regulated by some rigid law that it would be death to break. Then, you
know, at home we are always talking about people, and discussing them;
but we always talk of each person for what he is in himself, and I
always thought a person could refine himself if he tried, and was
sincere, and not conceited. But _he_ seems to judge people according to
their origin and locality and calling, and to believe that all
refinement must come from just such training and circumstances as his
own. Without exactly saying so, he puts everything else quite out of the
question. He doesn't appear to dream that there can be any different
opinion. He tramples upon all that I have been taught to believe; and
though I cling the closer to my idols, I can't help, now and then,
trying myself by his criterions; and then I find myself wanting in every
civilized trait, and my whole life coarse and poor, and all my
associations hopelessly degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow,
and I believe that even my little experience would prove them false; but
then, they are his, and I can't reconcile them with what I see is good
in him."
Kitty spoke with half-averted face where she sat beside one of the front
windows, looking absently out on the distant line of violet hills beyond
Charlesbourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her lap and
letting it drop again.
"Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her difficulties, "you oughtn't
to sit against a light like that. It makes your profile quite black to
any one back in the room."
"O well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality."
"Yes, but a young lady ought always to think how she is looking. Suppose
some one was to come in."
"Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, and he wouldn't mind
it. But if you like it better, I'll come and sit by you," said Kitty,
and took her place beside the sofa.
Her hat was in her hand, her sack on her arm; the fatigue of a recent
walk gave her a soft pallor, and languor of face and attitude. Mrs.
Ellison admired her pretty looks with a generous regret that they should
be wasted on herself, and then asked, "Where were you this afternoon?"
"O, we went to the Hôtel Dieu, for one thing, and afterwards we looked
into the court-yard of the convent; and there another of his pleasant
little traits came out,--a way he has of always putting you in the wrong
even when it's a matter of no consequence any way, and there needn't be
any right or wrong about it. I remembered the place because Mrs. March,
you know, showed us a rose that one of the nuns in the hospital gave
her, and I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he graciously took it
as if poor Mrs. March had made an advance towards his acquaintance. I do
wish you could see what a lovely place that court-yard is, Fanny. It's
so strange that such a thing should be right there, in the heart of this
crowded city; but there it was, with its peasant cottage on one side,
and its long, low barns on the other, and those wide-horned Canadian
cows munching at the racks of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all
about among their feet--"
"Yes, yes; never mind all that, Kitty. You know I hate nature. Go on
about Mr. Arbuton," said Mrs. Ellison, who did not mean a sarcasm.
"It looked like a farmyard in a picture, far out in the country
somewhere," resumed Kitty; "and Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say it
was just like Normandy."
"Kitty!"
"He did, indeed, Fanny; and the cows didn't go down on their knees out
of gratitude, either. Well, off on the right were the hospital buildings
climbing up, you know, with their stone walls and steep roofs, and
windows dropped about over them, like our convent here; and there was an
artist there, sketching it all; he had such a brown, pleasant face, with
a little black mustache and imperial, and such gay black eyes that
nobody could help falling in love with him; and he was talking in such a
free-and-easy way with the lazy workmen and women overlooking him. He
jotted down a little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, and one
of the people called out,--Mr. Arbuton was translating,--'Look there!
with one touch he's made our Blessed Lady.' 'O,' says the painter,
'that's nothing; with three touches I can make the entire Holy Family.'
And they all laughed; and that little joke, you know, won my heart,--I
don't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton;--and so I said what a blessed
life a painter's must be, for it would give you a right to be a vagrant,
and you could wander through the world, seeing everything that was
lovely and funny, and nobody could blame you; and I wondered everybody
who had the chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took it
seriously, and said people had to have something more than the chance to
learn before they could sketch, and that most of them were an affliction
with their sketchbooks, and he had seen too much of the sad effects of
drawing from casts. And he put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don't
you see? I didn't want to learn drawing; I wanted to be a painter, and
go about sketching beautiful old convents, and sit on camp-stools on
pleasant afternoons, and joke with people. Of course, he couldn't
understand that. But I know the artist could. O Fanny, if it had only
been the painter whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead of
Mr. Arbuton! But the worst of it is, he is making a hypocrite of me, and
a cowardly, unnatural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the
painter's sketch; but I was ashamed to say I'd never seen a real
artist's sketch before, and I'm getting to be ashamed, or to seem
ashamed, of a great many innocent things. He has a way of not seeming to
think it possible that any one he associates with can differ from him.
