Ynne London citye was I borne,
Of parents of grete note;
My fadre dydd a nobile arms
Emblazon onne hys cote.
CHATTERTON.
In the snuggest and best private room of the House at
Montepoole, a party of ladies and gentlemen were gathered,
awaiting the return of the sportsmen. The room had been made
as comfortable as any place could be in a house built for "the
season," after the season was past. A splendid fire of hickory
logs was burning brilliantly and making amends for many
deficiencies; the closed wooden shutters gave the reality if
not the look of warmth, for though the days might be fine and
mild, the mornings and evenings were always very cool up there
among the mountains; and a table stood at the last point of
readiness for having dinner served. They only waited for the
lingering woodcock hunters.
It was rather an elderly party, with the exception of one
young man whose age might match that of the absent two. He was
walking up and down the room with somewhat the air of having
nothing to do with himself. Another gentleman, much older,
stood warming his back at the fire, feeling about his jaws and
chin with one hand, and looking at the dinner-table in a sort
of expectant reverie. The rest, three ladies, sat quietly
chatting. All these persons were extremely different from one
another in individual characteristics, and all had the
unmistakable mark of the habit of good society; as difficult
to locate, and as easy to recognise, as the sense of _freshness_
which some ladies have the secret of diffusing around
themselves; no definable sweetness, nothing in particular,
but making a very agreeable impression.
One of these ladies, the mother of the perambulating young
officer, (he was a class-mate of Rossitur's,) was extremely
plain in feature, even more than _ordinary_. This plainness was
not, however, devoid of sense, and it was relieved by an
uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of heart. In her
son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of
heart retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of
his nature; for it very rarely showed itself in open
expression; that is, to an eye keen in reading the natural
signs of emotion; for it cannot be said that his manner had
any want of amenity or politeness.
The second lady, the wife of the gentleman on the hearth-rug,
or rather on the spot where the hearth-rug should have been,
was a strong contrast to this mother and son; remarkably
pretty, delicate, and even lovely; with a black eye, however,
that though in general soft, could show a mischievous sparkle
upon occasion; still young, and one of those women who always
were and always will be pretty and delicate at any age.
The third had been very handsome, and was still a very elegant
woman, but her face had seen more of the world's wear and
tear. It had never known placidity of expression, beyond what
the habitual command of good-breeding imposed. She looked
exactly what she was, a perfect woman of the world. A very
good specimen, for Mrs. Carleton had sense and cultivation,
and even feeling enough, to play the part very gracefully; yet
her mind was bound in the shackles of "the world's" tyrannical
forging, and had never been free; and her heart bowed
submissively to the same authority.
"Here they are! Welcome home," exclaimed this lady, as her son
and his friend at length made their appearance; "Welcome
home we are all famishing; and I don't know why in the world
we waited for you, for I am sure you don't deserve it. What
success? What success, Mr. Rossitur?"
"Faith, Ma'am, there's little enough to boast of, as far as I
am concerned. Mr. Carleton may speak for himself."
"I am very sorry, Ma'am, you waited for me," said that
gentleman. "I am a delinquent, I acknowledge. The day came to
an end before I was at all aware of it."
"It would not do to flatter you so far as to tell you why we
waited," said Mrs. Evelyn's soft voice. And then perceiving
that the gentleman at whom she was looking gave her no answer,
she turned to the other. "How many woodcock, Mr. Rossitur?"
"Nothing to show, Ma'am," he replied. "Didn't see a solitary
one. I heard some partridges, but I didn't mean to have room
in my bag for them."
"Did you find the right ground, Rossitur?"
"I had a confounded long tramp after it if I didn't," said the
discomfited sportsman, who did not seem to have yet recovered
his good humour.
"Were you not together?" said Mrs. Carleton. - "Where were
you, Guy?"
"Following the sport another way, Ma'am; I had very good
success, too."
"What's the total?" said Mr. Evelyn. "How much game did you
bag?"
"Really, Sir, I didn't count. I can only answer for a bagful."
"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Rossitur, bursting forth,
"What will you say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted
me and the sport in a most unceremonious manner, and that he,
the cynical philosopher, the reserved English gentleman, the
gay man of the world, you are all of 'em by turns, aren't
you, Carleton? _he!_ has gone and made a very cavaliero
servente of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to-
day in helping a little girl pick up chestnuts."
