The Conqueror

Rachael had just eaten the last of her sixteenth birthday sweets when, at a ball at Government House, she met John Michael Levine.  It was her début; she was the fairest creature in the room, and, in the idiom of Dr. Hamilton, the men besieged her as were she Brimstone Hill in possession of the French.  The Governor and the Captain General had asked her to dance, and even the women smiled indulgently, disarmed by so much innocent loveliness.

Levine, albeit a Dane, and as colourless as most of his countrymen, was her determined suitor before the night was half over.  It may be that he was merely dazzled by the regal position to which the young men had elevated her, and that his cold blood quickened at the thought of possessing what all men desired, but he was as immediate and persistent in his suit as any excitable creole in the room.  But Rachael gave him scant attention that night.  She may have been intellectual, but she was also a girl, and it was her first ball.  She was dazzled and happy, delighted with her conquests, oblivious to the depths of her nature.

The next day Levine, strong in the possession of a letter from Mr. Peter Lytton,—­for a fortnight forgotten,—­presented himself at Mistress Fawcett’s door, and was admitted.  The first call was brief and perfunctory, but he came the next day and the next.  Rachael, surprised, but little interested, and longing for her next ball, strummed the harp at her mother’s command and received his compliments with indifference.  A week after his first call Mary Fawcett drove into town and spent an hour with the Governor.  He told her that Levine had brought him a personal letter from the Governor of St. Croix, and that he was wealthy and well born.  He was also, in his Excellency’s opinion, a distinguished match even for the most beautiful and accomplished girl on the Island.  Peter Lytton had mentioned in his letter that Levine purposed buying an estate on St. Croix and settling down to the life of a planter.  On the following day Levine told her that already he was half a West Indian, so fascinated was he with the life and the climate, but that if she would favour his suit he would take Rachael to Copenhagen as often as she wished for the life of the world.

Mary Fawcett made up her mind that he should marry Rachael, and it seemed to her that no mother had ever come to a wiser decision.  Her health was failing, and it was her passionate wish not only to leave her child encircled by the protection of a devoted husband, but to realize the high ambitions she had cherished from the hour she foresaw that Rachael was to be an exceptional woman.

Levine had not seen Rachael on the morning when he asked for her hand, and he called two days later to press his suit and receive his answer.  Mistress Fawcett told him that she had made up her own mind and would perform that office for Rachael at once, but thought it best that he should absent himself until the work was complete.  Levine, promised an answer on the morrow, took himself off, and Mary Fawcett sent for her daughter.

Rachael entered the library with a piece of needlework in her hand.  Her mind was not on her books these days, for she had gone to another ball; but her hands had been too well brought up to idle, however her brain might dream.  Mary Fawcett by this time wore a large cap with a frill, and her face, always determined and self-willed, was growing austere with years and much pain:  she suffered frightfully at times with rheumatism, and her apprehension of the moment when it should attack her heart reconciled her to the prospect of brief partings from her daughter.  Her eyes still burned with the fires of an indiminishable courage however; she read the yellow pages of her many books as rapidly as in her youth, and if there was a speck of dust on her mahogany floors, polished with orange juice, she saw it.  Her negroes adored her but trembled when she raised her voice, and Rachael never had disobeyed her.  She expected some dissatisfaction, possibly a temper, but no opposition.

Rachael smiled confidently and sat down.  She wore one of the thin white linens, which, like the other women of the Islands, she put aside for heavier stuffs on state occasions only, and her hair had tumbled from its high comb and fallen upon her shoulders.  Mary Fawcett sighed as she looked at her.  She was too young to marry, and had it not been for the haunting terror of leaving her alone in the world, the Dane, well circumstanced as he was, would have been repulsed with contumely.

“Rachael,” said her mother, gently, “put down your tapestry.  I have something to say to you, something of great import.”

Rachael dropped her work and met her mother’s eyes.  They were hard with will and definite purpose.  In an instant she divined what was coming, and stood up.  Her face could not turn any whiter, but her eyes were black at once, and her nostrils spread.

“It cannot be possible that you wish me to marry that man—­Levine,” she stammered.  “I do not know how I can think of such a thing—­but I do—­it seems to me I see it in your eyes.”

“Yes,” said her mother, with some uneasiness.  “I do; and my reasons are good—­”

“I won’t listen to them!” shrieked Rachael.  “I won’t marry him!  His whiteness makes me sick!  I know he is not a good man!  I feel it!  I never could be happy with him!  I never could love him!”

Mary Fawcett looked at her aghast, and, for a moment, without answering; she saw her own will asserting itself, heard it on those piercing notes, and she knew that it sprang from stronger and more tragic foundations than had ever existed in her own nature; but believing herself to be right, she determined to prevail.

“What do you know about men, my darling?” she said soothingly.  “You have been dreaming romantic dreams, and young Levine does not resemble the hero.  That is all.  Women readjust themselves marvellously quick.  When you are married to him, and he is your tender and devoted husband, you will forget your prince—­who, no doubt, is dark and quite splendid.  But we never meet our princes, my dear, and romantic love is only one of the things we live for—­and for that we live but a little while.  Levine is all that I could wish for you.  He is wealthy, aristocratic, and chivalrously devoted.”

Her long speech had given her daughter time to cool, but Rachael remained standing, and stared defiantly into the eyes which had relaxed somewhat with anxious surprise.

“I feel that he is not a good man,” she repeated sullenly, “and I hate him.  I should die if he touched me.  I have not danced with him.  His hands are so white and soft, and his eyes never change, and his mouth reminds me of a shark’s.”

“Levine is a remarkably handsome man,” exclaimed Mistress Fawcett, indignantly.  “You have trained your imagination to some purpose, it seems.  Forget your poets when he comes to-morrow, and look at him impartially.  And cannot he give you all that you so much desire, my ambitious little daughter?  Do you no longer want to go to Europe? to court? to be grande dame and converse with princes?”

“Oh, yes,” said Rachael.  “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.