“How are you going to check it? Tell me that. We cannot shut her up in her room and set a watch over her, nor can we pack her off to Hong Kong or Timbuctoo--out of his way.”
“Then you are against it?”
“Yes.”
“But what for?”
“I am not ready to give you my reasons.”
“I cannot imagine what they may be. Leonard is rich.”
“Very. Colonel Rutgers told me his estate in land and houses and ready cash might be worth seven hundred thousand dollars. But, as you reminded me in regard to Mary Selwyn, money in matrimony does not much matter.”
“I don’t think it is as important as love; though, as you said, money does no harm to matrimony. But it is not only money, with Leonard. He is of good family.”
“His great-grandfather was a Highland Scot, and James Murray, his father, cared for nothing but money. It was a bit of land here, and a dollar or two there--a hard man, both to friend and foe. I never liked him. We came to words often, and to blows once--that was about you, Carlita.”
“You had no need to quarrel about me. From the first to last it has been you, Gerardus; you, and only you.”
“Yet after we were engaged, James Murray asked you to marry him. No honourable man would have done such a thing.”
“Have you not forgotten? The man is dead. Let his faults be left in silence.”
“I do not like to see you so partial to his son.”
“The son is his mother’s son. He has qualities the very opposite of his father’s. James Murray was a bigot and a miser. Leonard has the broadest and most tolerant views.”
“There, you have said plenty. If there is any man not to be trusted, it is this broad, tolerant fellow. You remember Herman Strauss? He is that kind of character, brought up in the Middle Dutch Church, he married an Episcopalian, and without difficulty--being so broad--he went with her to Trinity. He praised the Democrats--Clintonian and Madisonian both--and yet he called himself a Federalist--thought that both were right in some ways. But like all men of this uncertain calibre, he had one or two trifling opinions, of no consequence whatever, either to himself or others, for whose sake he would lose money and friends, and even risk his life. It was only a question as to the brand of wine Mr. Jefferson drank, that made him insult Colonel Wilde, and in consequence fight a duel which has left him a cripple for life. So much for your man of wide sympathies and broad views! I like a man who has positive opinions and sticks to them. Yes, sticks to them, right or wrong! A man who sticks to his opinions will stick to his friends and his family. Good in everything! Good in every one! _Nonsense!_ Such ideas lead to nowhere, and to nothing. The man that holds them I do not want to marry my daughter.”
“Mrs. Clark says Leonard’s moral character is beautiful.”
“Mrs. Clark has known him about four days. And pray, what does Mrs. Clark, or you, or any other woman know about a man’s moral character? Leonard Murray’s ancestors have been for centuries restless, quarrelsome, fighting Highlandmen. He is not twenty-two yet, and he has been as far west and south as he could get, and only came home because there was likely to be some fighting on hand.”
“But then, Gerardus--what have you behind you?”
“Centuries full of God-fearing Dutchmen--honest traders and peaceable burghers and scholarly domines.”
“Oh, yes, and _Beggars of the Sea_, and men who fought with De Ruyter and Tromp, and wandered to the ends of the earth with Van Heemskirk for adventures, and came with the Englishman, Henry Hudson, here itself, and did a little good business with the poor Indians. And Gerardus, look at your own sons--Christopher is never at home but when he is at sea. He is happier in a ship than a house, and also he likes the ship to carry cutlasses and cannon. As for Peter, you know as well as I do that if he were not building ships he would be sailing them. He loves a ship better than a wife. He knows all about every ship he ever built--her length and breadth and speed, how much sail she can carry, how many men she requires to manage her, and he calls them by their names as if they were flesh and blood. Does Peter ever go to see a woman? No; he goes to see some ship or other. Now then, what influence have your honest traders and peaceable burghers had on your sons?”
