The Tyrannical Father
“Jennie,” said Mr. Stacy, one evening, to his daughter, “Edward Wright call at my store to-day. I suppose you know what for?”
“How should I know what for, papa?” returned Jennie, with a look of unconsciousness that was belied by the vivid crimson that rose from the cheeks to the temples. “I suppose it was to see about an order for some goods, or something.”
“Not exactly,” replied her father smiling. “He came to see me about you; in short, to ask my permission to address you.”
Jennie reddened again; but the sudden flash that gleamed out from beneath the brown lashes spoke more of scorn that satisfaction.
“Of course, I gave my consent,” continued Mr. Stacey, after waiting vainly for his daughter to reply.
“If you hadn’t, I suppose that would have been the last of it, so far as he was concerned,” retorted Jennie, with a sarcastic touch that was quite lost upon her matter-of-fact father.
“Well, my dear, I don’t know as there is any need of raising that question. I could have no reasonable objection to a well-principled intelligent young man like Mr. Wright; and whi is withal, doing an excellent business. So it now remains for you to say whether or no you will be Mrs. Edward Wright.”
Jennie pursed up her rosy lips with an air of great dignity.
“ I haven’t been asked yet,”
“No I suppose not But I shouldn’t wonder if he was here tonight for that express purpose.”
Then, as a glimmer of the truth entered his mind, Mr. Stacy added:
“I trust that you are not so foolish, my daughter as to take offence because he spoke to me about it first. In so doing he acted honorably, and as every man should and it ought to raise rather than lower him in your esteem. Indeed I fancied, from what he said, that he was quite sure of the nature of your feelings for him else he had not spoken to me,”
Jennie’s indignation now reached it climax. She elevated her natural rather aspiring nose, unit it stood at right angles.
“Quite sure, was he? I don’t know why he should be, then. I never gave him any reason to feel so confident.”
Mr. Stacey looked rather gravely at his daughter
“I don’t know what you’ve said to him but, I know that he’s been here a good deal, and you’ve always seemed glad to see him. I hope you haven’t been trifling with the young man Jennie. Am I to understand that you don’t intend to marry him?”
Jennie’s round and rosy face assumed as lofty an expression as features could be expected to wear not formed exactly from the heroic mold.
‘Mr. Wright is an excellent young man, papa. I’ve nothing to say against him. But I would sooner perish than unite my fate with one whose feelings are so antagonistic to the holiest sympathies of my nature.” Quotation from her favorite novel. “Astrea; or, the Stony-hearted Father,” and was pronounced with no little vehemence of look or tone.
Mr. Stacy started at his daughter for a moment without speaking.
“I really don not see, my dear,” he said dryly, “any necessity for so much display of energy; if you don’t like Mr. Wright well enough to marry him, all that you have got to do is to tell him so.”
Here was a “come down’ to Jennie’s soaring imagination. Her father absolutely refused to play the role of the Stony-hearted Father. Ruthlessness destroying the secret hope that had risen in her heart that some romantic incident, for which she had often longed, was about to break the sameness of her dull and prosy life.
And to increase her dissatisfaction Edward Wright whom she really liked, and who she had invested with many of the virtues and graces that adorned her favorite heroes, instead of throwing himself at her feet and declaring that no power on earth should take her from him, had actually condescended to the common sense and conventional method of asking her father’s permission before speaking to her! Nothing more was necessary to convince her that her was not, to use her own language, “The chasen arbiter of her destiny”
After tea, Jennie slipped out of the back way, and ran over to a neighbor’s for the two-fold purpose of avoiding, what she was pleased to term to “persecution” of the aforesaid Mr. Edward Wright and to pour her troubles—or rather her want of any—into the sympathizing bosom of her dear friend, Arabella Eugenie Angelina Stubbs.
Jennie being firmly convinced that “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and as in the event of her becoming Mrs. Edward Wright there would be nothing left for her to do but to order her wedding finery and go through with the requisite ceremony, she either avoid the poor fellow altogether, or else treated him with such an air of lofty indifference as to put him to his wits end to discover the cause of this singular change in her conduct.
“Jennie,” said Mr. Stacy, a few weeks after, “who was that young man that you were talking with at the gate this morning?” “ Edward Wright, papa,” replied Jennie, not a little at this abrupt inquiry, as well as the scowl that accompanied it.
“Well, Don’t never let me see you with him again!”
Jennie opened her eyes still wider. “Why not, I thought Edward was a great favorite of yours?”
“So he was, until I found him out. I did think a great deal of the young man, but after what has happened he shall never darken my door again!”
“Dear me! What in the world has he done?”
“Done? What ought to send him to the penitentiary—what would send him there if I had the law in my hands!”
***** The sudden pallor that swept over Jennie’s from…betrayed to the indin…state of Jennie. Has he killed anybody?”
“Worse that that. A man that will sell his country is worse that a murderer, and any one that will vote for that lying, double faced traitor Higgins is a worse scoundrel than he!
