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EAST ANGELS
A Novel
BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
AUTHOR OF "ANNE" "FOR THE MAJOR" ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON'S WORKS.
EAST ANGELS. A Novel. 16mo,
Cloth, $1.25.
ANNE. A Novel. Illustrated. pp iv.,
540. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
FOR THE MAJOR. A Novelette. Illustrated.
pp. 208. 16mo, Cloth, $1.00.
CASTLE NOWHERE. Lake Country
Sketches, pp 386. 16mo, Cloth,
$1.00. (_New Edition nearly ready._)
RODMAN THE KEEPER. Southern
Sketches, pp. 340. 16mo, Cloth.
$1 00. (_New Edition nearly ready._)
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
==>_Any of the above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of
the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price._
Copyright, 1884, 1885, 1886, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
EAST ANGELS.
CHAPTER I.
"I think, more than anything else, I came to be under blue sky."
"Are you fond of sky?" said the young girl who was sitting near the
speaker, her eyes on the shimmering water of the lagoon which stretched
north and south before the house.
"I can't lay claim to tastes especially celestial, I fear," answered the
visitor, "but I confess to a liking for an existence which is not, for
six months of the year, a combat. I am mortally tired of our long
northern winters, with their eternal processions of snow, ice, and
thaw--thaw, ice, and snow; I am tired of our springs--hypocritical
sunshine pierced through and through by east winds; and I have at last,
I think, succeeded in breaking loose from the belief that there is
something virtuous and heroic in encountering these things--encountering
them, I mean, merely from habit, and when not called to it by any
necessity. But this emancipation has taken time--plenty of it. It is
directly at variance with all the principles of the country and creed in
which I was brought up."
"You have good health, Mr. Winthrop?" asked Mrs. Thorne, in a tone which
was prepared to turn with equal appreciation towards sympathy if he
were, and congratulation if he were not, the possessor of the lungs
which classify a person, and give him an occupation for life.
"Do I look delicate?"
"On the contrary, you look remarkably well," answered his hostess, sure
of her ground here, since even an invalid likes to be congratulated upon
an appearance of health: not only is it more agreeable in itself, but it
gives him the opportunity to explain (and at some length) that all is
illusory merely, a semblance; an adjustment of the balances between
resignation and heroism which everybody should admire. "Yes," Mrs.
Thorne went on, with a critical air which seemed to say, as she looked
at him, that her opinions were founded upon unprejudiced scrutiny,
"wonderfully well, indeed--does he not, Garda?"
"Mr. Winthrop looks well; I don't know that it is a wonder," replied
Edgarda Thorne, in her soft voice. "He has been everywhere, and seen
everything," she added, turning her eyes towards him for a moment--eyes
in which he read envy, but envy impersonal, concerning itself more with
his travels, his knowledge of many places, his probable adventures, than
with himself.
"Mr. Winthrop is accustomed to a largeness of opportunity," remarked
Mrs. Thorne; "but it is his natural atmosphere." She paused, coughed
slightly, and then added, "He does not come into the ports he enters
with banners flying, with rockets and cannon, and a brass band at bow
and stern."
"You describe an excursion steamer on the Fourth of July," said
Winthrop.
"Precisely. One or two of the persons who have visited Gracias-a-Dios
lately have seemed to us not unlike that," answered the lady.
Mrs. Thorne had a delicate little voice, pitched on rather a high key,
but so slender in volume that, like the pure small note of a little
bird, it did not offend. Her pronunciation was very distinct and
accurate--that is, accurate according to the spelling; they knew no
other methods in the conscientious country school where she had received
her education. Mrs. Thorne pronounced her _t_ in "often," her _l_ in
"almond," her "again" rhymed with "plain."
"Did you mean that you, too, would like to go everywhere and see
everything, Miss Thorne?" said Evert Winthrop, addressing the daughter.
"I assure you it's dull work."
"Naturally--after one has had it all." She spoke without again turning
her eyes towards him.
"We are kept here by circumstances," observed Mrs. Thorne, smoothing the
folds of her black gown with her little withered hand. "I do not know
whether circumstances will ever release us--I do not know. But we are
not unhappy meanwhile. We have the old house, with its many
associations; we have our duties and occupations; and if not frequent
amusement, we have our home life, our few dear friends, and our
affection for each other."
"All of them crowned by this same blue sky which Mr. Winthrop admires so
much," added Garda.
"I see that you will always hold me up to ridicule on account of that
speech," said Winthrop. "You are simply tired of blue. As a contrast you
would welcome, I dare say, the dreariest gray clouds of the New England
coast, and our east wind driving in from the sea."
"I should welcome snow," answered Garda, slowly; "all the country
covered with snow, lying white and dead--that is what I wish to see. I
want to walk on a frozen lake with ice, real ice over deep water, under
my feet. I want to breathe freezing air, and know how it feels. I want
to see trees without any leaves on them; and a snow-storm when the
flakes are very big and soft like feathers; and long icicles hanging
from roofs; and then, to hear the wind whistle round the house, and be
glad to draw the curtains and bring my chair close to a great roaring
fire. Think of that--to be _glad_ to come close to a great roaring
fire!"
"I have described these things to my daughter," said Mrs. Thorne,
explaining these wintry aspirations to their guest in her careful little
way. "My home before my marriage was in the northern part of New
England, and these pictures from my youth have been Garda's fairy
tales."
"Then you are not English?" said Winthrop. He knew perfectly that she
was not, but he wished to hear the definite little abstract of family
history which, in answer to his question, he thought she would feel
herself called upon to bestow. He was not mistaken.
"My husband was English--that is, of English descent," she
explained--"and I do not wonder that you should have thought me English
also, for I have imbibed the family air so long that I have ended by
really becoming one of them. We Thornes are very English; but we are the
English of one hundred and fifty years ago. _We_ have not moved on, as
no doubt the English of to-day have been obliged to move; _we_ have
remained stationary. Even in dear old England itself, we should to-day,
no doubt, Garda and I, be called old-fashioned."
Winthrop found himself so highly entertained by this speech, by her "We
Thornes," and her "dear old England," that he looked down lest she
should see the change of expression which accompanies a smile, even
though the smile be hidden. This little woman had never been in England
in her life; unmistakable New Hampshire looked from her eyes, sounded in
every tone of her voice, made itself visible in all her movements and
attitudes. She was unceasingly anxious; she had never indulged herself
in anything, or taken anything lightly since she was born; she had as
little body as was possible, and in that body she had to the full the
strict American conscience. All this was vividly un-English.
"Yes, I always regret so much the modern ways into which dear England
has fallen," she went on. "It would have been beautiful if they could
but have retained the old customs, the old ideas, as we have retained
them here. But in some things they have done so," she added, with the
air of wishing to be fully just. "In the late unhappy contest, you know,
they were with us--all their best people--as to our patriarchal system
for our servants. They understood us--us of the South--completely."
Winthrop's amusement had now reached its highest point. "Heroic,
converted little Yankee school-marm," was his thought. "What a colossal
effort her life down here must have been for her, poor thing!"
"Your husband was the first of the American Thornes, then?" he said,
with the intention of drawing out more narrative.
"Oh no. The first Edgar Thorne came out from England with Governor Tonyn
(the friend of Lord Marchmont, you know), during the British occupation
of this province in the last century; he remained here after the
retrocession to Spain, because he had married a daughter of one of the
old Spanish families of this coast, Beatriz de Duero. As Beatriz was an
only child, they lived here with her parents, and the second Edgar
Thorne, their son, was born here. He also married a Duero, a cousin
named Ines; my husband, the third Edgar, was their child. My husband
came north one summer; he came to New England. There he met me. We were
married not long afterwards, and I returned with him to his southern
home. Edgarda was but two years old when her dear father was taken from
us."
"Miss Thorne resembles her Spanish more than her English ancestors, I
fancy?" said Winthrop, looking at the handle of his riding-whip for a
moment, perhaps to divest the question of too closely personal a
character, the young lady herself being beside him. But this little
by-play was not needed. Mrs. Thorne had lived a solitary life so long
that her daughter, her daughter's ancestors, her daughter's resemblances
(the last, indeed, might be called historical), seemed to her quite
natural subjects for conversation; if Winthrop had gazed at Garda
herself, instead of at the handle of his riding-whip, that would have
seemed to her quite natural also.
