"Will you buy any tape,
Or lace for your cape?--
Come to the peddler,
Money's a meddler
That doth utter all men's ware-a."--_Winter's Tale._
There they sat, those four young creatures, a perfect galaxy of bright
and beaming eyes. There was not a plain face among them; and I was
struck with the circumstance of how rare it was to meet with a youthful
and positively ugly American female. Kitty, too, was at the door by the
time we reached the carriage, and she also was a blooming and
attractive-looking girl. It was a thousand pities that she spoke,
however; the vulgarity of her utterance, tone of voice, cadences, and
accents, the latter a sort of singing whine, being in striking contrast
to a sort of healthful and vigorous delicacy that marked her appearance.
All the bright eyes grew brighter as I drew nearer, carrying the flute
in my hand; but neither of the young ladies spoke.
"Buy a vatch, ma'ams," said uncle Ro, approaching his mother, cap in
hand, with his box open.
"I thank you, friend; but I believe all here are provided with watches
already."
"Mine ist ferry sheaps."
"I dare say they may be," returned dear grandmother, smiling; "though
cheap watches are not usually the best. Is that very pretty pencil
gold?"
"Yes, ma'ams; it ist of goot gold. If it might not be I might not say
so."
I saw suppressed smiles among the girls; all of whom, however, were too
well-bred to betray to common observers the sense of the ridiculous that
each felt at the equivoque that suggested itself in my uncle's words.
"What is the price of this pencil?" asked my grandmother.
Uncle Roger had too much tact to think of inducing his mother to take a
purchase as he had influenced Miller, and he mentioned something near
the true value of the "article," which was fifteen dollars.
"I will take it," returned my grandmother, dropping three half-eagles
into the box; when, turning to Mary Warren, she begged her acceptance of
the pencil, with as much respect in her manner as if she solicited
instead of conferred a favor.
Mary Warren's handsome face was covered with blushes; she looked
pleased, and she accepted the offering, though I thought she hesitated
one moment about the propriety of so doing, most probably on account of
its value. My sister asked to look at this little present, and after
admiring it, it passed from hand to hand, each praising its shape and
ornaments. All my uncle's wares, indeed, were in perfect good taste, the
purchase having been made of an importer of character, and paid for at
some cost. The watches, it is true, were, with one or two exceptions,
cheap, as were most of the trinkets; but my uncle had about his person a
watch or two, and some fine jewelry, that he had brought from Europe
himself, expressly to bestow in presents, among which had been the
pencil in question, and which he had dropped into the box but a moment
before it was sold.
"Wa-a-l, Madam Littlepage," cried Miller, who used the familiarity of
one born on the estate, "this is the queerest watch-pedler I've met with
yet. He asks fifteen dollars for that pencil, and only four for this
watch!" showing his own purchase as he concluded.
My grandmother took the watch in her hand, and examined it attentively.
"It strikes me as singularly cheap!" she remarked, glancing a little
distrustfully, as I fancied, at her son, as if she thought he might be
selling his brushes cheaper than those who only stole the materials,
because he stole them ready made. "I know that these watches are made
for very little in the cheap countries of Europe, but one can hardly see
how this machinery was put together for so small a sum."
"I has 'em, matam, at all brices," put in my uncle.
"I have a strong desire to purchase a _good_ lady's watch, but should a
little fear buying of any but a known and regular dealer."
"You needn't fear us, ma'am," I ventured to say. "If we might sheat
anypodies, we shouldn't sheat so goot a laty."
I do not know whether my voice struck Patt's ear pleasantly, or a wish
to see the project of her grandmother carried out at once induced my
sister to interfere; but interfere she did, and that by urging her aged
parent to put confidence in us. Years had taught my grandmother caution,
and she hesitated.
"But all these watches are of base metal, and I want one of good gold
and handsome finish," observed my grandmother.
My uncle immediately produced a watch that he had bought of Blondel, in
Paris, for five hundred francs, and which was a beautiful little
ornament for a lady's belt. He gave it to my grandmother, who read the
name of the manufacturer with some little surprise. The watch itself was
then examined attentively, and was applauded by all.
"And what may be the price of this?" demanded my grandmother.
"One hoondred dollars, matam: and sheaps at dat."
