Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858», sayfa 9

"I gave you credit for more penetration, Hugh. Now, just look a minute. What would you think of the shrewdness of a young man, who had no special turn for business, but a great fondness for taking his ease,–with no money nor prospect of any,–and who, when he had the opportunity to step at once into fortune and position, made no movement to secure it?"

"Well, the application?"

"The fortune may be yours, if you will."

"Don't tell me riddles. Show me the prize, and I'm after it."

"But it has an incumbrance."

"Well?"

"A pretty, artless, affectionate little woman, who will make you the best wife in the world."

"Splendid, by Jove! Who is she?"

"You needn't look far. We generally miss seeing the thing that is under our nose."

"Why, mother, there isn't an heiress in Innisfield except my sister Mildred."

"Mildred is not your sister. You are no more to each other than the two farthest persons on earth."

"True enough! Well, mother, you are an old 'un!"

"Don't!"–with a look of disgust,–"don't use your sailor slang here! To see that doesn't require any particular shrewdness."

"But Mildred never liked me much. She always ran from me, like the kitten from old Bose. She has always looked as though she thought I would bite, and that it was best she should keep out of reach under a chair."

"Any young man of good address and fair intelligence can make an impression on a girl of eighteen, if he has the will, the time, and the opportunity. You have everything in your favor, and if you don't take the fortune that lies right in your path, you deserve to go to the poor-house."

Hugh meditated.

"Good-morning," said Mrs. Kinloch. "You know the horse and carriage, or the saddle-ponies, are always yours when you want to use them."

Great discoveries seem always so simple, that we wonder they were not made from the first. The highest truths are linked with the commonest objects and events of daily life.

Hugh looked about him as much astonished as though he had been shown a gold mine in old Quobbin, where he could dig for the asking. What determination he made, the course of our story will show.

CHAPTER VIII

Hugh had ordered George, the Asiatic, to saddle the ponies after dinner, intending to ask Mildred to take a ride northward, through the pine woods; but on making inquiries, he found that she had walked out, leaving word that she should be absent all day.

"Confound it!" thought he,–"a mishap at the start! I'm afraid the omen isn't a good one. However, I must kill time some way. I can't lay up here, like a ship in ordinary; better be shaken by storms or covered with barnacles at sea than be housed up, worm-eaten or crumbled into powder by dry-rot on shore."

He went to ride alone, but did not go in the direction of the pine woods.

Mildred could not get over the unpleasant impressions of the morning, so, rather than remain in her room this fine day, she had walked across the meadow, east of the mill-pond, to a farm-house, where she was a frequent and welcome visitor. On her way, she called for Lizzy Hardwick, the blacksmith's daughter, who accompanied her. Mr. Alford, the farmer, was a blunt, good-humored, and rather eccentric man, shrewd and well to do, but kindly and charitable. He had no children, and he enjoyed the occasional visits of his favorites heartily; so did his wife, Aunt Mercy. Her broad face brightened as she saw the girls coming, and her plump hands were both extended to greet them. They went to the dairy to see the creaking cheese-presses, ate of the fresh curd, saw the golden stores of butter;–thence to the barn, where they clambered upon the hay-mow, found the nest of a bantam, took some of the little eggs in their pockets;–then coming into the yard, they patted the calves' heads, scattered oats for the doves, that, with pink feet and pearly blue necks, crowded around them to be fed, and next began to chase a fine old gander down to the brook, when Mr. Alford, getting over the fence, called out, "Hold on, girls! don't bother Uncle Ralph!–don't!"

"Where is Uncle Ralph?" asked Mildred.

"Why, that gander you've been chasin'; and he's about the harn'somest bird I know on, too. Talk about swans! there never was a finer neck, nor a prettier coat of feathers on anything that ever swum. His wings are powerful; only let him spread 'em, and up he goes; but as for his feet, he limps just a little, as you see. No offence, Lizzy. I love your father as well as you do; but when I hear him, with his idees so grand,–the minister don't begin with him,–and yet to be bothered, as he is sometimes, to get a word out, I think of my good old fellow here, whose wings are so much better'n his legs. Come here, Ralph! You see he knows his name. There!"–patting his head,–"that's a good fellow! Now go and help marm attend to your goslins."

The kindly tone and the caress took away from the comparison any idea of disrespect, and the girls laughed at the odd conceit,–Lizzy, at least, not a little proud of the implied compliment. Mr. Alford left them, to attend to his affairs, and they went on with their romp,–running on the top of the smooth wall beside the meadow, gathering clusters of lilac blossoms from the fatherly great posy that grew on the sunny side of the house, and admiring the solitary state of the peacock, as, with dainty step, he trailed his royal robe over the sward. Soon they heard voices at the house, and, going round the corner of the shed, saw Uncle Ralph and Mark Davenport talking with Mr. Alford at the door.