"Edgarda is the portrait of her Spanish grandmother painted in English
colors," she answered, in one of her neatly arranged little phrases.
"An anomaly, therefore," commented Garda, who seemed rather tired of the
turn the conversation had taken. "But it can do no harm, Medusa-fashion,
because fastened forever upon a Florida wall."
"A Florida wall is not such a bad thing," answered Winthrop. "I am
thinking a little of buying one for myself."
"Ah, a residence in Gracias-a-Dios?" said Mrs. Thorne, her small, bright
blue eyes meeting his with a sort of screen suddenly drawn down over
them--a screen which he interpreted as a quick endeavor on her part to
conceal in their depths any consciousness that a certain desirable old
Spanish mansion was possibly to be obtained, and for a price which, to a
well-filled purse of the north, might seem almost comically small.
"No; I do not care for a house in the town," he answered. "I should
prefer something outside--more of a place, if I should buy at all."
"I cannot imagine why any one should wish to buy a place down here now,"
said Garda. "A house in Gracias-a-Dios, with a rose garden and a few
orange-trees, is all very well; you could stay there for two months or
so in the winter, and then close it and go north again. But what could
you do with a large place? Cotton and sugar are no longer worth raising,
now that we have no slaves. And as to one of the large orange groves
that people are beginning to talk about, there is no one here who could
manage it for you. You would have to see to it yourself, and that you
could never do. To begin with, the climate would kill you; and then
there are the snakes."
"Being already dead, the snakes would hardly trouble me, I suppose,
unless you refer to future torments," said Winthrop, laughing. "Allow me
to congratulate you upon your picture of the agricultural resources of
the country. They have never before been so clearly presented to me; it
is most interesting."
Garda shook her head, repressing a smile. But still she did not look at
him.
"In purchasing a place here Mr. Winthrop may not be thinking of
agriculture; he may be thinking only of climate," remarked Mrs. Thorne,
mildly, to her daughter.
"Climate--that is blue sky, I suppose," said Garda; "I acknowledge that
there is an abundance of that here. But I advise Mr. Winthrop to buy but
a small piece of ground as his standing-point, and to take his sky out
perpendicularly; he can go up to any height, you know, as high as the
moon, if he likes. That would be ever so much wiser than to have the
same amount spread out horizontally over a quantity of swamp-land which
no person in his senses could wish to own."
"But the land about here strikes me as remarkably dry," observed their
visitor, amused by the girl's opposition to an idea which he had as yet
so faintly outlined. He suspected, however, that she was not combating
him so much as she was combating the possibility of a hope in the breast
of her little mother. But poor Mrs. Thorne had been very discreet; she
had not allowed herself to even look interested.
"It is as dry as the Desert of Sahara," Garda answered, with decision,
"and it is as wet as a wet sponge. There is this dry white sand which
you see on the pine-barrens--miles upon miles of it. Then, stretching
across it here and there come the great belts of bottomless swamp.
_That_ is Florida."
"Your description is a striking one," said Winthrop, gravely. "You make
me feel all the more desirous to own a little of such a remarkable
combination of wet and dry."
Garda glanced at him, and this time her smile conquered her. Winthrop
was conscious of a pleasure in having made her look at him and smile.
For it was not a matter of course that she would do either. His feeling
about her had been from the first that she was the most natural young
girl he had ever met--that is, in the ranks of the educated. There was a
naturalness, of course, in the Indian girls, whom he had seen in the far
West, which probably exceeded Garda's; but that sort of naturalness he
did not care for. Garda was natural in her own graceful way, singularly
natural; her glance and her smile, while not so ready, nor so promptly
hospitable as those of most girls of her age, seemed to him to possess a
quality which he had come to consider almost extinct--the quality of
frank, undisturbed sincerity.
"I sometimes regret that I described to my daughter so often the aspects
of my northern home," said Mrs. Thorne. "It was a pleasure to me at the
time (it had been a great change for me, you know), and I did not
realize that they were becoming exaggerated to her, these
descriptions--more beautiful than the reality. For she has dwelt too
much upon them; by contrast she over-estimates them. The South, too, has
its beautiful aspects: that we must allow."
Winthrop fancied that he detected a repressed plaintiveness in her tone.
"She thinks her daughter cruel to keep on beating down so ruthlessly her
poor little hope," was his thought. Then he answered the spoken
sentence: "As she has never seen these things for herself, your
descriptions must have been vivid."
"No; it is her imagination that is that."
"True--I have myself had an example of her imagination in her remarks
upon agriculture."
Garda laughed. "I shall say no more about agriculture, blue sky, or
anything else," she declared.
"You leave me, then, to take care of myself?"
"You do not need my assistance, I never waste it."
"I should have pretended to be quite helpless! That's the second mistake
I have made this afternoon. If I had only let it be supposed that my
health was delicate, Mrs. Thorne would have been much more interested in
me."
"Oh no, Mr. Winthrop," said his hostess, earnestly; "you are quite
mistaken. Good health is in itself full of the deepest interest, I am
sure, and especially at the present day, when it is so singularly rare.
I am most glad you possess it--most glad indeed."
"I possess enough of it, at any rate, to go over the place, if you will
be so kind," said Winthrop. "You know you promised me that pleasure some
day, and why not this afternoon? There is a delightful breeze."
Mrs. Thorne dropped her eyes to the tips of her black cloth slippers,
visible beneath the skirt of her gown. These little shoes one could
scarcely fail to see, since the skirt, which was neatness itself in its
decent black folds, was rather scanty and short. Their age and well-worn
thinness, the skilful mending of their worst places, the new home-made
bindings, the fresh ribbon bows bravely tied, told a story to the
observers of delicate things.
But while Mrs. Thorne surveyed her slippers, her daughter was replying:
"It would hardly amuse you to go over the place, Mr. Winthrop; there is
really nothing to see but the crane."
"Let us go, then, and see the crane."
"Mamma would be so delighted, you know. But she never walks."
"Not far," corrected Mrs. Thorne. "I am not strong, not able to walk
far."
"And I should be delighted, too," continued Garda, "only I am so sleepy.
I have fallen into the habit of spending my afternoons in the hammock;
that makes me immensely drowsy just at this hour."
"I feel like an interloper," said Winthrop; "say a large mosquito."
"You needn't. It's not well to sleep so much," replied Miss Thorne,
calmly.
"Certainly you know how to console. Is that the hammock in which you
pass your happy existence?"
"Not existence; only afternoons. You really wish to go?" she added,
seeing that he had taken his hat from the chair beside him. "We will
send Raquel with you, then, as guide."
"Raquel?"
"Haven't you noticed her? She lets you in when you come. She is an
important personage with us, I assure you; her mother, grandmother, and
great-grandmother lived on the place here before her."
Winthrop recalled the portly jet-black negress who, in answer to his
knock, had opened the lower door.
"Three generations make aristocracy in America," he replied; "I am
afraid of so distinguished a guide. If doomed to go without Mrs. Thorne
or yourself, why may I not go alone?"
"You would never find the magnolias, you would come into the live-oak
avenue at the wrong end, you would look at the ruin from its commonplace
side, you would see only the back of the Cherokee roses, the crane would
not dance for you, the wild cattle would run at you, and you would
inevitably get into the swamp," answered the girl, checking off the
items one by one on her pretty fingers.
"I have confessed my fear of Raquel, and now you display before me this
terrible list of dangers. Don't you think it would be but common charity
to come with me yourself? My conversation is not exciting; you could
easily sleep a little, between-times, as we walk."
"I believe you have had your own way all your life," remarked Garda, "or
you would never persist as you do. Your humility is nothing but a
manner; in reality you expect everything to be done for you by
everybody."
"Not by everybody," Winthrop responded.