Tom Miller looked at the bit of tinsel in his own hand, and at the
smaller, but exquisitely-shaped "article" that my grandmother held up to
look at, suspended by its bit of ribbon, and was quite as much puzzled
as he had evidently been a little while before, in his distinctions
between the rich and the poor. Tom was not able to distinguish the base
from the true; that was all.
My grandmother did not appear at all alarmed at the price, though she
cast another distrustful glance or two over her spectacles at the
imaginary pedler. At length the beauty of the watch overcame her.
"If you will bring this watch to yonder large dwelling, I will pay you
the hundred dollars for it," she said; "I have not as much money with me
here."
"Ja, ja--ferry goot; you might keep das vatch, laty, und I will coome
for der money after I haf got some dinners of somebodys."
My grandmother had no scruple about accepting of the credit, of course,
and she was about to put the watch in her pocket, when Patt laid her
little gloved hand on it, and cried--
"Now, dearest grandmother, let it be done at once--there is no one but
us three present, you know!"
"Such is the impatience of a child!" exclaimed the elder lady, laughing.
"Well, you shall be indulged. I gave you that pencil for a keepsake,
Mary, only _en attendant_, it having been my intention to offer a watch,
as soon as a suitable one could be found, as a memorial of the sense I
entertain of the spirit you showed during that dark week in which the
anti-renters were so menacing. Here, then, is such a watch as I might
presume to ask you to have the goodness to accept."
Mary Warren seemed astounded! The color mounted to her temples; then she
became suddenly pale. I had never seen so pretty a picture of gentle
female distress--a distress that arose from conflicting, but creditable
feelings.
"Oh! Mrs. Littlepage!" she exclaimed, after looking in astonishment at
the offering for a moment, and in silence. "You cannot have intended
that beautiful watch for me!"
"For you, my dear; the beautiful watch is not a whit too good for my
beautiful Mary."
"But, dear, _dear_ Mrs. Littlepage, it is altogether too handsome for my
station--for my means."
"A lady can very well wear such a watch; and you are a lady in every
sense of the word, and so you need have no scruples on that account. As
for the means, you will not misunderstand me if I remind you that it
will be bought with my means, and there can be no extravagance in the
purchase."
"But we are so poor, and that watch has so rich an appearance! It
scarcely seems right."
"I respect your feelings and sentiments, my dear girl, and can
appreciate them. I suppose you know I was once as poor, nay, much poorer
than you are yourself."
"You, Mrs. Littlepage! No, that can hardly be. You are of an affluent
and very respectable family, I know."
"It is quite true, nevertheless, my dear. I shall not affect extreme
humility, and deny that the Malbones did and do belong to the gentry of
the land, but my brother and myself were once so much reduced as to toil
with the surveyors, in the woods, quite near this property. We had then
no claim superior to yours, and in many respects were reduced much
lower. Besides, the daughter of an educated and well-connected clergyman
has claims that, in a worldly point of view alone, entitle her to a
certain consideration. You will do me the favor to accept my offering?"
"Dear Mrs. Littlepage! I do not know how to refuse _you_, or how to
accept so rich a gift! You will let me consult my father, first?"
"That will be no more than proper, my dear," returned my beloved
grandmother, quietly putting the watch into her own pocket; "Mr. Warren,
luckily, dines with us, and the matter can be settled before we sit down
to table."
This ended the discussion, which had commenced under an impulse of
feeling that left us all its auditors. As for my uncle and myself, it is
scarcely necessary to say we were delighted with the little scene. The
benevolent wish to gratify, on the one side, with the natural scruples
on the other, about receiving, made a perfect picture for our
contemplation. The three girls, who were witnesses of what passed, too
much respected Mary's feelings to interfere, though Patt restrained
herself with difficulty. As to Tom Miller and Kitty, they doubtless
wondered why "Warren's gal" was such a fool as to hesitate about
accepting a watch that was worth a hundred dollars. This was another
point they did not understand.
"You spoke of dinner," continued my grandmother, looking at my uncle.
"If you and your companion will follow us to the house, I will pay you
for the watch, and order you a dinner in the bargain."
We were right down glad to accept this offer, making our bows and
expressing our thanks, as the carriage whirled off. We remained a
moment, to take our leave of Miller.
