The next morning, at breakfast, Dr. Physick said: "You did me a good
office, Katy, by singing me to sleepiness last night. I was as tired as
a dog,--no, as a whole pack of Esquimaux dogs,--and, instead of lying
awake and saying to myself, every time I turned over, 'What in this wide
world am I ever going to do with that poor little Nelly Fader?' I only
repeated, whenever I came to myself a little, 'Nelly Bligh shuts her eye
when she goes to sleep'; and then I followed her example."
"I only wish," said I, "that there was any good office beside that I
could do you."
"Well, now I think of it, there is one that I should be very much
obliged to you to do, to me and Nelly Fader besides. I've got to hurry
off in the direction opposite to her Uncle Wardour's; and you talked of
walking. Take this paper. Empty it into a wine-bottle. Fill it up with
spring-water. Cork it. Gum these directions on it. Take them to Nelly.
Read them to her, and make her understand them if you can, and follow
them, which I can't. I happen to have a better sample of the drug than
is often in the market; and she may as well have the benefit of it. Her
aunt's a goose, and she's a baby. But, as she's likely to be a suffering
baby for some time to come, we must try to have patience, and take extra
pains with her."
"Is she going to die?" asked I, anxiously.
"No, no! I've no idea she is. No such good luck, poor little victim!
'_Only_ nervous,' as people say. I can't find out that there's much else
the matter. I utterly hate these cases. She ought to be under the care
of a sensible woman; and if there only was such a one in the profession,
I'd guarantee her her hands full of patients out of my practice alone."
"A female physician!" cried I, in horror.
"O Phil! what will you say next?" exclaimed his wife, laughing.
"Well, only wait till you're a male physician, then, and see," returned
he, jumping into his chaise, and relieving his own nerves with a crack
of the whip, which put new vivacity into those of De Quincey.
I made ready at once, for the day was sulky. It had been weeping, and
had not yet begun to smile.
Nelly lived with her uncle, the apothecary, Mr. Wardour, and his widowed
sister, Mrs. Cumberland. As I neared the door, I heard her voice, which
was not dulcet, from the parlor-kitchen: "What's this here winder open
for?"
"It felt so close in here," was the plaintive little answer; "and the
Doctor said I ought to have the air."
"Does he think we can afford wood enough to warm all out-doors with?"
I knocked; but Mrs. Cumberland was deaf, and went on: "My sakes alive,
child! what's all this?"
"The stewed damsons."
"'Stewed damsons,' indeed!--Stewed stalks and stewed leaves and stewed
creaturs! Didn't you have faculty of yourself enough to know that they'd
got to be picked over before they went into the pot? There, there,
child! don't you go to cryin', whatever you do."
I knocked louder.
"There's somebody to the door; mebbe it's the Doctor. You go and see
what's wanted, an' don't take no more concern about these. I'll see to
'em."
After a little delay, occasioned perhaps by the need of rubbing the
eyelids, which were red, a little pallid lass, apparently about sixteen
years old, shyly opened the door, and looked relieved, I thought, to
find only me at it. She had a small and pretty nose and mouth, large,
heavy blue eyes, flaxen hair drawn neatly, but unbecomingly, away from
her face, looked modest and refined, but sadly moped, and was dressed in
dark green, which set her off much as spinach does a _dropped_ egg.
"Miss Nelly?" said I.
"Yes, Miss Morne," said she.
I had never seen her before; but it afterwards came out that she had
peeped at me through the blinds of her chamber.
"I have brought you a little treat from Dr. Physick."
"O," said she, looking rather pleased; "then isn't he coming to-day?"
"No; he sent me instead."
"I am glad to see you," said she, timidly, but beginning to look really
pretty, as her countenance went on brightening. "Won't you walk in?"
I did so, sat down opposite to her in the cold, shaded "best parlor,"
and went over the directions to her aloud. She kept her face civilly
turned towards me; but it grew utterly blank again, and I saw she was
not paying the least attention. So I played her a genuine teacher's
trick, which I had learned in my school-room. "Now," continued I, "will
you be so good as to repeat to me what I have been saying, so that I may
be able to tell Dr. Physick that I explained it to you perfectly? He was
rather _particular_ about it."
Of course she could not; but this obliged her, in common courtesy, to
listen the second time, which was all I wanted. Then I rose.
She went with me to the door, saying, "I am sorry to give so much
trouble. You are very kind to take so much for me."
"It will be a 'joyful trouble,' if it does you good."
"You are very kind to me. Do you like roses?"
"Indeed I do. Do not you?"
"I don't know. I used to."
There were three blossoms and one bud on a monthly rose-bush, which
stood in an earthen pot by the front door. In an instant she had
gathered them all, in spite of my protestations. She added two or three
from a heliotrope, and the freshest sprigs from a diosma, a myrtle, and
a geranium, all somewhat languishing, and tied them together for me with
a long blade of grass.