Mrs. Thorne had coughed as Garda ended her speech. Mrs. Thorne often
coughed, and her coughs had a character of their own; they did not
appear to be pulmonary. They were delicate little sounds which came
forth apologetically, shielded by her hand, never quite completed; they
were not coughs so much as suggestions of coughs, and with these
suggestions she was in the habit of filling little pauses in the
conversation, covering up the awkwardnesses or mistakes of others (there
were never any of her own to cover), or acting as hyphen for disjointed
remarks when people had forgotten what they were going to say. It was,
indeed, a most accomplished cough, all Gracias had been indebted to it.
Lately, too, she had begun to use it to veil her own little periods of
consultation with herself regarding her daughter; for she seemed by no
means certain of the direction which this daughter's thoughts or words
might take, and the uncertainty troubled her careful maternal mind.
Garda, however, though often out of sight round some unexpected corner,
was never far distant; the hurrying elderly comprehension always caught
up with her before long; but these periods of uncertainty, combined with
cares more material, had ended by impressing upon Mrs. Thorne's face the
look of anxiety which was now its most constant expression--an anxiety
covered, however, as much as possible, by the mask of minutely careful
politeness which fitted closely over it, doing its best to conceal, or,
failing in that, to at least mark as private, the personal troubles
which lay underneath.
"Mamma's cough means that I am not sufficiently polite," said Garda; "I
always know what mamma's cough means." She rose, passed behind her
mother's chair, and bending forward over her small head, lightly kissed
her forehead. "I will go, mamma," she said, caressingly. "I will be
beautifully good, because to-morrow is your birthday; it ought to be a
dear little day, about six hours long, to fit you."
"I am fortunate to have asked my favor upon the eve of an anniversary,"
said Winthrop.
"You are," answered Garda, taking her broad-brimmed hat from the nail
behind her. "It's only upon such great occasions that I am really and
angelically good--as mamma would like me to be all the time."
"I will send Raquel after you, my daughter, with the umbrellas," said
Mrs. Thorne, with a little movement of her lips and throat, as though
she had just swallowed something of a pleasant taste, which was, with
her, the expression of content.
"Surely it is not going to rain?" said Winthrop, examining the sky.
"They are sun-umbrellas; you may need them," answered his hostess, with
a certain increased primness of accentuation, which immediately brought
to his mind the idea that the carrier of these articles would represent
the duenna whom she considered necessary.
"A Spanish graft, that, on the original New England tree," was his
mental comment. "I wonder how many more there are?"
But the descendant of the Spaniards was speaking for herself. "We do not
want Raquel, mamma; we can carry the umbrellas ourselves." And she
passed into the darkened drawing-room, from which opened the little
balcony where they had been sitting.
Winthrop, after taking leave of Mrs. Thorne, followed Garda. But he had
the conviction that a duenna of some sort, though it might not be
Raquel, would be improvised from that balcony before long, and sent
after them.
He had already paid several visits to these ladies, and knew his way
through the interior dimness, but the old house still attracted him, and
he did not hurry his steps; he looked again at the rooms, which, with
their few articles of furniture, had to northern eyes an appearance of
cool shaded emptiness, the broad open spaces having been purposely left
to give place for the free passage of air. The vaulted ceilings deep in
shadow, the archways in place of the northern doors, one room panelled
to the top in dark polished wood which glimmered dimly as he passed
through--all these he liked to note. Beyond, the stone stairway made a
leisurely, broad-stepped descent. The high wainscot on the wall at its
side showed pomegranates stiffly carved in low relief, and the
balustrade of the same dark wood ended in a clumsy column, with a heavy
wreath of the fruit wound round it, the conventional outlines worn into
vagueness by the touch of time.
The old house was built of stone, the porous shell-conglomerate of that
coast. The thick blocks had been covered with an outer coat of plaster,
and painted a shadeless gray-white. The structure extended itself over a
large space of ground. Blank, unadorned, covered by a flat roof, without
so much as the projection of a cornice to break their monotony, the
walls stretched evenly round a parallelogram, and having but two stories
of height, looked low in comparison with their length. But the old house
in reality was not so large as it appeared to be, these same walls with
their lining of rooms enclosing an interior court which was open to the
sky; the windows of the inner sides looked down upon a low-curbed well,
a clump of bananas, a rose-bush, and an ancient stone seat with a hook
above it, where had hung in his cage, until he died of old age, Mrs.
Thorne's northern canary, who had accompanied his mistress southward on
her wedding journey to Florida.
Viewed from without, the gray-white abode had a peculiarly dumb aspect.
On the north side there were no windows; on the south, east, and west
the windows of the lower story, few at best, were covered by solid
wooden shutters, which, being all kept closed, and having the same hue
as the walls, could scarcely be distinguished from them. The windows of
the upper story were more numerous, but almost as jealously guarded; for
though their shutters were here and there partially open, one could see
that in a trice they could all be drawn to and barred within, and that
then the old mansion would present an unbroken white wall to all points
of the compass. But once allowed to pass the door, solidly set in the
stone, without top or side lights, the visitor perceived that these
rooms with exterior windows darkened, opened widely upon the sunny court
within. Some of them, indeed, did more. The inner walls of the
ground-floor had been cut away in four places, leaving rounded open
arches with pillars supporting the second story, and, under these
arcades, there were chairs and tables and even a sofa visible, articles
which presented to Evert Winthrop's eyes, each time he came, a picture
of tropical and doorless confidence in the temperature which struck him
as delightful. These arcades were not so unprotected as they appeared to
be. Still, as the months went by, it could be said with truth that they
remained, for five-sixths of the year, thus widely open. Evert Winthrop
had spent his childhood and youth in New England, he had visited all
parts of the great West, in later years he had travelled extensively in
the Old World; but this was his first visit to that lovely southern
shore of his own country which has a winter climate more enchanting than
any that Europe can offer; to match it, one must seek the Madeira
Islands or Algiers. In addition to this climate, Winthrop was beginning
to discover that there were other things as well--old Spanish houses
like the one through which he was now passing, a flavor of tradition and
legend, tradition and legend, too, which had nothing to do with Miles
Standish and his companions, or even with that less important personage,
Hendrik Hudson. There was--he could not deny it--a certain comparative
antiquity about this southern peninsula which had in it more richness of
color and a deeper perspective than that possessed by any of the rather
blank, near, little backgrounds of American history farther north. This
was a surprise to him. Like most New-Englanders, he had unconsciously
cherished the belief that all there was of historical importance, of
historical picturesqueness even, in the beginnings of the republic, was
associated with the Puritans from whom he was on his father's side
descended, was appended to their stately hats and ruffs, their wonderful
perseverance, their dignified orthography, the solemnities of their
speech and demeanor. And if, with liberality, he should stretch the
lines a little to include the old Dutch land-holders of Manhattan
Island, and the river up which the _Half-moon_ had sailed, that had
seemed to him all that could possibly be necessary; there was, indeed,
nothing else to include. But here was a life, an atmosphere, to whose
contemporary and even preceding existence on their own continent neither
Puritan nor Patroon had paid heed; and it was becoming evident that he,
their descendant, with all the aids of easy communication, and that
modern way of looking at the globe which has annihilated distance and
made a voyage round it but a small matter--even he, with all this help,
had not, respecting this beautiful peninsula of his own country,
developed perceptions more keen than those of these self-absorbed
ancestors--an appreciation more delicate than their obtuse one.
Winthrop's appreciation was good. But it had been turned, as regarded
historical and picturesque associations, principally towards the Old
World. He now went through a good deal of meditation upon this subject;
he was pleased, yet, on the whole, rather ashamed of himself. When
Raphael was putting into the backgrounds of his pictures those prim,
slenderly foliaged trees which he had seen from Perugino's windows in
his youth, the Spaniards were exploring this very Florida shore; yet
when he, Evert Winthrop, had discovered the same tall, thin trees (which
up to that time he had thought rather an affectation) from the
overhanging balcony of the little inn at Assisi--it had seemed to
overhang all Umbria--did he not think of Raphael's day as far back in
the past, and as completely remote from the possibility of any
contemporary history in America as America is remote from the future
great cities of the Sahara plains? And when, in Venice, he dwelt with
delight upon the hues of Titian and Veronese, was he not sure (though
without thinking of it) that in their day the great forests of his own
New World untrodden by the white man's foot, had stretched unbroken to
the sea? Because no Puritan with grave visage had as yet set sail for
Massachusetts Bay, he had not realized that here on this southern shore
had been towns and people, governors, soldiers, persecutions, and
priests.
