CARL.
Notwithstanding what he had said of his anxiety to reach the Elms, he
did not seem to be in a great hurry to do so. He stopped some days in
New York, and again in Washington, and it was two weeks from the time he
left Boston before a telegram came to his mother saying he was in
Richmond and would be with us the next evening. That same day Fan had a
letter from Jack, who wrote: “I was the first to make the acquaintance
of Mrs. Hathern, and am also the first to know her son Carl. He has been
at the Spotswood four days, and I verily believe knows more of the city
than I do. He has been everywhere and seen everything, from Libby
Prison, Castle Thunder and Belle Isle to the fortifications in the
country for miles around. He has the most expensive room in the hotel,
and drives out with a span and a guide and coachman, and myself,
whenever I can find time to go out with him. He has visited the State
House and every store and shop and office in town, and talked politics
and reconstruction with as much assurance as if he were a gray-haired
veteran of fifty instead of a boy of fifteen or sixteen. Everybody knows
him and everybody likes him, especially at the hotel, where he spends
his money so freely. I usually go there every night and look over the
register to see the new arrivals, and when I saw ‘Carlyle Haverleigh,
Boston, Mass.,’ I soon had him by the hand, telling him who I was and
asking what I could do for him. _Do for him!_ Bless your soul, he does
not need anyone to do for him; he is equal to anything; takes care of
and patronizes me; owns the whole south generally, and Richmond and the
Spotswood in particular. And yet he is not in the least offensive in his
patronage. It is just his pleasant, genial, helpful way, which goes to
your heart directly. We call him _Boston_, and laugh at his ‘I guesses’
and ‘carnts’ and ‘sharnts,’ and tell him he ought to be kept under a
glass cover, with his fine clothes and white hands. But he takes it in
perfect good humor and ridicules our ‘I reckons’ and ‘heaps’ and ‘right
smarts,’ and says we wear baggy, ill-made clothes, and talk through our
noses worse than any down-east Yankee he ever met, but admits that we
are a pretty good sort, on the whole, for rebs, and much better, he
presumes, for having been _licked_! Think of it! A Boston cub, right
from the very heart of abolitionism and everything else, talking like
that to old Virginia soldiers, who shake their sides over him. Truly the
world moves, and we move with it, and I am glad we do. I like the boy,
or, perhaps, I should say young man, for he is nearly as tall as I am,
and straight as an Indian, with a proud bearing as if the world were
made for him. He has a frank, ingenuous face, with clear-cut features,
laughing eyes, and a mouth which, if it were a girl’s, would not be bad
to kiss! I rather think it is a kissing mouth, he is so fond of the
girls,—talks to everyone he meets in the hotel, and actually asked Mrs.
Gen. Sands’ daughter Mabel, from South Carolina, to take a walk with
him. She took it and a blowing up, too, from her mother, when she got
home, while he took a worse one for his presumption,—I’m not sure she
didn’t call it impudence,—in proposing such a thing to a southern girl
and a stranger. You should have seen Carl then. I was really proud of
him, he stood up so manly and dignified in the parlor half full of
people and said, ‘I beg your pardon, madam; I meant no harm, I assure
you. It was because she was a southern girl that I asked her. I wanted
to see if she were like Boston girls; she is very much like them,
except, perhaps, more charming, because not quite so stiff. I really did
not intend to be impudent. I couldn’t, you know. Why, I’m a _Bostonian_,
a _Haverleigh_, and a _gentleman_!’
“We all wanted to cheer, and Mrs. Sands most of all. She has been out
driving with him since and taken Mabel with her. What strikes me as very
remarkable about the boy is his freedom from all bad habits. I don’t
believe he has one, unless it is a disposition to spend his money too
freely. He says he owes everything to his mother. There was some bad
blood in the family away back somewhere, and she was as afraid of it as
of a mad dog and watched him as a rat would watch a mouse. When he was
ten years old some college chaps got him to drink and smoke until he was
so deathly sick that they feared he would die. When he got over it his
mother thrashed him so soundly with a rawhide that he declares he has a
mark of one of the welts on his back yet. Then she told him that for
every year until he was twenty-one in which he neither drank, nor
smoked, nor chewed, nor swore, nor lied, she would give him one hundred
dollars over and above the allowance she usually made him. She wanted to
tack on dancing and theatres, he said, but he kicked at that and
promised the rest, and kept his promise, too, until last year, when he
called a girl who lived with them a d—— fool because she would make eyes
at him. Quite to his surprise his mother gave him fifty dollars, saying
it was only half a swear and the girl deserved it.