And I do differ from him. I differ from him as much as my whole past
life differs from his; I know I'm just the kind of production that he
disapproves of, and that I'm altogether irregular and unauthorized and
unjustifiable; and though it's funny to have him talking to me as if I
must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his ideas, it's provoking,
too, and it's very bad for me. Up to the present moment, Fanny, if you
want to know, that's the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on me. I'm
being gradually snubbed and scared into treasons, stratagems, and
spoils."
Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, for she was one of
those women who like a snub from the superior sex, if it does not
involve a slight to their beauty or their power of pleasing. But she
thought it best not to enter into the question, and merely said, "But
surely, Kitty, there are a great many things in Mr. Arbuton that you
must respect."
"Respect? O, yes, indeed! But respect isn't just the thing for one who
seems to consider himself sacred. Say _revere_, Fanny; say revere!"
Kitty had risen from her chair, but Mrs. Ellison waved her again to her
seat with an imploring gesture. "Don't go, Kitty; I'm not half done with
you yet. You _must_ tell me something more. You've stirred me up so,
now. I know you don't always have such disagreeable times. You've often
come home quite happy. What do you generally find to talk about? Do tell
me some particulars for once."
"Why, little topics come up, you know. But sometimes we don't talk at
all, because I don't like to say what I think or feel, for fear I should
be thinking or feeling something vulgar. Mr. Arbuton is rather a blight
upon conversation in that way. He makes you doubtful whether there isn't
something a little common in breathing and the circulation of the blood,
and whether it wouldn't be true refinement to stop them."
"Stuff, Kitty! He's very cultivated, isn't he? Don't you talk about
books? He's read everything, I suppose."
"O yes, he's _read_ enough."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Only sometimes it seems to me as if he hadn't read because he
loved it, but because he thought it due to himself. But maybe I'm
mistaken. I could imagine a delicate poem shutting up half its sweetness
from his cold, cold scrutiny,--if you will excuse the floweriness of the
idea."
"Why, Kitty! don't you think he's refined? I'm sure, I think he's a
_very_ refined person."
"He's a very elaborated person. But I don't think it would make much
difference to him what our opinion of him was. His own good opinion
would be quite enough."
"Is he--is he--always agreeable?"
"I thought we were discussing his mind, Fanny. I don't know that I feel
like enlarging upon his manners," said Kitty, slyly.
"But surely, Kitty," said the matron, with an air of argument, "there's
some connection between his mind and his manners."
"Yes, I suppose so. I don't think there's much between his heart and his
manners. They seem to have been put on him instead of having come out of
him. He's very well trained, and nine times out of ten he's so
exquisitely polite that it's wonderful; but the tenth time he may say
something so rude that you can't believe it."
"Then you like him nine times out of ten."
"I didn't say that. But for the tenth time, it's certain, his training
doesn't hold out, and he seems to have nothing natural to fall back
upon. But you can believe that, if he knew he'd been disagreeable, he'd
be sorry for it."
"Why, then, Kitty, how can you say that there's no connection between
his heart and manners? This very thing proves that they come from his
heart. Don't be illogical, Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison, and her nerves
added, _sotto voce_, "if you _are_ so abominably provoking!"
"O," responded the young girl, with the kind of laugh that meant it was,
after all, not such a laughing matter, "I didn't say he'd be sorry for
_you_! Perhaps he would; but he'd be certain to be sorry for himself.
It's with his politeness as it is with his reading; he seems to consider
it something that's due to himself as a gentleman to treat people well;
and it isn't in the least as if he cared for _them_. He wouldn't like to
fail in such a point."
"But, Kitty, isn't that to his credit?"
"Maybe. I don't say. If I knew more about the world, perhaps I should
admire it. But now, you see,"--and here Kitty's laugh grew more natural,
and she gave a subtle caricature of Mr. Arbuton's air and tone as she
spoke,--"I can't help feeling that it's a little--vulgar."
Mrs. Ellison could not quite make out how much Kitty really meant of
what she had said. She gasped once or twice for argument; then she sat
up, and beat the sofa-pillows vengefully in composing herself anew, and
finally, "Well, Kitty, I'm sure I don't know what to make of it all,"
she said with a sigh.
"Why, we're not obliged to make anything of it, Fanny, there's that
comfort," replied Kitty; and then there was a silence, while she brooded
over the whole affair of her acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, which this
talk had failed to set in a more pleasant or hopeful light. It had begun
like a romance; she had pleased her fancy, if not her heart, with the
poetry of it; but at last she felt exiled and strange in his presence.
