Cripps was sitting at the foot of the bed, evidently much the worse for liquor; for spite of the exhortation of Tiff, he had applied to the whiskey-jug immediately on his departure. Why not? He was uncomfortable — gloomy; and every one, under such circumstances, naturally inclines towards some source of consolation. He who is intellectual reads and studies; he who is industrious flies to business; he who is affectionate seeks friends; he who is pious, religion; but he who is none of these — what has he but his whiskey? Cripps made a stupid, staring inclination toward Nina and Harry, as they entered, and sat still, twirling his thumbs and muttering to himself.
The sunshine fell through the panes on the floor, and there came floating in from without the odor of flowers and the song of birds. All the Father’s gentle messengers spoke of comfort; but he as a deaf man heard not — as a blind man did not regard. For the rest, an air of neatness had been imparted to the extreme poverty of the room by the joint efforts of Milly and Tiff.
Tiff entered softly, and stood by Nina, as she gazed. He had in his hand several sprays of white jessamine, and he laid one on the bosom of the dead.
“She had a hard walk of it,” he said, “but she’s got home! Don’t she look peaceful? — poor lamb!”
The little, thoughtless, gay coquette had never looked on a sight like this before. She stood with a fixed, tender thoughtfulness, unlike her usual gayety, her riding-hat hanging carelessly by its strings from her hands, her loose hair drooping over her face. She heard some one entering the cottage, but she did not look up. She was conscious of some one looking over her shoulder, and thought it was Harry.
“Poor thing! how young she looks,” she said, “to have had so much trouble!” Her voice trembled, and a tear stood in her eye. There was a sudden movement; she looked up, and Clayton was standing by her.
She looked surprised, and the color deepened in her cheek, but was too ingenuously and really in sympathy with the scene before her even to smile. She retained his hand a moment, and turned to the dead, saying, in an undertone, “See here!”
“I see,” he said. “Can I be of service?”
“The poor thing died last night,” said Nina. “I suppose some one might help about a funeral. Harry,” she said, walking softly towards the door, and speaking low, “you provide a coffin; have it made neatly.”
“Uncle,” she said, motioning Tiff towards her, “where would they have her buried?”
“Buried?” said Tiff. “O Lord! buried!” And he covered his face with his hard hands, and the tears ran through his fingers.
“Lord, Lord! Well, it must come, I know, but ‘pears like I couldn’t! Laws, she’s so beautiful! Don’t, today! don’t!”
“Indeed, ‘uncle,” said Nina tenderly, “I’m sorry I grieved you; but you know, poor fellow, that must come.”
“I’s known her ever since she’s dat high!” said Tiff. “Her har was curly, and she used to war such pretty red shoes, and come running after me in de garden. ‘Tiff, Tiff,’ she used to say — and dar she is now, and troubles brought her dar! Lord, what a pretty gal she was! Pretty as you be, Miss Nina. But since she married dat ar,” pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and speaking confidentially, “everything went wrong. I’s held her up — did all I could; and now here she is!”
“Perhaps,” said Nina, laying her hand on his, “perhaps she’s in a better place than this.”
“Oh, Lord, dat she is! She told me dat when she died. She saw de Lord at last, — she did so! Dem’s her last words. ‘Tiff,’ she says, ‘I see Him, and He will give me rest. Tiff,’ she says, — I’d been asleep, you know, and I kinder felt something cold on my hand, and I woke up right sudden, and dar she was, her eyes so bright, looking at me and breathing so hard; and all she says was, ‘Tiff, I’ve seen Him, and I know now why I’ve suffered so; He’s g wine to take me, and give me rest!’”
“Then, my poor fellow, you ought to rejoice that she is safe.”
“‘Deed I does,” said Tiff; “yet I’s selfish. I wants to be dere too, I does — only I has de chil’en to care for.”
“Well, my good fellow,” said Nina, “we must leave you now. Harry will see about a coffin for your poor mistress; and whenever the funeral is to be, our carriage will come over, and we will all attend.”
