Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1878 — MISS MONTGOMERY’S HEIR. [ARTICLE]

MISS MONTGOMERY’S HEIR.

' 1 So you have refused my nephew ?” Mrs. Ambrose Montgomery looked severely at the young girl, who was calmly tying her bonnet-strings before her mirror. She was a severe old lady, very wealthy, about whom fluttered poor relations innumerable. Edna Sargeant might have counted as one of these, being certainly very poor, though people were apt. to say of her, “ proud as Lucifer himself.” “ Yes, Aunt Lucille, I refused to marry Walter Templeton. Since he seems to have told yon, I suppose there is no impropriety in my doing the same.” “ May I ask your reason?” “ Certainly ! I want my husband, if ever I have one, to be a man, filling a man s place in the world, doing a man’s duties. I will never be the wife of a lazy dandy who dawdles through life, waiting for a possible fortune.” “Your cousin is very useful to me.” Doubtless. But j. do not need any one yet to put my footstool for me, fetch me a shawl, feed my poodle and run my errands.” J “Oh!” I want my husband to work for me at a man’s work of brain and hands.” “Upon my word! You had bettor marry a mechanic. But, pray, take him away from here if you do. I want no low fellow claiming kinship with me. I should think when these plebeian ideas come into your mind, Miss Sargeant, it would be well for you to remember the fact that you can trace your descent direct from the Pilgrim Fathers !” “I am not likely to forget that fact, Aunt Lucille, heating it every day. By the way, auntie, do you suppose if our noble ancestors, the Pilgrim Fathers I mean, were to present themselves in your drawing-rooms that you would recognize them ? Imagine them, in their common clothes, holding by shabby wives with babies in their arms, homeless, exiled, coming suddenly upon you. I can hear you now telling John to put those horrid low people out of the house. ” “ You are pleased to be sarcastic,” was the cool reply. “I can value my ancestors if you are incapable of doing so. I hope your ideal husband may appear. In the meantime I think you are one remove from an idiot to refuse Walter, a perfect gentleman, and my probable heir!” Perhaps! I will come to-morrow and finish your dress.” And so saying Edna wrapped her shawl about her and departed. For this girl, sharing with her mother an exceedingly slender income, the legacy of her long-dead father, utilized a ready needle and exquisite taste by sewing for her relatives. Her mother would have fainted in horror had any one suggested to her that her daughter was a dressmaker. But dear Edna, she admitted, helped her more-prosperous relatives with their sewing, omitting to add that said relatives put a sufficiently small pecuniary acknowledgment into Edna’s purse. The girl herself, a superbly-handsome brunette, rebelled mentally every hour of her life against all this pretense. Proud to her heart’s core, she had no mean shrinking from facing the truth that she was poor and obliged to work for money; but the prejudices of her rich aunt, thefiffectatiofisof her helpless, fipe-

lady mother must be respected, and sha worked for half pay and secrecy_when ’she might havewWon an bonest Inrog as an acknowledged dressmaker. , When Walter-Templeton asked Her to Ibie.liis wife some of rritation of the false life forced upon her found vent in her refusal of his suit. She the sarcasms she had poured upon n» position wnenahe saw the face of hurtamazement there. L ~ 2 “After all,” she thought, wwu he left her, “the poor fellow is not much to blame. He has been under Aunt Lucille’s thumb ever since he was a mere boy, brought up upon small doses of' common sense and vast ones of Pilgrim Fathers, blue blood, and the degradation of honest labor. But I won't marry him 1 I get enough of the fifthly failing without going to live with Aunt Lucille, one more hanger-on. I earn all she gives me, that’s one comfort. Anv dreaunaker would charge twice as much as-she will pay me to make that black velvet.” Yet when she came day after day, working busily at the fall sewing of her aunt, she missed the courteous atten-. tions of her cousin. Truly Aunt Lucille had spoken truly when she said Walter Templeton was a perfect gentleman. His manner was the perfection of good breeding, with deferential courtesy for all womankind, and a most fascinating deference for the one woman he loved. Stung by the bitter emphasis of Edna’s refused, the contemptuous sarcasm of her reasons, he withdrew from her presence, seldom coming to the room, where he read to his aunt while she sewed. Truly Edna had defined his position in that mental retrospect she had taken. He had been his aunt’s plaything in his boyhood, a handsome lad, full of talent and promise. When he attained riper years he was sent to school, to college, graduated there, was put into the position of a outifnl nephew to an aunt who openly proclaimed him her heir. Courted in society, his aunt’s favorite, with ample means at his ready command, his own idea of his course of life was that it was far superior to that of common men, Thoroughly imbued with his aunt’s pride, he rather scorned the idea of labor of any kind until he loved Edna. By the light of that love he felt uneasily that she scorned the money he took freely, unless he earned it first. More than onee he had known of her proud refusal of any gift for which her nimble fingers had not given a full equivalent. He loved her first for her beauty, then for the noble attributes of mind and heart she certainly possessed, though she screened them well with her sarcastic pride. Gradually, indeed unconsciously, she had sheathed the weapons she had kept at command, her pungent wit, her keen satire, when her cousin Walter was by. She let herself be interested when he read, and spoke freely when they discussed literature or art.

