The intimacy between the brother and sister had been more than usually strong, notwithstanding marked differences of character; for Anne had not a particle of ideality. Sense she had, shrewdness, and a pleasant dash of humor withal; but she was eminently what people call a practical girl. She admired highly the contrary of all this in her brother; she delighted in the poetic-heroic element in him, for much the same reason that young ladies used to admire Thaddeus of Warsaw and William Wallace — because it was something quite out of her line. In the whole world of ideas she had an almost idolatrous veneration for her brother; in the sphere of practical operations she felt free to assert, with a certain good-natured positiveness, her own superiority. There was no one in the world, perhaps, of whose judgment in this respect Clayton stood more in awe.
At the present juncture of affairs Clayton felt himself rather awkwardly embarrassed in communicating to her an event which she would immediately feel she had a right to know before. A sister of Anne Clayton’s positive character does not usually live twenty-seven years in constant intimacy with a brother like Clayton, without such an attachment as renders the first announcement of a contemplated marriage somewhat painful. Why, then, had Clayton, who always unreservedly corresponded with his sister, not kept her apprised of his gradual attachment to Nina? The secret of the matter was, that he had had an instinctive consciousness that he could not present Nina to the practical, clear-judging mind of his sister as she appeared through the mist and spray of his imaginative nature. The hard facts of her case would be sure to tell against her in any communication he might make; and sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts. Nothing, in fact, is less capable of being justified by technical reasons than those fine insights into character whereupon affection is built. We have all had experience of preferences which would not follow the most exactly ascertained catalogue of virtues, and would be made captive where there was very little to be said in justification of the captivity.
But, meanwhile, rumor, always busy, had not failed to convey to Anne Clayton some suspicions of what was passing; and though her delicacy and pride forbade any allusion to it, she keenly felt the want of confidence, and of course was not any more charitably disposed towards the little rival for this reason. But now the matter had attained such a shape in Clayton’s mind that he felt the necessity of apprising his family and friends. With his mother the task was made easier by the abundant hopefulness of her nature, which enabled her in a moment to throw herself into the sympathies of those she loved. To her had been deputed the office of first breaking the tidings to Anne, and she had accomplished it during the pleasure-party of the morning.
The first glance that passed between Clayton and his sister, as she entered the room, on her return from the party, showed him that she was discomposed and unhappy. She did not remain long in the apartment, or seem disposed to join in conversation; and after a few abstracted moments, she passed through the open door into the garden, and began to busy herself apparently among her plants. Clayton followed her. He came and stood silently beside her for some time, watching her as she picked the dead leaves off her geranium.
“Mother has told you,” he said, at length.
“Yes,” said Anne.
There was a long pause, and Anne picked off dry leaves and green promiscuously, threatening to demolish the bush.
“Anne,” said Clayton, “how I wish you could see her!”
“I’ve heard of her,” replied Anne dryly, “through the Livingstons.”
“And what have you heard?” said Clayton eagerly. “Not such things as I could wish, Edward; not such as I expected to hear of the lady that you would choose.”
“And, pray, what have you heard? Out with it,” said Clayton,—”let’s know what the world says of her.”
“Well, the world says,” said Anne, “that she is a coquette, a flirt, a jilt. From all I’ve heard, I should think she must be an unprincipled girl.”
“That is hard language, Anne.”
“Truth is generally hard,” replied Anne.
“My dear sister,” said Clayton, taking her hand, and seating her on the seat in the garden, “have you lost all faith in me?”
“I think it would be nearer truth,” replied Anne, “to say that you had lost all faith in me. Why am I the last one to know all this? Why am I to hear it first from reports, and every way but from you? Would I have treated you so? Did I ever have anything that I did not tell you? Down to my very soul I’ve always told you everything!”
“This is true, I own, dear Anne; but what if you had loved some man that you felt sure I should not like? Now, you are a positive person, Anne, and this might happen. Would you want to tell me at once? Would you not, perhaps, wait, and hesitate, and put off, for one reason or another, from day to day, and find it grow more and more difficult the longer you waited?”
“I can’t tell,” said Anne bitterly. “I never did love any one better than you, — that’s the trouble.”
“Neither do I love anybody better than you, Anne. The love I have for you is a whole, perfect thing, just as it was. See if you do not find me every way as devoted. My heart was only opened to take in another love, another wholly different; and which, because it is so wholly different, never can infringe on the love I bear to you. And, Anne, my dear sister, if you could love her as a part of me” —
“I wish I could,” said Anne, somewhat softened; “but what I’ve heard has been so unfavorable! She is not, in the least, the person I should have expected you to fancy, Edward. Of all things I despise a woman who trifles with the affections of gentlemen.”
