The Inheritance Page 10

  "I have not told all yet, my lady," said the boy. "The paper that I took I have not yet returned. A strange old man sent her a packet with this and another paper and a locket, which she kept. She burned the other letters and doubtless thinks she has destroyed this, too. Will you restore it to her and win my pardon for the sorrow I have caused one who has done so much for me?" Laying the paper on the table by her side, he bowed and left them.

  Lady Hamilton opened the paper, read a few lines, and then, pale and trembling, sank back in her chair, saying faintly, "Arthur, 'tis your uncle's will, and Edith is his child."

  They gathered round her, and young Hamilton read aloud the paper that proved Edith to be their cousin and the rightful heiress of the wealth they now possessed.

  "God has ordered it all for the best," said Lady Hamilton as he ceased. "We now must depend on her and trust to the love she bears us."

  "Why should she burn what brings her rank and wealth? What can it mean?" said Arthur, wondering at the strange tale they had heard from Louis.

  "She knew that if she claimed it, you were poor, and she would silently destroy all proof of her high birth, and with a noble woman's truest love, has chosen poverty and the wealth of a sinless heart and put aside all earthly riches, showing us the holiest gratitude and how deeply we have wronged her." And, as he ceased, Lord Percy turned away to hide the strong emotion that this sacrifice of her he had loved and reverenced so long and silently had caused.

  "What ought we to do, my son?" asked Lady Hamilton.

  "There is but one honorable way, and that way I shall take. Ask of Edith all she knows of this mysterious discovery, and then give her back her father's wealth and with it all the love, the reverence and honor that we feel for one whose noble sacrifice has taught us such a lesson of gratitude and truth," said Arthur. His fine face glowed with the feelings stirring in his noble heart.

  "Let me go to Edith and ask pardon for the sorrow and neglect she has suffered. She is bound more closely to us than before but never can be dearer to our hearts than now," cried Amy, as she longed to tell her overflowing love and weep her gratitude on Edith's gentle bosom.

  "No, my love, not now. We must all wait till we are calmer ere we meet one who is mistress here. Go rather to your cousin Ida and tell her who our friendless Edith has become and whom she has so hated and so wronged," replied Lady Hamilton. Turning to her son as Amy hastened away, she said, "Do not seek Edith till she joins us at sunset, and meanwhile, as Lord Percy has gone silently away, come with me to my room, for we have much to talk of and I need your help and counsel."

  CHAPTER

  XIV

  SUNSET CAME, AND ALL SAVE Lady Ida assembled in the drawing room and, heedless of the lovely scene without, sat waiting with far different feelings than they had expected. The evening light shone softly in and lit up Edith's fair, pale face, which looked so calm and sad in the rosy glow that fell upon it as she stood at length before them.

  "We wait for your decision, Edith," said Lady Hamilton. Her voice was strangely kind and tender as she looked upon the slender form drooping before her, wondering at the strong, true heart that beat within.

  "Forgive me that I grieve you thus, but I am still unchanged. The promise given I cannot break. Do with me as you will, but, ah, remember when I am gone that even when suspected and deserted most, I still was true and grateful to the last."

  Lady Hamilton controlled the tears that rose, saying as she laid the will before her, "We know all, Edith, and here give you back the wealth that you so generously put by. Louis has confessed his sin and that he took this paper from the others that you burned. He has restored it, and now take again all you have lost, and with it our truest love and gratitude for the sacrifice you have so nobly made. You are the rightful mistress here and will use well the power you have won.

  "This is the first and last use I shall ever make of it," said Edith. She tore the will and, with a calm smile on her pale face and a holy light in her soft eyes that shone through falling tears, she dropped the fragments, saying, "Now I am the poor orphan girl again. Can you love me for myself alone and forget that I have any right to the rank and wealth that are so worthless to one who only longs for tenderness and love? I had fondly hoped this never would be known and I might hide the secret in my grateful heart and love you as my kindred, though I might never call you by the dear names that I longed to speak, and prayed that by this silent deed I might become more worthy of the kindness and protection you had shown the friendless child. This cannot be, but now take all that I can give, and in return for this act, let me call you mother and be a faithful, loving child, for you can never know how sad it is to be so young and yet so utterly alone."