“Is that all?” said Jennie, drawing a long sigh of relief. “I thought it was something dreadful.”
“All!” echoed her father, “I should say that it was enough—quite enough to sink him in the estimation of every honest man. Once more I say, don’t let me see you with him!”
Here Mr. Stacey stamped out of the room banging the door after him.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Jennie, as she picked up the contents of the work-basket, that her father had knocked over in his furious exit, “I should like to know what’s got int pa, all at once. To think of his forbidding me to speak to Edward just for that!”
And with flushed cheeks and a flutter of delight at her heart at the thought of having “something to tell,” and that something so “strange and mysterious.” She sought the presence of her usual confident the fair Arabella Engenie Angelina Stubbs, to who it was duly unfolded, with sundry embellishments, the fruits of her fertile imagination, and who quite agreed with her in thinking it to be “the strangest thing that ever came to her knowledge!”
“Jennie.” Said Mr. Stacy, the next day after dinner, as taking his hat he turned to leave the house. “young Wright had the impudence to speak to me again about you; and, as he intimates that he did so by your permission, you may as well know once for all, that it can never be! I would sooner see you in the grave than the wife of such a man! I’ve got a husband picked out for you. Deacon Obidiah Pettigrew is a man that will do you and the family some credit.
“Deacon Pettigrew? Why pa, he’s more than twice my age!”
“That’s the very reason why I’ve selected him; you need some one to keep you steady. He will be here to see you to-morrow evening, and I shall expect you to receive him with the respect and consideration due to your future husband.”
Before his daughter had time to recover form the astonishment into which this announcement threw her, Mr. Stacey was some ways down the street
“Well, I know two things,” exclaimed Jennie, putting down her foot with a determined air, “I won’t have that stupid Deacon Pettigrew and I will have—Edward Wright!”
As she said this, she took from her bosom a letter, from the last named individual, full of protestations of undying love, and imploring her to meet him in the little grove just back of the hours, at half-past six that evening, re-reading it for…(worn edges at bottom of page)
That evening, as Jennie went to the appointed place, which she did not fail to do, she found Edward waiting for her,
Instead of wearing his usual cheerful look and pleasant smile, he stood leaning against a tree, with arms folded across his chest, and a gloomy cloud upon his brow, “looking,” as Jennie confidentially informed the sympathizing Arabella Enenie Angelina Stubbs, “ for all the world like the picture of Rupert di Rinaldo, in “ The Brigand of the Black Forest.”
Edward found little difficulty in persuading her to leave home, and unite her fate with his. Accordingly the next night as soon as the house was still, Jennie developed in a dark mantle, and her face concealed by a thick, close-drawn veil, stole out through the back way to the place where her lover was waiting.
He had a covered carriage and through the night was dark, she could see the dim outline of a man upon the box.
They rode two hours mostly I silence; for now that the irrevocable step was taken, Jennie’s courage began to fail her, and she grew depressed in spirits—she hardly knew why. It seem to her that they would never reach their destination, which Edward had informed her was the house of a clergyman in an adjoining town. But at last to he r great relief, the carriage stopped.
“To avoid observation, we are going in through the back way,” whispered Edward, as he assisted her to alight. “Draw your veil closely around your face.”
The night was so dark that she could not see the least thing, and she clung nervously to the hand that led her along a short path over a plat of grass, up some steps, into a dark narrow passage, which led into a hall, and from thence into a room that opened out of it, lighted by one small, low lamp. Beside the table on which it was placed a clergyman stood—a venerable-looking man—and at the lower end of the apartment seemed to be a number of persons, though the light was so dim that only the outlines of their form were visible.
Edward spoke a few whispered words to the clergyman, and the ceremony commenced.
As soon as the last words were spoken, as if by a preconcerted movement. The two burners at each end of the room were lighted, filling with a sudden blaze of light, while a merry peal of laughter made ring again and again.
As soon as Jennie’s dazzled eye would permit her to see, she found to her astonishment that she was back in the house that she suppose she had quitted forever, and surrounded by her father, and quite a large group of friends and relatives.
“My daughter,” said Mr. Stacey advancing toward her, “I trust that I have played the role of the “Tyrannical Father” to your entire satisfaction, and that you will now permit me to offer you my congratulation upon a marriage that has long been the first wish of my heart.”
I hope you enjoyed your ride said her roguish brother Tom, with in the capacity of coachman I given her all about the outskirts of the town, and finally back to the place from whence they started.
“How could you deceive me so?” said Jennie, turning her eyes reproachfully upon her husband, as her mind slowly took in the ruse that had been played her.
“My dearest love,” he said, with a look that quite disarmed her, “it was the only way by which I could hope to win you.”
Title: The Tyrannical Father
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Media: Newspaper article, glued to page 7 of the Ledger of Captain
W. B. Blair
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