“My dear Carlita, don’t you see you are running away with yourself? You are preaching for my side, instead of your own. Chris and Peter are results, so is Leonard Murray. You can’t put nature to the door, Carlita. Nature is more than nurture; all that our home and education and trading surroundings could do for boys, was done for Peter and Chris; but nature was ahead of us--she had put into them the wandering salt drops of adventure that stirred ‘The Beggars,’ and Tromp, and Van Heemskirk. I tell you truly, Carlita, that the breed is more than the pasture. As you know, the cuckoo lays her eggs in any bird’s nest; it may be hatched among blackbirds or robins or thrushes, but it is always a cuckoo. And so we came back to my first position, that a man cannot deliver himself from his ancestors.”
“I do not care, Gerardus, about ancestors; I look at Leonard just as he is to-day. And I wish you would tell me plainly what to do. Or will you, yourself, let Leonard know your mind on this subject? Perhaps that would be best.”
“How can I speak to him? Can I refuse Sapphira until he asks for her? Can I go to him and say, ‘Sir, I see that you admire my daughter, and I do not intend to let you marry her.’ That would be offering Sapphira and myself for insult, and I could not complain if I got what I asked for.”
“Is there anything I can do, seeing that you object so strongly to Leonard?”
“Yes, you can tell Sapphira how much I feel about such an alliance; you can show her the path of obedience and duty; and I expect you to do this much. I did not like mother’s attitude about him at all, and I shall speak to her myself. Sapphira must be made to feel that Leonard Murray is impossible.”
“Well, Gerardus, I will speak to the poor little one. Oh, I am so sorry for her--she will feel it every way so much; but some fathers don’t care, even if they turn a wedding into a funeral.”
“Such words are not right, nor even true. I care for Sapphira’s welfare above everything.”
“Speak to mother; I wish you would. She will not refuse Leonard if he asks her for Annette. And Annette is already in love with him, I am not deceived in that. She was white with envy and jealousy to-night.”
“Is Annette in it?”
“Yes, and very much so, I think.”
“Then I give up the case. No man can rule right against three or four women. I am going to sleep now, and I hope it may be a long time before I hear Leonard Murray’s name again.”
His hope had but a short existence. When he entered the breakfast room the following morning, the first thing he saw was Sapphira bending over a basket of green rushes, running over with white rosebuds. She turned to him a face full of delight.
“See, father,” she cried. “Are they not lovely? Are they not sweet? If you kiss me, you will get their dew upon my lips.”
He bent his head down to the fragrant flowers, and then asked: “Where did you get them so early in the morning?”
“Leonard Murray sent them. Let me pin this bud on the lapel of your coat.”
“No,” he said bitterly, pushing the white hand and the white flower away. “Go to your room, and take the flowers with you. I will not have them in any place where I can see them.” Then a negro boy entering, he turned to him, and ordered his breakfast in a tone and manner that admitted of no delay nor dispute.
Sapphira had lifted her basket, but as soon as they were alone she asked: “Did you mean those unkind words, father?”
“Every one of them.” He shuffled his coffee cup, let the sugar tongs fall, and then rang the bell in a passion. Yet he did not escape the pathetic look of astonished and wounded love in Sapphira’s eyes as she left the room, with the basket of rosebuds clasped to her breast.
All day this vision haunted him. He wished to go home long before the usual hour, but that would have been a kind of submission. He said he had a headache, but it was really a heartache that distressed him, and during a large part of the day he was debating within himself how such an unhappy position had managed to subjugate him in so short a period of time. For, if any one a week previously had told him he could be controlled in all his tenderest feelings by a dislike apparently so unreasonable, he would have scoffed the idea away. He said frequently to himself the word “unreasonable,” for that was the troublesome, exasperating sting of the temptation. The young man himself had done nothing that any fair or rational person would consider offensive--quite the contrary; and yet he was conscious of an antagonism that was something more than mere dislike--something, indeed, that might easily become hatred.
He had just admitted the word “hatred” to his consciousness as he reached the entrance of the Government House. The day had at last worn itself away, wearily enough, to the dinner hour. He might now go home and face whatever trouble he had evoked.