“His father left a large fortune, the use of which is to be his mother’s
during her lifetime, with the exception of twenty-five thousand dollars
which are to be paid to Carl when he is twenty-one. At his mother’s
death he gets the whole. So, you see, he will some day be a very rich
man and a great catch. Pity he wasn’t older, or you and Annie younger.
He has asked me a great many questions about you; says he always wanted
some sisters, and knows he shall like you,—love, I think he said, but he
is only a boy and I am not jealous. He leaves day after to-morrow and I
shall miss him, for I find myself looking forward to the close of
business hours when I am free to join him and hear his funny and
original remarks about us and our ways which he says are a hundred years
behind Boston.”
This letter did not in the least diminish our desire to see Carl
Haverleigh, in whose coming the whole household was interested. We were
running like clockwork now, with Phyllis as laundress, Norah as cook,
Julina as housemaid, and Boston baked beans and brown bread on Sunday.
We dressed for dinner and dined in courses at six, while father wore his
swallow-tail and Julina waited upon us in her pretty white apron and
cap. Mrs. Hathern’s carriage and horses had come from Boston. We had a
colored coachman from Richmond, who wore a tall hat and brass buttons
and went to sleep on the box while driving us around the neighborhood.
Altogether, we were very high-toned and Bostony, and but for a few
drawbacks might have enjoyed the new order of things immensely. Our
house was handsomely furnished; father’s debts were paid, and had he
chosen he might have dismissed his patients and lived a life of perfect
ease. Mrs. Hathern was very free with her money, and more generous to
Fan and me than we expected or deserved. But there was always a feeling
of restraint in her presence and a hankering for the flesh-pots of
Egypt, when it didn’t matter whether things were in order or not, or we
on time to a minute; and then there was unfortunate Katy, who not only
spent hours in the high chair and in bed for trivial things we had never
dreamed of calling faults, but to whose other trials was added that of
daily music lessons. Mrs. Hathern’s piano, a splendid Steinway, had
come, and the old one which had been our mother’s was moved to make room
for it. Then, following Miss Errington’s advice, she commenced teaching
Katy, who was required to practice every day until her little arms and
hands ached with fatigue. She hated the practice, but liked the singing,
and every morning for half an hour or more the house was filled with
melody as she went up and down the scales, clear and sweet as a bird,
while I listened with pride and Fan with fear of what might be the
result in the future.
There was to be a cessation of the lessons for a few days on account of
Carl’s arrival and because of a grand picnic which was to be held in the
woods near a little waterfall and a fine bit of scenery. Everybody in
town who was anybody was going, and Mrs. Hathern was especially glad
that it was fixed for the day after Carl’s expected arrival, as it would
give her an early opportunity to show her handsome and accomplished son
to her friends and neighbors. I think the New Englander revels in
picnics. Mrs. Hathern was certainly in her element preparing for this
one and for Carl, who was coming at last.
It was a lovely July day,—cool for the season, but with that
deliciousness in the air and deep blue in the sky common to Virginia
summers. Carl’s room was in readiness for him. Julina had swept and
dusted and lingered over it longer than was at all necessary, and there
was a light in the girl’s eyes and an airiness in her movements which
irritated and disgusted us. Mrs. Hathern had hung upon the walls a few
pictures we had not seen before, some of them exquisitely colored
photographs of Venice and others, copies of Pompeiian dancing girls,
who, it seemed to me, might have worn thicker garments and not have been
uncomfortable even in the summer. But I was not up in high art and had
not spent a year and a half abroad, like Mrs. Hathern, who could
contemplate and discuss a Venus de Medicis or Apollo Belvidere as
readily as a block of unhewn marble. There was a head of a Madonna,
which Mrs. Hathern had found in Florence, in Carl’s room, and Norah hung
around its neck a string of beads from Lourdes which had been blessed by
the Pope; “not for keeps,” she said, “but just for a little while to
show him I am glad he is coming.” Phyllis, too, had brought the only
valuable article she possessed,—a handsome bowl of Royal Worcester,
which a Federal soldier had given her in exchange for a peck of apples
and some walnuts. It was stolen, of course, from some desecrated home,
but as Phyllis didn’t know where that home was she had no compunctions
in taking it, and since the war it had stood on a little table at the
head of the bed with her pipes and tobacco and child’s first reader
which she kept there, not because she could read,—we had tried to teach
her and failed,—but because it looked as if she could. She had heard us
talk so much of Carl that she was interested, too, and brought the bowl
full of flowers and set it down by his photograph on the bureau.
