THE WILD WOOD HOME BY DAY.
It is a quiet picture of delight,
The pretty cottage hiding from the sun
In the thick woods. We see it not till there,
When at its porch ... quiet’s especial temple.—W. G. SIMMS.
“I have the vaguest idea of the outside of our home—a pretty brown
cottage in evergreen woods—that was all I could make out as we
approached it in the twilight last evening; and that is all I can make
out now, while peering through that crimson curtained window,” said
Drusilla, as she sat at breakfast with her husband the next morning.
“‘A pretty brown cottage, in evergreen woods.’ Well, that is all you
would make out if you were to inspect the premises most carefully every
day for a month. It is a new place, my little love. The house and stable
only are finished and walled in. The grounds are not laid out or even
cleared, as you may see by the thicket crowding up to the very windows,”
replied Alexander.
“But, I think I like it even better just so. There is something very
fascinating to me in the deep, wild wood, where the trees may grow as
they please, without touch of ax or pruning knife, and where birds may
sing and rabbits run without fear of trap or fowling-piece,” said
Drusilla.
“Then if that be so, not a tree shall be felled, though we should have
to send to the city market for all our fruit and vegetables,” laughed
Alexander.
“Oh no, no, no; don’t ‘Woodman, Spare That Tree’ on my account. The
woods are very charming, but so is a garden with beds of growing
vegetables and parterres of blooming flowers; and so are vineyards and
orchards, and poultry-yards and cow-pens, none of which can be had
without the sacrifice of the woods. And you know what a good little
farmer your dear mother——” Here the tears rushed to the bride’s eyes,
but she quickly wiped them away and smiled, saying: “No, I will not weep
the day after our wedding. I will remember that she is in Heaven,
and—happy as we may be, she is happier still.”
“But what were you about to say, love, when you broke off?” gravely and
gently inquired Alexander.
“Oh, I was going to remind you what a skillful little farmer your dear
mother had made of me, and to tell you how well I can manage a little
place like this, with the help of the two servants.”
“Yes, darling; but you will not need to do so. What? You worry with the
cultivation of cabbage and onions, and the rearing of fowls and turkeys,
and the feeding of cows and pigs? It is ridiculous, the idea!”
“But your dear mother saw to all such things with her own eyes, and
often helped among them with her own hands.”
“My venerated mother belonged to an old school of housekeepers that are
now obsolete, or fast passing away before the progress of civilization.
Machinery does the work of laborers, and laborers have become
intelligent directors of machinery. Nonsense! Even if this were not so,
do you think I would let you spoil your exquisite beauty in the way you
propose, Drusa? No, my darling, your beauty is too rare and rich to be
put to any such uses. I think that even if I were a very poor man, I
would rather labor day and night than you should soil your pretty
hands,” he whispered, lifting one of the little members of which he
spoke, and gazing on it with the eyes of a connoisseur and the smile of
a lover.
“Oh, Alexander! dear Alexander!” said the little bride, earnestly,
“please do not prize my looks so much. It frightens me when you do so.”
“But why?” smiled the bridegroom.
“Oh, because—one’s looks——”
“One’s beauty, you mean——”
“Oh, Alexander, it is such an accidental and perishable thing to be
loved for. Illness or chance might destroy it in a day; and time will
certainly impair it in the course of years. And whether I lose it sooner
or later, what shall I do if I lose your love also?”
This was spoken so gravely and feelingly that the bridegroom burst into
a laugh.
“Why you solemn little quiz! You remind me of a little prig of a Sunday
school scholar that I used to see perched up in the corner of the
housekeeper’s room in my mother’s house in Richmond. A little ‘rum un’
who used to sew quilt pieces and lecture lost sheep.”
“But oh, tell me one thing. Even if I should grow ugly, you would love
me still, would you not, Alexander?”
“_You_ grow ugly? impossible! Your beauty, if you take common care of
it, will last you until you are sixty years old, and by that time, I,
who am so much your senior, will be so blind with age, or love, or
habit, that I shall not know whether you are a Venus or a Gorgon,” said
Alexander, laughing, and rising from the table.
“Till I am sixty! So many years to live together, you and I, if Heaven
should spare us. Such a long and happy life, if you only love me all the
time. Oh, what can I do to keep you loving me all these long, long
years?” aspirated Drusilla, in a sort of repressed fervor.