"I presume you intend to show me everything in its worst possible
aspect," he said, as he joined Garda in the sunny court below. She was
waiting for him beside the bananas, which were here not full grown--tall
shrubs that looked, with their long-winged leaves standing out stiffly
from their stalks, like green quill-pens that a giant might use for his
sonnet-writing.
"No; I have withdrawn my guardianship--don't you remember? You must now
guard yourself."
"From the great temptations opening before me."
"They may be such to you; they are not to me. I think I have never met
any great temptations; I wonder when they will begin?"
They had crossed the court, and passed through a cool, dark,
stone-floored hall on the other side; here they went out through a low
door, which Raquel opened for them. Winthrop declined the white umbrella
which this stately handmaid offered him, and as Garda would not let him
carry the one she had taken, he walked on beside her with his hands in
the pockets of his short morning-coat, looking about him with enjoyment,
as he usually did at East Angels. The facade of the house which looked
towards the lagoon was broken by the small balcony, roofed and closely
shaded by green blinds, where they had been sitting, and where the
hammock was swung. This little green cage, hung up on the side of the
house, had no support from below; there was neither pillar nor trellis;
not even a vine wandered up to its high balustrade. The most agile Romeo
could not have climbed to it. But a Romeo, in any case, could not have
approached near enough to attempt such a feat, since a wide space of
open ground, without tree or shrub upon it, extended from the
house-walls outward to a certain distance on all sides. Winthrop had
already noticed these features--the heavy barred shutters of the lower
floor, the high-hung little balcony, the jealous open space--he had
pronounced them all very Spanish. He now looked about him again--at the
dumb old house, the silvery sheen of the lagoon, the feathery tops of
the palmettoes on Patricio opposite, the blue sky, and the sunny sea
stretching eastward to Africa. "I ask nothing more," he said at last.
"_This_ is content."
His companion glanced at him. "You do look wonderfully contented," she
commented.
"It amuses you? Perhaps it vexes you?"
"Neither. I was only wondering what there could be here to make you so
contented."
This little speech pleased the man beside her highly. He said to himself
that in the mind of a girl accustomed to the ways of the world, it would
have belonged to the list of speeches too obvious in application to be
made; while a little country coquette would have said it purposely. But
Garda Thorne had spoken both naturally and indifferently, without
thinking or caring as to what he might say in reply.
"I was remembering," he answered, "that at home all the rivers are
frozen over, not to speak of the water-pipes, and that ice-blocks are
grinding against each other in the harbor; is it any wonder, then, that
in this charming air I should be content? But there are various degrees
even in contentment, and I should reach a higher one still if you would
only let me carry that umbrella." For she had opened it, and was holding
it as women will, not high enough to admit him under its shade, but at
just the angle that kept him effectually at a distance on account of the
points which were dangerously on a level, now with his hat, now with his
collar, now with some undefended portion of his face. He had always
admired the serenity with which women will pass through a crowded
street, raking all the passers-by as they go with an umbrella held at
just that height, the height that suits themselves; smilingly and with
agreeable countenances they advance, without the least conception,
apparently, of the wild dodging they force upon all persons taller than
themselves, of the wrath and havoc they are leaving behind them.
"No man knows how to hold a sun-umbrella," answered Garda. "To begin
with, he never has the least idea where the sun is."
"I have learned that when you say 'To begin with,' there is small hope
for us. Might I offer the suggestion, humbly, that there may be other
methods of holding umbrellas in existence, besides those prevalent in
Gracias."
Garda laughed. Her laugh was charming, Winthrop had already noticed
that; it was not a laugh that could be counted upon, it did not come
often, or upon call. But when it did ripple forth it was a distinct
laugh, merry and sweet, and not the mere magnified smile, or the two or
three shrill little shouts in a descending scale, which do duty as
laughs from the majority of feminine lips. Its influence extended also
to her eyes, which then shot forth two bright beams to accompany it. "I
see that it will not do to talk to you as I talk to--to the persons
about here," she said.
"Are there many of them--these persons about here?"
"Four," replied Garda, promptly. "There is Reginald Kirby, surgeon. Then
there is the Reverend Mr. Moore, rector of St. Philip and St. James.
Then we have Adolfo Torres, from the Giron plantation, south of here,
and Manuel Ruiz, from Patricio, opposite."
"A tropical list," said Winthrop; "discouragingly tropical."
"But I'm tropical myself," Garda responded.
She was taking him through a narrow path, between what had once been
hedges, but were now high tangled walls, overrun with the pointed leaves
of the wild smilax. The girl had a light step, but if light, it was not
quick; it could have been best described, perhaps, by the term
unhurrying, a suggestion of leisure lay in each motion, from the poise
of the small head to the way the pretty feet moved over the path or
floor. Winthrop disliked a hurried step, he disliked also a tardy one;
the step that is light but at the same time leisurely--this seemed to
him to mark the temperament that gets the most out of life as a whole,
certainly the most of pleasure, often too the most of attainment. Garda
Thorne had this step. In her case, probably, there had been more of
pleasure than of attainment. She did not indeed strike one as a person
who had given much thought to attainment, whether of scholarship or
housewifely skill, of needle-work or graceful accomplishments, or even
of that balance of conscience, that trained obedience of the mind, which
are so much to many of her sisters farther north. But these same sisters
farther north would have commented, probably, commented from the long,
rocky coast of New England, and from the many intelligent communities of
the Middle States, that no woman need trouble herself about attainment,
or anything else, if she were as beautiful as Edgarda Thorne.
For in their hearts women always know that of all the gifts bestowed
upon their sex that of beauty has so immeasurably the greatest power
that nothing else can for one moment be compared with it, that all other
gifts, of whatsoever nature and extent, sink into insignificance and
powerlessness beside it. It is, of course, to the interest of domestic
men, the good husbands and fathers who are satisfied with home comforts
and home productions, and desire nothing so much as peace at the
hearth-stone, to deny this fact, to qualify it as much as possible, and
reduce its universality. But the denials of these few, contented,
low-flying gentlemen are lost in the great tide of world-wide agreement,
and no one is deceived by them, save, in occasional instances, their own
wives, who in that case have been endowed by nature with much faith (or
is it self-complacence?), and powers of observation not much beyond
those of the oyster. But on that long New England coast already spoken
of, and in those pleasant, pretty towns of the Middle States,
observation has been keenly cultivated, and self-complacence held in
abeyance by much analysis. All the northern sisters who lived there
would probably have answered again, and with one voice, that with simply
the most ordinary good qualities in addition, a girl as beautiful as
Edgarda Thorne would carry all before her in any case.
Garda was of medium height, but her litheness made her seem tall. This
litheness had in it none of the meagre outlines of the little mother,
its curves were all moulded with that soft roundness which betrays a
southern origin. But the observer was not left to this evidence alone,
there was further and indisputable proof in her large, dark, beautiful,
wholly Spanish eyes. She had, in truth, been well described by Mrs.