"Mr. Carleton would be a better man if he were to spend a good
many more days in the same manner," said that gentleman, drily
enough. But the entrance of dinner put a stop to both laughter
and questioning for a time, all of the party being well
disposed to their meat.
When the pickerel from the lakes, and the poultry and half-
kept joints had had their share of attention, and a pair of
fine wild ducks were set on the table, the tongues of the
party found something to do besides eating.
"We have had a very satisfactory day among the Shakers, Guy,"
said Mrs. Carleton; "and we have arranged to drive to Kenton
to-morrow I suppose you will go with us?"
"With pleasure, mother, but that I am engaged to dinner about
five or six miles in the opposite direction."
"Engaged to dinner! what with this old gentleman where you
went last night? And you too, Mr. Rossitur?"
"I have made no promise, Ma'am; but I take it I must go."
"Vexatious! Is the little girl going with us, Guy?"
"I don't know yet I half apprehend, yes; there seems to be a
doubt in her grandfather's mind, not whether he can let her
go, but whether he can keep her, and that looks like it."
"Is it your little cousin who proved the successful rival of
the woodcock to-day, Charlton?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "What is
she?"
"I don't know, Ma'am, upon my word. I presume Carleton will
tell you she is something uncommon and quite remarkable."
"Is she, Mr. Carleton?"
"What, Ma'am?"
"Uncommon?"
"Very."
"Come? That _is_ something, from _you_," said Rossitur's brother
officer, Lieut. Thorn.
"What's the uncommonness?" said Mrs. Thorn, addressing herself
rather to Mr. Rossitur as she saw Mr. Carleton's averted eye;
"Is she handsome, Mr. Rossitur?"
"I can't tell you, I am sure, Ma'am. I saw nothing but a nice
child enough, in a calico frock, just such as one would see in
any farm-house. She rushed into the room when she was first
called to see us, from somewhere in distant regions, with an
immense iron ladle a foot and a half long in her hand, with
which she had been performing unknown feats of housewifery;
and they had left her head still encircled with a halo of
kitchen smoke. If, as they say, 'coming events cast their
shadows before,' she was the shadow of supper."
"O, Charlton, Charlton!" said Mrs. Evelyn, but in a tone of
very gentle and laughing reproof, "for shame! What a
picture! and of your cousin!"
"Is she a pretty child, Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton, who did not
relish her son's grave face.
"No, Ma'am something more than that."
"How old?"
"About ten or eleven."
"That's an ugly age."
"She will never be at an ugly age."
"What style of beauty?"
"The highest that degree of mould and finish which belongs
only to the finest material."
"That is hardly the kind of beauty one would expect to see in
such a place," said Mrs. Carleton. "From one side of her
family, to be sure, she has a right to it."
"I have seen very few examples of it anywhere," said her son.
"Who were her parents?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Her mother was Mrs. Rossitur's sister her father"
"Amy Charlton!" exclaimed Mrs. Evelyn, "Oh, I knew her! Was
Amy Charlton her mother? O, I didn't know whom you were
talking of. She was one of my dearest friends. Her daughter
may well be handsome she was one of the most lovely persons
I ever knew; in body and mind both. O, I loved Amy Charlton
very much. I must see this child."
"I don't know who her father was," Mrs. Carleton went on.
"Oh, her father was Major Ringgan," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I never
saw him, but I have heard him spoken of in very high terms. I
always heard that Amy married very well."
"Major Ringgan!" said Mrs. Thorn; "his name is very well
known; he was very distinguished."
"He was a self-made man, entirely," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a
tone that conveyed a good deal more than the simple fact.
"Yes, he was a self-made man," said Mrs. Thorn, "but I should
never think of that where a man distinguishes himself so much;
he was very distinguished."
"Yes, and for more than officer-like qualities," said Mrs.
Evelyn. "I have heard his personal accomplishments as a
gentleman highly praised."
"So that little Miss Ringgan's right to be a beauty may be
considered clearly made out," said Mr. Thorn.
"It is one of those singular cases," said Mr. Carleton, "where
purity of blood proves itself, and one has no need to go back
to past generations to make any inquiry concerning it."
