_WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT._
[Illustration: “From John, good fellow.”]
SPRINGDALE was one of those beautiful rural towns whose flourishing
aspect is a striking exponent of the peculiarities of New-England
life. The ride through it presents a refreshing picture of wide, cool,
grassy streets, overhung with green arches of elm, with rows of large,
handsome houses on either side, each standing back from the street
in its own retired square of gardens, green turf, shady trees, and
flowering shrubs. It was, so to speak, a little city of country-seats.
It spoke of wealth, thrift, leisure, cultivation, quiet, thoughtful
habits, and moral tastes.
Some of these mansions were of ancestral reputation, and had been in
the family whose name they bore for generations back; a circumstance
sometimes occurring even in New-England towns where neither law nor
custom unites to perpetuate property in certain family lines.
The Seymour house was a well-known, respected mansion for generations
back. Old Judge Seymour, the grandfather, was the lineal descendant of
Parson Seymour; the pastor who first came with the little colony of
Springdale, when it was founded as a church in the wilderness, amid all
the dangers of wild beasts and Indians.
This present Seymour mansion was founded on the spot where the house of
the first minister was built by the active hands of his parishioners;
and, from generation to generation, order, piety, education, and high
respectability had been the tradition of the place.
The reader will come in with us, on this bright June morning, through
the grassy front yard, which has only the usual New-England fault of
being too densely shaded. The house we enter has a wide, cool hall
running through its centre and out into a back garden, now all aglow
with every beauty of June. The broad alleys of the garden showed
bright stores of all sorts of good old-fashioned flowers, well tended
and kept. Clumps of stately hollyhocks and scarlet peonies; roses of
every hue, purple, blush, gold-color, and white, were showering down
their leaves on the grassy turf; honeysuckles climbed and clambered
over arbors; and great, stately tufts of virgin-white lilies exalted
their majestic heads in saintly magnificence. The garden was Miss
Grace Seymour’s delight and pride. Every root in it was fragrant with
the invisible blossoms of memory,—memories of the mother who loved
and planted and watched them before her, and the grandmother who had
cared for them before that. The spirit of these charming old-fashioned
gardens is the spirit of family love; and, if ever blessed souls from
their better home feel drawn back to any thing on earth, we think it
must be to their flower-garden.
Miss Grace had been up early, and now, with her garden hat on, and
scissors in hand, was coming up the steps with her white apron full
of roses, white lilies, meadow-sweets, and honeysuckle, for the
parlor-vases, when the servant handed her a letter.
“From John,” she said, “good fellow;” and then she laid it on the
mantel-shelf of the parlor, while she busied herself in arranging her
flowers.
“I must get these into water, or they will wilt,” she said.
The large parlor was like many that you and I have seen in a certain
respectable class of houses,—wide, cool, shady, and with a mellow
_old_ tone to every thing in its furniture and belongings. It was
a parlor of the past, and not of to-day, yet exquisitely neat and
well-kept. The Turkey carpet was faded: it had been part of the wedding
furnishing of Grace’s mother, years ago. The great, wide, motherly,
chintz-covered sofa, which filled a recess commanding the window, was
as different as possible from any smart modern article of the name.
The heavy, claw-footed, mahogany chairs; the tall clock that ticked in
one corner; the footstools and ottomans in faded embroidery,—all spoke
of days past. So did the portraits on the wall. One was of a fair,
rosy young girl, in a white gown, with powdered hair dressed high over
a cushion. It was the portrait of Grace’s mother. Another was that of
a minister in gown and bands, with black-silk gloved hands holding
up conspicuously a large Bible. This was the remote ancestor, the
minister. Then there was the picture of John’s father, placed lovingly
where the eyes seemed always to be following the slight, white-robed
figure of the young wife. The walls were papered with an old-fashioned
paper of a peculiar pattern, bought in France seventy-five years
before. The vases of India-china that adorned the mantels, the framed
engravings of architecture and pictures in Rome, all were memorials of
the taste of those long passed away. Yet the room had a fresh, sweet,
sociable air. The roses and honeysuckles looked in at the windows; the
table covered with books and magazines, and the familiar work-basket
of Miss Grace, with its work, gave a sort of impression of modern
family household life. It was a wide, open, hospitable, generous-minded
room, that seemed to breathe a fragrance of invitation and general
sociability; it was a room full of associations and memories, and its
daily arrangement and ornamentation made one of the pleasant tasks of
Miss Grace’s life.
She spread down a newspaper on the large, square centre-table, and,
emptying her apronful of flowers upon it, took her vases from the
shelf, and with her scissors sat down to the task of clipping and
arranging them.