“Well, but, my dear, Nina isn’t a woman; she is a child — a gay, beautiful, unformed child; and I’m sure you may apply to her what Pope says: —
‘If to her share some female errors fall, Look in her face, and you forget them all.’”
“Yes, indeed,” said Anne, “I believe all you men are alike — a pretty face bewitches any of you. I thought you were an exception, Edward; but there you are.”
“But, Anne, is this the way to encourage my confidence? Suppose I am bewitched and enchanted, you cannot disentangle me without indulgence. Say what you will about it, the fact is just this — it is my fate to love this child. I’ve tried to love many women before. I have seen many whom I knew no sort of reason why I shouldn’t love, — handsomer far, more cultivated, more accomplished, —— and yet I’ve seen them without a movement or a flutter of the pulse. But this girl has awakened all there is to me. I do not see in her what the world sees. I see the ideal image of what she can be, what I’m sure she will be, when her nature is fully awakened and developed.”
“Just there, Edward — just that,” said Anne. “You never see anything; that is, you see a glorified image — a something that might, could, would, or should be — that is your difficulty. You glorify an ordinary boarding-school coquette into something symbolic, sublime; you clothe her with all your own ideas, and then fall down to worship her.”
“Well, my dear Anne, suppose it were so, what then? I am, as you say, ideal, — you, real. Well, be it so; I must act according to what is in me. I have a right to my nature, you to yours. But it is not every person whom I can idealize; and I suspect this is the great reason why I never could love some very fine women with whom I have associated on intimate terms; they had no capacity of being idealized; they could receive no color from my fancy; they wanted, in short, just what Nina has. She is just like one of those little whisking, chattering cascades in the White Mountains, and the atmosphere round her is favorable to rainbows.”
“And you always see her through them.”
“Even so, sister; but some people I cannot. Why should you find fault with me? It’s a pleasant thing to look through a rainbow. Why should you seek to disenchant, if I can be enchanted?”
“Why,” replied Anne, “you remember the man who took his pay of the fairies in gold and diamonds, and, after he had passed a certain brook, found it all turned t
o slate-stones. Now, marriage is like that brook; many a poor fellow finds his diamonds turned to slate on the other side; and this is why I put in my plain, hard common sense against your visions. I see the plain facts about this young girl; that she is an acknowledged flirt, a noted coquette and jilt; and a woman who is so is necessarily heartless; and you are too good, Edward, too noble, I have loved you too long, to be willing to give you up to such a woman.”
“There, my dear Anne, there are at least a dozen points in that sentence to which I don’t agree. In the first place, as to coquetry, it isn’t the unpardonable sin in my eyes — that is, under some circumstances.”
“That is, you mean, when Nina Gordon is the coquette?”
“No, I don’t mean that. But the fact is, Anne, there is so little of true sincerity, so little real benevolence and charity, in the common intercourse of young gentlemen and ladies in society, and our sex, who ought to set the example, are so selfish and unprincipled in their ways of treating women, that I do not wonder that, now and then, a lively girl, who has the power, avenges her sex by playing off our weak points. Now, I don’t think Nina capable of trifling with a real, deep, unselfish attachment — a love which sought her good, and was willing to sacrifice itself for her; but I don’t believe any such has ever been put at her disposal. There’s a great difference between a man’s wanting a woman to love him and loving her. Wanting to appropriate a woman as a wife does not, of course, imply that a man loves her, or that he is capable of loving anything. All these things girls feel, because their instincts are quick; and they are often accused of trifling with a man’s heart when they only see through him, and know he hasn’t any. Besides, love of power has always been considered a respectable sin in us men; and why should we denounce a woman for loving her kind of power?”
“Oh, well, Edward, there isn’t anything in the world that you cannot theorize into beauty. But I don’t like coquettes, for all that; and then, I’m told Nina Gordon is so very odd, and says and does such very extraordinary things sometimes.”
“Well, perhaps that charms me the more. In this conventional world, where women are all rubbed into one uniform surface, like coins in one’s pocket, it’s a pleasure now and then to find one who can’t be made to do and think like all the rest. You have a little dash of this merit yourself, Anne; but you must consider that you have been brought up with mamma, under her influence, trained and guided every hour, even more than you knew. Nina has grown up an heiress among servants, a boarding-school girl in New York; and, furthermore, you are twenty-seven and she is eighteen, and a great deal may be learned between eighteen and twenty-seven.”
“But, brother, you remember Miss Hannah More says, —— or some of those good women, I forget who: at any rate it’s a sensible saying,—’ that a man who chooses his wife as he would a picture in a public exhibition-room should remember that there is this difference, that the picture cannot go back to the exhibition, but the woman may.’ You have chosen her from seeing her brilliancy in society; but, after all, can you make her happy in the dull routine of a commonplace life? Is she not one of the sort that must have a constant round of company and excitement to keep her in spirits?”
