Hearts Afire

PREARRANGED LOVE.

Elder Alexander Van Heemskirk was a great man in his sphere. He had a reputation for both riches and godliness, and was scarcely more respected in the market-place than he was in the Middle Kirk. And there was an old tie between the Van Heemskirks and the Morgans,—a tie going back to the days when the Scotch Covenanters and the Netherland Confessors clasped hands as brothers in their “churches under the cross.” Then one of the Van Heemskirks had fled for life from Scotland to Holland, and been sheltered in the house of a Morgan; and from generation to generation the friendship had been continued. So there was much real kindness and very little ceremony between the families.

“Sit down, Elder, near the fire. A glass of hot Hollands will take the chill from you.”

“You are more than kind, Joris, I'll now say that a small glass would be nice, what with the late hour, and the thick mist.”

“Come, come, Elder. Mists in every country you will find, until you reach the New Jerusalem.”

“Very true, but there's a difference in mists. Now, a Scotch mist isn’t at all unhealthy. When I was a lad, I had been out in them for a week straight, and I never felt better.” He had taken off his plaid and hat as he spoke; and he drew the chair set for him in front of the blazing logs, and stretched out his thin legs to the comforting heat.

In the meantime Joanna Van Heemskirk daughter of Elder Van Heemskirk, had gone upstairs; and their footsteps and voices, and Charlotte's rippling laugh, could be heard distinctly through the open doors. Then Madam called, “Joanna!” and the girl came down at once. She was tying on her white apron as she entered the room; and, at a word from her mother, she began to take from the cupboards various Dutch dainties, and East Indian jars of fruits and sweetmeats, and a case of crystal bottles, and some fine lemons. She was a fair, rosy girl, with a kind, cheerful face, a pleasant voice, and a smile that was at once innocent and bright. Her fine light hair was rolled high and backward; and no one could have imagined a dress more suitable to her than the trig dark bodice, the quilted skirt, and the white apron she wore.

Her father and mother watched her with a loving satisfaction; and though Elder Van Heemskirk was discoursing on that memorable dispute between the Caetus and Conferentie parties, which had resulted in the establishment of a new independent Dutch church in America, he was quite sensible of Joanna's presence, and of what she was doing.

“I was aye for the ordaining of American ministers in America,” he said, as he touched the fingertips of his left hand with those of his right; and then in an aside full of deep personal interest, “Joanna, my dearie, I'll have a Holland bloater and nae other thing. And I was a proud man when I got the invite to be secretary to the first meeting of the new Caetus. Maybe it is praising green barley to say just yet that it was a wise departure; but I think so, I think so.”

At this point, Charlotte Morgan came into the room; and the elder slightly moved his chair, and said, “Come in, my bonnie lass, and let us have a look at you.” And Charlotte laughingly pushed a stool toward the fire, and sat down between the two men on the hearthstone. She was the daintiest little maiden that ever latched a shoe,—very diminutive, with a complexion like a sea-shell, great brown eyes, and such a quantity of brown hair hair, that it made light of its ribbon snood, and rippled over her brow and slender white neck in bewildering waves. She dearly loved fine clothes; and she had not removed her outer wrap of Indian silk, nor her scarf of French design. And in her hands she held a great mass of lilies of the valley, which she caressed almost as if they were living things.

“Father,” Charlotte said, nestling close to his side, “look at the lilies. How straight they are! How strong! Oh, the white bells full of sweet scent! In them put your face, father. They smell of the spring.” Her fingers could scarcely hold the bunch she had gathered; and she buried her lovely face in them, and then lifted it, with a charming look of delight, and the cries of “Oh, oh, how delicious!”

Long before supper was over, Madam Morgan had discovered that this night Elder Van Heemskirk had a special reason for his call. His talk of Mennon and the Anabaptists and the objectionable Lutherans, she perceived, was all surface talk; and when the meal was finished, and the girls gone to their room, she was not astonished to hear him say, let us light another pipe. I have something to speak. Sit still, good wife, we shall want your word on the matter.”

“On what matter, Elder?”

“A marriage between my son Sir Edward and your daughter Charlotte.”

The words fell with a sharp distinctness, not unkindly, but as if they were more than common words. They were followed by a marked silence, a silence which in no way disturbed Van Heemskirk. He knew his friends well, and therefore he expected it. He puffed his pipe slowly, and glanced at Joris and Lysbet Morgan. The father's face had not moved a muscle; the mother's was like a handsome closed book. She went on with her knitting, and only showed that she had heard the proposal by a small pretense of finding it necessary to count the stitches in the heel she was turning. Still, there had been some faint, evanescent flicker on her face, some droop or lift of the eyelids, which Joris understood; for, after a glance at her, he said slowly, “For Charlotte the marriage would be good, and Lysbet and I would like it. However, we will think a little about it; there is time, and to spare. One should not run on a new road. The first step is what I like to be sure of; as you know, Elder, to the second step it often binds you.—Say what you think, Lysbet.”