"It is plain," said I, as I thanked her, "that you still care enough
about flowers to arrange them most sweetly. These look as if they were
sitting for their picture. I should like to paint them just as they
are."
"Can you paint?"
"A little. Cannot you?"
"No; I can't do anything."
"Shall we make a bargain, then?" I ventured to say, as she looked and
seemed so much like the poor baby the Doctor had called her. "We will
each of us try to do something for the other. If I succeed in painting
your flowers, and you succeed in following your directions, you shall
have the picture."
She blushed deeply, looked half ashamed and half gratified, but
altogether more alive than she had done till now, and finally managed to
stammer out: "It's too good an offer--too kind--to refuse; but it's more
than I deserve, a great deal. So I'll try to mind Dr. Physick, to please
you; and then--if you _liked_ to give me the picture, I should prize it
very much."
I nodded, laughed, went home, put the flowers in water on Julia's
work-table, read to her, and went into the heart of the town to do some
shopping for her. After our early dinner, I said I was a little tired;
and she drove with her husband. I took out my paper, brushes, and
palette, set Nelly's nosegay in a becoming light, and began to rub my
paints; when wheels and hoofs came near and stopped, and presently the
door-bell rang.
"Are the ladies at home?" asked a smooth, silvery, feminine voice, with
a peculiarly neat, but unaffected enunciation.
"No'm, he ain't," returned the portress, mechanically; "an' he's druv
Missis out, too. Here's the slate; or Miss Kitty could take a message, I
s'pose, without she's went out lately ago."
"Take this card," resumed the first voice, "if you please, to Miss
Morne, and say that, if she is not engaged, I should be glad to see
her."
I rose in some confusion, pushed my little table into the darkest corner
of the room, received the white card from Rosanna's pink paw, in which
it lay like cream amidst five half-ripe Hovey's seedlings, read "Miss
Dudley" upon it, told Rosanna to ask her to please to walk in, and took
up my position just within the door, in a state of some palpitation.
In another minute a gray-haired, rather tall and slight, and very
well-made lady, with delicate, regular, spirited features, was before
me, telling me with a peculiar kind of earnest cordiality, and a
sympathy that expressed itself fully in tones, though not in words, that
she could not content herself with writing her acknowledgments to me;
she must come and see me herself, to tell me how pleased and gratified
and touched she was by the offering that I had sent her.
I felt myself too much moved by the associations connected with it, and
called up by her, to answer readily; and she, as if conjecturing this,
led the conversation gently off, at first to painting in general, and
afterwards, as I grew more at my ease with her, back again, with an
appearance of genuine interest, to mine.
"There was one little shell," said she, "in your native group, which was
quite new to me, and--which is more remarkable--to my brother."
"Was it like this?" asked I, taking a specimen from my paint-box.
"Precisely. We felt sure the portrait must be true to life, because all
its companions were such faithful likenesses; and then it had itself
such an honest, genuine, individual look. But is it to be found on this
coast?"
"Yes. If Mr. Dudley has not met with it, it must no doubt be very rare;
but, near the same spot always, just beyond Cedar Point, under the rocks
in the little cove that lies farthest to the south, I have found it more
than once."
"You must be quite an enthusiast in natural history. Have you studied it
long?"
"No, ma'am, never. I mean," continued I, answering her look of surprise,
"never from books. I believe I should enjoy it more than any other
study; but I know so little yet of other things, and there are so many
other things that one needs more to know." I felt my cheeks burn; for no
sooner was I helplessly launched into this speech, than I perceived what
an awkward one it was to make to the sister of an eminent naturalist.
Notwithstanding, as I thought it was true, I could not take it back.
"I agree with you entirely," said she with a reassuring smile. "Such
studies are fitted much more for the coping-stones than the
foundation-stones of a good education. But then, if you will not think
me too inquisitive, pray let me ask you one thing more; and that is,
where and how you came by all the information that that group showed."
"Only by playing on the beaches and in the woods when I was a child. My
mother did not like to keep me in, because she thought that that had
impaired my sister"--here my voice _would_ break, but I _would_ go
on,--Fanny's dear name should not die out of memory while I lived--"my
sister Fanny's health; but they were afraid to let me run quite wild,
and so she--my sister--led me out often wherever I wished to go, and
helped me fill a little pasteboard museum which she made for me."
Miss Dudley's large, soft, trusty brown eyes met mine tenderly, as she
said: "These things must indeed possess a more than common interest for
you then. Have you that museum now?"
"No, ma'am; I sometimes wish I had. I gave it away when I went to
Greenville _to keep school_," I added; not that I supposed it would
matter anything to her, but that I thought it just as well to make sure
of her understanding my position in life.