"When you've got through at the Nest," said that semi-worthy fellow,
"give us another call here. I should like my woman and Kitty to have a
look at your finery, before you go down to the village with it."
With a promise to return to the farm-house, we proceeded on our way to
the building which, in the familiar parlance of the country, was called
the Nest, or the Nest house, from Ravensnest, its true name, and which
Tom Miller, in his country dialect, called the "Neest." The distance
between the two buildings was less than half a mile, the grounds of the
family residence lying partly between them. Many persons would have
called the extensive lawns which surrounded my paternal abode a park,
but it never bore that name with us. They were too large for a paddock,
and might very well have come under the former appellation; but, as
deer, or animals of any sort, except those that are domestic, had never
been kept within it, the name had not been used. We called them the
grounds--a term which applies equally to large and small enclosures of
this nature--while the broad expanse of verdure which lies directly
under the windows goes by the name of the lawn. Notwithstanding the
cheapness of land among us, there has been very little progress made in
the art of landscape gardening; and if we have anything like park
scenery, it is far more owing to the gifts of a bountiful nature than to
any of the suggestions of art. Thanks to the cultivated taste of
Downing, as well as to his well-directed labors, this reproach is likely
to be soon removed, and country life will acquire this pleasure, among
the many others that are so peculiarly its own. After lying for more
than twenty years--a stigma on the national taste--disfigured by ravines
or gullies, and otherwise in a rude and discreditable condition, the
grounds of the White House have been brought into a condition to denote
that they are the property of a civilized country. The Americans are as
apt at imitation as the Chinese, with a far greater disposition to admit
of change; and little beyond good models is required to set them on the
right track. But it is certain that, as a nation, we have yet to acquire
nearly all that belongs to the art I have mentioned that lies beyond
avenues of trees, with an occasional tuft of shrubbery. The abundance of
the latter, that forms the wilderness of sweets, the _masses_ of flowers
that spot the surface of Europe, the beauty of curved lines, and the
whole finesse of surprises, reliefs, backgrounds and vistas, are things
so little known among us as to be almost "arisdogratic," as my uncle Ro
would call the word.
Little else had been done at Ravensnest than to profit by the native
growth of the trees, and to take advantage of the favorable
circumstances in the formation of the grounds. Most travellers imagine
that it might be an easy thing to lay out a park in the virgin forest,
as the axe might spare the thickets, and copses, and woods, that
elsewhere are the fruits of time and planting. This is all a mistake,
however, as the rule; though modified exceptions may and do exist. The
tree of the American forest shoots upward toward the light, growing so
tall and slender as to be unsightly; and even when time has given its
trunk a due size, the top is rarely of a breadth to ornament a park or a
lawn, while its roots, seeking their nourishment in the rich alluvium
formed by the decayed leaves of a thousand years, lie too near the
surface to afford sufficient support after losing the shelter of its
neighbors. It is owing to reasons like these that the ornamental grounds
of an American country-house have usually to be commenced _ab origine_,
and that natural causes so little aid in furnishing them.
My predecessors had done a little toward assisting nature, at the Nest,
and what was of almost equal importance, in the state of knowledge on
this subject as it existed in the country sixty years since, they had
done little to mar her efforts. The results were, that the grounds of
Ravensnest possess a breadth that is the fruit of the breadth of our
lands, and a rural beauty which, without being much aided by art, was
still attractive. The herbage was kept short by sheep, of which one
thousand, of the fine wool, were feeding on the lawns, along the slopes,
and particularly on the distant heights, as we crossed the grounds on
our way to the doors.