“Lord bless you, Miss Gordon! Dat ar too good on ye! My heart’s been most broke, tinking nobody cared for my poor young mistress! you’s too good, dat you is!” Then drawing near to her, and sinking his voice, he said: “‘Bout de mourning, Miss Nina. He ain’t no ‘count, you know — body can see how ’tis with him very plain. But missis was a Peyton, you know; and I’s a Peyton, too. I naturally feels a ‘sponsibility he couldn’t be ‘spected fur to. I’s took de ribbons off of Miss Fanny’s bonnet, and done de best I could trimming it up with black crape what Milly gave me; and I’s got a band of black crape on Master Teddy’s hat; and I ‘lowed to put one on mine, but there wasn’t quite enough. You know, missis, old family servants always wars mourning. If missis just be pleased to look over my work! Now, dis yer is Miss Fanny’s bonnet. You know I can’t be ‘spected for to make it like a milliner.”
“They are very well indeed, Uncle Tiff.”
“Perhaps, Miss Nina, you can kind of touch it over.”
“Oh, if you like, Uncle Tiff, I’ll take them all home, and do them for you.”
“The Lord bless you, Miss Gordon! Dat ar was just what I wanted, but was most ‘fraid to ask you. Some gay young ladies doesn’t like to handle black.”
“Ah! Uncle Tiff, I’ve no fears of that sort; so put it in the wagon, and let Milly take it home.” So saying, she turned and passed out of the door where Harry was standing holding the horses. A third party might have seen, by the keen, rapid glance with which his eye rested upon Clayton, that he was measuring the future probability which might make him the arbiter of his own destiny — the disposer of all that was dear to him in life. As for Nina, although the day before a thousand fancies and coquetries would have colored the manner of her meeting Clayton, yet now she was so impressed by what she had witnessed, that she scarcely appeared to know that she had met him. She placed her pretty foot on his hand, and let him lift her on to the saddle, scarcely noticing the act, except by a serious, graceful inclination of her head.
One great reason of the ascendency which Clayton had thus far gained over her was that his nature, so quiet, speculative, and undemonstrative, always left her such perfect liberty to follow the more varying moods of her own. A man of a different mould would have sought to awake her out of the trance — would have remarked on her abstracted manner, or rallied her on her silence. Clayton merely mounted his horse and rode quietly by her side, while Harry, passing on before them, was soon out of sight.
CHAPTER XI
THE LOVERS
THEY rode on in silence, till their horses’ feet again clattered in the clear, pebbly water of the stream. Here Nina checked her horse, and pointing round the circle of pine forests, and up the stream, overhung with bending trees and branches, said: —
“Hush! — listen!” Both stopped, and heard the swaying of the pine-trees, the babble of the waters, the cawing of distant crows, and the tapping of the woodpecker.
“How beautiful everything is!” she said. “It seems to me so sad that people must die! I never saw anybody dead before, and you don’t know how it makes me feel! To think that that poor woman was just such a girl as I am, and used to be just so full of life, and never thought any more than I do that she should lie there all cold and dead! Why is it things are made so beautiful, if we must die?”
“Remember what you said to the old man, Miss Nina. Perhaps she sees more beautiful things now.”
“In heaven? Yes; I wish we knew more about heaven, so that it would seem natural and homelike to us, as this world does. As for me, I can’t feel that I ever want to leave this world — I enjoy living so much! I can’t forget how cold her hand was! I never felt anything like that cold!”
In all th
e varying moods of Nina, Clayton had never seen anything that resembled this. But he understood the peculiar singleness and earnestness of nature which made any one idea, or impression, for a time absolute in her mind. They turned their horses into the woodpath, and rode on in silence.
“Do you know,” said she, “it’s such a change coming from New York to live here? Everything is so unformed, so wild, and so lonely! I never saw anything so lonesome as these woods are. Here you can ride miles and miles, hours and hours, and hear nothing but the swaying of the pine-trees, just as you hear it now. Our place (you never were there, were you V) stands all by itself, miles from any other; and I’ve been for so many years used to a thickly settled country that it seems very strange to me. I can’t help thinking things look rather deserted and desolate, here. It makes me rather sober and sad. I don’t know as you’ll like the appearance of our place. A great many things are going to decay about it; and yet there are some things that can’t decay; for papa was very fond of trees and shrubbery, and we have a good deal more of them than usual. Are you fond of trees?”
