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Chapter 14 of L.C. Venner. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dion Gines, Salt Lake City, Utah. L.C. Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Chapter 14, Family Secrets. It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland that Dudley Venner had had a great deal of trouble with that daughter of his, so handsome, yet so peculiar, about whom there were so many strange stories. There was no end to the tales which were told of her extraordinary doings, yet her name was never coupled with that of any youth

or man until this cousin had provoked remark by his visit, and even then it was oftener in the shape of wondering conjectures whether he would dare to make love to her than in any pretended knowledge of their relations to each other, that the public tongue exercised its village prerogative of tattle. The more common version of the trouble at the mansion house was this. Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. Her temper was singular. Her tastes were anomalous.

Her habits were lawless, her antipathies were many and intense, and she was liable to explosions of ungovernable anger. Some said that was not the worst of it. At nearly fifteen years old, when she was growing fast and in an irritable state of mind and body, she had had a governess placed over her for whom she had conceived an aversion. It was whispered among a few who knew more of the family's secrets than others that, worried and exasperated by the presence and

jealous oversight of this person, Elsie had attempted to get finally rid of her by unlawful means, such as young girls have been known to employ in their straits, and to which the sex at all ages has a certain instinctive tendency in preference to more palpable instruments for the righting of its wrongs. At any rate, this governess had been taken suddenly ill, and the doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old Sophie had taken her master into a room apart and said

a few words to him, which turned him as white as a sheet. As soon as he recovered himself, he sent Sophie out, called in the old doctor, and gave him some few hints on which he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his patient out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper to say that during the following days the most thorough search was made in every nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsie chiefly haunted, but nothing was found

which might be accused of having been the intentional cause of the probably accidental sudden illness of the governess. From this time forward, her father was never easy. Should he keep her apart or shut her up for fear of risk to others, and so lose every chance of restoring her mind to its healthy tone by kindly influences and intercourse with wholesome natures? There was no proof, only presumption, as to the agency of Elsie in the matter referred to. But the doubt was worse,

perhaps, than certainty would have been, for then he would have known what to do. He took the old doctor as his advisor. The shrewd old man listened to the father's story, his explanations of possibilities, of probabilities, of dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, the doctor looked him in the face steadily, as if he were saying, Is that all? The father's eyes fell. This was not all. There was something at the bottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of. Nay,

which, as often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unworded consciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as the ruined angels tread down a lost soul, trying to come up out of the seething sea of torture. Only this one daughter. No, God never would have ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it. It could not be. She was ill. She would outgrow all these singularities. He had had an aunt who was peculiar. He had heard that hysteric

girls showed the strangest forms of moral obliquity for a time, but came right at last. She would change all at once when her health got more firmly settled in the course of her growth. Are there not rough buds that open into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits which, while unripe, are not to be tasted or endured, which mature into the richest taste and fragrance? In God's good time she would come to her true nature. Her eyes would lose that frightful, cold glitter.

Her lips would not feel so cold when she pressed them against his cheek. And that faint birthmark her mother swooned when she first saw would fade wholly out. It was less marked, surely, now than it used to be. So Dudley Venner felt and would have thought if he had let his thoughts breathe the air of his soul. But the doctor read through words and thoughts and all into the father's consciousness. There are states of mind which may be shared by two persons in presence

of each other, which remain not only unworded but unthoughted, if such a word may be coined for our special need. Such a mutually interpenetrative consciousness there was between the father and the old physician. By a common impulse, both of them rose in a mechanical way and went to the western window, where each started as he saw the other's look directed towards the white stone, which stood in the midst of the small plot of green turf. The doctor had, for a moment,

forgotten himself, but he looked up at the clouds, which were angry, and said, as if speaking of the weather. It is dark now, but we hope it will clear up by and by. There are a great many more clouds than rains, and more rains than strokes of lightning, and more strokes of lightning than there are people killed. We must let this girl of ours have her way, as far as it is safe. Send away this woman she hates quietly. Get her a foreigner for a governess if you can, one that

can dance and sing and will teach her. In the house old Sophie will watch her best. Out of it you must trust her, I am afraid, for she will not be followed round. And she is in less danger than you think. If she wanders at night, find her if you can. The woods are not absolutely safe. If she will be friendly with any young people, have them to see her, young men especially. She will not love anyone easily, perhaps not at all, yet love would be more like to bring her right than anything else.

