“Well, then, but as to that other one?”
“What! my lord Lofty? Oh, he wants humbling! — it wouldn’t hurt him, in the least, to be put down a little. He’s good, too, and afflictions always improve good people. I believe I was made for a means of grace to ’em all.”
“Miss Nina, what if all three of them should come at once — or even two of them?”
“What a droll idea! Wouldn’t it be funny? Just to think of it! What a commotion! What a scene! It would really be vastly entertaining.”
“Now, Miss Nina, I want to speak as a friend.”
“No, you sha’n’t! it is just what people say when they are going to say something disagreeable. I told Clayton, once for all, that I wouldn’t have him speak as a friend to me.”
“Pray, how does he take all this?”
“Take it! Why, just as he must. He cares a great deal more for me than I do for him.” Here a slight little sigh escaped the fair speaker. “And I think it fun to shock him. You know he is one of the fatherly sort, who is always advising young girls. Let it be understood that his standard of female character is wonderfully high, and all that. And then, to think of his being tripped up before me! — it’s too funny!” The little sprite here took off her opera-hat, and commenced waltzing a few steps, and stopping mid whirl, exclaimed: “Oh, do you know, we girls have been trying to learn the cachucha, and I’ve got some castanets! Let me see — where are they?” And with this she proceeded to upset the trunk, from which flew a meteoric shower of bracelets, billets-doux, French Grammars, drawing-pencils, interspersed with confectionery of various descriptions, and all the etceteras of a schoolgirl’s depository. “There, upon my word, there are the bills you were asking for. There, take them!” throwing a package of papers at the young man. “Take them! Can you catch?”
“Miss Nina, these do not appear to be bills.”
“Oh, bless me! those are love-letters, then. The bills are somewhere.” And the little hands went pawing among the heap making the fanciful collection fly in every direction over the carpet. “Ah! I believe now in this bonbon-box I did put them. Take care of your head, Harry!” And, with the word, the gilded missile flew from the little hand, and opening on the way, showered Harry with a profusion of crumpled papers. “Now you have got them all, except one, that I used for curl-papers the other night. Oh, don’t look so sober about it! Indeed, I kept the pieces — here they are. And now don’t you say, Harry, don’t you tell me that I never save my bills. You don’t know how particular I have been, and what trouble I have taken. But, there — there’s a letter Clayton wrote to me, one time when we had a quarrel. Just a specimen of that creature!”
“Pray tell us about it, Miss Nina,” said the young man, with his eyes fixed admiringly on the little person, while he was smoothing and arranging the crumpled documents.
“Why, you see, it was just this way. You know, these men — how provoking they are! They’ll go and read all sorts of books — no matter what they read! — and then they are so dreadfully particular about us girls. Do you know, Harry, this always made me angry?
“Well, so, you see, one evening Sophy Elliot quoted some poetry from ‘Don Juan,’ — I never read it, but it seems folks call it a bad book, — and my lord Clayton immediately fixed his eyes upon her in such an appalling way, and says, ‘Have you read “Don Juan,” Miss Elliot? ‘ Then, you know, as girls always do in such cases, she blushed and stammered, and said her brother had read some extracts from it to her. I was vexed, and said, ‘And, pray, what’s the harm if she did read it? I mean to read it, the very first chance I get!’
“Oh! everybody looked so shocked. Why, dear me! if I had said I was going to commit murder, Clayton could not have looked more concerned. So he put on that very edifying air of his, and said, ‘Miss Nina, I trust, as your friend, that you will not read that book. I should lose all respect for a lady friend who had read that.’
“‘Have you read it, Mr. Clayton?’ said I.
“‘Yes, Miss Nina,’ said he, quite piously.
“‘What makes you read such bad books?’ said I, very innocently.