The Nest house was a respectable New York country dwelling, as such
buildings were constructed among us in the last quarter of the past
century, a little improved and enlarged by the second and third
generations of its owners. The material was of stone, the low cliff on
which it stood supplying enough of an excellent quality; and the shape
of the main _corps de batiment_ as near a square as might be. Each face
of this part of the constructions offered five windows to view, this
being almost the prescribed number for a country residence in that day,
as three have since got to be in towns. These windows, however, had some
size, the main building being just sixty feet square, which was about
ten feet in each direction larger than was common so soon after the
revolution. But wings had been added to the original building, and that
on a plan which conformed to the shape of a structure in square logs,
that had been its predecessor on its immediate site. These wings were
only of a story and a half each, and doubling on each side of the main
edifice just far enough to form a sufficient communication, they ran
back to the very verge of a cliff some forty feet in height,
overlooking, at their respective ends, a meandering rivulet, and a wide
expanse of very productive flats, that annually filled my barns with hay
and my cribs with corn. Of this level and fertile bottomland there was
near a thousand acres, stretching in three directions, of which two
hundred belonged to what was called the Nest farm. The remainder was
divided among the farms of the adjacent tenantry. This little
circumstance, among the thousand-and-one other atrocities that were
charged upon me, had been made a ground of accusation, to which I shall
presently have occasion to advert. I shall do this the more readily,
because the fact has not yet reached the ears and set in motion the
tongues of legislators--heaven bless us, how words do get corrupted by
too much use!--in their enumeration of the griefs of the tenants of the
State.
Everything about the Nest was kept in perfect order, and in a condition
to do credit to the energy and taste of my grandmother, who had ordered
all these things for the last few years, or since the death of my
grandfather. This circumstance, connected with the fact that the
building was larger and more costly than those of most of the other
citizens of the country, had, of late years, caused Ravensnest to be
termed an "aristocratic residence." This word "aristocratic," I find
since my return home, has got to be a term of expansive signification,
its meaning depending on the particular habits and opinions of the
person who happens to use it. Thus, he who chews tobacco thinks it
aristocratic in him who deems the practice nasty not to do the same; the
man who stoops accuses him who is straight in the back of having
aristocratic shoulders; and I have actually met with one individual who
maintained that it was excessively aristocratic to pretend not to blow
one's nose with his fingers. It will soon be aristocratic to maintain
the truth of the familiar Latin axiom of "_de gustibus non disputandum
est_."
As we approached the door of the Nest house, which opened on the piazza
that stretched along three sides of the main building, and the outer
ends of both wings, the coachman was walking his horses away from it, on
the road that led to the stables. The party of ladies had made a
considerable circuit after quitting the farm, and had arrived but a
minute before us. All the girls but Mary Warren had entered the house,
careless on the subject of the approach of two pedlers; she remained,
however, at the side of my grandmother, to receive us.
"I believe in my soul," whispered uncle Ro, "that my dear old mother has
a secret presentiment who we are, by her manifesting so much respect.
T'ousand t'anks, matam, t'ousand t'anks," he continued, dropping into
his half-accurate, half-blundering broken English, "for dis great honor,
such as we might not expect das laty of das house to wait for us at her
door."
"This young lady tells me that she has seen you before, and that she
understands you are both persons of education and good manners, who have
been driven from your native country by political troubles. Such being
the case, I cannot regard you as common pedlers. I have known what it
was to be reduced in fortune"--my dear grandmother's voice trembled a
little--"and can feel for those who thus suffer."
"Matam, dere might be moch trut' in some of dis," answered my uncle,
taking off his cap, and bowing very much like a gentleman, an act in
which I imitated him immediately. "We _haf_ seen petter tays; und my
son, dere, hast peen edicated at an university. But we are now poor
pedlers of vatches, und dem dat might make moosic in der streets."
My grandmother looked as a lady would look under such circumstances,
neither too free to forget present appearances, nor coldly neglectful of
the past. She knew that something was due to her own household, and to
the example she ought to set it, while she felt that far more was due to
the sentiment that unites the cultivated. We were asked into the house,
were told a table was preparing for us, and were treated with a generous
and considerate hospitality that involved no descent from her own
character, or that of the sex; the last being committed to the keeping
of every lady.
In the meantime, business proceeded with my uncle. He was paid his
hundred dollars; and all his stores of value, including rings, brooches,
earrings, chains, bracelets, and other trinkets that he had intended as
presents to his wards, were produced from his pockets, and laid before
the bright eyes of the three girls--Mary Warren keeping in the
background, as one who ought not to look on things unsuited to her
fortune. Her father had arrived, however, had been consulted, and the
pretty watch was already attached to the girdle of the prettier waist. I
fancied the tear of gratitude that still floated in her serene eyes was
a jewel of a far higher price than any my uncle could exhibit.