Thorne's phrase--"the portrait of her Spanish grandmother, painted in
English colors." The tints of her complexion were very different from
the soft, unchanging, creamy line which had been one of the beauties of
the beautiful Ines de Duero; Garda's complexion had the English
lightness and brightness. But it was not merely pink and white; there
were browns under its warm fairness--browns which gave the idea that it
was acquainted with the open air, the sun, the sea, and enjoyed them
all. It never had that blue look of cold which mars at times the beauty
of all women who are delicately fair; it never had the fatal shade of
yellow that menaces the brunette. It was a complexion made for all times
and all lights; pure and clear, it had also a soft warmth of color which
was indescribably rich. The lustrous black braids of Ines de Duero had
been changed in her grand-daughter to braids equally thick, but in color
a bright brown; not the brown that is but golden hair grown darker, nor
that other well-known shade, neither light nor dark, which covers the
heads of so many Americans that it might almost be called the national
color; this brown had always been bright, had never changed; the head of
the little Garda of two years old had showed a flossy mass of the same
hue. This hair curled slightly through all its length, which gave the
braids a rippled appearance. It had, besides, the beauty of growing low
and thickly at the temples and over the forehead. The small head it
covered was poised upon a throat which was not a mere point of union, an
unimportant or lean angle to be covered by a necklace or collar; this
throat was round, distinct in outline, its fairness beautiful not only
in front, but also behind, under and at the edges of the hair where the
comb had lifted the thick, soft mass and swept it up to take its place
in the braids above. Garda's features were fine, but they were not of
the Greek type, save that the beautiful forehead was low; the mouth was
not small, the lips full, delicately curved. When she smiled, these lips
had a marked sweetness of expression. They parted over brilliantly white
teeth, which, with the colors in her hair and complexion, were the
direct gifts of English ancestors, as her dark eyes with their long,
curling, dark lashes, the thickness of her brown braids, her rounded
figure with its graceful unhurrying gait and high-arched little feet,
were inheritances from the Dueros.
But written words are not the artist's colors; they can never paint the
portrait which all the world can see. A woman may be described, and by a
truthful pen, as possessing large eyes, regular features, and so on
through the list, and yet that woman may move through life quite without
charm, while another who is chronicled, and with equal truthfulness, as
having a profile which is far from showing accordance with artists'
rules, may receive through all her days the homage paid to loveliness
alone. The bare catalogue of features, tints, and height does not
include the subtle spell whose fulness crowns the one, while its lack
mars the other, and a narrator, therefore, while allowing himself as
detailed a delineation as it pleases him to give, should set down
plainly at the end the result, the often mysterious and unexpected
whole, which the elements he has described have, in some occult manner,
combined to produce. "There was an enchantment in her expression,"
"There was an irresistible sweetness about her;" these phrases tell more
than the most minute record of hue and outline; they place the reader
where he would be were the living, breathing presence before him,
instead of the mere printed page.
But in the case of Garda Thorne it could have been said that she had not
only brilliant beauty, but the loveliness which does not always
accompany it. There was sufficient regularity in her face to keep from
it the term irregular; but it had also all the changing expressions, all
the spirit, all the sweetness, which faces whose features are not by
rule often possess. She had undoubtedly a great charm, a charm which no
one had as yet analyzed; she was not a girl who turned one's thoughts
towards analysis, one was too much occupied in simply admiring her. She
was as open as the day, her frankness was wonderful; it would have been
said of her by every one that she had an extraordinary simplicity, were
it not that the richness of her beauty threw over her a sort of
sumptuousness which did not accord with the usual image of pure, rather
meagre limpidity called up by the use of that word.
Evert Winthrop, beholding her for the first time in the little Episcopal
church of Gracias, had said to himself that she was the most beautiful
girl (viewing the matter impersonally) whom he had ever seen.
Impersonally, because he would have set down his personal preference as
decidedly for something less striking, for eyes of blue rather than
black, eyes which should be not so much lustrous as gentle, for smooth
hair of pale gold, a forehead and eyebrows like those of a Raphael
Madonna. He was sure, also, that he much preferred slenderness; even a
certain virginal thinness and awkwardness he could accept, it might be
part of the charm. A friend of his, a lady older than himself, upon
hearing him express these sentiments not long before, had remarked that
they shed a good deal of light backward over his past. When he asked her
what she meant, she added that a liking for little wild flowers in a man
of the world of his age, and an indifference to tea-roses, did not so
much indicate a natural simplicity of taste as something quite apart
from that--too long an acquaintance, perhaps, with the heavily perfumed
atmosphere of conservatories.
"I don't know what you are trying to make me out," Winthrop had
answered, laughing.
"I make you out a very good fellow," replied the lady. "But you are like
my husband (who is also a very good fellow); he wonders how I can go to
the theatre, plays are so artificial. I suppose they are artificial; but
I notice that it required his closest--I may almost say his
nightly--attention for something like fifteen years to find it out."
Winthrop happened to think of this little conversation--he knew not
why--as he followed his guide through her green-walled path, which had
now become so narrow that he could no longer walk by her side. As it
came up in his mind he said to himself that here was a tea-rose, growing
if not quite in the seclusion of untrodden forests where the wild
flowers have their home, then at least in natural freedom, in the pure
air and sunshine, under the open sky. There was--there could be--nothing
of the conservatory, nothing artificial, in the only life Edgarda Thorne
had known, the life of this remote southern village where she had been
born and brought up. Her knowledge of the world outside was--must
be--confined to the Spanish-tinted legends of the slumberous little
community, to the limited traditions of her mother's small experience,
and to the perceptions and fancies of her own imagination; these last,
however numerous they might be in themselves, however vivid, must leave
her much in the condition of a would-be writer of dramas who has never
read a play nor seen one acted, but has merely evolved something vaguely
resembling one from the dreaming depths of his own consciousness;
Garda's idea of the world beyond the barrens must be equally vague and
unreal. And then, as he looked at her, sweet-natured and indifferent,
walking onward with her indolent step over her own land, under the low
blue sky, it came over him suddenly that probably she had not troubled
herself to evolve anything, to think much of any world, good or bad,
outside of her own personality. And he said to himself that wherever she
was would be world enough for most men. In which class, however, he
again did not include Evert Winthrop.
The path made a sudden turn, and stopped. It had brought them to the
borders of a waste.
"This was one of the sugar fields," said Garda, with her little air of
uninterested proprietorship.
Two old roads, raised on embankments, crossed the level, one from north
to south, the other from east to west. The verge upon which they stood
had once been a road also, though now narrowed and in some places
blocked by the bushes which had grown across it. "A little farther on,
beyond that point, you will find our ruin," said Garda. "There will not
be time to sketch it, I will wait for you here."
"You are deserting me very soon."
"I am not deserting you at all, I intend to take you remorselessly over
the entire place. But there are thorns in those bushes, and thorns are
dangerous."
"I know it, I am already wounded."
"I mean that the briers might tear my dress," explained Miss Thorne,
with dignity.
This stately rejection of so small and, as it were, self-made a pun
entertained her companion highly; it showed how unfamiliar she was with
the usual commonplaces. Talking with her would be not unlike talking
with a princess in a fairy tale--one of those who have always lived
mysteriously imprisoned in a tower; such a damsel, regarding her own
rank, would be apt to have a standard which might strike the first comer
as fantastically high. His entertainment, however, was not visible as,
with a demeanor modelled upon the requirements of her dignity, he bent
back the thorny bushes of the green cape, and made a passageway for her
round its point. When his little roadway was finished, she came over it
with her leisurely step, as though (he said to himself) it and the whole
world, including his own poor individuality, belonged to her by
inherited right, whenever she should choose to claim them. He was well
aware that he was saying to himself a good many things about this girl;
but was it not natural--coming unexpectedly upon so much beauty, set in
so unfamiliar a frame? It was a new portrait, and he was fond of
portraits; in picture-galleries he always looked more at the portraits
than at anything else.
On the opposite side of the thorny cape the ruin came into view,
standing back in a little arena of its own. Two of its high stone walls
remained upright, irregularly broken at the top, and over them clambered
a vine with slender leaves and long curling sprays that thrust
themselves boldly out into the air, covered with bell-shaped, golden
blossoms. This was the yellow jessamine, the lovely wild jessamine of
Florida.
"You will look at it, please, from the other side," announced Garda; "it
looks best from there. There will not be time to sketch it."
"Why do you keep taking it for granted that I sketch? Do I look like an
artist?"
"Oh no; I've never seen an artist, but I'm sure you don't look like one.
I suppose you sketch simply because I suppose northerners can do
everything; I shall be fearfully disappointed if they cannot--when I see
them."
"Do you wish to see them?"
"I wish to see hundreds," answered Miss Thorne, with great deliberation,
"I wish to see thousands. I wish to see them at balls; I have never seen
a ball. I wish to see them driving in parks; I have never seen a park. I
wish to see them climbing mountains; I have never seen a mountain--"
"They don't do it in droves, you know," interpolated her companion.
"--I wish to see them in the halls of Congress; I have never seen
Congress. I wish to see them at the Springs; I have never seen Springs.