She had no right to a different result, even through any deep feeling in
the matter; but while she owned, with her half-sad, half-comical
consciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming and expecting too
much, she softly pitied herself, with a kind of impersonal compassion,
as if it wore some other girl whose pretty dream had been broken. Its
ruin involved the loss of another ideal; for she was aware that there
had been gradually rising in her mind an image of Boston, different
alike from the holy place of her childhood, the sacred city of the
antislavery heroes and martyrs, and from the jesting, easy, sympathetic
Boston of Mr. and Mrs. March. This new Boston with which Mr. Arbuton
inspired her was a Boston of mysterious prejudices and lofty
reservations; a Boston of high and difficult tastes, that found its
social ideal in the Old World, and that shrank from contact with the
reality of this; a Boston as alien as Europe to her simple experiences,
and that seemed to be proud only of the things that were unlike other
American things; a Boston that would rather perish by fire and sword
than be suspected of vulgarity; a critical, fastidious, and reluctant
Boston, dissatisfied with the rest of the hemisphere, and gelidly
self-satisfied in so far as it was not in the least the Boston of her
fond preconceptions. It was, doubtless, no more the real Boston we know
and love, than either of the others: and it perplexed her more than it
need, even if it had not been mere phantasm. It made her suspicious of
Mr. Arbuton's behavior towards her, and observant of little things that
might very well have otherwise escaped her. The bantering humor, the
light-hearted trust and self-reliance with which she had once met him
deserted her, and only returned fitfully when some accident called her
out of herself, and made her forget the differences that she now too
plainly saw in their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater and
greater effort to place herself in sympathy with him; she relaxed into a
languid self-contempt, as if she had been playing a part, when she
succeeded. "Sometimes, Fanny," she said, now, after a long pause,
speaking in behalf of that other girl she had been thinking of, "it
seems to me as if Mr. Arbuton were all gloves and slim umbrella,--the
mere husk of well dressed culture and good manners. His looks _do_
promise everything; but O dear me! I should be sorry for any one that
was in love with him. Just imagine some girl meeting with such a man,
and taking a fancy to him! I suppose she never would quite believe but
that he must somehow be what she first thought him, and she would go
down to her grave believing that she had failed to understand him. What
a curious story it would make!"
"Then, why don't you write it, Kitty?" asked Mrs. Ellison. "No one could
do it better."
Kitty flushed quickly; then she smiled: "O, I don't think I could do it
at all. It wouldn't be a very easy story to work out. Perhaps he might
never do anything positively disagreeable enough to make anybody condemn
him. The only way you could show his character would be to have her do
and say hateful things to him, when she couldn't help it, and then
repent of it, while he was impassively perfect through everything. And
perhaps, after all, he might be regarded by some stupid people as the
injured one. Well, Mr. Arbuton has been very polite to us, I'm sure,
Fanny," she said after another pause, as she rose from her chair, "and
maybe I'm unjust to him. I beg his pardon of you; and I wish," she added
with a dull disappointment quite her own, and a pang of surprise at
words that seemed to utter themselves, "that he would go away."
"Why, Kitty, I'm shocked," said Mrs. Ellison, rising from her cushions.
"Yes; so am I, Fanny."
"Are you really tired of him, then?"
Kitty did not answer, but turned away her face a little, where she stood
beside the chair in which she had been sitting.
Mrs. Ellison put out her hand towards her. "Kitty, come here," she said
with imperious tenderness.
"No, I won't, Fanny," answered the young girl, in a trembling voice. She
raised the glove that she had been nervously swinging back and forth,
and bit hard upon the button of it. "I don't know whether I'm tired of
_him_,--though he isn't a person to rest one a great deal,--but I'm
tired of _it_. I'm perplexed and troubled the whole time, and I don't
see any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go away! Yes, he _is_ tiresome.
What is he staying here for? If he thinks himself so much better than
all of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our company. It's quite
time for him to go. No, Fanny, no," cried Kitty with a little broken
laugh, still rejecting the outstretched hand, "I'll be flat in private,
if you please." And dashing her hand across her eyes, she flitted out of
the room. At the door she turned and said,
"You needn't think it's what you think it is, Fanny."
"No indeed, dear; you're just overwrought."
"For I really wish he'd go."
But it was on this very day that Mr. Arbuton found it harder than ever
to renew his resolution of quitting Quebec, and cutting short at once
his acquaintance with these people. He had been pledging himself to this
in some form every day, and every morrow had melted his resolution away.