We had been shown into the library, a room that was in the front of the
house, and of which the windows all opened on the piazza. I was at first
a little overcome at thus finding myself, and unrecognized, under the
paternal roof, and in a dwelling that was my own, after so many years of
absence. Shall I confess it! Everything appeared diminutive and mean,
after the buildings to which I had been accustomed in the old world. I
am not now drawing comparisons with the palaces of princes and the
abodes of the great, as the American is apt to fancy, whenever anything
is named that is superior to the things to which he is accustomed; but
to the style, dwellings, and appliances of domestic life that pertain to
those of other countries who have not a claim in anything to be
accounted my superiors--scarcely my equals. In a word, American
aristocracy, or that which it is getting to be the fashion to stigmatize
as aristocratic, would be deemed very democratic in most of the nations
of Europe. Our Swiss brethren have their chateaux and their habits, that
are a hundred times more aristocratic than anything about Ravensnest,
without giving offence to liberty; and I feel persuaded, were the
proudest establishment in all America pointed out to a European as an
aristocratic abode, he would be very apt to laugh at it, in his sleeve.
The secret of this charge among ourselves is the innate dislike which is
growing up in the country to see any man distinguished from the mass
around him in anything, even though it should be in merit. It is nothing
but the expansion of the principle which gave rise to the traditionary
feud between the "plebeians and patricians" of Albany at the
commencement of this century, and which has now descended so much
farther than was then contemplated by the _soi-disant_ "plebeians" of
that day, as to become quite disagreeable to their own descendants. But
to return to myself--
I will own that, so far from finding any grounds of exultation in my own
aristocratical splendor, when I came to view my possessions at home, I
felt mortified and disappointed. The things that I had fancied really
respectable, and even fine, from recollection, now appeared very
commonplace, and in many particulars mean. "Really," I found myself
saying, _sotto voce_, "all this is scarcely worthy of being the cause of
deserting the right, setting sound principles at defiance, and of
forgetting God and his commandments!" Perhaps I was too inexperienced to
comprehend how capacious is the maw of the covetous man, and how
microscopic the eye of envy.
"You are welcome to Ravensnest," said Mr. Warren, approaching and
offering his hand in a friendly way, much as he would address any other
young friend; "we arrived a little before you, and I have had my ears
and eyes open ever since, in the hope of hearing your flute, and of
seeing your form in the highway, near the parsonage, where you promised
to visit me."
Mary was standing at her father's elbow, as when I first saw her, and
she gazed wistfully at my flute, as she would not have done had she seen
me in my proper attire, assuming my proper character.
"I danks you, sir," was my answer. "We might haf plenty of times for a
little moosic, vhen das laties shall be pleaset to say so. I canst blay
'Yankee Doodle,' 'Hail Coloombias,' and der 'Star Spangled Banner,' und
all dem airs, as dey so moch likes at der taverns and on der road."
Mr. Warren laughed, and he took the flute from my hand, and began to
examine it. I now trembled for the incognito! The instrument had been
mine for many years, and was a very capital one, with silver keys,
stops, and ornaments. What if Patt--what if my dear grandmother should
recognize it! I would have given the handsomest trinket in my uncle's
collection to get the flute back again into my own hands; but, before an
opportunity offered for that, it went from hand to hand, as the
instrument that had produced the charming sounds heard that morning,
until it reached those of Martha. The dear girl was thinking of the
jewelry, which, it will be remembered, was rich, and intended in part
for herself, and she passed the instrument on, saying, hurriedly:
"See, dear grandmother, this is the flute which you pronounced the
sweetest-toned of any you had ever heard!"
My grandmother took the flute, started, put her spectacles closer to her
eyes, examined the instrument, and turned pale--for her cheeks still
retained a little of the color of their youth--and then cast a glance
hurriedly and anxiously at me. I could see that she was pondering on
something profoundly in her most secret mind, for a minute or two.
Luckily the others were too much occupied with the box of the pedler to
heed her movements. She walked slowly out of the door, almost brushing
me as she passed, and went into the hall. Here she turned, and, catching
my eye, she signed for me to join her. Obeying this signal, I followed,
until I was led into a little room, in one of the wings, that I well
remembered as a sort of private parlor attached to my grandmother's own
bedroom. To call it a _boudoir_ would be to caricature things, its
furniture being just that of the sort of room I have mentioned, or of a
plain, neat, comfortable, country parlor. Here my grandmother took her
seat on a sofa, for she trembled so she could not stand, and then she
turned to gaze at me wistfully, and with an anxiety it would be
difficult for me to describe.