Not to make a mystery of a simple matter, the blacksmith had come to borrow of Mr. Alford the money necessary to make up the amount owing by Mark to the Kinloch estate.

The young man had shown great readiness to accompany his uncle; praiseworthy, certainly; but I am inclined to think he had somehow got an intimation that the girls had preceded him.

Fortunately, the farmer was able to lend the sum wanted, and, as he had an errand in town, he took Mr. Hardwick with him in his wagon.

Mark was left, nothing loath, to walk home with the girls. Do not think he was wanting in affection for his cousin Lizzy, if he wished that she were, just for one hour, a hundred miles away. They took a path that led over the plain to the river, intending to cross upon a foot-bridge, a short distance above the village. But though Mark was obliged to be silent on the matter he had most at heart, Mildred was not unaware of his feelings. A tone, a look, a grasp of the hand serves for an index, quite as well as the most fervent speech. The river makes a beautiful bend near the foot-bridge, and its bank is covered with a young growth of white pines. They sat down on a hillock, under the trees, whose spicy perfume filled the air, and looked down the stream towards the village. How fair it lay in the soft air of that June day! The water was deep and blue, with a reflected heaven. The mills that cluster about the dam, a mile below, were partially concealed by young elms, silver-poplars, and water-maples. Gardens sloped on either bank to the water's edge. Neat, white houses gleamed through the trees and shrubbery around the bases of the hills that hem in the valley; and the tall, slender spire of the meeting-house shewed fairly against its densely-wooded background. Verily, if I were a painter, I should desire no lovelier scene for my canvas than that on which Mark and Mildred looked. Lizzy walked away, and began hunting checkerberries with an unusual ardor. She did understand; she would not be Mademoiselle de Trop any longer. Kind soul! so unlike young women in general, who won't step aside gracefully, when they should! Further I can vouch, that she neither hemmed, nor made eyes, nor yet repeated the well-worn proverb, "Two's company, but three's none." No, she gathered berries and sang snatches of songs as though she were quite alone.

Now those of my readers who have the good-fortune still to linger in teens are expecting that I shall treat them to a report of this delightful tête-à-tête. But it must not be told. The older people would skip it, or say, "Pshaw!" And besides, if it were set down faithfully, you would be sadly disappointed; the cleverest men, even, are quite sure to appear silly (to other people) when in love. The speeches of the Romeos and Claude Melnottes, with which you have been so enchanted, would be common-place enough, if translated into the actual prose in which they were delivered. When Shakspeare wooed Anne Hathaway, it might have been different; but consider, you will wait some time before you find a lover like him. No, when your time comes, it will be soon enough. You will see your hero in his velvet cloak and plumed hat, with the splendor of scenery and the intoxication of the music. I don't choose to show him to you in morning dress at rehearsal, under daubed canvas and dangling machinery.

However full of poetry and passion Mark's declaration was for Mildred, to him it was tame and hesitating enough. It seemed to him that he could not force into the cold formula of words the emotion that agitated him. But with quickening breath he poured out his love, his hopes, and his fears,–the old burden! She trembled, her eyelids fell; but at length, roused by his pleading tones, she looked up. Their eyes met; one look was enough; it was a reciprocal electric flash. With a sudden energy he clasped her in his arms; and it was a very pretty tableau they made! But in the quick movement his heedless foot chanced to touch a stone, which rolled down the bank and fell into the stream with a splash. The charm was broken.

"What's that?" cried Lizzy from a distance, forgetting her discretion. "Did a pickerel jump?"

"No," replied Mark, "the pickerel know me of old, and don't come about for fear that I have a hook and line in my pocket. It was only a stone rolling into the river."

"You come here a moment," continued the unthoughtful Lizzy; "here's a beautiful sassafras sapling, and I can't pull it up by the roots alone."

"Send for the dentist, then."

"Go and help her," said Mildred, softly.

"Well," said Mark, with a look of enforced resignation,–"if I must."

The sapling grew on the steep bank, perhaps fifty yards from where he had been sitting. He did not use sufficient care to brace himself, as he pulled with all his might, and in a moment, he knew not how, he rolled down into the river. The girls first screamed, and then, as he came out of the water, shaking himself like a Newfoundland dog, they laughed immoderately. The affair did not seem very funny to Mark, and he joined in the laugh with no great heartiness. The shock had effectually dispelled all the romance of the hour.