“Then there followed a general fuss and talk; and the gentlemen, you know, would not have their wives or their sisters read anything naughty, for the world. They wanted us all to be like snowflakes, and all that. And they were quite high, telling they wouldn’t marry this, and they wouldn’t marry that, till at last I made them a curtsy, and said, ‘Gentlemen, we ladies are infinitely obliged to you, but we don’t intend to marry people that read naughty books, either. Of course you know snowflakes don’t like smut!’
“Now, I really didn’t mean anything by it, except to put down these men, and stand up for my sex. But Clayton took it in real earnest. He grew red and grew pale, and was just as angry as he could be. Well, the quarrel raged about three days. Then, do you know, I made him give up, and own that he was in the wrong. There, I think he was, too, — don’t you? Don’t you think men ought to be as good as we are, anyway?”
“Miss Nina, I should think you would be afraid to express yourself so positively.”
“Oh, if I cared a sou for any of them, perhaps I should. But there isn’t one of the train that I would give that for!” said she, flirting a shower of peanut-shells into the air.
“Yes, but Miss Nina, some time or other you must marry somebody. You need somebody to take care of the property and place.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it? You are tired of keeping accounts, are you, with me to spend the money? Well, I don’t wonder. How I pity anybody that keeps accounts! Isn’t it horrid, Harry? Those awful books! Do you know that Mme. Ardaine set out that ‘we girls’ should keep account of our expenses?. I just tried it two weeks. I had a headache and weak eyes, and actually it nearly ruined my constitution. Somehow or other, they gave it up, it gave them so much trouble. And what’s the use? When money’s spent, it’s spent; and keeping accounts ever so strict won’t get it back. I am very careful about my expenses. I never get anything that I can do without.”
“For instance,” said Harry, rather roguishly, “this bill of one hundred dollars for confectionery.”
“Well, you know just how it is, Harry. It’s so horrid to have to study! Girls must have something. And you know I didn’t get it all for myself; I gave it round to all the girls. Then they used to ask me for it, and I couldn’t refuse — and so it went.”
“I didn’t presume to comment, Miss Nina. What have we here? — Mme. Les Cartes, $450?”
“Oh, Harry, that horrid Mme. Les Cartes! You never saw anything like her! Positively, it is not my fault. She puts down things I never got: I know she does. Nothing in the world but because she is from Paris. Everybody is complaining of her. But, then, nobody gets anything anywhere else. So what can one do, you know? I assure you, Harry, I am economical.”
The young man, who had been summing up the accounts, now burst out into such a hearty laugh as somewhat disconcerted the fair rhetorician.
She colored to her temples.
“Harry, now, for shame! Positively, you aren’t respectful!”
“Oh, Miss Nina, on my knees I beg pardon!” still continuing to laugh; “but, indeed, you must excuse me. I am positively delighted to hear of your economy, Miss Nina.”
“Well, now, Harry, you may look at the bills and see. Haven’t I ripped up all my silk dresses and had them colored over, just to economize? You can see the dyer’s bill, there; and Mme. Carteau told me she always expected to turn my dresses twice, at least. Oh, yes, I have been very economical.”
“I have heard of old dresses turned costing more than new ones, Miss Nina.”
“Oh, nonsense, Harry! What should you know of girls’ things? But I’ll tell you one thing I’ve got, Harry, and that is a gold watch for you. There it is,” throwing a case carelessly towards him; “and there’s a silk dress for your wife,” throwing him a little parcel. “I have sense enough to know what a good fellow you are, at any rate. I couldn’t go on as I do, if you did
n’t rack your poor head fifty ways to keep things going straight here at home for me.”
A host of conflicting emotions seemed to cross the young man’s face, like a shadow of clouds over a field, as he silently undid the packages. His hands trembled, his lips quivered, but he said nothing.
“Come, Harry, don’t this suit you? I thought it would.”
“Miss Nina, you are too kind.”
“No, I’m not, Harry; I am a selfish little concern, that’s a fact,” said she, turning away, and pretending not to see the feeling which agitated him.