"Do not keep me in suspense!" she said, almost awfully in tone and
manner, "am I right in my conjecture?"
"Dearest grandmother, you are!" I answered in my natural voice.
No more was needed: we hung on each other's necks, as had been my wont
in boyhood.
"But who is that pedler, Hugh?" demanded my grandmother, after a time.
"Can it possibly be Roger, my son?"
"It is no other; we have come to visit you, incog."
"And why this disguise?--Is it connected with the troubles?"
"Certainly; we have wished to take a near view with our own eyes, and
supposed it might be unwise to come openly, in our proper characters."
"In this you have done well; yet I hardly know how to welcome you, in
your present characters. On no account must your real names be revealed.
The demons of tar and feathers, the sons of liberty and equality, who
illustrate their principles as they do their courage, by attacking the
few with the many, would be stirring, fancying themselves heroes and
martyrs in the cause of justice, did they learn you were here. Ten armed
and resolute men might drive a hundred of them, I do believe; for they
have all the cowardice of thieves, but they are heroes with the unarmed
and feeble. Are you safe yourselves, appearing thus disguised, under the
new law?"
"We are not armed, not having so much as a pistol; and that will protect
us."
"I am sorry to say, Hugh, that this country is no longer what I once
knew it. Its justice, if not wholly departed, is taking to itself wings,
and its blindness, not in a disregard of persons, but in a faculty of
seeing only the stronger side. A landlord, in my opinion, would have but
little hope, with jury, judge, or executive, for doing that which
thousands of the tenants have done, still do, and will continue to do,
with perfect impunity, unless some dire catastrophe stimulate the public
functionaries to their duties, by awakening public indignation."
"This is a miserable state of things, dearest grandmother; and what
makes it worse is the cool indifference with which most persons regard
it. A better illustration of the utter selfishness of human nature
cannot be given, than in the manner in which the body of the people look
on, and see wrong thus done to a few of their number."
"Such persons as Mr. Seneca Newcome would answer, that the public
sympathizes with the poor, who are oppressed by the rich, because the
last do not wish to let the first rob them of their estates! We hear a
great deal of the strong robbing the weak, all over the world, but few
among ourselves, I am afraid, are sufficiently clear-sighted to see how
vivid an instance of the truth now exists among ourselves."
"Calling the tenants the strong, and the landlords the weak?"
"Certainly; numbers make strength in this country, in which all power in
practice, and most of it in theory, rests with the majority. Were there
as many landlords as there are tenants, my life on it, no one would see
the least injustice in the present state of things."
"So says my uncle; but I hear the light steps of the girls--we must be
on our guard."
At that instant Martha entered, followed by all three of the girls,
holding in her hand a very beautiful Manilla chain that my uncle had
picked up in his travels, and had purchased as a present to my future
wife, whomsoever she might turn out to be, and which he had had the
indiscretion to show to his ward. A look of surprise was cast by each
girl in succession, as she entered the room, on me, but neither said,
and I fancy neither thought much of my being shut up there with an old
lady of eighty, after the first moment. Other thoughts were uppermost at
the moment.
"Look at this, dearest grandmamma!" cried Patt, holding up the chain as
she entered the room. "Here is just the most exquisite chain that was
ever wrought, and of the purest gold; but the pedler refuses to part
with it!"
"Perhaps you do not offer enough, my child; it is, indeed, very, very
beautiful; pray what does he say is its value?"
"One hundred dollars, he says; and I can readily believe it, for its
weight is near half the money. I do wish Hugh were at home; I am certain
he would contrive to get it, and make it a present to me!"
"Nein, nein, young lady," put in the pedler, who, a little
unceremoniously, had followed the girls into the room, though he knew,
of course, precisely where he was coming; "dat might not be. Dat chain
is der broperty of my son, t'ere, und I haf sworn it shalt only be gifen
to his wife."
Patt colored a little, and she pouted a good deal; then she laughed
outright.
"If it is only to be had on those conditions, I am afraid I shall never
own it," she said, saucily, though it was intended to be uttered so low
as not to reach my ears. "I will pay the hundred dollars out of my own
pocket-money, however, if that will buy it. Do say a good word for me,
grandmamma?"