  And as her own tears fell, proud Lady Hamilton folded Edith to her heart and blessed her for her grateful love. The evening sunlight stealing in lit up those _ happy faces and cast golden shadows on the gentle head that bowed in silent thankfulness for all the love and joy that pure, young heart had won.

  Lady Ida sat alone with a heavy heart. She had learned all, and Edith, whom she had so hated and so deeply wronged, was heiress of the wealth and honor she had so often coveted. Young, beautiful, and rich-how fair a future was before her. And as she thought this, bitter tears flowed down her cheek, and her own lot seemed darker and more dreary still. Poor and growing daily more unlovely, her proud spirit was humbled and disgraced by her discovered sin. Lord Percy's love and the respect of those around her were now forever lost. Bowed with sorrow, despair, and disappointed hopes, she wept burning tears of self-reproach and shame.

  Soft arms were thrown around her, and a low voice whispered tenderly, "Dear Lady Ida, let me comfort you. The past is all forgotten and forgiven. We are cousins. Now let us be friends." And Edith's sweet face bent down.

  CHAPTER

  XV

  A LONG NIGHT AND A HAPPY day had passed. All had been told, and Edith, with her fair face radiant with joy, wandered through the home now hers, and all about her seemed a blissful dream. Loving faces smiled upon her, dear voices whispered tender words, and kind hands pressed her own. But still, amid all her happiness, one face came oftenest to her heart, and with it tender memories and sweet thoughts. When she saw Lord Percy sit so pale and still among them, she longed earnestly to share her happiness with him and cheer his sorrow. She little dreamed of the hard struggle between his love and the fear lest he should grieve if he told it, nor how he stilled the plead ings of his heart and silently resolved he would not cause another sorrow to one who had so patiently borne many by offering a love he feared she never could return.

  "How often we have stood here looking on this scene, but never has it seemed so beautiful as now, when with Cousin Edith by my side I can look on it and feel it is her own," said Arthur fondly as they sat again upon the balcony, while the summer sky was bright with evening clouds.

  "I fear it is the last time I shall see it for a long while, Arthur, for tomorrow I must say farewell," said Lord Percy as he looked at Edith with a silent blessing in his heart.

  "You must not go," cried Amy. "We shall be so sad and lonely here without you. Shall we not, dear Edith?"

  "Yes" was the low reply. The happy smile that Arthur's kind words had brought faded from Edith's face. Lord Percy heard a deep sigh as she turned and walked away, and he saw a bright tear fall.

  When Edith reached the quiet seat beneath the old tree, she bowed her face upon her hands and felt how deeply she had learned to love him and how joyless life would seem when he was gone, for he had forgotten poverty and humble birth to be a true and faithful friend when others most neglected her. By gentle words and silent acts of kindness, he had won her reverence and trust, which now had deepened into woman's truest, purest love. "Of all my friends, I shall have lost the dearest and the best when he is gone," she murmured sadly.

  "Lady Edith," said a low voice near her, and she started, for he stood before her with all his untold love shining in the earnest eyes that looked so tenderly upon her.
"Forgive me that I dared to follow you, but my heart bid me come, and I am here to ask you if the love I have cherished long and silently can be returned. I never thought to tell it, but the sorrow my departure caused you woke a new hope in my heart, and I could silence it no longer. Do not think your newfound wealth and rank have tempted me, for God knows I would most joyfully have won you when most poor and friendless, for I had learned the priceless worth of a pure heart, rich in woman's truest virtues and most holy faith. But you had said you could not give your hand to one above you in rank and wealth, and from that hour my love was hopeless but it never died. Each day some new deed of tenderness and care, some gentle look or word of yours made it stronger and more heavy to be borne. We how are equals in mere worldly riches. Can you give your heart to one who so ill deserves the blessing you bestow and trust me with the precious gift that shall be held most sacred until death?"

