The Conqueror | Page 9

"I want that as much as ever; but I want to
love the man. I want to be happy."
"Well, do love him," exclaimed her mother with energy. "Your father
was twenty years older than myself, and a Frenchman, but I made up
my mind to love him, and I did--for a good many years."
"You had to leave him in the end. Do you wish me to do the same?"
"You will do nothing of the kind. There never was but one John
Fawcett."
"I don't love this Levine, and I never shall love him. I don't believe at
all that that kind of feeling can be created by the brain, that it responds
to nothing but the will. I shall not love that way. I may be ignorant, but
I know that."
"You have read too much Shakespeare! Doubtless you imagine
yourself one of his heroines--Juliet? Rosalind?"
"I have never imagined myself anybody but Rachael Fawcett. I cannot
imagine myself Rachael Levine. But I know something of myself--I
have read and thought enough for that. I could love someone--but not
this bleached repulsive Dane. Why will you not let me wait? It is my
right. No, you need not curl your lip--I am not a little girl. I may be
sixteen. I may be without experience in the world, but you have been
almost my only companion, and until just now I have talked with
middle-aged men only, and much with them. I had no real childhood.
You have educated my brain far beyond my years. To-day I feel twenty,

and it seems to me that I see far down into myself--much deeper than
you do. I tell you that if I marry this man, I shall be the most hopeless
wretch on earth."
Mary Fawcett was puzzled and distressed, but she did not waver for a
moment. The cleverest of girls could not know what was best for
herself, and the mother who permitted her daughter to take her life into
her own hands was a poor creature indeed.
"Listen, my dear child," she said tenderly, "you have always trusted in
me, believed me. I know that this is a wise and promising marriage for
you. And--" she hesitated, but it was time to play her trump. "You
know that my health is not good, but you do not know how bad it is. Dr.
Hamilton says that the rheumatism may fly to my heart at any moment,
and I must see you married--"
She had ejaculated the last words; Rachael had shrieked, and flung
herself upon her, her excitement at this sudden and cruel revelation
bursting out in screams and sobs and a torrent of tears. Her mother had
seen her excited and in brief ungovernable tempers, but she never had
suspected that she was capable of such passion as this; and, much
disturbed, she led her off to bed, and sent for her advisers, Archibald
Hamn and Dr. Hamilton.
IV
Mr. Hamn responded at once to the widow's call, his adjacence giving
him the advantage of Dr. Hamilton, of whom he was a trifle jealous. He
was an old bachelor and had proposed to Mistress Fawcett--a
captivating woman till her last hour--twice a year since her husband's
death. But matrimony had been a bitter medicine for Mary after her
imagination had ceased to sweeten it, and her invariable answer to her
several suitors was the disquieting assertion that if ever she was so rash
as to take another husband, she certainly should kill him. Archibald
was not the man to conquer her prejudices, although she loved the
sterling in him and attached him to her by every hook of friendship. He
was a dark nervous little man, spare as most West Indians, used a deal
of snuff, and had a habit of pushing back his wig with a jerking forearm

when in heated controversy with Dr. Hamilton, or expounding
matrimony to the widow.
Dr. Hamilton, for whose arrival Mr. Hamn was kept waiting,--Mistress
Fawcett tarried until her daughter fell asleep,--was a large square man,
albeit lean, and only less nervous than the widow's suitor. His white
locks were worn in a queue, a few escaping to soften his big powerful
face. Both men wore white linen, but Dr. Hamilton was rarely seen
without his riding-boots, his advent, except in Mistress Fawcett's house,
heralded by the clanking of spurs. Mary would have none of his spurs
on her mahogany floors, and the doctor never yet had been able to
dodge the darkey who stood guard at her doorstep.
The two men exchanged mild surmises as to the cause of the summons;
but as similar summons occurred when newly wedded blacks were
pounding each other's heads, provoked thereto by the galling chain of
decency, or an obeah doctor had