Mrs. Lang returned from her wedding-journey happy and beautiful, charmed
by all she had seen, and Mr. Lang was unusually demonstrative to every
one in the excess of his joy; but I had reason to suppose that the
announcement of our engagement reduced his exuberance considerably. Miss
Darry did not, however, admit the least disappointment in their manner
of receiving it; her own judgment was an estimate, from which, for
herself, there was no appeal. She was the most entirely self-sustained
woman I have ever met. Having decided that I was a genius, and that she
loved me, the opinion of others was of no moment in her eyes. Mr. Lang
merely offered his congratulations to me by saying,--
"Well, Sandy, my dear fellow, you are to obtain, it seems, what many a
man of wealth and position will envy you. You must pardon me for saying
that Miss Darry's choice is quite astonishing to her friends. If you
possess the genius of Raphael, I shall still regard you as two very
peculiar persons to come together; but I am in no mood to cavil at
love."
Mrs. Lang said, kindly,--
"We must see more of you than ever, Mr. Allen, if you are finally to
deprive us of Miss Darry. She has lived with me ever since the death of
her parents, who were old friends of my mother, and we shall miss her
very much. She is a splendid woman. You are sure you understand her?"
she added, naively; "I freely confess I don't."
My pride swelled at all this. Frank Darry's love was the most blissful
proof yet afforded of the personal power of the man who had captivated
her, and more vehemently than was perhaps natural under the
circumstances, I professed to comprehend, love, nay, worship Miss Darry.
The efforts for my culture were now redoubled. In order to demonstrate
the wisdom of Miss Darry's choice, I must give palpable proof of
superiority. I had earned enough for present support, and my forge must
be given up. I must cut off all my old connections, go to the city,
visit studios, draw from casts, attend galleries of paintings, have
access to public libraries, make literary and artistic acquaintances,
pursue my classical studies, and display the powers which Miss Darry, by
her own force of will, projected into me. Such were the business-like
plans which usurped the place of those mutual adulatory confidences
presumed to occupy the first elysian hours of an engagement. Miss
Darry's love was not of that caressing, tendril description, so common
with her sex, which plays in tender demonstrativeness around the one
beloved; it helped constantly to keep the highest standard before him,
and to sustain rather than depend.
About a week after Mr. and Mrs. Lang's return, Mr. Leopold, who had
accompanied them, came back; and Miss Darry intimated that it would be
well for me to inform him of our engagement. I said to him, therefore,
rather abruptly one afternoon, as I was about leaving to seek Miss
Darry, (who was never quite ready to see me, if my painting-hours were
abridged,)--
"Mr. Leopold, I have sold my forge to-day. I wanted to ask your advice
about the course to be pursued in town; but I am under orders now of the
most binding kind, I am engaged to Miss Darry."
Mr. Leopold was busy at his easel, his profile toward me. I was
certainly not mistaken; the blood rushed over his face, subsided,
leaving it very pale, and he made a quick, nervous movement which
overthrew his palette. He rose quietly and replaced it, however, saying,
in his usual tone,--
"Very well, Sandy. I am ready to help you in any way I can."
"But you do not--no one congratulates me," I said, deceived by his
calmness, and supposing the momentary suspicion that his was the love
rejected by Miss Darry must have been a mistaken one.
"If they do not, it is not because of any lack appreciation for either
of you," he answered slowly, "but that they fail to see the point of
union. I admire the pine; it is straight, strong, self-reliant, and yet
wind-haunted by many tender and melancholy sentiments; I like the
peach-tree, too, with its pink tufts of fanciful blooming in the
spring-time: but if these two should grow side by side, I am not sure
but I should wonder a little."
His smile, as he looked me full in the eye, had genuine good-will
mingled with its humor; and it softened the indignation I felt at the
implied comparison.
"You make me out the weaker vessel of the two, then?" I asked,
resentfully.