“Yes; I’m almost a tree-worshiper. I have no respect for a man who can’t appreciate a tree. The only good thing I ever heard of Xerxes was, that he was so transported with the beauty of a plane-tree, that he hung it with chains of gold. This is a little poetical island in the barbarism of those days.”
“Xerxes!” said Nina. “I believe I studied something about him in that dismal, tedious history at Mme. Ardaine’s; but nothing so interesting as that, I’m sure. But what should he hang gold chains on a tree for?”
“‘T was the best way he knew of expressing his good opinion.”
“Do you know,” said Nina, half checking her horse suddenly, “that I never had the least idea that these men were alive that we read about in these histories, or that they had any feelings like ours? We always studied the lessons, and learnt the hard names, and how forty thousand were killed on one side, and fifty thousand on the other; and we don’t know any more about it than if we never had. That’s the way we girls studied at school, except a few ‘poky’ ones, who wanted to be learned, or meant to be teachers.”
“An interesting résumé, certainly,” said Clayton, laughing.
“But how strange it is,” said Nina, “to think that all those folks we read about are alive now, doing something somewhere; and I get to wondering where they are — Xerxes, and Alexander, and the rest of them. Why, they were so full of life they kept everything in commotion while in this world; and I wonder if they have been keeping a-going ever since. Perhaps Xerxes has been looking round at our trees — nobody knows. But here we are coming now to the beginning of our grounds. There, you see that holly hedge! Mamma had that set out. She traveled in England, and liked the hedges there so much that she thought she would see what could be done with our American holly. So she had these brought from the woods, and planted. You see it all grows wild, now, because it hasn’t been cut for many years. And this live-oak avenue my grandfather set out. It’s my pride and delight.”
As she spoke, a pair of broad gates swung open, and they cantered in beneath the twilight arches of the oaks. Long wreaths of pearly moss hung swinging from the branches, and although the sun now was at high noon, a dewy, dreamy coolness seemed to rustle through all the leaves. As Clayton passed in, he took off his hat, as he had often done in foreign countries in cathedrals.
“Welcome to Canema!” said she, riding up to him, and looking up frankly into his face.
The air, half queenly, half childish, with which this was said, was acknowledged by Clayton with a grave smile, as he replied, bowing, —
“Thank you, madam.”
“Perhaps,” she added in a grave tone, “you’ll be sorry that you ever came here.”
“What do you mean by that?” he replied.
“I don’t know; it just came into my head to say it. We none of us ever know what’s going to come of what we do.”
At this instant, a violent clamor, like the cawing of a crow, rose on one side of the avenue; and the moment after Tomtit appeared, caracoling, and cutting a somerset; his curls flying, his cheeks glowing.
“Why, Tomtit, what upon earth is this for?” said Nina.
“Laws, missis, deres been a gen’leman waiting for you at the house these two hours. And missis she’s done got on her best cap, and gone down in the parlor for him.”
Nina felt herself blush to the roots of her hair, and was vexed and provoked to think she did so. Involuntarily her eyes met Clayton’s. But he expressed neither curiosity nor concern.
“What a pretty drapery this light moss makes!” said he. “I wasn’t aware that it grew so high up in the state.”
“Yes; it is very pretty,” said Nina abstractedly.
Clayton, however, had noticed both the message and the blush, and was not so ill informed as Nina supposed as to the whole affair, having heard from a New York correspondent of the probability that an arrival might appear upon the field about this time. He was rather curious to watch the development produced by this event. They paced up the avenue, conversing in disconnected intervals, till they came out on the lawn which fronted the mansion —— a large, gray, three-story building, surrounded on the four sides by wide balconies of wood. Access was had to the lower of these by a broad flight of steps. And there Nina saw, plain enough, her Aunt Nesbit in all the proprieties of cap and silk gown, sitting, making the agreeable to Mr. Carson.