Mrs. Montgomery looked well pleased. It was one of her pet schemes to leave her wealth divided between Walter and Edna, as man and wife, and she encouraged intimacy with all her heart, Mding her satisfaction under her usual curt manner. Partly from her hints, partially, it must be confessed, from his own sense of superiority, Walter had a settled conviction that he was conferring an honor when he offered his hand to Edna, a hand that would lift her to his side in the affluence of his aunt’s favor. So the first spur that, drove him from her presence was certainly mortified vanity. More reasonable motives came later. Tho fall sewing was completed, when, with that unreasonable perversity that falls often to the lot of the most favored mortals, Mrs. Montgomery was obliged to have it all renewed iu mourning, for her only sister, Edna’s mother. It was “dreadfully provoking,” of course, the more so as Edna, really loving the peevish invalid who had been her care for years, could not attend to the sewing. She was sorrowed sincerely for many weeks, and then, to Mrs. Montgomery’s infinite disgust, accepted a position as companion to an invalid lady and went abroad. “ I suppose,” her aunt said, when it was too late, “if I had offered you a salary with a home you would have come when I asked you.” And Edna frankly admitted that she would. So over the ocean she carried her sorrows and her pride, the one fairly stifled for the time under the weight of the others. For she missed her mother, she found her new duties uncongenial and confining, and she grieved for Walter’s love.

She did not regret her decision, knowing the Uncertainty of riches. She saw no future of usefulness before him, if, at the end, his aunt disappointed his expectations, She knew him for a man who could turn his brain or hands to no purpose in life, and for this she despised him as a mere dandified puppet of her aunt’s. Yet in the heart-hunger of her new life she thought often of the glorious capabilities of her young cousin. She knew he had a mind clear and strong—full of power to grasp any intellectual pursuit. She knew him patient, kind of heart, strong of purpose when once aroused, an.l it fretted all the grander attributes of her nature to think of the waste of such a manhood. For what was he? A walking tailor’s advertisement, a charming partner in a dance, a courteous gentleman, a willing servant to his aunt. No more ! Yet when Edna wandered with her new mistress over the Old World, enjoying with keen zest the intellectual, artistic and musical treats spread before her, she turned mentally to Walter for congenial pleasure. When the vapid praise or weak criticism of the fashionable invalid was poured into her ears, she wondered how Walter’s clear brain would have viewed the same object. Her home memories were not very pleasant ones to her soul, full of sordid cares, of mean shifts, of shallow pretense, and she rested upon those of her Cousin Walter, floating upon them to rosy dreamlands, till stung to life again by the rejection of his hand and her reasons for that step. ' Viewed through the medium of this rose-haze of memory she softened to her discarded lover, thinking of the chivalry of his wooing, the unselfishness of his love. She well kwew that Mm Ambrose Montgomery’s heir might have chosen a bride among the wealthiest; that Walter’s handsome face, undoubted talents and Courtly manners would have won him true love among the nfbst fastidious. And yet he had turned from all these to choose her, a penniless girl, whose education was, for the most part, self-imparted, who was quick-tempered and unpopular. In spite of her beauty, she knew well that she often owed it to Walter and his efforts that she was not a wall-flower in social gatherings. He loved her, and she had shut her heart to his love. She did not regret that home of luxury he could have commanded for he?,—tfie probable .fortune she would have shared with hiim—butin her bitter loneliness sh§ hungered for the sound of his tender voice, the love of his pleading eyes. ;.?? For four years she wandered hither and thither across the Old World at the caprice of her employer. Then a lawyer’s letter informed her of her Aunt Lucille’s death, and her own inheritance Of $30,000, and n superbly-botind Bopy of the “laves of the PilgrimjFathete,” Mrs. Montgomery’s one literary effort, being a collection of all her own cuttings upon the subject. She was glad to go home agfijij, glad to end her uncongenial bondage, At the

steamer’s arrival her Cousin Walter met her. There was beauty upon his handsome face—f£e beauty of purpose, of a noble content. He had a Hack fa Waftfag; and drove first to * hotel for breakfast. In the privateipartoE where #jwa*«OTed he told fast:-> m k t .- “ Edna I want to thank you J,, . ‘‘‘Thankme?” flhe&ud, wondering. ? “Ibr awakening me from a slothful dream to an object in life. De you knpw how J. have spent the last feun years?” f • “With Aunt Montgomery, have-on not?” ‘ :J< ffertafalyC I would not desert her in old age, when Y was certainly* teomfort fa her. But I studied medidine, won a diploma, and have now aprac-f tice. It is large, Edna, but hdt Verylucrative, being among the very poor for the mat part But I have found what yon told me I lacked, cousin—purpose in life; a field for labor where I hope I am not altogether useless.” ,> ff;&dengratulaie you with all my heart,” she said, impulsively, holding out both hands. “ I want more than that, Edna. Your, wards opened my eyes to myxmrn waste of<life; but, though I find my time busily filled, my heart wants something more. . Edna, all the old love there cries out far you. Can yon love me a little now?” “ Not a little,” she said in a low voice, her cheeks flushing rosily, “but with all my heart, Walter.” ” Then you will grant me my hope, and be married here and now, coming to my old home as my wife, to help me in the life-work to which, your words guided me?” And Edna, loving him, granted his wish, and in his old home proves, as he hoped, a true wife and helpmate fa his noble works of charity and usefulness.