"No, Sandy, I don't say that; possibly, as whatever power we have runs
parallel with Providential forces or against them, it makes mortal
strength or weakness. But may you become a truly noble man, if you are
to be Miss Darry's husband!" he answered, rising and extending his hand.
I believe he was one to scorn a lack of self-control in himself; but I
do not think he cared either to reveal or to hide the love which I read
at that moment. I grasped his hand as cordially as it was given, and
hurried down stairs, out of the door, and over the hill, with a strong
conviction that Miss Darry was a mistaken and foolish woman, and a
prompting to disinterestedness not quite compatible with my relations to
her. I was in no mood for her society, so I resolved to delay seeing her
until evening, and conclude my arrangements at the forge, as I was to go
to the city the next week.
Approaching the village, I overtook Miss Dinsmore; and though my new
pretensions had not increased my popularity among the villagers, I had
reason to consider her my firm friend and advocate; so I was quite
willing to escape my unpleasant train of thought in listening to her.
"Well, Sandy, nobody gets a sight of you nowadays down this way. I never
was so set up as when I heard tell you was goin' to marry the
schoolmarm. Why, I was always certain sure you'd take to Annie Bray.
Such a sweet little lamb as she is; not a bit high-strung 'cause she's
made much of at the great house on the hill, though she does sing like a
bird in an apple-tree every Sunday, when Louisy Purdo doesn't drown her
voice with screechin'; but she's grown more sober an' quiet-like than
ever. Miss Bray says she helps a powerful deal about house, and Amos
don't swear so much now he sees it hurts her."
"She's a dear little thing," I interrupted, impatiently; "but, Miss
Dinsmore, do you know Mr. Bray may have all the blacksmith-work to
himself now? for I'm going to town for the rest of the summer and
autumn."
"You don't say so, Sandy! Well, old Dr. Allen wasn't one of us, as I
tell 'em, and there's no sort of reason why you should be; and your
mother was a real born lady, though she was so gentle-spoken 't wasn't
half the women could tell the difference between her and them."
"But, Miss Dinsmore," I said, "I don't expect to forget my old friends,
because I hope to do better somewhere else than here. I shall often come
down to Warren."
"Oh, yes, you'll come down, I don't mistrust that," she replied, slowly
nodding her green calash, "as long as the schoolmarm is at the Hill; but
Annie will look paler than ever. She thinks a sight of you, poor thing,
and it will never be the same to her. She loves you like--a sister,"
added Miss Dinsmore, the tears in her faded blue eyes, and her sense of
womanly modesty supplying the familiar title.
We were very near the Variety Store. If I could for a moment drift away
from this annoying theme!
"How did you like Mr. Leopold, that afternoon I introduced him to you,
Miss Dinsmore?" I asked, in desperation.
"Oh! ah! Well, Sandy, to speak plain, I've seen him a matter of three or
four times, may-be, since. He set down, quite friendly-like, to a bit of
supper, last time he come. I suppose he feels lonely; he seems
pleasant-spoken, and is liked by everybody round here; poor man, he
oughtn't to be without a mate. He's taken a great likin' to Annie Bray;
but then, of course, he's got some sense of what's becomin'; she's years
too young for him."
"Too young! I should think so," indignantly; "he's old enough to be her
grandfather."
"No, Sandy,--no, I think not," said Miss Dinsmore, pausing thoughtfully
at her door-step. "Old Mr. Bray would have been nigh upon eighty come
next harvest; but then Annie has nobody to look out for her now you
know, exceptin' Amos, who a'n't over wide-awake, between you and me,
though an honester man never lived."
I was very willing to part with Miss Dinsmore.
"Another afternoon experience like this will make a hermit of me," I
muttered, impatiently, as I strode away in the same direction from which
I had come.
Miss Darry, Mr. Leopold, anybody, was better than Annie Bray, with her
sweet, pale face, in my present mood.
"Annie has nobody to look out for her now, you know": many a day I
remembered with a pang that this was too true.