“Sir Edward is to my mind a fine choice, when the time comes. But yet the child is still a child. And there is more: she must learn to help her mother about the house before she can manage a house of her own. So in time, I say, it would be a good thing. We have been long good friends.”

“We have been friends for four generations, and we may safely tie the knot tighter now.

“Surely. Well, well, it was about wedding and housekeeping I came to speak, and we'll have it out. The land between this place and my place, on the river-side, is your land, Joris. Give it to Charlotte, and I will build the young things a house; and the furnishing and plenishing we'll share between us.”

“There is more to a wedding than house and land, Elder” Said Lysbet Morgan.

“Vera true, madam. There's the income to meet the outgoing bills. Sir Edward will have a good practice in law, and is like to have better then I did. They'll be comfortable and respectable, madam; but I think well of you for speaking after the daily bread.”

“Well, look now, it was not the bread-making I was thinking about. It was the love-making. A young girl should be wooed before she is married. You know how it is; and Charlotte, the little one, she thinks not of such a thing as love and marriage.”

“Who knows what thoughts are under brown locks? You'll have noticed madam that Charlotte has come more often than ordinary to Semple House lately?”

“That is so. It was because of Colonel Gordon's wife, who likes Charlotte. She is teaching her a new stitch in her crewel-work.”

“Hum-m-m! Mistress Gordon has likewise a new student, a very handsome lad. I have seen that he takes a deal of interest in the crewel-stitch likewise. And Sir Edward has seen it too,—for Sir Edward has set his heart on Charlotte,—and this afternoon there was a look passed between the young men I did not like. We'll be having a challenge, and two fools playing the fools for love.”

“I am glad you spoke, Elder. Thank you. I'll turn your words over in my heart.”

“As for Sir Edward, he's our little baron; and his mother and I would fain to keep him near us. Charlotte would be a welcome daughter to our old age, and well loved.”

Elder Van Heemskirk, in speaking of her as already marriageable, had given Joris Morgan a shock. It seemed such a few years since he had walked her to sleep at nights, cradled in his strong arms, close to his breast; such a little while ago when she toddled about the garden at his side, her plump white hands holding his big forefinger; only yesterday that she had been going to the school, with her spelling-book and Heidelberg in her hand. When his wife had spoken of Mistress Gordon, who was teaching Charlotte the new crewel-stitch, it had appeared to him quite proper that such a child should be busy learning something in the way of needlework. “Needlework” had been given as the reason of those visits, which he now remembered had been very frequent; and he was so absolutely truthful, that he never imagined the word to be in any measure a false definition.

Elder Van Heemskirk's implication had stunned Joris Morgan like a buffet. In his own room, he sat down on a big oak chest; and, as he thought, his mind slowly gathered. Joris knew that gay young suitors were coming and going about the Semple House, and he feared they would interfere with his own plans for keeping Charlotte near to him. The beautiful little young maiden had been an attraction which he was proud to exhibit, just as he was proud of his imported furniture, his pictures, and his library. He remembered that Elder Van Heemskirk had spoken with touching emphasis of his longing to keep his last son near home; but must he give up his darling Charlotte to further this plan?

“I like not it,” he muttered. “Good breeding for good breeding. That is the right way; but I will not make angry myself for so much of passion, so much of nothing at all to the purpose. That is the truth. Always I have found it so.”

Then Lysbet Morgan, having finished her second locking up, entered the room. She came in as one wearied and troubled, and said with a sigh, as she untied her apron, “By the girls' bedside I stopped one minute. Dear me! When one is young, the sleep is sound.”

“Well, then, they were awake when I passed,—that is not so much as one quarter of the hour,—talking and laughing; I heard them.”

“And now they are fast in sleep; their heads are on one pillow, and Charlotte's hand is fast clasped in Joanna's hand. The dear ones! Joris, the elder's words have made trouble in my heart. What did the man mean?”

“Who can tell? What a man says, we know; but only God understands what he means. But I will say this, Lysbet, and it is what I mean: if Elder Van Heemskirk will led my daughter into the way of temptation, then, for all that is past and gone, we shall be unfriends.”

“Give yourself no kommer on that matter, Joris. Why should not our Charlotte see what kind of people the world is made of? Have not some of our best maidens married into the Scottish set? And none of them were as beautiful as Charlotte. There is no harm, I think, in a girl taking a few steps up when she puts on the wedding ring. There, let us sleep. Tonight I will speak no more.”