Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1878 — HITTY THORNE’S DUTY. [ARTICLE]

HITTY THORNE’S DUTY.

“ Wo might mortgage the place,” said Miss Hitty, sighing. “And retire to the almshouse, eh?” returned her sister. “ But what alternative is open tons? Shall we allow Tom to come to grief l” “Tom rielily deservt s all the grief that will fall to his share, poor fellow. Such a schemer! Expected to make a fortuno for us all, fcrsootli, that we might flaunt in our velvets, drive our span, nud fare sumptuously every dav ! One dollar for us and #2 for himself,“ I rockoD. What should such a bey know about speculation ? It’s tho old story over and over. Speculating with other poople’B money is a little indiscreet, to say the least. I should have chosen sackcloth and ashes rather than velvets worn by such means.” “Certainly. But, now that Tom is involved, nothiug but money will extricate him. There's my watch, the heirloom from Grandma rentecost; there are fifty diamonds bedded in tho case, if there’s one—” “Kobo diamonds, every spark of them.” “ Not to mention tho pearls and emeralds,” “Doublets and split pearls, I dare Bay.” “You are so discouraging, Liddy! We must have the money. I don’t suppose that the watch would bring a tenth of the sum, but it would help. Dear ! '’’ear ! there’s Hannah de Rothschild with &2,000,()()0 of income, while you and I can’t raise $5,000 though wo should break our hearts—not even to save an old and honorable name from contempt and a foolish young fellow from ruiu. Alas! alas !” “ You know, Hitty, it might have been different,” suggested Liddy, her eyes wandering toward the old-fashioned square mansion crowning the hill within sight, with its fringe of elms and its spicy orchards beyond. “You might have had enough and to spare, Hitty—enough to keep Tom out of temptation.” “And it was a temptation to poor Tom, no doubt,” returned Hitty, ignoring the allusion, “ seeing so much mouey lyiug idle, and such a chance for doubling it over and over, as he fondlv believed.”

“ Pshaw 1 A Thorne had no business to be tempted. Was our grandfather tempted at the time of the embargo, when lie could have had false papers made out, as every body was doing, and saved his fortune, and left us all independent ? If we mortgage the place, it won’t bring #5,000; and who could we call upon to take the mortgage, and what should we do afterward—live iu a tent, gypsy style ? Oh, Hitty, if only you hadn’t been so headstrong about Searle, all this would have been spared us 1”

“Don’t speak of it, Liddy; it hurts me still. How oould I know what would be best ? ’ and Miss Hitty, pacing the ong room with head bent, paused at tlio casement, and saw the sunset reddening upon Searlo hill, and touching the win-dow-panes into jewelry. The twenty years of happiness Avhicli might have fallen to her share up yonder had proved twenty years of silent endurance merely. She had watched tho seasons as they passed over the hill with an interest which slio had hoped would die, but which had only strengthened with the years—the lovely dallying of the springtime, the summer’s overflow of bloom, the splendor that autumn wears, the white maguiticcnce borrowed from winter. If, twenty years ago, Hitty had loved Anson Searle well enough to die for him, if need be, she had loved little Tom well enough to renounce happiness and children and love for his sake, and to live on through the barren, hopeless days without a murmur. Tom had come to her arms a forlorn and helpless 2-year-old baby, without father or mother, when Hitty was 18, aud hor love had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength. Tom’s mother had eloped with her music-master, and had broken her father’s heart; and, when the old gentleman died, he had left a respectablo fortune, tho interest for the benefit of his two living daughters, the principal falling to their children; and only in case Liddy and Hitty died without leaving direct heirs could anything more than the merest trifle revert to poor little Tom. Hitty had been engaged to Anson Searle a year when old Mr. Thorne shuffled off the mortal coil and this unjust will came to light, aud Searle himself was at that time onlv a young lawyer wrestling with circumstances; with no great amount of funds at his command. “ And nothing for little Tom but this paltry hundred dollars!” groaned Hitty, when the will had been read and the estate administered. “Of course I shall never marry,” said Liddy, who was plain and oldlooking for her years, and whose one lover hid jilted her years ago, when the bloom of youth, at least, had been hers. There wasn’t the smallest danger that Liddy would threaten Tom’s interests by marrying. “No, you may never marry, Liddy,” sighed her sister; “but I—l love Anpn, and oh I J Jove little Tom, too—my