How prettily the hussy uttered that word of endearment, so different
from the "paw" and "maw" one hears among the dirty-noses that are to be
found in the mud-puddles! But our grandparent was puzzled, for she knew
with whom she had to deal, and of course saw that money would do
nothing. Nevertheless, the state of the game rendered it necessary to
say and do something that might have an appearance of complying with
Patty's request.
"Can I have more success in persuading you to change your mind, sir?"
she said, looking at her son in a way that let him know at once, or at
least made him suspect at once, that she was in his secret. "It would
give me great pleasure to be able to gratify my granddaughter, by making
her a present of so beautiful a chain."
My uncle Ro advanced to his mother, took the hand she had extended with
the chain in it, in order the better to admire the trinket, and he
kissed it with a profound respect, but in such a manner as to make it
seem to the lookers-on an act of European usage, rather than what it
was, the tempered salute of a child to his parent.
"Laty," he then said, with emphasis, "if anyboty might make me change a
resolution long since made, it would be one as fenerable, und gracious,
und goot as I am sartain you most be. But I haf vowet to gif dat chain
to das wife of mine son, vhen he might marry, one day, some bretty young
American; und it might not be."
Dear grandmother smiled; but now she understood that it was really
intended the chain was to be an offering to my wife, she no longer
wished to change its destination. She examined the bauble a few moments,
and said to me:
"Do you wish this, as well as your un--father, I should say? It is a
rich present for a poor man to make."
"Ja, ja, laty, it ist so; but vhen der heart goes, golt might be t'ought
sheap to go wid it."
The old lady was half ready to laugh in my face, at hearing this attempt
at Germanic English; but the kindness, and delight, and benevolent
tenderness of her still fine eyes made me wish to throw myself in her
arms again, and kiss her. Patt continued to _bouder_ for a moment or two
longer, but her excellent nature soon gave in, and the smiles returned
to her countenance as the sun issues from behind a cloud in May.
"Well, the disappointment may and must be borne," she said,
good-naturedly; "though it is much the most lovely chain I have ever
seen."
"I dare say the right person will one day find one quite as lovely to
present to you!" said Henrietta Coldbrooke, a little pointedly.
I did not like this speech. It was an allusion that a well-bred young
woman ought not to have made, at least before others, even pedlers; and
it was one that a young woman of a proper tone of feeling would not be
apt to make. I determined from that instant the chain should never
belong to Miss Henrietta, though she was a fine, showy girl, and though
such a decision would disappoint my uncle sadly. I was a little
surprised to see a slight blush on Patt's cheeks, and then I remembered
something of the name of the traveller, Beekman. Turning toward Mary
Warren, I saw plain enough that she was disappointed because my sister
was disappointed, and for no other reason in the world.
"Your grandmother will meet with another chain, when she goes to town,
that will make you forget this," she whispered, affectionately, close at
my sister's ears.
Patt smiled, and kissed her friend with a warmth of manner that
satisfied me these two charming young creatures loved each other
sincerely. But my dear old grandmother's curiosity had been awakened,
and she felt a necessity for having it appeased. She still held the
chain, and as she returned it to me, who happened to be nearest to her,
she said:
"And so, sir, your mind is sincerely made up to offer this chain to your
future wife?"
"Yes, laty; or what might be better, to das young frau, before we might
be marriet."
"And is your choice made?" glancing round at the girls, who were grouped
together, looking at some other trinkets of my uncle's. "Have you chosen
the young woman who is to possess so handsome a chain?"
"Nein, nein," I answered, returning the smile, and glancing also at the
group; "dere ist so many peautiful laties in America, one needn't be in
a hurry. In goot time I shalt find her dat ist intended for me."
"Well, grandmamma," interrupted Patt, "since nobody can have the chain,
unless on certain conditions, here are the three other things that we
have chosen for Ann, Henrietta, and myself, and they are a ring, a pair
of bracelets, and a pair of earrings. The cost, altogether, will be two
hundred dollars; can you approve of that?"
My grandmother, now she knew who was the pedler, understood the whole
matter, and had no scruples. The bargain was soon made, when she sent us
all out of the room, under the pretence we should disturb her while
settling with the watchseller. Her real object, however, was to be alone
with her son, not a dollar passing between them, of course.