I wish to see them wearing diamonds; I have never seen diamonds--"
"The last is a wish easily gratified. In America, as one may say, the
diamond's the only wear," remarked Winthrop, taking out a little
linen-covered book.
Garda did not question this assertion, which reduced her own
neighborhood to so insignificant an exception to a general rule that it
need not even be mentioned. To her Florida was Florida. America? That
was quite another country.
"You are going to sketch, after all," said the girl. She looked about
her for a conveniently shaped fragment among the fallen blocks, and,
finding one, seated herself, leaning against a second sun-warmed
fragment which she took as her chair's back. "I thought I mentioned that
there would not be time," she added, indolently, in her sweet voice.
"It will take but a moment," answered Winthrop. "I am no artist, as you
have already mentioned; but, plainly, as a northerner, I must do
something, or fall hopelessly below your expectations. There is no
mountain here for me to climb, there is no ball at which I can dance.
I'm not a Congressman and can't tell you about the 'halls,' and I
haven't a diamond to my name, not one. Clearly, therefore, I must
sketch; there is nothing else left." And with slow, accurate touch he
began to pencil an outline of the flower-starred walls upon his little
page. Garda, the handle of her white umbrella poised on one shoulder,
watched him from under its shade. He did not look up nor break the
silence, and after a while she closed her eyes and sat there motionless
in the flower-perfumed air. Thus they remained for fully fifteen
minutes, and Winthrop, going on with his work, admired her passiveness,
he had never before seen the ability to maintain undisturbed an easy
silence in a girl so young. True, the silence had in it something of
that same element of indifference which he had noted in her before; but
one could pardon her that for her tranquillity, which was so charming
and so rare.
"Ah--sketching?" said a voice, breaking the stillness. "Yes--yes--the
old mill has, I suppose, become an object of antiquity; we must think of
it now as venerable, moss-grown."
Garda opened her eyes. "Jessamine-grown," she said, extending her hand.
The new-comer, whose footsteps had made no sound on the sand as he came
round the cape of thorns, now crossed the arena, and made a formal
obeisance over the little glove; then he threw back his shoulders, put
his hands behind him, and remained standing beside her with a
protecting, hospitable air, which seemed to include not only herself and
the stranger artist, but the ruin, the sky, the sunshine, and even to
bestow a general benediction upon the whole long, warm peninsula itself,
stretching like a finger pointing southward from the continent's broad
palm into the tropic sea.
But now Miss Thorne laid her white umbrella upon the heap of fallen
blocks beside her, and rose; she did this as though it were something of
a trouble, but a trouble that was necessary. She walked forward several
steps, and turned first towards the new-comer, then towards the younger
gentleman. "Let me present to you, Doctor, Mr. Evert Winthrop, of New
York," she said, formally. "Mr. Winthrop, this is our valued friend, Mr.
Reginald Kirby, surgeon, of Gracias-a-Dios." She then returned to her
seat with the air of one who had performed an important task.
Dr. Kirby now advanced and offered his hand to Winthrop. He was a little
man, but a little man with plenty of presence; he bore--if one had an
eye for such things--a general resemblance to a canary-bird. He had a
firm, plump little person, upon which his round, partly bald head
(visible as he stood with hat doffed) was set, with scarcely any
intervention of neck; and this plump person was attired in
nankeen-colored clothes. His face showed a small but prominent aquiline
nose, a healthily yellow complexion, and round, bright black eyes. When
he talked he moved his head briskly to and fro upon his shoulders, and
he had a habit of looking at the person he was addressing with one eye
only, his face almost in profile, which was most bird-like of all. In
addition, his legs were short in proportion to his body, and he stood on
his small, well-shaped feet much as a canary balances himself on his
little claws.
"I am delighted to meet you, sir," he said to Winthrop. "I esteem it a
fortunate occurrence, most fortunate, which brought me to East Angels
this evening to pay my respects to Mistress Thorne, thus obtaining for
myself, in addition, the pleasure of your acquaintance. Mistress Thorne
having mentioned to me that you were making a little tour of the place
with Miss Garda, I offered to bear you company during a portion, at
least, of your progress, for Miss Garda, though possessing an
intelligence delicately keen, may not (being feminine) remember to
present you with the statistics, the--as I may say--historical items,
which would naturally be interesting to a northerner of discrimination."
The Doctor had a fine voice; his words were borne along on it like
stately ships on the current of a broad river.
"Do not praise me too highly," said the possessor of the delicate
intelligence, from her block. "I could never live up to it, you know."
"Miss Thorne has said many interesting things," answered Winthrop, "but
she has not as yet, I think, favored me with anything historical; her
attention has perhaps been turned rather more to the agricultural side."
"Agricultural?" said Kirby, bringing to bear upon Winthrop a bright left
eye.
"He is making sport of me," explained Garda, laughing.
"Pooh! pooh!" said the Doctor, raising himself a little, first on his
toes, then on his heels, thus giving to his plump person a slightly
balancing motion to and fro. "A little more seriousness, Garda, my
child; a little more seriousness." Then, with his hands behind him, he
turned to Winthrop to present, in his full tones, one of the historical
items of which he had spoken. "These walls, Mr. Winthrop, whose
shattered ruins now rise before you, once formed part of a large
sugar-mill, which was destroyed by the Indians during the Seminole war.
This province, sir, has had a vast deal of trouble with her Indians--a
vast deal. The nature of the country has afforded them every protection,
and clogged pursuit with monstrous difficulties, which, I may add, have
never been in the least appreciated by those unfamiliar with the ground.
The records of our army--I speak, sir, of the old army," said the
Doctor, after a moment's pause, making his little explanation with a
courteous wave of the hand, which dismissed, as between himself and the
guest of Mistress Thorne, all question as to the army which was
newer--"these records, sir, are full of stories of the most harassing
campaigns, made up and down this peninsula by our soldiers, in
pursuit--vain pursuit--of a slippery, creeping, red-skinned, damnable
foe. Canebrake, swamp, hammock; hammock, swamp, canebrake; ague,
sunstroke, everglade; fever, scalping, ambuscade; and
massacre--massacre--massacre!--such, sir, are the terms that succeed
each other endlessly on those old pages; words that represent, I venture
to say, more bravery, more heroic and unrequited endurance, than formed
part of many a campaign that shines out to-day brilliantly on history's
lying scroll. Yet who knows anything of them? I ask you, who?" The
Doctor's fine voice was finer still in indignation.
"As it happens, by a chance, I do," answered Winthrop. "A cousin of my
father's was in some of those campaigns. I well remember the profound
impression which the Indian names in his letters used to make upon me
when a boy--the Withlacoochee, the Caloosahatchee, the Suwannee, the
Ocklawaha; they seemed to me to represent all that was tropical and wild
and far, far away."
"They represented days of wading up to one's waist in stiff marsh-grass
and water, sir. They represented rattlesnakes, moccasins, and adders,
sir. They represented every plague of creation, from the mosquito down
to the alligator, that great pig of the Florida waters. They represented
long, fruitless tramps over the burning barrens, with the strong
probability of being shot down at the last by a cowardly foe, skulking
behind a tree," declaimed the Doctor, still indignant. "But this cousin
of yours--would you do me the favor of his name?"
"Carey--Richard Carey."
"Ah! Major Carey, without doubt," said the little gentleman, softening
at once into interest. "Allow me--was he sometimes called Dizzy Dick?"
"I am sorry to say that I have heard that name applied to him," answered
Winthrop, smiling.
"Sir, you need not be," responded the other man, with warmth; "Dizzy
Dick was one of the finest and bravest gentlemen of the old army. My
elder brother Singleton--Captain Singleton Kirby--was of his regiment,
and knew and loved him well. I am proud to take a relative of his by the
hand--proud!" So saying, the Doctor offered his own again, and the two
men went gravely through the ceremony of friendship a second time, under
the walls of the old mill.
"Returning to our former subject," began the Doctor again--"for I hope
to have many further opportunities for conversation with you concerning
your distinguished relative--I should add, while we are still beside
this memento, that the early Spanish settlers of this coast--"
"As a last wish," interrupted Garda, in a drowsy voice, "wait for the
resurrection."