The morning was long and the evening was longer, but five o’clock came
at last and the carriage with Mrs. Hathern and father and Katy went to
the station, while Fan and I waited at home upon the piazza, and Julina
went once or twice to the gate and looked anxiously down the street.
Suddenly there was the sound of rapid footsteps and of some one
whistling Dixie at the rear of the hall, and in a moment Carl stood
before us, flushed and expectant and eager. The train, which was usually
late, had been ahead of time and pulled up at the station before the
carriage reached it, for something had happened to the harness and
detained it. Everybody knew Carl was coming, and everyone at the station
knew it was he as he leaped upon the platform in his long linen duster
and straw hat and northern air generally.
“Halloo! Is there anyone here from the Hatherns? I am Carl Haverleigh,”
was his salutation to the station master, who replied that there was not
yet, but undoubtedly would be soon.
“Well, is there a short cut to the house which I can take and surprise
them?” he asked next.
There was one and Carl took it and brought up by Phyllis’s cabin, where
she sat quietly smoking under the dogwood tree after her work was done.
Jack had described us all so minutely that Carl knew in a moment who
Phyllis was, and his cheery “Halloo, Aunt Phyllis. How d’ye,” nearly
threw the old woman off her seat. She did drop her clay pipe, and Carl’s
brown head and her red turban knocked together as both stooped to pick
it up.
“God bless you, Mas’r Carl! I’se jes tolable, thank ye. How d’ye you
’self?” she said, taking her pipe from him and holding his hand, white
as a girl’s, in both her black horny ones.
“Where are the folks?” he asked, and she replied, “Ole Mas’r and Missus
and Katy has done gone for you, but you’ll find de young ladies in the
piazza waitin’ for you. We’s all right glad to see you, Mas’r Carl. Go
right up de path dar.”
Following her directions he came next to the kitchen, where Norah
stopped her preparations for dinner to greet him, while Julina darted
out from some corner and seized him by the hand, her black eyes full of
the delight she felt. But there was no answering gleam in his, and his
“How are you, Julina?” was cold and formal as he hurried on to where we
were sitting. Jack had written “He is nearly as tall as I am,” but in
his long duster he looked taller, and there was such an air of fashion
and maturity about him that for a moment we felt abashed as if in the
presence of a full-grown young man of a different type from any we had
known. This feeling, however, soon passed, for no one could withstand
the cordiality of his manner, or the expression of his frank, handsome
face.
“Halloo,” he cried, “here you are, Fan-and-Ann, and I am Carl.”
He kissed us and whirled us round and told us he was _first rate_,
before we could say a word to him. Then, holding each of us by the hand,
he looked us over curiously and critically.
“You look just as I thought you did. The rest of the folks have gone for
me, I suppose,” he said, releasing our hands, and beginning to remove
his duster, “Won’t mother scold though because I gave her the slip.
Hallo, there they are;” and he darted down the steps to meet the
carriage just entering the yard.
There was a slight cloud on Mrs. Hathern’s face as she alighted and
asked why he did not wait for them.
“Oh, I couldn’t. I was in such a hurry to see my sisters, and here’s
another one,” he said, lifting Katy in his arms and squeezing her until
she was red in the face.
“You are a beauty, and no mistake!” he said, putting her down and
turning to father, towards whom his manner was exceedingly polite and
deferential.
It was strange what a change his coming made in our home. He was so
bright and thoughtful and magnetic that before the evening was over we
felt that we had known him years instead of hours. Jack was a gentleman,
and so were all our male acquaintances, while Col. Errington represented
the highest phase of polish we had ever seen. But Carl was different
from them all, with a difference we felt but could not well define. He
seemed to know the right thing to say and when to say it and how to
bring out the best there was in one. I had never been as well satisfied
with myself as I was after that first evening spent with him, his
flatteries and compliments were so delicate and seemed so earnest. Fan
thought him not altogether genuine and a little too familiar.
“He is too tall to be putting his arm around us so much,” she said when
we were discussing him in the privacy of our room. “I call him a flirt,
and if there was nothing to keep us in mind, he’d forget us in a
week,—but, on the whole, I like him.”