Just then Letitia Ferguson came across the garden, and entered the back
door after her, with a knot of choice roses in her hand, and a plate of
seed-cakes covered with a hem-stitched napkin. The Fergusons and the
Seymours occupied adjoining houses, and were on footing of the most
perfect undress intimacy. They crossed each other’s gardens, and came
without knocking into each other’s doors twenty times a day, _apropos_
to any bit of chit-chat that they might have, a question to ask, a
passage in a book to show, a household receipt that they had been
trying. Letitia was the most intimate and confidential friend of Grace.
In fact, the whole Ferguson family seemed like another portion of the
Seymour family. There were two daughters, of whom Letitia was the
eldest. Then came the younger Rose, a nice, charming, well-informed,
good girl, always cheerful and chatty, and with a decent share of
ability at talking lively nonsense. The brothers of the family, like
the young men of New-England country towns generally, were off in
the world seeking their fortunes. Old Judge Ferguson was a gentleman
of the old school,—formal, stately, polite, always complimentary to
ladies, and with a pleasant little budget of old-gentlemanly hobbies
and prejudices, which it afforded him the greatest pleasure to air
in the society of his friends. Old Mrs. Ferguson was a pattern of
motherliness, with her quaint, old-fashioned dress, her elaborate
caps, her daily and minute inquiries after the health of all her
acquaintances, and the tender pityingness of her nature for every thing
that lived and breathed in this world of sin and sorrow.
Letitia and Grace, as two older sisters of families, had a peculiar
intimacy, and discussed every thing together, from the mode of clearing
jelly up to the profoundest problems of science and morals. They were
both charming, well-mannered, well-educated, well-read women, and
trusted each other to the uttermost with every thought and feeling and
purpose of their hearts.
As we have said, Letitia Ferguson came in at the back door without
knocking, and, coming softly behind Miss Grace, laid down her bunch of
roses among the flowers, and then set down her plate of seed-cakes.
Then she said, “I brought you some specimens of my Souvenir de
Malmaison bush, and my first trial of your receipt.”
“Oh, thanks!” said Miss Grace: “how charming those roses are! It was
too bad to spoil your bush, though.”
“No: it does it good to cut them; it will flower all the more. But try
one of those cakes,—are they right?”
“Excellent! you have hit it exactly,” said Grace; “exactly the right
proportion of seeds. I was hurrying,” she added, “to get these flowers
in water, because a letter from John is waiting to be read.”
“A letter! How nice!” said Miss Letitia, looking towards the shelf.
“John is as faithful in writing as if he were your lover.”
“He is the best lover a woman can have,” said Grace, as she busily
sorted and arranged the flowers. “For my part, I ask nothing better
than John.”
“Let me arrange for you, while you read your letter,” said Letitia,
taking the flowers from her friend’s hands.
Miss Grace took down the letter from the mantelpiece, opened, and began
to read it. Miss Letitia, meanwhile, watched her face, as we often
carelessly watch the face of a person reading a letter.
Miss Grace was not technically handsome, but she had an interesting,
kindly, sincere face; and her friend saw gradually a dark cloud rising
over it, as one watches a shadow on a field.
When she had finished the letter, with a sudden movement she laid her
head forward on the table among the flowers, and covered her face with
her hands. She seemed not to remember that any one was present.
Letitia came up to her, and, laying her hand gently on hers, said,
“What is it, dear?”
Miss Grace lifted her head, and said in a husky voice,—
“Nothing, only it is so sudden! John is engaged!”
“Engaged! to whom?”
“To Lillie Ellis.”
“John engaged to Lillie Ellis?” said Miss Ferguson, in a tone of
shocked astonishment.
[Illustration: “She laid her head forward on the table.”]
“So he writes me. He is completely infatuated by her.”
“How very sudden!” said Miss Letitia. “Who could have expected it?
Lillie Ellis is so entirely out of the line of any of the women he has
ever known.”
“That’s precisely what’s the matter,” said Miss Grace. “John knows
nothing of any but good, noble women; and he thinks he sees all this in
Lillie Ellis.”
“There’s nothing to her but her wonderful complexion,” said Miss
Ferguson, “and her pretty little coaxing ways; but she is the most
utterly selfish, heartless little creature that ever breathed.”
“Well, _she_ is to be John’s wife,” said Miss Grace, sweeping the
remainder of the flowers into her apron; “and so ends my life
with John. I might have known it would come to this. I must make
arrangements at once for another house and home. This house, so
much, so dear to me, will be nothing to her; and yet she must be its
mistress,” she added, looking round on every thing in the room, and
then bursting into tears.