Whatever was his opinion of Colonel and Mrs. Ellison, it is certain
that, if he considered Kitty merely in relation to the present, he could
not have said how, by being different, she could have been better than
she was. He perceived a charm, that would be recognized anywhere, in her
manner, though it was not of his world; her fresh pleasure in all she
saw, though he did not know how to respond to it, was very winning; he
respected what he thought the good sense running through her transports;
he wondered at the culture she had somewhere, somehow got; and he was so
good as to find that her literary enthusiasms had nothing offensive, but
were as pretty and naive as a girl's love of flowers. Moreover, he
approved of some personal attributes of hers: a low, gentle voice,
tender long-lashed eyes; a trick of drooping shoulders, and of idle
hands fallen into the lap, one in the other's palm; a serene repose of
face; a light and eager laugh. There was nothing so novel in those
traits, and in different combination he had seen them a thousand times;
yet in her they strangely wrought upon his fancy. She had that soft,
kittenish way with her which invites a caressing patronage, but, as he
learned, she had also the kittenish equipment for resenting
over-condescension; and she never took him half so much as when she
showed the high spirit that was in her, and defied him most.
For here and now, it was all well enough; but he had a future to which
he owed much, and a conscience that would not leave him at rest. The
fascination of meeting her so familiarly under the same roof, the
sorcery of the constant sight of her, were becoming too much; it would
not do on any account; for his own sake he must put an end to it. But
from hour to hour he lingered upon his unenforced resolve. The passing
days, that brought him doubts in which he shuddered at the great
difference between himself and her and her people, brought him also
moments of blissful forgetfulness in which his misgivings were lost in
the sweetness of her looks, or the young grace of her motions. Passing,
the days rebuked his delay in vain; a week and two weeks slipped from
under his feet, and still he had waited for fate to part him and his
folly. But now at last he would go and in the evening, after his cigar
on Durham Terrace, he knocked at Mrs. Ellison's door to say that on the
day after to-morrow he should push on to the White Mountains.
He found the Ellisons talking over an expedition for the next morning,
in which he was also to take part. Mrs. Ellison had already borne her
full share in the preparation; for, being always at hand there in her
room, and having nothing to do, she had been almost a willing victim to
the colonel's passion for information at second-hand, and had probably
come to know more than any other American woman of Arnold's expedition
against Quebec in 1775. She know why the attack was planned, and with
what prodigious hazard and heroical toil and endurance it was carried
out; how the dauntless little army of riflemen cut their way through the
untrodden forests of Maine and Canada, and beleaguered the gray old
fortress on her rock till the red autumn faded into winter, and, on the
last bitter night of the year, flung themselves against her defences,
and fell back, leaving half their number captive, Montgomery dead, and
Arnold wounded, but haplessly destined to survive.
"Yes," said the colonel, "considering the age in which they lived, and
their total lack of modern improvements, mental, moral, and physical, we
must acknowledge that they did pretty well. It wasn't on a very large
scale; but I don't see how they could have been braver, if every man had
been multiplied by ten thousand. In fact, as it's going to be all the
same thing a hundred years from now, I don't know but I'd as soon be one
of the men that tried to take Quebec as one of the men that did take
Atlanta. Of course, for the present, and on account of my afflicted
family, Mr. Arbuton, I'm willing to be what and where I am; but just see
what those fellows did." And the colonel drew from his glowing memory of
Mrs. Ellison's facts a brave historical picture of Arnold's expedition.
"And now we're going to-morrow morning to look up the scene of the
attack on the 31st of December. Kitty, sing something."
At another time Kitty might have hesitated; but that evening she was so
at rest about Mr. Arbuton, so sure she cared nothing for his liking or
disliking anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, and sang a
number of songs, which I suppose were as unworthy the cultivated ear as
any he had heard. But though they were given with an untrained voice and
a touch as little skilled as might be, they pleased, or else the singer
pleased. The simple-hearted courage of the performance would alone have
made it charming; and Mr. Arbuton had no reason to ask himself how he
should like it in Boston, if he were married, and should hear it from
his wife there. Yet when a young man looks at a young girl or listens to
her, a thousand vagaries possess his mind,--formless imaginations,
lawless fancies. The question that presented itself remotely, like pain
in a dream, dissolved in the ripple of the singer's voice, and left his
revery the more luxuriously untroubled for having been.
He remembered, after saying good-night, that he had forgotten something:
it was to tell them he was going away.
VIII.
NEXT MORNING.