little, motherless Tom! I cannot rob him of his patrimony, and I cannot live without Anson. How can I wrong Tom to pleasure myself ? What will he have to go out into this hard world with, if—if—” “ Hush, you silly girl; he will have his head and hands, like other men; and then—you may never have any children to stand in his way.” “Bnt how unhappy it would make me to see them enriched at his expense; to see him earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, while they fared like the lilies of the field; to have Tom envy and perhaps hate them, and feel bitter that life had been rendered so mnch easier for them by injustice!" “Perhaps they would share with Tom.” “ Ah, it wouldn’t be quite safe to trust to that pleasant 'perhaps.’ ” “ You ought not to suspect your children of being less generous than yourself.” “But their mother must have been ungenerous first, you see. ” “You have Anson to think of, Hitty, in this affair, as well as Tom. If you don’t love Tom better—” “ I don’t—l don’t; but the will has made it impossible for me to marry Anson with a clear conscience—to marry him and be happy. If he were sure of earning a fortune, with whieh we could make amends to little Tom, it would be different. But I cannot count upon such an improbable contingency. As you say, Tom will have liis head and hands to push his way, but the best head and the busiest hands do not always compel fortune ; and, if any harm should come to him from want of capital—if he should be tempted to sin from lack of money, I—l should have to answer for it; it would be my guilt.” “Nonsense, Hitty; your conscience is too tender. Marry Anson and trust to fate, that’s my advice. Supposing you refuse, and he marries somebody else, and—little Tom doesn’t live to grow up? ” “ I shall not have wronged him.” “ But you will have wronged Anson.” “Not if he—if he marries—another.”

Many would, perhaps, approve Hitty Thorne’s oonduct at this crisis, more would condemn; but she walked according to her light in those cruel days. It was no easy task she had set nerself. She was to receive no meed for her sacrifice, except self-approval—nothing but reproaches. Could she have seen all that would happen, sue might have spared herself this cruelty. And how much can happen in this time ! how much to make our wisest forethoughts assume the aspect of improvidences! Propelty changes hands, values shrink, children grow up with wills of their own, people die and make room for remote heirs, or they outlive the sharp edge of sorrow and anger, and learn to bear the burden of their mistakes. Mißs Hitty had faded in the meantime, while Anson Searle wore his years like garlands. The fortune of which her “not impossible ” children might have robbed little Tom had dwindled to the merest pittance through the knavery of the man to whose wisdom it had been intrusted, while Anson Searle had unexpectedly stepped into the possession of the Searle estate, with its old stone mansion, its orchards and outlying meadow-lands, and the income that had been rolling up since the Searles first set foot upon Plymouth rook. Twenty years before there had been no shadow of such a possibility, no dream of it in Anson’s mind or another’s. Two healthy lives had barred the way against him, but Death had effected a breach.

“ What a mistake Hitty Thorne made!” people commented these half dozen years. “She might have been mistress at Searle Hill if she’d had a mind to risk marrying a poor man. Polks get their oome-up once in this world sometimes,” with the usual charity commentators bestow upon the motives of others. Nobody had known the true cause of Hitty’s refusal to marry Searle. It had been the town talk, to be sure—a riddle which no one had solved. She had not even confided her reasons to her lover. He would overrule them, she feared, would call them absurd, and only make her task more difficult, and perhaps grow to hate little Tom—and some time Tom might need his good-will; who could till ? Anson Searle had not borne his dismissal with the fortitude of an early martyr, but he had sworn he would never ask her twice to marry him, and he had kept bis word. But perhaps after his anger cooled, and he watched her saddening year by year, some surmise that her behavior had not been dictated by caprice or any petty motive grew upon him, and obliged him to render her the tardy justice of appreciation. And a pretty return Tom had made her—speculating with his employer’s money, and threatening the family pride with disgrace. Unless $5,000 were forthcoming, there was only a fortnight between him and ruin. And Tom was only 22. They must save him. Miss Hitty was one to stand by her guns ; where there was a will there was a way, and she followed the only way she knew. If Mr. Searle, fumbling about for the reasons of Hitty’s conduct toward himself, had at length stumbled upon the clew—having an intimate knowledge of her father’s will already—and if he had not been quite heroic enough to forgive her for preferring Tom’s welfare to his own, he must have found a grim satisfaction in the turn that Fate had ordered, in seeing tho Thome property shrinking day by day, till there was hardly enough to butter their bread—till it’ was plain that Hitty’s sacrifice had been for naught. But when did ever sacrifice prove futile ? Though it fail of its direct purpose, does it not enrich the soul not only of the one who sacrifices, but of all beholders ?