Now, Miss Grace was not one of the crying sort, and so this emotion
went to her friend’s heart. Miss Letitia went up and put her arms round
her.
“Come, Gracie,” she said, “you must not take it so seriously. John is a
noble, manly fellow. He loves you, and he will always be master of his
own house.”
“No, he won’t,—no married man ever is,” said Miss Grace, wiping her
eyes, and sitting up very straight. “No man, that is a gentleman, is
ever master in his own house. He has only such rights there as his wife
chooses to give him; and this woman won’t like me, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps she will,” said Letitia, in a faltering voice.
“No, she won’t; because I have no faculty for lying, or playing
the hypocrite in any way, and I shan’t approve of her. These soft,
slippery, pretty little fibbing women have always been my abomination.”
“Oh, my _dear_ Grace!” said Miss Ferguson, “do let us make the best of
it.”
“I _did_ think,” said Miss Grace, wiping her eyes, “that John had some
sense. I wasn’t such a fool, nor so selfish, as to want him always to
live for me. I wanted him to marry; and if he had got engaged to your
Rose, for instance ... O Letitia! I always did so _hope_ that he and
Rose would like each other.”
“We can’t choose for our brothers,” said Miss Letitia, “and, hard as it
is, we must make up our minds to love those they bring to us. Who knows
what good influences may do for poor Lillie Ellis? She never has had
any yet. Her family are extremely common sort of people, without any
culture or breeding, and only her wonderful beauty brought them into
notice; and they have always used that as a sort of stock in trade.”
“And John says, in this letter, that she reminds him of our mother,”
said Miss Grace; “and he thinks that naturally she was very much such a
character. Just think of that, now!”
“He must be far gone,” said Miss Ferguson; “but then, you see, she is
distractingly pretty. She has just the most exquisitely pearly, pure,
delicate, saint-like look, at times, that you ever saw; and then she
knows exactly how she does look, and just how to use her looks; and
John can’t be blamed for believing in her. I, who know all about her,
am sometimes taken in by her.”
“Well,” said Miss Grace, “Mrs. Lennox was at Newport last summer at the
time that she was there, and she told me all about her. I think her an
artful, unscrupulous, unprincipled woman, and her being made mistress
of this house just breaks up our pleasant sociable life here. She has
no literary tastes; she does not care for reading or study; she won’t
like our set here, and she will gradually drive them from the house.
She won’t like me, and she will want to alienate John from me,—so there
is just the situation.”
“You may read that letter,” added Miss Grace, wiping her eyes, and
tossing her brother’s letter into Miss Letitia’s lap. Miss Letitia took
the letter and read it. “Good fellow!” she exclaimed warmly, “you see
just what I say,—his heart is all with you.”
“Oh, John’s heart is all right enough!” said Miss Grace; “and I don’t
doubt his love. He’s the best, noblest, most affectionate fellow in the
world. I only think he reckons without his host, in thinking he can
keep all our old relations unbroken, when he puts a new mistress into
the house, and such a mistress.”
“But if she really loves him”—
“Pshaw! she don’t. That kind of woman can’t love. They are like cats,
that want to be stroked and caressed, and to be petted, and to lie soft
and warm; and they will purr to any one that will pet them,—that’s all.
As for love that leads to any self-sacrifice, they don’t begin to know
any thing about it.”
“Gracie dear,” said Miss Ferguson, “this sort of thing will never do.
If you meet your brother in this way, you will throw him off, and,
maybe, make a fatal breach. Meet it like a good Christian, as you
are. You know,” she said gently, “where we have a right to carry our
troubles, and of whom we should ask guidance.”
“Oh, I do know, ’Titia!” said Miss Grace; “but I am letting myself be
wicked just a little, you know, to relieve my mind. I ought to put
myself to school to make the best of it; but it came on me so _very_
suddenly. Yes,” she added, “I am going to take a course of my Bible and
Fénelon before I see John,—poor fellow.”
“And try to have faith for her,” said Miss Letitia.
“Well, I’ll try to have faith,” said Miss Grace; “but I do trust it
will be some days before John comes down on me with his raptures,—men
in love are such fools.”
“But, dear me!” said Miss Letitia, as her head accidentally turned
towards the window; “who is this riding up? Gracie, as sure as you
live, it is John himself!”
“John himself!” repeated Miss Grace, becoming pale.
“Now do, dear, be careful,” said Miss Letitia. “I’ll just run out this
back door and leave you alone;” and just as Miss Letitia’s light heels
were heard going down the back steps, John’s heavy footsteps were
coming up the front ones.