He thought more and more on this subject, for Marie, her first timidity
got over, began to ask him artless questions about his home.
He told her that his family consisted of five members. He had a brother
older than himself, who was a lawyer in Boston. He was married, but had
no children, and he lived in the old family mansion on Beacon Hill,
with his two sisters, Maud and Edith, who were respectively nineteen
and seventeen, and had not quit the school-room yet. The fifth person
was Mrs. Wilson, their governess.
"Maud is the elder. She is quite talented, and is writing a novel," he
said. "Edith is an embryo artist. My brother's wife is very pretty and
fashionable. I hope you will like them all."
But a shudder crept over him at the thought of taking home a bride into
that refined and cultured circle to place her in the school-room, to
begin at the bottom of the ladder of learning. How shocked they would
be, how his brother's wife would lift her pale brows in wonder! He
dreaded her more than all the rest, for two reasons. One was that she
had brought a little money into the once rich, but now impoverished Van
Zandt family, and took airs on that account, and the other was that she
had a pretty sister with a _dot_, and wanted to make a match between
her and her brother-in-law. So Eliot fancied, and with some reason,
that she would not take kindly to the new-comer.
The further he got away from New Orleans, the more he was tormented by
his dread of his home-folks.
At last he made up his mind to give Marie some sight-seeing in New
York, and to write to his brother, and, to some extent, prepare them
for the shock they were to receive.
When the letter was written and posted, he felt better. He had
explained matters and invoked their good-will for his simple
child-wife. However much they were disappointed, they would respect his
wishes, they would not be unkind to Marie.
So he gave himself up with a light heart to the pleasure of showing her
the wonders of New York City.
Several days were spent there, and then he took her to Niagara Falls
for a few days more. He judged by that time that they would have got
over the shock in Boston, and be ready, perhaps, to receive Marie with
equanimity.
In this hope, he took the train for Boston with his little bride.
Throughout their long journey Van Zandt had adhered to his manly
resolve of treating his little bride simply as a dear friend or young
sister until she should have awakened from a child into a woman and
given her heart unreservedly with a wifely love.
On the steamer she had her separate state-room, at hotels her solitary
suite of rooms, on the trains her comfortable Pullman sleeping-car,
while the chivalrous young husband lounged away the long hours in a
smoking-car with his favorite cigar. The young bride, in her ignorance
and innocence, had not an idea but that this was the usual mode of
procedure with husband and wife, and thoroughly enjoyed the long
journey and the varied scenery through which she was being whirled.
Its newness and the strong contrast to her Southern home made it all
the more delightful. Eliot Van Zandt enjoyed her delight, her naïve
questions, and even her utter ignorance of everything, although he
sometimes caught himself wondering at the fact. But the truth was,
that the girl's invariably well-chosen sentences, acquired from
companionship with refined and well-bred people, made him often forget
that she was totally uneducated, and that years of school-room drudgery
yet lay before her ere she could take her place in the cultured world
of Boston society.
"There is one comfort. She is exceedingly intelligent, quick, and
receptive. She will learn very fast," he told himself.
One evening, at Niagara, when they sat together admiring the glorious
falls by moonlight, she said to him, curiously:
"You said once that if you could have chosen my name, it would not have
been Marie. Tell me what you would have called me?"
Turning to her with a smile, he replied:
"The name that I always fancied I should like for my wife to bear was
the sweet one of Una--no sweeter, I know, than Marie, but I grew to
love the name from reading Spenser's 'Faëry Queen.'"
Then he told her the pretty story, as well as he could, of the
beautiful Una who personified Truth in the "Faëry Queen." She listened
with sparkling eyes and eager interest.
"From this hour I shall be called Una," she exclaimed.
"But you have been baptized Marie," he said.
"It shall be Una Marie, then," she replied, in her pretty, positive
fashion, and he was pleased to assent.
"From this hour, then, I shall call you Una, and you shall call me
Eliot."
"But, monsieur--" deprecatingly.
"No more monsieurs," he replied, playfully. "They remind me too much of
Madame Lorraine."
"It shall be Eliot, then, always," answered the little bride.