  "I can." And, with her tearful eyes turned trustingly to him, Edith laid her hand in his and pledged her love. "I can bring you nothing but a grateful heart" whose constancy and deep affection can never pass away. Take me poor and erring as I am, and teach me to be worthy of the great happiness I have won,"

  "Oh, Edith," said Lord Percy. His fond eyes rested tenderly upon the head bent down before him. "I need no richer dowry than the love of such a heart And though I take you without earthly wealth, still in the tender reverence and fadeless gratitude of those you bless, surely, dearest, you have won a nobler Inheritance."

  AFTERWORD

  BY Joel Myerson AND Daniel Shealy

  AS WE CAREFULLY OPENED THE COVER OF THE RED NOTEbook, we immediately noticed a slip of paper pasted on the inside: My first novel written at seventeen-High St Boston. Across the top of the first page was the title The Inheritance Chap t. In the hushed silence of the Houghton Library reading room at Harvard University, we stared in amazement at the neatly handwritten pages of what appeared to be a complete unpublished novel by Louisa May Alcott. This was not just any novel-it was her "first novel."

  We looked at each other, barely able to conceal our excitement. We could not recall hearing of The Inheritance. Alcott had, we knew, written much as a teenage girl- stories, poems, plays-but an entire novel? What we did know, however, was that the little volume we held in our hands was indeed a literary treasure, one that few were even aware existed.

  It was the summer of 1988, and we were working on The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. We had already spent many hours in the Houghton Library reading hundreds of letters written by Alcott during her life, detailing the true story of the "little women" and their family. It was, to be sure, a heroic story, one that had begun in poverty and had ended in fame and wealth, one that was filled with some of the most important events and famous personages of nineteenth-century America. We were also reading the journals and letters of her family and her contemporaries in search of information that would help complete the narration of the author's life.

  While we were looking in the card catalog, thumbing through the individual entries to ensure that our search for information was thorough, we came upon the following card: "Alcott, Louisa May. The Inheritance. A.MS.; Boston, 1849. 166p. Unpublished; her first novel." We knew that A.MS. was the abbreviation for "autograph manuscript," meaning the manuscript was handwritten. Hurriedly, we scribbled down the library call number and submitted our request to the attendants. Then we walked outside to the steps of the Houghton Library so our discussion of this possible find would not disturb other researchers. In the glare of the hot July sunlight, we rapidly asked each other questions. Did this work actually exist? Was it complete? Wanting to temper our excitement, we recalled that just a few days earlier we had requested a collection of family letters only to receive an empty ledger with the notation that the letters had been destroyed by Louisa. We hoped this work had not suffered a similar fate. When we returned to our table, there among the Alcott letters we had been reviewing was a red notebook, about the size of a student's journal. The handwriting on the blue pages was unmistakable; it clearly matched the letters written by Louisa during her teenage years. We eagerly turned the pages and began to read the story of young, orphaned Edith Adelon, knowing that Alcott herself had once held this very manuscript in her hands. Surely she must have been proud of her accomplishment.

  Born on November 29, 1832, Louisa May Alcott was the second daughter of Amos Bronson and Abigail Alcott. Growing up in Boston and rural Concord, Massachusetts, she found herself surrounded by one of the most important intellectual and literary movements in the first half of the nineteenth century: transcendentalism. Some of her father's friends-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Tho-reau, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne-were among the leaders of an emerging American literature. As a young teenager, Alcott herself visited Thoreau at his cabin on Walden Pond, tramped through the Concord woods with him in search of huckleberries, and listened while he played his flute and told her tales of nature's woodland fairies. She also ventured into Emerson's library in search of new books to read.