If any young person seems in danger of falling in love with her, send him to me for counsel. Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind hewn with a moist eye and in tones which tried to be cheerful and were full of sympathy. This advice was the key to the more than indulgent treatment which, as we have seen, the girl had received from her father and all about her. The old doctor often came in all the kindest, most natural sort of way, got into pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her in the same easy manner as at the great party, encouraging all her harmless fancies, and rarely reminding her that he was a professional advisor, except when she came out of her own accord as in the talk they had at the party

telling him of some wild trick she had been playing. Let her go to the girls' school by all means, said the doctor when she had begun to talk about it. Possibly she may take to some of the girls or of the teachers anything to interest her, friendship, love, religion,

whatever will set her nature at work. We must have headway on, or there will be no piloting her. Action, first of all, and then we will see what to do with it. So when Cousin Richard came along, the doctor, though he did not like his looks any too well, told her father to encourage his staying for a time.

If she liked him, it was good. If she only tolerated him, it was better than nothing. You know something about that nephew of yours during these last years, I suppose, the doctor said. Looks as if he had seen life. Has a scar that was made by a sword cut and a white spot on the side of his neck that looks like a bullet mark.

I think he has been what folks call a hard customer. Dudley Vener owned that he had heard little or nothing of him of late years. He had invited himself, and, of course, it would not be decent not to receive him as a relative. He thought Elsie rather liked having him about in the house for a while. She was very capricious, acted as if she fancied him one day, and disliked him the next.

He did not know, but sometimes thought that this nephew of his might take a serious liking to Elsie. What should he do about it if it turned out so? The doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there was no fear. Elsie was naturally what they call a man-hater,

and there was very little danger of any sudden passion springing up between two such young persons. Let him stay a while. It gives her something to think about. So he stayed a while, as we have seen. The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family,

that is, with the two persons of whom it consisted, the more favorably the idea of a permanent residence in the mansion house seemed to impress him. The estate was large, hundreds of acres, with woodlands and meadows of great value. The father and daughter had been living quietly, and there could not be a doubt that the property which came through the Dudleys must have largely increased of late years. It was evident enough

that they had an abundant income from the way in which Elsie's caprices were indulged. She had horses and carriages to suit herself. She sent to the great city for everything she wanted in the way of dress, even her diamonds, and the young man knew something about these gems must be of considerable value, and yet she wore them carelessly as it pleased her fancy. She had precious old laces too, almost worth their weight in diamonds, laces which had been snatched from

altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the wars, and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with for 10 minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich generations which had gone before. The famous golden fire set was a purchase of one of the family who had been in France during the Revolution, and must have come from a princely palace, if not from one of the royal residences. As for silver, the iron closet, which had been made in the dining-room

wall, was running over with it—tea kettles, coffee pots, heavy-lidded tankards, chafing dishes, punch bowls, all that the Dudleys had ever used, from the coddle-cup, which used to be handed round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which children scooped their bread and milk with spoons as solid as ingots, to that ominous vessel on the upper shelf, far back in the dark, with a spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and dying,

all along the last century and since, had taken the last drops that passed their lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dick could see well enough, too, that the books in the library had been ordered from the great London houses whose imprint they bore by persons who knew what was best and meant to have it. A man does not require much learning to feel pretty sure when he takes one of those solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos, say a Baskerville Addison, for instance,

bound in red Morocco with a margin of gold as rich as the embroidery of a prince's collar. As Van Dyck drew it, he need not know much to feel pretty sure that a score or two of shelves full of such books mean that it took a long purse as well as a literary taste to bring them together. To all these attractions, the mind of this thoughtful young gentleman may be said to have been fully open. He did not disguise from himself, however, that there were a number of drawbacks in

the way of his becoming established as the heir of the Dudley Mansion House and Fortune. In the first place, Cousin Elsie was unquestionably very piquant, very handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which made her worth trying for. But then there was something about Cousin Elsie. The small white scars began stinging as he said this to himself, and he pushed his sleeve up to look at them. There was something about Cousin Elsie he couldn't make out.