"As a last wish?" said the Doctor, turning his profile towards her with
his head on one side, in his canary-bird way.
"Yes. I see that you have begun upon the history of the Spaniards in
Florida, and as I shall certainly fall asleep, I think I ought to
protect, as far as possible beforehand, my own especial ancestors," she
answered, still somnolent; "they always have that effect upon me--the
Spaniards in Florida." And as she slowly pronounced these last words the
long lashes drooped over her eyes, she let her head fall back against
the block behind her, and was apparently lost in dreams.
In this seeming slumber she made a lovely picture. But its chief charm
to Evert Winthrop lay in the fact that it had in it so much more of the
sportiveness of the child than of the consciousness of the woman. "I am
interested in the old Spaniards, I confess," he said, "but not to the
extent of allowing them to put you to sleep in this fashion. We will
leave them where they are for the present (of course Elysium), and ask
you to take us to the crane; his powers of entertainment are evidently
greater than our own." And he offered his hand as if to assist her to
rise.
"I am not quite gone yet," replied Garda, laughing, as she rose without
accepting it. "But we must take things in their regular order, the
magnolias come next; the crane, as our greatest attraction, is kept for
the last." And she led the way along a path which brought them to a
grove of sweet-gum-trees; the delicately cut leaves did not make a thick
foliage, but adorned the boughs with lightness, each one visible on its
slender stalk; the branches were tenanted by a multitude of little
birds, whose continuous carols kept the air filled with a shower of fine
small notes.
"How they sing!" said Winthrop. "I am amazed at myself for never having
been in Florida before. The Suwannee River can't be far from here.
"''Way down upon de Suwannee River,
Far, far away--'
I must confess that Nilsson's singing it is the most I know about it."
"Nilsson!" said Garda, envyingly.
"You, sir, are too young, unfortunately too young, to remember the
incomparable Malibran," said Dr. Kirby. "Ah! there was a voice!" And
with recollections too rich for utterance, he shook his head several
times, and silently waved his hand.
"Oh, when shall _I_ hear something or somebody?" said Garda.
"We shall accomplish it, we shall accomplish it yet, my dear child,"
said the Doctor, coming briskly back to the present in her behalf.
"Malibran is gone. Her place can never be filled. But I hope that you
too may cross the seas some day, and find, if not the atmosphere of the
grand style, which was hers and perished with her, at least an
atmosphere more enlarging than this. And there will be other
associations open to you in those countries besides the
musical--associations in the highest degree interesting; you can pay a
visit, for instance, to the scenes described in the engaging pages of
Fanny Burney, incomparably the greatest, and I fear, from the long
dearth which has followed her, the last of female novelists. For who is
there since her day worthy to hold a descriptive pen, and what has been
written that is worth our reading? With the exception of some few things
by two or three ladies of South Carolina, which I have had the privilege
of seeing, and which exist, I regret to say, only in manuscript as yet,
I know of nothing--no one."
Winthrop glanced at Garda to see if her face would show merriment over
the proposed literary pilgrimage. But no, the young girl accepted Miss
Burney calmly; she had heard the Doctor declaim on the subject all her
life, and was accustomed to think of the lady as a celebrated historical
character, as school-boys think of Helen of Troy.
Beyond the grove, they came to the Levels. Great trees rose here,
extending their straight boughs outward as far as they could reach,
touching nothing but the golden air. For each stood alone, no neighbor
near; each was a king. Black on the ground beneath lay the round mass of
shadow they cast. Above, among the dense, dark foliage, shone out
occasional spots of a lighter green; and this was the mistletoe. Besides
these monarchs there were sinuous lines of verdure, eight and ten feet
in height, wandering with grace over the plain. Most of the space,
however, was free--wide, sunny glades open to the sky. The arrangement
of the whole, of the great single trees, the lines of lower verdure, and
the sunny glades, was as beautiful as though Art had planned and Time
had perfected the work. Time's touch was there, but Art had had nothing
to do with it. Each tree had risen from the ground where it and Nature
pleased; birds, perhaps, with dropped seeds, had been the first planters
of the lower growths. Yet it was not primeval; Winthrop, well used to
primeval things, and liking them (to gratify the liking he had made more
than one journey to the remoter parts of the great West), detected this
at once. Open and free as the Levels were, he could yet see, as he
walked onward, the signs of a former cultivation antecedent to all this
soft, wild leisure. His eye could trace, by their line of fresher green,
the course of the old drains crossing regularly from east to west; the
large trees were sometimes growing from furrows which had been made by
the plough before their first tiny twin leaves had sprouted from the
acorn which had fallen there. "How stationary things are here!" he said,
half admiringly. He was thinking of the ceaseless round of change and
improvement which went on, year after year, on the northern farms he
knew, of the thrift which turned every inch of the land to account, and
made it do each season its full share. The thrift, the constant change
and improvement, were best, of course; Winthrop was a warm believer in
the splendid industries of the great republic to which he belonged;
personally, too, there was nothing of the idler in his temperament.
Still, looked at in another way, the American creed for the moment
dormant, there was something delightfully restful in the indolence of
these old fields, lying asleep in the sunshine with the low furrows of a
hundred years before stretching undisturbed across them. Here was no
dread, no eager speed before the winter. It was, in truth, the absence
of that icy task-master which gave to all the lovely land its appearance
of dreaming leisure. Growing could begin at any time; why, then, make
haste?
"All this ground was once under cultivation," said the Doctor. "The
first Edgar Thorne (your great-grandfather, Garda) I conjecture to have
been a man of energy, who improved the methods of the Dueros; these
Levels probably had a very different aspect a hundred years ago."
"A hundred years ago--yes, that was the time to have lived," said Garda.
"I wish I could have lived a hundred years ago!"
"I don't know what we can do," said Winthrop. "Perhaps Dr. Kirby would
undertake for a while the stately manners of your Spanish ancestors; I
could attempt, humbly, those of the British colonist; I haven't the
high-collared coat of the period, but I would do my best with the
high-collared language which has been preserved in literature. Pray take
my arm, and let me try."
Garda, looking merrily at the Doctor, accepted it.
"Arms were not taken in those days," said the Doctor, stiffly. "Ladies
were led, delicately led, by the tips of their fingers." He was not
pleased with Garda's ready acceptance; but they had kept her a child,
and she did not know. He flattered himself that it would be an easy
matter to bring about a withdrawal of that too freely accorded hand from
the northerner's arm; he, Reginald Kirby, man of the world and noted for
his tact, would be able to accomplish it. In the mean while, the hand
remained where it was.
Beyond the Levels they came to the edge of a bank. Below, the ground
descended sharply, and at some distance forward on the lower plateau
rose the great magnolias, lifting their magnificent glossy foliage high
in the air. "The Magnolia Grandiflora," said the Doctor, as if
introducing them. "You no doubt feel an interest in these
characteristically southern trees, Mr. Winthrop, and if you will walk
down there and stand under them for a moment--the ground is too wet for
your little shoes, Garda--you will obtain a very good idea of their
manner of growth."
Miss Thorne made no objection to this suggestion. But neither did she
withdraw her hand from Winthrop's arm.
"I can see them perfectly from here," answered that gentleman. "They are
like tremendous camellias."
"When they are in bloom, and all the sweet-bays too, it is superb," said
Garda; "then is the time to come here, the perfume is enchanting."
"Too dense," said the Doctor, shaking his head disapprovingly; "it's
fairly intoxicating."
"That is what I mean," Garda responded. "It's as near as I can come to
it, you know; I have always thought I should love to be intoxicated."
"What is your idea of it?" said Winthrop, speaking immediately, in order
to prevent the Doctor from speaking; for he saw that this gentleman was
gazing at Garda with amazement, and divined the solemnity his words
would assume after he should have got his breath back.
"I hardly know how to describe my idea," Garda was answering. "It's a
delicious forgetting of everything that is tiresome, an enthusiasm that
makes you feel as if you could do anything--that takes you way above
stupid people. Stupid people are worse than thieves."