  Books had always played a part in her family's life; reading was not a chore but a pastime, an act to be relished. As a young girl, Alcott, who was educated primarily at home by her father, devoured a variety of literature. By 1843, she was reading Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (Dickens would remain a favorite throughout her life) and Maria Edgeworth's Rosamond, a collection of tales for children. Of course, The Pilgrim's Progress, which her father would read aloud each year, was also a family favorite and would later form the framework for Little Women. She also enjoyed Sir Walter Scott's epic adventures of medieval times, especially his novel Kenilworth, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

  Growing up in such a literary environment inspired the young Louisa May to dream about building her own castles in the air. Surely her childhood dreams were not unlike those of Jo March's in Little Women: "I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, rooms piled with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be ... famous. I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle-something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday. I think I shall write books and get rich and famous.'(1) Indeed she did, and she started at a young age to achieve her place as a famous author.

  Alcott worked hard to achieve that place. But her accomplishment was not easy; it was indeed a pilgrim's progress, one filled with hard times, disappointments, poverty, and even tragedy. At the same time, her life was one filled with excitement, good fortune, and love-especially the love of her family.

  Always imaginative in their fun, the Alcott sisters would often act out their literature to entertain family and friends, drawing upon various works, such as Dickens, for inspiration. Louisa, along with her older sister, Anna, would also write their own plays. When she was seventeen, Louisa recorded her dream of success in her journal: "Anna wants to be an actress, and so do I. We could make plenty of money perhaps, and it is a very gay life. Mother says we are too young and must wait. ... I like tragic plays. . . . We get up fine ones, and make harps, castles, armor, dresses, waterfalls, and thunder, and have great fun."(2) Such plays form an important scene in the second chapter of Little Women.

  1. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868) (New York: Penguin, 1989), p.143.

  2. Louisa May Alcott, The Joumals of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy; assoc. ed. Madeleine B. Stern (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), pp. 63-64.

  Thus, it comes as no surprise that Alcott's early fiction was inspired by the melodrama of the theater and both the gothic and sentimental influences of the popular literature of the period. Alcott's first published piece was a poem entitled "Sunlight," which appeared under the pseudonym "Flora Fairfield" in Peterson 's Magazine in September 1851, when she was almost nineteen.

  Her first story "The Rival Painters. A Tale of Rome" appeared less than a year later, in the May 1852 edition of The Olive Branch, a polite magazine
espousing family virtues. Her contribution earned her the small sum of five dollars. However, the thrill of seeing her name in print was even more exciting. She was now a published author! The story, Alcott revealed in her journal, "was written in Concord when I was sixteen. . . . Read it aloud to sisters, and when they praised it, not knowing the author, I proudly announced her name."(3) Alcott would later recapture this real-life event in Little Women, as Jo reads "The Rival Painters" aloud to Meg, Beth, and Amy, who are unaware of the story's authorship.

  Another tale, "The Masked Marriage," would soon follow in December 1852. Like "The Rival Painters," this story is also set in Italy and tells the events of a true love that is thwarted by a greedy parent.

  3. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, p. 67.

  In several respects, this short tale resembles The Inheritance. Alice de Adelon, the main character, not only shares a common surname with Edith Adelon, but is also Italian. Both narratives are set among the castles of royalty, and a long-hidden secret legacy provides the climax of both tales. Clearly, The Inheritance was a forerunner of this early short story.

  Alcott would continue to publish stories and poems in newspapers and magazines, and in December 1854, she published her first book. Flower Fables was a collection of peaceful nature fairy tales that originally had been told to young Ellen Emerson, daughter of her neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson. By the late i85os, Alcott was earning money writing for such newspapers as The Saturday Evening Gazette, and by the early i86os, she found herself published in the most prestigious literary magazine of the era, The Atlantic Monthly.

  She soon began writing what she called "blood and thunder" tales for Frank Leslie's newspapers. He was a major publisher of "penny dreadfuls," cheap periodicals filled with lurid accounts of vice and murder. Mention of such sensational tales would also find its way into Little Women when young Jo submits tales to the Weekly Volcano. Like Jo March, Louisa "went abroad for her characters and scenery, and banditti, counts, gypsies, nuns, and duchesses appeared upon her stage and played their parts with as much accuracy and spirit as could be expected."(4)