“But, Harry, wasn’t it droll, this morning, when all our people came up to get their presents! There was Aunt Sue, and Aunt Tike, and Aunt Katy, each one got a new sack pattern, in which they are going to make up the prints I brought them. In about two days our place will be flaming with aprons and sacks. And did you see Aunt Rose in that pink bonnet, with the flowers? You could see every tooth in her head! Of course, now they’ll be taken with a very pious streak, to go to some camp-meeting or other, to show their finery. Why don’t you laugh, Harry?”
“I do, don’t I, Miss Nina?”
“You only laugh on your face. You don’t laugh deep down. What’s the matter? I don’t believe it’s good for you to read and study so much. Papa used to say that he didn’t think it was good for” —
She stopped, checked by the expression on the face of her listener.
“For servants, Miss Nina, your papa said, I suppose.”
With the quick tact of her sex, Nina perceived that she had struck some disagreeable chord in the mind of her faithful attendant, and she hastened to change the subject in her careless, rattling way.
“Why, yes, Harry, study is horrid for you, or me either, or anybody else, except musty old people, who don’t know how to do anything else. Did ever anybody look out of doors, such a pleasant day as this, and want to study? Think of a bird’s studying, now, or a bee! They don’t study — they live. Now, I don’t want to study — I want to live. So now, Harry, if you’ll just get the ponies and go in the woods, I want to get some jessamines, and spring beauties, and wild honeysuckles, and all the rest of the flowers that I used to get before I went to school.”
CHAPTER II
CLAYTON
THE curtain rises on our next scene, and discovers a tranquil library, illuminated by the slant rays of the afternoon’s sun. On one side the room opened by long glass windows on to a garden, from whence the air came in perfumed with the breath of roses and honeysuckles. The floor covered with white matting, the couches and sofas robed in smooth glazed linen, gave an air of freshness and coolness to the apartment. The walls were hung with prints of the great masterpieces of European art, while bronzes and plaster-casts, distributed with taste and skill, gave evidence of artistic culture in the general arrangement. Two young men were sitting together near the opened window at a small table, which displayed an antique coffee-set of silver, and a silver tray of ices and fruits. One of these has already been introduced to the notice of our readers, in the description of our heroine in the last chapter.
Edward Clayton, the only son of Judge Clayton, and representative of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of North Carolina, was in personal appearance much what our lively young friend had sketched — tall, slender, with a sort of loose-jointedness and carelessness of dress, which might have produced an impression of clownishness, had it not been relieved by a refined and intellectual expression on the head and face. The upper part of the face gave the impression of thoughtfulness and strength, with a shadowing of melancholy earnestness, and there was about the eye, in conversation, that occasional gleam of troubled wildness which betrays the hypochondriac temperament. The mouth was even feminine in the delicacy and beauty of its lines, and the smile which sometimes played around it had a peculiar fascination. It seemed to be a smile of but half the man’s nature; for it never rose as high as the eyes, or seemed to disturb the dark stillness of their thoughtfulness.
The other speaker was in many respects a contrast; and we will introduce him to our readers by the name of Frank Russel. Furthermore, for their benefit, we will premise that he was the only son of a once distinguished and wealthy, but now almost decayed family of Virginia.
It is supposed by many that friendship is best founded upon similarity of nature; but observation teaches that it is more common by a union of opposites, in which each party is attracted by something wanting in itself. In Clayton, the great preponderance of those faculties which draw a man inward, and impair the efficiency of the outward life, inclined him to overvalue the active and practical faculties, because he saw them constantly attended with a kind of success which he fully appreciated, but was unable to attain. Perfect ease of manner, ready presence of mind under all social exigencies, adroitness in making the most of passing occurrences, are qualities which are seldom the gift of sensitive and deeply thoughtful natures, and which for this very reason they are often disposed to overvalue. Russel was one of those men who have just enough of all the higher faculties to appreciate their existence in others, and not enough of any one to disturb the perfect availability of his own mind. Everything in his mental furnishing was always completely under his own control, and on hand for use at a moment’s notice. From infancy he was noted for quick tact and ready reply. At school he was the universal factotum, the “good fellow” of the ring, heading all the mischief among the boys, and yet walking with exemplary gravity on the blind side of the master. Many a scrape had he rescued Clayton from, into which he had fallen from a more fastidious moral sense, a more scrupulous honor, than is for worldly profit either in the boy’s or man’s sphere; and Clayton, superior as he was, could not help loving and depending on him.