"I'm so sorry!" said Lizzy, still laughing at his grotesque and dripping figure.

"You must hurry and get dry clothes on, Mark," said Mildred. "Squire Clamp's is the nearest house across the bridge."

"Hang Squire Clamp! his clothes would poison me. I'd as lief go to a quarantine hospital to be dressed."

"Don't!" said Lizzy.

But he kept on in the same mercurial strain.–"Clamp lives on poison, like Rappaccini's daughter, in Hawthorne's story; only it makes him ugly instead of fair, as that pretty witch was. His wife never had any trouble with spiders as long as she lived; he had only to blow into a nest, and the creatures would tumble out, and give up their venomous ghosts. No vermin but himself are to be seen in his neighborhood; the rats even found they couldn't stand it, and had to emigrate."

"The breath that killed spiders must have been a little too powerful, at times, for Mrs. Clamp, one would think," said Mildred.

"It was," said Mark. "She died one day, after Clamp had cheated a widow out of her dower."

"Don't stop longer for your fun," said Mildred, "you'll surely take cold. Besides, I can't have you making any disparaging remarks upon my guardian."

"Bless my soul! your guardian! how imprudent, to be sure!"–with a significant twinkle. "Well, I'm going. Banfield's is the nearest house; so we'll part here."

The girls went towards the village; and Mark, making vigorous strides across the meadow, took a straight line for Banfield's. Near the house is a piece of woods,–one corner of the leafy mantle that covers the hill slipped down its side and trailing upon the borders of the fertile field below. Just as he passed the woods he saw Hugh Branning letting down the bars and leading his pony out into the road. The only bridle-path through the woods led over the hill to the little house on the westerly slope, where lived Dame Ransom, Lucy's bowed and wrinkled grandmother. Mark wondered not a little where the midshipman had been; but as he still retained the memory of the old quarrel, he did not accost him, and presently thought no more of it. Reaching the house, he got some dry clothes and then went home with bounding steps. The earth was never so beautiful nor the sky so benign. The cloud of doubt had furled off and left his heaven blue. He had spoken and found that the dream of his boyhood and the hope of his youth had become the proud triumph of his manhood. Mildred Kinloch loved him! loved him as sincerely as when they were both children! What higher felicity was to be thought of? And what a motive for exertion had he now! He would be worthy of her, and the world should acknowledge that the heiress had not stooped when she mated with him.

CHAPTER IX

Mrs. Kinloch was surprised at finding that neither Hugh nor Mildred, nor yet Lucy Ransom, was in the house.

Mildred came home first and was not accompanied by Hugh, as Mrs. Kinloch had hoped. He had not found her, then,–perhaps he had not sought for her. Next Lucy returned, coming through the garden which stretched up the hill. Being questioned, she answered that she had been to her grandmother's, and had come back the nearest way over the hill, through the woods.

"What had she gone for after the fatigue of washing-day?"

"Because Squire Clamp, who owned the house her grandmother lived in, wanted her to take a message."

Mrs. Kinloch began to become interested. "Squire Clamp!" she exclaimed,–"when did you see him?"

"He called here yesterday evening,–on his way to Mr. Hardwick's, I guess."

"Why didn't he ask me if you could go? I think he's pretty free to send my girls about the town on his errands."

"You were out, Ma'am,–in the next house; and after he'd gone I forgot it."

"You remembered it to-day, it seems."

"Yes'm; after dinner I thought of it and hurried right off; but granny was sick and foolish, and didn't want to let me come away, so I couldn't get back as quick as I meant to."

"Well, you can go to the kitchen."

"Yes'm."

"I must keep an eye on that girl," thought Mrs. Kinloch. "She is easily persuaded, fickle, without strong sense, and with only a very shallow kind of cunning. She might do mischief. What can Squire Clamp want? The old hovel her grandmother lives in isn't worth fifty dollars. Whatever has been going on, I'm glad Hugh is not mixed up in it."

Just then Hugh rode up, and, tying his horse, came in. He seemed to have lost something of the gayety of the morning. "I am tired," he said. "I had to get off and lead the pony down the hill, and it's steep and stony enough."

"There are pleasant roads enough in the neighborhood," said his mother, "without your being obliged to take to the woods and clamber over the mountains."

"I know it," he replied; "but I had been up towards the Allen place, and I took a notion to come back over the hill."

"Then you passed Lucy's house?"

"Yes. The bridle-path leads down the hill about a mile above this; but on foot one may keep along the ridge and come down into the valley through our garden."

"So I suppose; in fact, I believe Lucy has just returned that way."