It was near twilight of an autumn day that Miss Hitty put on her worn bonnet and went slowly, with a oertain reluctance, up the hill toward the Searle mansion; she pulled the brazen knocker timidly, and stepped into the house that might have been her own like any beggar. The dead Searles looked down from the walls of the oaken hall with cold questionings in their pursuing eyes; in the great drawing-room the wood fire snapped with a good will, and glinted gayly upon bronze and ormolu, upon the quaint mirrors set in garnets, upon the yellow ivory keys of the old piano. Anson Searle rose to receive his guest with a flush of surprise. “Is it— you —Hitty?” he cried. “ You?" “Yob. You did not expect me ?” “ Expect you ! No. Have I had reason to expect you ?” “Wesometimes expect without a reason. I have come—expecting you to grant me a favor.” “A favor?” “Yes. It Btrikes you oddly that I should be brought to beg a favor of you, does it not? But there is no other friend upon whom I can make even so shadowy a claim as upon you. Do you think I would ask anything of one whom I have served so—so ill—if I were not in extremity ?” “ I hope you will ask anything of me, Miss Hitty—anything you want.” 1 ‘ I have become mercenary, Mr. Searle. I want money. Liddy and I have made up our minds to mortgage tho place; we must have #5,000 without delay; the place is not worth so much, I know, but I—l thought perhaps you would take it for security, as far as it would go, and then—Liddy and I are not too old to work, to earn money; and there’s Tom; and we would all strive to make it up to you, sooner or later, interest and principal. lam dreadfully unbusinesslike, perhaps; but what can I do ? And I must have the money. I can’t live—l can’t die—without it/ Do I make it clear ?” “You niake jt clear that the Thorne iQrtvpie has all leaked away. Jam glad

of it. Pardon, bnt I hold a grudge against that same property; it has cheated me out of twenty years of happiness. Yea, Miss Hitty, von shall have the money. I have plenty; I am rich in everything bnt the one thing I coveted. Bnt I cannot take the mortgage; von shall have the money and welcome, but I can’t accept a mortgage on the old place. Miss Bitty; it is too sacred to me. Think of mortgaging the old apple-trees where we swung in the hammock together, of bringing the garden where we dreamod in the summer evenings into a business transaction ! Bnt all Hie same yon shall have the money, Miss Hitty—” “ But, oh ! yon know I cannot take the money unless—unless—” “Unless yon take the owner with it ? Was that what you meant to say? I’m sure it wasn’t; but, for Heaven’s sake, say it, Hitty. Don’t yon know I vowed never to ask yon to marry me twice ? Do yon want me to break my word, eh ? Now it ia yonr turn to do the asking.” “ I should think I had asked enough,” said Hitty, the great tears standing in her eyes. “You are not in earnest, Anson Searle. You don’t want to marry me, an old maid like me! See how faded and gray I am.” “ And if I swear I do want to marry you, what will you say ?” “ I shall say, then, why don’t you do so, Mr. Searle?” She smiled through her tears. “ What will Liddy say when she hears that I’ve asked yon to marry me ?” “She will say you have done your duty like a man!” “Well, Miss Hitty Thorne always had an eye to the main chance,” said her neighbors. “ She jilted Searle when he was poor, and now he is rich she marries him. What a fool a woman can make of a sensible man—only it usually takes a young one!”