In a little room connected with the refreshment-room there stood before
a large mirror somebody winding a red scarf about her head. I had only
time to see that the head was small and shapely, and the figure full of
flexible grace, when it turned and nodded to the party. Of course, it
could only be Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet voice,
and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard
the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid
the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl characteristic of Northern
tongues.
I was attracted to her, not by her beauty, though that was marked, but
by her cordial, unaffected manner of placing her two hands in ours, and
by her infantine sweetness of expression. Whatever she might have gone
through, I saw she had not suffered. There was no line or track of
experience, on her broad, tranquil brow, nor was there the hushed,
restrained expression left in all eyes that have deeply mourned and
bitterly wept. The look was serene and youthful, with such happiness as
might come from health and elemental life,--such as a Dryad might have
in her songful bowers, or a Naiad plunging in the surf. But it was a
shallow face, and pleased only as the sunshine does. For my part, I
would rather listen to the sorrowful song of the pine-tree: that is the
tune of life.
So, after the first five minutes, the face of Mrs. Lewis ceased to
attract me, and I only wondered how she came to attract her husband.
At Miss Post's, our rooms were quite near each other; and I frequently
passed an hour in the morning with Mrs. Lewis, chatting with her, and
looking about her fanciful apartment. She had dozens of birds of all gay
colors,--paroquets from Brazil, cockatoos, ring-doves, and canaries;
fresh flowers, in vases on the mantel-pieces, and a blue-ribboned guitar
in the corner. No books, no pictures. A great many scarfs, bonnets, and
drapery generally, fell about on the chairs and tables.
She never asked about Auguste, nor talked of her children. Once she said
they were at Madam somebody's, she couldn't think of the name, but a
very nice school, she believed. Everything was "very nice" or "very
horrid." Much of the time she passed in draping herself in various
finery before the mirror, and trying the effects of color on her
complexion. I could think of nothing but field-lilies, that toil not,
and yet exceed Solomon in glory; sometimes it seemed gaudiness rather
than glory, only that her brilliant complexion carried off the brightest
hues, and made them only add to the native splendor of lip and eye. Then
she had a transparent complexion, where the blood rippled vividly and
roseately at the least excitement. This expressed a vivacity of
temperament and a sensitiveness which yet she had not, so that I was
constantly looking for more than there was in her, and as constantly
disappointed. The face suggested, and so did the conversation, far more
both of native sensibility and of culture than she had of either. This
was apparent during the first twenty-four hours.
It may seem strange that I should cultivate such a disappointing
acquaintance as Mrs. Lewis. But, first, I liked Mr. Lewis, and he was
much of the time in their parlor; and, secondly, Mrs. Lewis took a
decided fancy to me, and that had its effect. I could not deem her
insensible to excellence of some sort; besides, she was a curious study
to me, and besides, I had occasion, as the time wore on, to think more
of her. Our lives are threaded with black and gold, not of our own
selecting, and we feel that we are guided by an Unseen Hand in many of
our associations.
There was a want of arrangement of material in her mind, which prevented
her from using what she knew, to any advantage; and what she knew,
though it had the originality of first observation, and a grace of
expression so great that more met the ear than was meant, was still so
wanting, either in insight or reflection, as to be poor and vapid as
small-beer after the first sparkle is gone. The manner was all in Mrs.
Lewis, but that was ever varying and charming.
One day she had been wrapping some green and gold gauzes about her, and
draping herself so that you could think of nothing but sunsets and
tulip-beds, when, in pulling over her finery, she came across a
miniature of herself. She handed it to me.
"This was what made William dead in love with me, before he saw me. I
used to wear my hair so for years after I married him; he liked me to."
It was a very delicately painted miniature, by Staigg, I think. Still a
very good likeness, and with the perpetual childhood of the large brown
eyes, and the clusters of chestnut curls over brow and neck, that gave
an added expression of extreme youth to the face.
"Will she never mature?" I thought.
But always there was the same promise, the same expectation, and the
same disappointment. I used to think I would as soon marry Hoffman's
machine, who looked so beautiful, and said, "Ah! ah!" and the husband
thought her very sensible. But Hoffman's husband thought he had an
admiring wife, and her "ah! ah-s!" were appreciative, whereas Mr. Lewis
could be under no such delusion. Once I heard him say, "he cared only
for love in a wife: intellect he could find in books, but the heart only
in woman." "Eyes that look kindly on me are full of good sense,--lips
that part over pearls are better than wisdom,--and the heart-beat is the
measure of true life."
He liked to talk in this proverb-fashion, and would often turn towards
his wife, giving his remarks point and affectionate direction by
smoothing her curls or gently touching her shoulder. He was very happy
in her beauty.
Notwithstanding this, he often brought in books of an evening, to read
to us, leaving Lulu to get her entertainment as she could, and would
sometimes sit a whole hour, discussing literary points with me, and
metaphysical ones with the Dominie, who was only too happy to pull the
Scotch professors over the coals, and lead to condign execution Brown,
Reid, and Stewart, in their turn. Sometimes Lulu would come in, with a
bird on each hand, and sit at our feet. She then never mingled in the
conversation, but just smoothed the birds' plumage, or fed them with
crumbs from her own lips, like a child, or a princess trifling in the
harem.
Once we were at Hoboken, where we had passed most of the warm day, and,
being weary with strolling among the trees, had seated ourselves on a
bank, whence we had a good view of the water and the vessels in the hazy
distance. Mr. Lewis took Wordsworth from his pocket, and read aloud the
"Ode to Immortality." It was so beautiful, and the images of "the calm
sea that brought us hither" so suggestive, that we listened with
rapture. Lulu twined oak-leaves into wreaths, sitting at her husband's
feet. I don't know whether she heard or not, but, as we discussed
afterwards the various beauties of the expression, and the exquisite
thoughts, Mr. Lewis leaned over and laid his hand lightly on his wife's
hair. He had done it a hundred times before. But to-day she shook her
head away from him, blushed angrily, and said, "Don't, William! I am not
a baby!"