“Be beautiful, be happy and love me—that is all,” he answered. “And now
put on some outer garment and come with me, and I will show you what
little is to be seen of our small place.”
Drusilla took a gray hooded cloak from the hands of the maid who had run
and fetched it for her, and she wrapped herself in it, drew the hood
over her head, and took the offered arm of Alexander.
He led her out of the front door and down the step of the porch to the
broad carriage drive that had been cleared through the cedars from the
house to the gate.
It was a fine wintry day. A little snow had fallen during the night,
just sufficient to cover the ground with a white garment and powder the
cedars like coachmen’s wigs; but the sky was now clear and the sun
bright.
They walked down the drive to the gate, and then, at Alexander’s
suggestion, turned about and leaned against the gate, and faced the
front of the cottage to take a look at it.
“A mere toy palace, or doll’s house, as I told you,” said Alexander,
disparagingly.
“It is a beauty. But perhaps you are comparing it with spacious Crowood
or lofty Lyon Hall; in which case it must suffer by comparison in size,
I grant you, but not in beauty,” said Drusilla, gazing on her home with
perfect satisfaction.
“I am very glad you approve of it, darling, even in its half finished
condition. In another year I will see what money and taste can do to
convert it into a paradise for you,” said Alexander.
“The sweet spot is Arcadia already. But how were you so fortunate as to
get it, dear Alexander? And have you rented it, or bought it?” she
asked.
“I have taken it on trial for a year, with the privilege of purchasing
it, if I like it, at the end of that time.”
“But why does the owner wish to sell such a pretty place, which he has
only just built?”
“Ah, love, it is a common case. The place was commenced by a poor old
fellow, who was about to retire from business on a comfortable
competency. But he put off living too long, for just as he was preparing
to do it he died.”
“Poor man! and he never enjoyed the pretty place.”
“Let us hope that he enjoys a better one. Meanwhile we have the
privilege of purchasing it, if we like.”
“Oh, I do like it so much!”
“Then consider it purchased, my pet.”
“Not on my account. Oh, Alexander, dear, please do always what you judge
to be best without thinking of me in the matter.”
“But, darling, if I love you as you wish me to do, and as I certainly
do, I _must_ think of your pleasure in everything.”
She looked at him, secretly acknowledging the truth of his words, yet
much perplexed by them.
The house upon which they gazed, incomplete as were its surroundings,
deserved all Drusilla’s praise.
It was a charming little cottage ornée, which, if the truth may be
spoken, was much more suitable as the home of a fresh young bride than
the resting-place of a worn-out old worldling. It was built after no
particular plan, and therefore perhaps all the more picturesque and
pleasing in its aspect. It was so irregularly and fantastically erected
as to defy all manner of description. From the outside it seemed an
eccentric collection of low walls and steep roofs, gable ends, twisted
chimneys, hanging balconies, bay-windows, porches, verandahs, and so
forth. Its dark gray stone walls and dark green Venetian shutters and
pillars and cornices, so harmonized in hue with the colors of the wintry
woods, as at a short distance to mingle with them and be
indistinguishable from them. Such was the outside of Drusilla’s little
home.
The inside was a collection of hexagon shaped halls, chambers, parlors,
quaint closets, cosy recesses and sunny nooks.
“Now I will take you round and show you the stable and the cow-house,”
said Alexander, drawing his wife’s arm within his own, and leading her
around to the rear of the house where, in a neat and well kept stable,
he showed her a pretty pair of gray ponies and a neat little carriage.
She looked up in his face to thank him with her eyes, but when she would
have spoken, he stopped her with a kiss.
Then he took her to an adjoining compartment of the same building, and
showed her a white cow with a young calf beside her.
“I can not thank you enough; no, I can not—not only for all that you
have given me, but for the _beauty_ of every object and every living
creature you have placed around me—the beautiful house and furniture,
the beautiful carriage and ponies, the pretty white cow and calf. Dear
Alexander, I thank you so much for all the beauty with which you have
blessed my home,” smiled and faltered Drusilla, in a voice broken by
happy emotions.
