; and in heaping every possible annoyance and disgrace upon him that the circumstances admitted. My dear, I think I should have preferred his wrath upon myself, to being the witness of my brother’s miserable exultation over the wretched man, Parker. His chief gratification lay in the thought that, exquisite as were the vexations he heaped upon him, the man was obliged to express gratitude for his master’s forbearance as regarded the law.