"Hear him!" cried Rossitur; "and for the life of me I could
see nothing of all this wonder. Her face is not at all
striking."
"The wonder is not so much in what it is, as in what it
indicates," said Mr. Carleton.
"What does it indicate?" said his mother.
"Suppose you were to ask me to count the shades of colour in a
rainbow," answered he.
"Hear him!" cried Thorn, again.
"Well, I hope she will go with us, and we shall have a chance
of seeing her," said Mrs. Carleton.
"If she were only a few years older, it is my belief you would
see enough of her, Ma'am," said young Rossitur.
The haughty coldness of Mr. Carleton's look, at this speech,
could not be surpassed.
"But she has beauty of feature, too, has she not?" Mrs.
Carleton asked again of her son.
"Yes, in very high degree. The contour of the eye and brow I
never saw finer."
"It is a little odd," said Mrs. Evelyn, with the slightest
touch of a piqued air, (she had some daughters at home)
"that is a kind of beauty one is apt to associate with high
breeding, and certainly you very rarely see it anywhere else;
and Major Ringgan, however distinguished and estimable, as I
have no doubt he was, and this child must have been brought
up with no advantages, here in the country."
"My dear madam," said Mr. Carleton, smiling a little, "this
high breeding is a very fine thing, but it can neither be
given nor bequeathed; and we cannot entail it."
"But it can be taught, can't it?"
"If it could be taught, it is to be hoped it would be oftener
learned," said the young man, drily.
"But what do we mean, then, when we talk of the high breeding
of certain classes and families? and why are we not
disappointed when we look to find it in connection with
certain names and positions in society?"
"I do not know," said Mr. Carleton.
"You don't mean to say, I suppose, Mr. Carleton," said Thorn,
bridling a little, "that it is a thing independent of
circumstances, and that there is no value in blood?"
"Very nearly answering the question as you understand it."
"May I ask how you understand it?"
"As you do, Sir."
"Is there no high breeding then in the world?" asked good-
natured Mrs. Thorn, who could be touched on this point of
family.
"There is very little of it. What is commonly current under
the name, is merely counterfeit notes which pass from hand to
hand of those who are bankrupt in the article."
"And to what serve, then," said Mrs. Evelyn, colouring, "the
long lists of good old names which even you, Mr. Carleton, I
know, do not disdain?"
"To endorse the counterfeit notes," said Mr. Carleton,
smiling.
"Guy, you are absurd!" said his mother. "I will not sit at the
table and listen to you if you talk such stuff. What do you
mean?"
"I beg your pardon, mother, you have misunderstood me," said
he, seriously. "Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary
conformity to what the world requires, but of that fine
perfection of mental and moral constitution, which, in its own
natural necessary acting, leaves nothing to be desired, in
every occasion or circumstance of life. It is the pure gold,
and it knows no tarnish; it is the true coin, and it gives
what it proffers to give; it is the living plant ever
blossoming, and not the cut and art-arranged flowers. It is a
thing of the mind altogether; and where nature has not
curiously prepared the soil, it is in vain to try to make it
grow. _This_ is not very often met with!"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Carleton; " but you are so
fastidiously nice in all your notions! at this rate nothing
will ever satisfy you."
"I don't think it is so very uncommon," said Mrs. Thorn. "It
seems to me one sees as much of it as can be expected, Mr.
Carleton."
Mr. Carleton pared his apple with an engrossed air.
"O no, Mrs. Thorn," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't agree with you
I don't think you often see such a combination as Mr.
Carleton has been speaking of very rarely! But, Mr.
Carleton, don't you think it is generally found in that class
of society where the habits of life are constantly the most
polished and refined?"
"Possibly," answered he, diving into the core of his apple.
"No, but tell me; I want to know what you think."
"Cultivation and refinement have taught people to recognize
and analyze and imitate it; the counterfeits are most current
in that society; but as to the reality, I don't know; it is
nature's work, and she is a little freaky about it."
"But, Guy!" said his mother, impatiently, "this is not selling
but giving away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of
birth if breeding is not supposed to go along with it? Where
the parents have had intelligence and refinement, do we not
constantly see them inherited by the children? and in an
increasing degree from generation to generation?"
"Very extraordinary!" said Mrs. Thorn.