The diviner part of man is often shamefaced and self distrustful, ill at home in this world, and standing in awe of nothing so much as what is called common sense; and yet common sense very often, by its own keenness, is able to see that these unavailable currencies of another’s mind are of more worth, if the world only knew it, than the ready coin of its own; and so the practical and the ideal nature are drawn together.
So Clayton and Russel had been friends from boyhood; had roomed together their four years in college; and although instruments of a vastly different quality, had hitherto played the concerts of life with scarce a discord.
In person, Russel was of about the medium size, with a well-knit, elastic frame, all whose movements were characterized by sprightliness and energy. He had a frank, open countenance, clear blue eyes, a high forehead shaded by clusters of curling brown hair; his flexible lips wore a good-natured yet half-sarcastic smile. His feelings, though not inconveniently deep, were easily touched; he could be moved to tears or to smiles, with the varying humor of a friend; but never so far as to lose his equipoise — or, as he phrased it, forget what he was about.
But we linger too long in description. We had better let the reader hear the dramatis personæ and judge for himself.
“Well, now, Clayton,” said Russel, as he leaned back in a stuffed leather chair, with a cigar between his fingers, “how considerate of them to go off on that marooning party, and leave us to ourselves, here! I say, old boy, how goes the world now? — Reading law, hey? — booked to be Judge Clayton the second! Now, my dear fellow, if I had the opportunities that you have — only to step into my father’s shoes — I should be a lucky fellow.”
“Well, you are welcome to all my chances,” said Clayton, throwing himself on one of the lounges; “for I begin to see that I shall make very little of them.”
“Why, what’s the matter? — Don’t you like the study?”
“The study, perhaps, well enough — but not the practice. Reading the theory is always magnificent and grand. ‘Law hath her seat in the bosom of God; her voice is the harmony of the world’ You remember we used to declaim that. But, then, come to the practice of it, and what do you find? Are legal examinations anything like searching after truth? Does not an advocate commit himself to
one-sided views of his subject, and habitually ignore all the truth on the other side? Why, if I practiced law according to my conscience, I should be chased out of court in a week.”
“There you are again, Clayton, with your everlasting conscience, which has been my plague ever since you were a boy, and I have never been able to convince you what a humbug it is! It’s what I call a crotchety conscience — always in the way of your doing anything like anybody else. I suppose, then, of course, you won’t go into political life. — Great pity, too. You’d make a very imposing figure as senator. You have exactly the cut for a conscript father — one of the old Viri Romæ.”
“And what do you think the old Viri Romæ would do in Washington? What sort of a figure do you think Regulus, or Quintus Curtius, or Mucius Scævola, would make there?”
“Well, to be sure, the style of political action has altered somewhat since those days. If political duties were what they were then, — if a gulf would open in Washington, for example, — you would be the fellow to plunge in, horse and all, for the good of the republic; or, if anything was to be done by putting your right hand in the fire and burning it off — or, if there were any Carthaginians who would cut off your eyelids, or roll you down hill in a barrel of nails, for truth and your country’s sake, — you would be on hand for any such matter. That’s the sort of foreign embassy that you would be after. All these old-fashioned goings on would suit you to a T; but as to figuring in purple and fine linen, in Paris or London, as American minister, you would make a dismal business of it. But still, I thought you might practice law in a wholesome, sensible way, — take fees, make pleas with abundance of classical allusions, show off your scholarship, marry a rich wife, and make your children princes in the gates — all without treading on the toes of your too sensitive moral what-d’-ye-call-’ems. But you’ve done one thing like other folks, at least, if all’s true that I’ve heard.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 63