“I think not,” said Clayton. “I think she is one of those whose vitality is in herself, and one whose freshness and originality will keep life anywhere from being commonplace; and that, living with us, she will sympathize, naturally, in all our pursuits.”
“Well, now, don’t flatter yourself, brother, that you can make this girl over, and bring her to any of your standards.”
“Who — I? Did you think I meditated such an impertinence? The last thing I should try, to marry a wife to educate her! It’s generally one of the most selfish tricks of our sex. Besides, I don’t want a wife who will be a mere mirror of my opinions and sentiments. I don’t want an innocent sheet of blotting-paper, meekly sucking up all I say, and giving a little fainter impression of my ideas. I want a wife for an alterative; all the vivacities of life lie in differences.”
“Why, surely,” said Anne, “one wants one’s friends to be congenial, I should think.”
“So we do; and there is nothing in the world so congenial as differences. To be sure, the differences must be harmonious. In music, now, for instance, one doesn’t want a repetition of the same notes, but differing notes that chord. Nay, even discords are indispensable to complete harmony. Now, Nina has just that difference from me which chords with me; and all our little quarrels — for we have had a good many, and I dare say shall have more —— are only a sort of chromatic passages, — discords of the seventh, leading into harmony. My life is inward, theorizing, self-absorbed. I am hypochondriac — often morbid. The vivacity and acuteness of her outer life make her just what I need. She wakens, she rouses, and keeps me in play; and her quick instincts are often more than a match for my reason. I reverence the child, then, in spite of her faults. She has taught me many things.”
“Well,” said Anne, laughing, “I give you up, if it comes to that. If you come to talk about reverencing Nina Gordon, I see it’s all over with you, Edward, and I’ll be good natured, and make the best of it. I hope it may all be true that you think, and a great deal more. At all events, no effort of mine shall be wanting to make you as happy in your new relation as you ought to be.”
“There, now, that’s Anne Clayton! It’s just like you, sister, and I couldn’t say anything better than that. You have unburdened your conscience, you have done all you can for me, and now very properly yield to the inevitable. Nina, I know, will love you; and if you never try to advise her and influence her, you will influence her very much. Good people are a long while learning that, Anne. They think to do good to others by interfering and advising. They don’t know that all they have to do is to live. When I first knew Nina, I was silly enough to try my hand that way myself; but I’ve learned better. Now, when Nina comes to us, all that you and mamma have got to do is just to be kind to her, and live as you always have lived; and whatever needs to be altered in her, she will alter herself.”
“Well,” said Anne, “I wish, as it is so, that I could see her.”
“Suppose you write a few lines to her in this letter that I am going to write; and then that will lead in due time to a visit.”
“Anything in the world, Edward, that you say.”
CHAPTER IV
THE GORDON FAMILY
A WEEK or two had passed over the head of Nina Gordon since she was first introduced to our readers, and during this time she had become familiar with the details of her home life. Nominally she stood at the head of her plantation, as mistress and queen in her own right of all, both in doors and out; but, really, she found herself, by her own youth and inexperience, her ignorance of practical details, very much in the hands of those she professed to govern.
The duties of a southern housekeeper, on a plantation, are onerous beyond any amount of northern conception. Every article wanted for daily consumption must be kept under lock and key, and doled out as need arises. For the most part, the servants are only grown-up children, without consideration, forethought, or self-control, quarreling with each other, and divided into parties and factions, hopeless of any reasonable control. Every article of wear, for some hundreds of people, must be thought of, purchased, cut and made, under the direction of the mistress; and add to this the care of young children, whose childish mothers are totally unfit to govern or care for them, and we have some slight idea of what devolves on southern housekeepers.
Our reader has seen what Nina was on her return from New York, and can easily imagine that she had no idea of embracing, in good earnest, the hard duties of such a life.
In fact, since the death of Nina’s mother, the situation of the mistress of the family had been only nominally filled by her aunt, Mrs. Nesbit. The real housekeeper, in fact, was an old mulatto woman, named Katy, who had been trained by Nina’s mother. Notwithstanding the general inefficiency and childishness of negro servants, there often are to be foun
d among them those of great practical ability. Whenever owners, through necessity or from tact, select such servants, and subject them to the kind of training and responsibility which belong to a state of freedom, the same qualities are developed which exist in free society. Nina’s mother, being always in delicate health, had, from necessity, been obliged to commit much responsibility to “Aunt Katy,” as she was called; and she had grown up under the discipline into a very efficient housekeeper. With her tall red turban, her jingling bunch of keys, and an abundant sense of the importance of her office, she was a dignitary not lightly to be disregarded.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 65