Mr. Frederic Augustus Carson was one of those nice little epitomes of conventional society which appear to such advantage in factitious life, and are so out of place in the undress, sincere surroundings of country life. Nina had liked his society extremely well in the drawing-rooms and opera-houses of New York. But in the train of thought inspired by the lonely and secluded life she was now leading, it seemed to her an absolute impossibility that she could, even in coquetry and in sport, have allowed such an one to set up pretensions to her hand and heart. She was vexed with herself that she had done so, and therefore not in the most amiable mood for a meeting. Therefore, when, on ascending the steps, he rushed precipitately forward, and, offering his hand, called her Nina, she was ready to die with vexation. She observed, too, a peculiar swelling and rustling of Aunt Nesbit’s plumage, —— an indescribable air of tender satisfaction, peculiar to elderly ladies who are taking an interest in an affair of the heart, which led her to apprehend that the bachelor had commenced operations by declaring his position to her. ‘T was with some embarrassment that Nina introduced Mr. Clayton, whom Aunt Nesbit received with a most stately curtsy, and Mr. Carson with a patronizing bow; “Mr. Carson has been waiting for you these two hours,” said Aunt Nesbit.
“Very warm riding, Nina,” said Mr. Carson, observing her red cheeks. “You’ve been riding too fast, I fear. You must be careful of yourself. I’ve known people bring on very grave illnesses by overheating the blood!”
Clayton seated himself near the door, and seemed to be intent on the scene without. And Carson, drawing his chair close to Nina, asked, in a confidential undertone,—” Who is that gentleman?”
“Mr. Clayton, of Claytonville,” said Nina, with as much hauteur as she could assume.
“Ah, yes! — Hem! — hem! I’ ve heard of the family —— a very nice family — a very worthy young man — extremely, I’m told. Shall be happy to make his acquaintance.”
“I beg,” said Nina, rising, “the gentlemen will excuse me a moment or two.”
Clayton replied by a grave bow, while Mr. Carson, with great empressement, handed Nina to the door. The moment it was closed, she stamped, with anger, in the entry.
“The provoking fool! to take these airs with me! And I, too — I deserve it! What on earth could make me think I could tolerate that man?”
As if Nina’s cup were not yet full, Aunt Nesbit followed her to her chamber with an air of unusual graciousness.
“Nina, my dear, he has told me all about it! and I assure you I’m very much pleased with him!”
> “Told you all about what?” said Nina.
“Why, your engagement, to be sure! I’m delighted to think you’ve done so well! I think your Aunt Maria, and all of them, will be delighted! Takes a weight of care off my mind!”
“I wish you wouldn’t trouble yourself about me, or my affairs, Aunt Nesbit!” said Nina. “And as for this old pussy-cat, with his squeaking boots, I won’t have him purring round me, that’s certain! So provoking, to take that way towards me! Call me Nina, and talk as though he were lord paramount of me, and everything here! I’ll let him know!”
“Why, Nina! Seems to me this is very strange conduct! I am very much astonished at you!”
“I dare say you are, aunt! I never knew the time I didn’t astonish you! But this man I detest!”
“Well, then, my dear, what were you engaged to him for?”
“Engaged! Aunt, for pity’s sake, do hush! Engaged! I should like to know what a New York engagement amounts to! Engaged at the opera! — Engaged for a joke! Why, he was my bouquet-holder! The man is just an opera libretto! He was very useful in his time. But who wants him afterwards?”
“But, my dear Nina, this trifling with gentlemen’s hearts!”
“I’ll warrant his heart! It’s neither sugar nor salt, I’ll assure you. I’ll tell you what, aunt, he loves good eating, good drinking, nice clothes, nice houses, and good times generally! and he wants a pretty wife as a part of a whole; and he thinks he’ll take me. But he is mistaken. Calling me ‘Nina,’ indeed! Just let me have a chance of seeing him alone! I’ll teach him to call me ‘Nina’! I’ll let him know how things stand!”
“But, Nina, you must confess you’ve given him occasion for all this.”
“Well, supposing I have? I’ll give him occasion for something else, then!”
“Why, my dear,” said Aunt Nesbit, “he came on to know when you’ll fix the day to be married!”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 75