"Indeed! it's strange I didn't see her."

"It is strange."

Hugh bore the quiet scrutiny well, and his mother came to the conclusion that the girl had told the truth about her going for the lawyer.

Presently Mildred came down from her room, and after a few minutes Mrs. Kinloch went out, casting a fixed and meaning look at her son. She seemed as impatient for the issue of her scheme, as the child who, after planting a seed, waits for the green shoot, and twice a day digs down to see if it has not sprouted.

Mildred, as the reader may suppose, was not likely to be very agreeable to her companion; the recollections of the day were too vivid, too delicious.

She could not part with them, but constantly repeated to herself the words of love, of hope, and enthusiasm, which she had heard. So she moved or talked as in a dream, mechanically, while her soul still floated away on the summer-sea of reverie.

Hugh looked at her with real admiration; and, in truth, she deserved it. A fairer face you would not see in a day's journey; her smooth skin, not too white, but of a rich creamy tint,–eyes brown and inclined to be dreamy,–her hair chestnut and wavy,–a figure rather below the medium size, but with full, graceful lines,–these, joined with a gentle nature and a certain tremulous sensibility, constituted a divinity that it was surely no sin to worship. If sin it were, all the young men in Innisfield had need of immediate forgiveness.

Hugh had some qualms about approaching the goddess. He was sensible of a wide gulf between himself and her, and he could not but think that she was aware of it too.

"You have been to Mr. Alford's?"

A momentary pause.

"Did you speak, Hugh?"

He repeated the question. Her eyes brightened a moment as she nodded in the affirmative; then they grew dim again, like windows seen from without when the light is withdrawn to an inner room. She seemed as unconscious as a pictured Madonna.

"A beautiful day for your walk," he ventured again. The same pause, the same momentary interest as she answered, followed by the same abstraction.

"I suppose," said he, at length, "that I am having the last of my idle days here; I expect to be ordered to sea shortly."

"Indeed!" Mildred looked up.

"I shall be very sorry to leave here," he continued.

"Yes, Innisfield is quite pretty this summer. But I supposed that the pleasures of the seaport and of adventure abroad were more attractive to you than this monotonous life."

"'Tis rather slow here, but–I–I meant to say that I shall be sorry to leave you."

"Me? Why, mother can take care of me."

"Certainly she will, but I shall miss you."

"No doubt you'll think of us, when you are away; I'm sure we shall remember you. We shall never sit down to the table without thinking of your vacant chair."

It was impossible to misinterpret her kind, simple, sisterly tones. And Hugh could but feel that they indicated no particle of tenderness for him. The task of winning her was yet wholly to be done, and there was no prospect that she would give him the least encouragement in advance, if she did not utterly refuse him at the end. He saw that he must not count on an easy victory, but prepare for it by a slow and gradual approach.

Mildred sat some time leaning out of the window, then opening her piano, for the first time since her father's death, she sat down and played a nocturne by Mendelssohn. The music seemed a natural expression of her feelings,–suited to the heart "steeped in golden languors," in the "tranced summer calm." The tones rang through the silent rooms, pervading all the charmed air, so that the ear tingled in listening,–as the lips find a sharpness with the luscious flavor of the pine-apple. The sound reached to the kitchen, and brought a brief pleasure, but a bitterer pang of envy, to Lucy's swelling bosom. It calmed for a moment the evil spirit in Hugh's troubled heart. And Mrs. Kinloch in her solitary chamber, though she had always detested the piano, thought she had never heard such music before. She had found a new sense, that thrilled her with an exquisite delight. It was a good omen, she was sure, that Mildred should now, after so long a time, feel inclined to play. Only a light heart, and one supremely careless or supremely happy, could touch the keys like that. "Hugh must be a fortunate boy," she thought; and she could have hugged him for joy. What thought Hugh, as she rose from her seat at the instrument like one in a trance and walked towards the hall? Conflicting emotions struggled for mastery; but, hardly knowing what he did, he started up and offered her a caress. It was not unusual, but her nerves had acquired an unwonted sensitiveness; she shuddered, and rushed from him up the stairs. He could have torn his hair with rage.

"Am I, then, such a bear," he asked himself, "that she is afraid of me?"

A light at the end of the hall caught his eye. It was Lucy with tear-stained cheeks going to bed,–unconscious that the flaring candle she carried was dripping upon her dress,–unconscious that the one she both loved and feared was looking at her as she slowly went up the back-stairs. Truly, how little the inmates of that house knew of the secrets of each other's hearts! It was strange,–was it not?–that, after so long intimacy, they could not understand each other better! How many hearts do you really know?