“Beauty! why who was it that, just now, begged and prayed me not to love
her for her beauty?” asked Alexander, quizzingly.
“It was I, of course,” said Drusilla, blushing and laughing, “but that
was because I wished you to love me for something deeper and more
lasting.”
“And so I do, darling; but come—confess that you like beautiful
things—that you like even _me_ better for not being ill-looking.”
“Oh, Alexander, not you! it was never your looks, although I like you to
be handsome. But oh, dear Alick, if you were to be maimed by accident or
marked by illness, I should love you quite as much as I do now, and even
more tenderly, I think, as I know I shall love you when you are old and
gray.”
“Bah! I would rather die than grow old and gray; but the time for that
is far enough off, thank Heaven!” said Alexander, as he led her back
into the house.
He took her into the drawing-room and showed her three musical
instruments, each of the very best quality—a piano, a harp and a guitar.
Upon a stand near was a collection of old standard music, and of all the
best new pieces out.
I suppose no one but a monomaniac in music can understand the delight of
sitting down and trying the tone of a new instrument of the very best
order.
Drusilla placed herself at the piano, and ran her fingers up and down
the keys to test its powers. And then she turned over her music and sang
song after song, for hour after hour, without weariness. And Alexander
leaned over her, and listened to her without flagging.
When at length she arose from the piano, he led her from the
drawing-room and across the hexagon hall to an opposite room, fitted up
as a library. Here, in the elegant book cases, were collected some of
the best standard works in English, French and German, also some choice
Latin and Greek volumes, and a few of the most popular publications of
the day.
Here were neat writing desks, easy reading chairs, soft foot cushions,
and every means and appliance of comfort and luxury.
And on the walls were a few very choice pictures, and on stands stood
statuettes and vases and other gems of art, to please a cultivated
taste.
“No words—you leave me no words to thank you for all these blessings,”
Drusilla murmured.
“I tell you they are all mine as you are mine, so there are no words
wanted for thanks,” smiled Alexander.
“Ah! but I know you did all this for me; I feel it and I must say it,
Alick, dear Alick,” she murmured, with tears of love and joy in her
eyes.
All the time they were in the library they heard the songs of birds—a
sound so unusual in that wintry season, that Drusilla had looked up once
or twice with a startled expression; but as Alexander had only smiled at
her surprise without attempting to gratify her unspoken curiosity, she
forbore to ask him questions, and waited until he should explain the
mystery.
“Come now,” he said, “I have something else to show you.”
And he led her down to the lower end of the room, to a green curtain
that hung from ceiling to floor, and from side to side, and
corresponded, except in color, with that one which divided the
dining-room from the drawing-room.
He drew aside this curtain and revealed a scene of enchantment.
It was a room of crystal glass, in gilded sashes, and it was filled with
the rarest and most beautiful exotic plants, most of them in full bloom.
Among these plants hung large gilded cages, in which were birds of the
most brilliant plumage and the sweetest notes, whose songs filled all
the sunny and perfumed air with melody.
Birds and flowers of all the objects in nature had always been
Drusilla’s especial delight. Her love of them might have been called a
passion. And it had never been gratified until now. And here she had
them of the most beautiful sorts, gathered in one splendid crystal room
like a fairy palace. And as she looked a smile of rapture lighted up her
lovely face, and then she turned towards the giver of all these and
tried to utter her feelings; but instead of speaking, she burst into
tears, threw herself in his arms, and sobbed on his bosom.
He had overwhelmed her with his gifts, as he had done once before.
How smilingly he caressed and soothed her, until she lifted up her head,
dashed away her tears, and said, laughing:
“‘I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of,’ as Juliet, or Lady Macbeth,
or Regan, or Goneril, or some one of Shakespeare’s women says.”
“Miranda, my love; it was Miranda. Never misquote Shakespeare; never
even in your most confidential communications to your most intimate
friends; never even in soliloquy and in solitude!” said Alexander,
shaking his head in mock gravity.
“Indeed I wasn’t even sure it _was_ in Shakespeare,” said Drusilla.
“And now to the dining-room. I think we have earned an appetite for
dinner,” smiled Alexander, drawing her arm within his own, and leading
her from the library.
This evening was spent in the drawing-room, where tea was served.
And so ended the second day of their bright honeymoon.