What was the matter with her eyes, that they sucked your life out of you in that strange way? What did she always wear a necklace for? Had she some such love token on her neck as the old Don's revolver had left on his? How safe would anybody feel to live with her? Besides, her father would last forever if he was left to himself,

and he may take it into his head to marry again. That would be pleasant. So talked Cousin Richard to himself in the calm of the night and in the tranquility of his own soul. There was much to be said on both sides.

It was a balance to be struck after the two columns were added up. He struck the balance and came to the conclusion that he would fall in love with Elsie Venner. The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and serious intention of falling in love with the young lady with that mere impulse of the moment before mentioned as an instance of making love. On the contrary, the moment Mr. Richard had made up his mind that he should fall in love with

Elsie. He began to be more reserved with her and to try to make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, you know, care very little what a girl's present fancy is. The question is, who manages her, and how can you get at that person or those persons? Her foolish little sentiments are all very well in their way, but business is business, and we can't stop for such trifles. The old political wire-pullers never go near the man they want to gain. If they can help

it, they find out who his intimates and managers are and work through them. Always handle any positively electrical body, whether it is charged with passion or power, with some non-conductor between you and it, not with your naked hands. The above were some of the young gentleman's working axioms, and he proceeded to act in accordance with them. He began by paying his court more assiduously to his uncle. It was not very hard to ingratiate himself in that quarter,

for his manners were insinuating, and his precocious experience of life made him entertaining. The old, neglected billiard room was soon put in order, and Dick, who was a magnificent player, had a series of games with his uncle in which, singularly enough, he was beaten, though his antagonist had been out of play for years. He evinced a profound interest in the family history, insisted on having the details of its early alliances, and professed a great pride in it

which he had inherited from his father, who, though he had allied himself with the daughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one with the real azure blood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile and Aragon for her dower, and the Cid for her grandpapa. He also asked a great deal of advice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of, and listened to it with due reverence. It is not very strange that Uncle Dudley took a kinder view of his nephew than the judge,

who thought he could read a questionable history in his face, or the old doctor, who knew men's temperaments and organizations pretty well and had his prejudices about races, and could tell an old sword cut and a bullet mark in two seconds from a scar got by falling against the fender, or a mark left by King's evil. He could not be expected to share our own prejudices, for he had heard nothing of the wild youth's adventures or his scamper over the pampas at short notice.

So then Richard Venner Esquire, guest of Dudley Venner Esquire at his elegant mansion, prolonged his visit until his presence became something like a matter of habit, and the neighbors began to think that the fine old house would be illuminated before long. for a grand marriage. He had done pretty well with the father. The next thing was to gain over the nurse. Old Sophie was as cunning as a red fox or a gray woodchuck. She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie. She had nothing to care for but this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick too well, for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he was a boy, and now he was a man.

there was something about him, she could not tell what, that made her suspicious of him. It was no small matter to get her over to his side. The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chile. So he said, for the express purpose of giving them to old Sophie, these Africans too

have a perfect passion for gay colored clothing, being condemned by nature, as it were, to a perpetual morning suit. They love to enliven it with all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, a flame with red and yellow. The considerate young man had remembered this too, and brought home for Sophie some handkerchiefs of rainbow hues, which had been strangely overlooked till now at the bottom of one of his trunks. Old Sophie took his gifts, but kept her

black eyes open and watched every movement of the young people all the more closely. It was through her that the father had always known most of the actions and tendencies of his daughter. In the meantime, the strange adventure on the mountain had brought the young master into new relations with Elsie. She had led him out of danger, perhaps saved him from death by the strange power she exerted. He was grateful and yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole scene.

In his dreams, he was pursued by the glare of cold, glittering eyes. whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile he could not always tell the images had so run together but he could not help seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often very often turned upon him when he had been looking away and fell as his own glance met them Helen Darley told him very plainly that this girl was thinking about him more than about her book

Dick Fenner found she was getting more constant in her attendance at school. He learned on inquiry that there was a new master, a handsome young man. The handsome young man would not have liked the look that came over Dick's face when he heard this fact mentioned. In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there would be no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter. End of chapter 14.

Thank you.