"I do not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother,
believe me, nor deny the general doctrine; though intelligence
does not always descend, and manners die out, and that
invaluable legacy, a name, may be thrown away. But this
delicate thing we are speaking of is not intelligence nor
refinement, but comes rather from a happy combination of
qualities, together with a peculiarly fine nervous
constitution; the _essence_ of it may consist with an omission,
even with an awkwardness, and with a sad ignorance of
conventionalities."
"But even if that be so, do you think it can ever reach its
full development but in the circumstances that are favourable
to it?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Probably not often; the diamond in some instances wants the
graver; but it is the diamond. Nature seems now and then to
have taken a princess's child and dropped it in some odd
corner of the kingdom, while she has left the clown in the
palace."
"From all which I understand," said Mr. Thorn, "that this
little chestnut girl is a princess in disguise."
"Really, Carleton!" Rossitur began.
Mrs. Evelyn leaned back in her chair, and quietly eating a
piece of apple, eyed Mr. Carleton with a look half amused and
half discontented, and behind all that, keenly attentive.
"Take for example those two miniatures you were looking at
last night, Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on; "Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette what would you have more unrefined,
more heavy, more _animal_, than the face of that descendant of a
line of kings?"
Mrs. Evelyn bowed her head acquiescingly, and seemed to enjoy
her apple.
"_He_ had a pretty bad lot of an inheritance, sure enough, take
it all together," said Rossitur.
"Well," said Thorn, "is this little stray princess as well-
looking as t'other miniature?"
"Better, in some respects," said Mr. Carleton, coolly.
"Better!" cried Mrs. Carleton.
"Not in the brilliancy of her beauty, but in some of its
characteristics; better in its promise."
"Make yourself intelligible, for the sake of my nerves, Guy,"
said his mother. "Better looking than Marie Antoinette!"
"My unhappy cousin is said to be a fairy, Ma'am," said Mr.
Rossitur; "and I presume all this may be referred to
enchantment."
"That face of Marie Antoinette's," said Mr. Carleton, smiling,
"is an undisciplined one uneducated."
"Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.
"Don't mistake me, mother, I do not mean that it shows any
want of reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained
character a mind unprepared for the exigencies of life."
"She met those exigencies indifferently well, too," observed
Mr. Thorn.
"Ay but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some
of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for
that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and
gracefully a part in ordinary life."
"Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton.
"Certainly, mother but I am comparing faces."
"Well the other face?"
"It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but to
compare them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a
superb exotic that has come to its brilliant perfection of
bloom in a hothouse it would lose its beauty in the strong
free air it would change and droop if it lacked careful
waiting upon and constant artificial excitement; the other,"
said Mr. Carleton, musingly, "is a flower of the woods,
raising its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil
where fortune has placed it, with an air of quiet patient
endurance; a storm wind may bring it to the ground, easily,
but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again,
unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and
sweetness to the end."
"The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur, "if I only had a place
for her. I don't like pale elegancies."
"I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton,"
said Mr. Thorn.
"Mr. Carleton has done that already," said Mrs. Evelyn,
smoothly.
"I never heard you talk so before, Guy," said his mother,
looking at him. His eyes had grown dark with intensity of
expression while he was speaking, gazing at visionary flowers
or beauties through the dinner-table mahogany. He looked up
and laughed as she addressed him, and rising, turned off
lightly with his usual air.
"I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton," Mrs. Evelyn whispered as
they went from the table, "that this little beauty is not a
few years older."
"Why?" said Mrs. Carleton, "If she is all that Guy says, I
would give anything in the world to see him married."
"Time enough," said Mrs. Evelyn, with a knowing smile.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Carleton, "I think he would be
happier. He is a restless spirit nothing satisfies him.
nothing fixes him. He cannot rest at home he abhors politics
he flits away from country to country and doesn't remain
long anywhere."
"And you with him."
"And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not
persuade him to stay at home."
"I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn,
slyly.
"I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never
disappointed me."
"No, of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead
him."
"No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton,
with a smile, that was anything but an ungratified one. "He
never wanted driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may
try it; and while you think you are going to gain your end, if
he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that he is
leading you. It is so with everybody in some inexplicable
way."
Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable, as
far as the mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.