"You describe the intoxication, or rather, to give it a better name, the
inspiration of genius," said Winthrop; "all artists feel this
inspiration at times--musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, all who
have in them a spark, great or small, of the creative fire; even I, when
with such persons--as by good fortune I have been once or twice--have
been able to comprehend a little of it, have caught, by reflection at
least, a tinge of its glow."
"Oh, if _you_ have felt it, it is not at all what I mean," answered
Garda, with one of her sudden laughs. She drew her hand from his arm,
and walked down the slope across the lower level towards the magnolias.
As soon as her back was turned, Dr. Kirby tapped Winthrop on the back
impressively, and raising himself on tiptoe, spoke in his ear. "She has
never, sir, been near--I may say, indeed, that she has never _seen_--an
intoxicated person in her life." He then came down to earth again, and
folding his arms, surveyed the northerner challengingly.
"Of course I understood that," Winthrop answered.
When Garda reached the dark shade under the great trees she paused and
turned. Winthrop had followed her. She gave him a bright smile as he
joined her. "I wanted to see if you would come," she said, with her
usual frankness.
"Of course I came; what did you suppose I would do?"
"I did not know, that was what I wanted to find out. You are so
different, I should never know."
"Different from whom? From your four persons about here? I assure you
that I am not different, I have no such pretension; your four are
different, perhaps, but I am like five thousand, fifty thousand,
others--as you will see for yourself when you come north."
"I don't believe it," said Garda, beginning to retrace her steps. She
looked at him reflectively, then added, "I don't believe they are like
you."
"What is it in me that you dislike so much?"
"Oh, I haven't thought whether I dislike it or not," responded Garda,
with what he called in his own mind her sweet indifference. "What I
meant was simply that I do not believe there are fifty thousand, or
five thousand, or even five hundred other men, who are as cold as you
are."
"Do I strike you in that way?"
"Yes; but of course you cannot help it, it is probably a part of your
nature--this coldness," said the girl, excusingly. "It was that which
made me say that you could never have felt the feeling I was trying to
describe, you know--intoxication; it needs a certain sort of
temperament; I have it, but you haven't."
"I see you are an observer," said her companion, inwardly smiling, but
preserving a grave face.
"Yes," responded Garda, serenely, "I observe a great deal; it helps to
pass the time."
"You have opportunities for exercising the talent?"
"Plenty."
"The four persons about here?"
Garda's laugh rippled forth again. "My poor four--how you make sport of
them! But I should have said five, because there is the crane, and he is
the wisest of all; he is wiser than any one I know, and more systematic,
he is more systematic even than you are, which is saying a great deal.
His name is Carlos Mateo, and you must be careful not to laugh at him
when he dances, for a laugh hurts his feelings dreadfully. His feelings
are very deep; you might not think so from a first glance, but that will
be because you have not looked deep into his eyes--taken him round the
neck and peered in. He has a great deal of expression; you have none at
all--what has become of it? Did you never have any, or have you worn it
all out? Perhaps you keep it for great occasions. But there will be no
great occasions here."
"No, great occasions are at the North, where they are engaged in
climbing mountains, walking on frozen lakes, wearing diamonds, and
attending the halls of Congress," Winthrop answered.
Dr. Kirby was waiting for them on the bank, he had not stained his
brightly polished little boots with the damp earth of the lower level.
He had surveyed with inward disfavor the thick-soled walking shoes of
the northerner, and the rough material of his gray clothes. The
northerner's gloves were carelessly rolled together in his pocket, but
the Doctor's old pair were on.
Garda led the way westward along the bank. After they had proceeded some
distance, in single file owing to the narrowness of the path, she
suddenly left her place, and, passing the Doctor, took Winthrop's hand
in hers. "Close your eyes," she commanded; "I am going to lead you to a
heavenly wall."
Winthrop obeyed; but retarded his steps.
"How slow you are!" she said, giving his hand a little pull.
"It's a wild country for a blind man," Winthrop answered, continuing to
advance with caution. "Please take both hands."
"Let me lead him, Garda," said the Doctor, preferring to join in this
child's play rather than have her continue it alone.
But the child's play was over, the bend in the path had been but a short
one, and they were now before her "heavenly wall." Winthrop, upon being
told to open his eyes--he had perhaps kept them closed longer than was
absolutely necessary--found himself standing before a wall of verdure,
fifteen feet high, composed of a mass of shining little leaves set
closely together in an almost even expanse; this lustrous green was
spangled with white flowers widely open, the five petals laid flatly
back like a star.
"The Cherokee rose," said Dr. Kirby. He had been greatly vexed by
Garda's freak of taking Winthrop's hands and pulling him along, and as
he added, explanatorily, "the wild white rose of the South," he glanced
at him to see how he, as a northerner and stranger, regarded it.
But the stranger and northerner was gazing at the southern flowers with
an interest which did not appear to depend at all upon the southern girl
who had brought him thither.
Garda remained but a moment; while they were looking at the roses she
walked slowly on, following her heavenly wall.
"She is but a child," said the Doctor, looking after her. "We have
perhaps kept her one too long."
"On the contrary, that is her charm," replied Winthrop. "How old is
she?"
"Barely sixteen. If her father had lived, it would perhaps have been
better for her; she would have had in that case, probably, more
seriousness--a little more. Mistress Thorne's ideas concerning the
training of children are admirable, most admirable; but they presuppose
a certain kind of child, and Garda wasn't that kind at all; I may say,
indeed, the contrary. Mistress Thorne has therefore found herself at
fault now and then, her precedents have failed her; she has been met by
perplexities, sometimes I have even thought her submerged in them and
floundering--if I may use such an expression of the attitude of a
cultured lady. The truth is, her perceptions have been to blame."
"Yet I have thought her perceptions unusually keen," said Winthrop.
"So they are, so they are; but they all advance between certain lines,
they are narrow. Understand me, however--I would not have them wider; I
was not wishing that, I was only wishing that poor Edgar, the father,
could have lived ten years longer. Too wide a perception, sir, in a
woman, a perception of things in general--general views in short--I
regard as an open door to immorality; women so endowed are sure to go
wrong--as witness Aspasia. It was a beautiful provision of nature that
made the feminine perceptions, as a general rule, so limited, so
confined to details, to the opinions and beliefs of their own families
and neighborhoods; in this restricted view lies all their safety."
"And ours?" suggested Winthrop.
"Ah, you belong to the new school of thought, I perceive," observed the
Doctor, stroking his smoothly shaven chin with his plump gloved hand.
The two men had begun to walk onward again, following their guide who
was now at the end of the rose wall. Here she disappeared; when they
reached the spot they found that she had taken a path which turned
northward along a little ridge--a path bordered on each side by stiff
Spanish-bayonets.
"Garda's education, however, has been, on the whole, good," said the
Doctor, as they too turned into this aisle. "Mistress Thorne, who was
herself an instructress of youth before her marriage, has been her
teacher in English branches; Spanish, of course, she learned from the
Old Madam; my sister Pamela (whom I had the great misfortune to lose a
little over a year ago) gave her lessons in embroidery, general
deportment, and the rudiments of French. As regards any knowledge of the
world, however, the child has lived in complete ignorance; we have
thought it better so, while things remain as they are. My own advice has
decidedly been that until she could enter the right society, the society
of the city of Charleston, for instance--it was better that she should
see none at all; she has therefore lived, and still continues to live,
the life, as I may well call it, of a novice or nun."
"The young gentleman who has just joined her is then, possibly, a monk?"
observed Winthrop.
The Doctor was near-sighted, and not at all fond of his spectacles; with
his bright eyes and quickly turning glance, it humiliated him to be
obliged to take out and put on these cumbrous aids to vision. On this
occasion, however, he did it with more alacrity than was usual with him.
"Ah," he said, when he had made out the two figures in front, "it is
only young Torres, a boy from the next plantation."
"A well-grown boy," commented the northerner.
"A mere stripling--a mere stripling of nineteen. He has but lately come
out from Spain (a Cuban by birth, but was sent over there to be
educated), and he cannot speak one word of English, sir--not one word."
"I believe Miss Thorne speaks Spanish, doesn't she?" remarked Winthrop.