"That is so natural to us all,--to part with these little relics when we
are still very young, and then to wish them back again before we are
much older! You would smile to see a little museum that I keep for my
brother,--not his scientific collection, which I hope some day to have
the pleasure of showing you,--but 'an _olla podrida_ in an ancestral
wardrobe,' as my little Paul calls it, of his and my two little nieces'
first baby-shoes, rattles, corals, and bells, wooden horses, primers,
picture-books, and so forth, down to the cups and balls, and copy-books,
which they have cast off within a month or two, each labelled with the
owner's name, and the date of deposit. No year goes by without leaving
behind some memento of each of them, or even without my laying aside
there some trifling articles of dress that they have worn. It is a fancy
of my brother's. He says that others may claim their after-years, but
their childhood is his own,--all of it that is not mine,--and he must
keep it for himself, and for them when they come back to visit him in
his old age. It is a birthday treat to them already to take the key from
my split-ring, and look together over the half-forgotten things. But
there is one thing there--a manuscript on the topmost shelf--which they
do not know about, but which we take out and laugh over sometimes when
they are all in bed,--a record that I have kept of all the most
diverting things which we have heard them say, ever since they began to
learn to talk." She checked herself,--I fancied because she remembered
that, in her enthusiasm about the children, she had forgotten to what a
new acquaintance she was speaking. She rose to take leave, and resumed,
shaking hands with me cordially,--she had, I observed, a remarkably
cordial and pleasant, earnest way of shaking hands,--"But upon the
subject of my museum, Miss Morne, I need hardly beg you to be more
discreet than I, and not to mention a domestic trifle of so little
general interest."
I could only bow, but longed, as I attended her to the door, to assure
her of the particular interest which I had already begun to feel in
every trifle which belonged to her.
Her little barouche, and long-tailed, dark-gray ponies, vanished with
her down the road; and I was left walking up and down the room. The
"kind o' poor-lookin', pale-lookin', queer-lookin' lady," that Miss
Mehitable had described,--was this she? How are we ever to know people
by descriptions, when the same person produces one impression on one
mind and quite another on another,--nay, may have one set of inherent
qualities brought out by contact with one character, and quite another
set by contact with another character? Have _I_ described Miss Dudley?
No,--and I cannot. She was both _unique_ and indescribable.
Most people impress us more, perhaps, by their outward and physical,
than by their inward and psychical life. On a first interview with them,
especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of
beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or
uncouthness of manner. These are the common people, whether ladies and
gentlemen, or simple men and women. There are, however, others, in all
ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we
chiefly feel, when they have come in our way, that a spirit has passed
by,--that a new life has been brought in contact with our own life.
Of these was Miss Dudley. But because, ever since the day I write of, I
have loved to think of her, and because I know that, when I rejoin her,
I shall leave some behind me who will still love, and have a right to
hear of her, I will indulge myself in saying something more. That
something shall be what I said to myself then, as I promenaded to and
fro,--that bodily exercise was one of my safety-valves in those
times,--in the endeavor to work off so much of my superfluous animation
as to be in a state to sit down and paint again; and thus I spake: "I
must have had before me an uncommonly fine specimen of a class whose
existence I have conjectured before, but by no means including all the
wealthy, who wear their purple and fine linen both gracefully and
graciously, fare not more sumptuously than temperately every day, and do
a great deal, not only directly by their ready beneficence, but
indirectly by their sunny benignity, to light up the gloomy world of
Lazarus." And though I was but a budding theorist in human nature, and
often made mistakes before and afterwards, I never found myself mistaken
there.
When Julia came in an hour after, she said to me, as I looked up from my
roses and my rose-colored revery, "Katy, you look like an inspired
sibyl! What has come over you?"
"Miss Dudley," said I.
"What! has she really--been here? How I wish I had seen her! What did
she wear?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. Wait, I will try. O yes! it comes back to
me;--a silver-gray _shot_ poplin, or silk, made full, but, I think,
quite plain; a large red Cashmere shawl, rather more crimson and less
scarlet than they usually are,--it glowed gloriously out from the
gray;--then some kind of a thin, gray bonnet, with large gray and
crimson crape and velvet flowers in it,--hibiscus or passion-flowers, or
really I don't know what,--that seemed just to marry the dress to the
shawl."
"Pretty well for you, Katy! Rather heavy for the season; but I suppose
she was afraid of this east wind. You liked her, then?"
"Very much."
"So does the Doctor, always. Some people call her proud; but he says,
that is only their way of expressing their view of the fact that she has
a good deal to make her so, and more than enough to make them so, if
they had it instead of her."
"I dare say. I should not think she was a person to take liberties with;
but she was very sweet and kind to me."
"You are not a person to take liberties with anybody, nor to have any
taken with you; and so _I_ dare say she recognized a kindred spirit."
"Now, Julia, by your paying me such a compliment as that, I am certain
you must want to have your bonnet taken up stairs for you; and so you
shall."
"Ah! now I shall always know what string to pull when I wish to put a
skilful attendant in motion. Phil would take my bonnet up stairs for me
in a moment, if I bade him; but when I went up myself after it, it would
be sure to stare me in the face, topsy-turvy, _dumped_ bolt upright on
the feather."