Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “It’s a pity, madam, you were not with us. Such an interesting time!” said Mr. Carson, launching, with great volubility, into the tide of discourse.

  “It wouldn’t have done for me at all,” said Mrs. Nesbit. “Being out when the dew falls always brings on hoarseness. I have been troubled in that way these two or three years. Now I have to be very careful. Then I’m timid about riding in a carriage with John’s driving.”

  “I was amused enough,” said Nina, “with Old Hundred’s indignation at having to get out the carriage and horses to go over to what he called a ‘cracker funeral.’ I really believe, if he could have upset us without hurting himself, he would have done it.”

  “For my part,” said Aunt Nesbit, “I hope that family will move off before long. It’s very disagreeable having such people round.”

  “The children look very pretty and bright,” said Nina. “Oh, there’s no hope for them! They’ll grow up and be just like their parents. I’ve seen that sort of people all through and through. I don’t wish them any evil; only I don’t want to have anything to do with them!”

  “For my part,” said Nina, “I’m sorry for them. I wonder why the legislature, or somebody, don’t have schools, as they do up in New York State? There isn’t anywhere there where children can’t go to school, if they wish to. Besides, aunt, these children really came from an old family in Virginia. Their old servant-man says that their mother was a Peyton.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it! They’ll lie — all of them. They always do.”

  “Well,” said Nina, “I shall do something for these children, at any rate.”

  “I quite agree with you, Nina. It shows a very excellent spirit in you,” said Mr. Carson. “You’ll always find me ready to encourage everything of that sort.”

  Nina frowned and looked indignant. But to no purpose. Mr. Carson went on remorselessly with his really good-hearted rattle, till Nina, at last, could bear it no longer.

  “How dreadfully warm this room is!” said she, springing up. “Come, let’s go back into the parlor.”

  Nina was as much annoyed at Clayton’s silence, and his quiet, observant reserve, as with Carson’s forth-putting. Rising from table, she passed on before the company, with a half-flying trip, into the hall, which lay now cool, calm, and breezy, in the twilight, with the odor of the pillar-roses floating in at the window. The pale white moon, set in the rosy belt of the evening sky, looked in at the open door. Nina would have given all the world to be still; but well aware that stillness was out of the question she determined to select her own noise, and sitting down at the piano, began playing very fast, in a rapid, restless, disconnected manner. Clayton threw himself on a lounge by the open door; while Carson busied himself fluttering the music, opening and shutting music-books, and interspersing running commentaries and notes of admiration on the playing.

  At last, as if she could bear it no longer, she rose, with a very decided air, from the piano, and facing about towards Mr. Carson, said: —

  “It looks very beautiful outdoors. Don’t you want to come out? There’s a point of view at the end of one of the paths, where the moon looks on the water, that I should like to show you.”

  “Won’t you catch cold, Nina?” said Aunt Nesbit.

  “No, indeed! I never catch cold,” said Nina, springing into the porch, and taking the delighted Mr. Carson’s arm. And away she went with him, with almost a skip and a jump, leaving Clayton tête-à-tête with Aunt Nesbit.

  Nina went so fast that her attendant was almost out of breath. They reached a little knoll, and there Nina stopped suddenly, and said, “Look here, Mr. Carson; I have something to say to you.”

  “I should be delighted, my dear Nina! I’m perfectly charmed!”

  “No — no — if you please — don’t!” said Nina, putting up her hand to stop him. “Just wait till you hear what I have to say. I believe you did not get a letter which I wrote you a few days ago, did you?”

  “A letter! no, indeed. How unfortunate!”

  “Very unfortunate for me!” said Nina; “and for you, too. Because, if you had, it would have saved you and me the trouble of this interview. I wrote that letter to tell you, Mr. Carson, that I cannot think of such a thing as an engagement with you! That I’ve acted very wrong and very foolishly; but that I cannot do it. In New York, where everybody and everything seemed to be trifling, and where the girls all trifled with thçse things, I was engaged — just for frolic — nothing more. I had no idea what it would amount to; no idea what I was saying, nor how I should feel afterwards. But every hour since I’ve been home, here, since I’ve been so much alone, has made me feel how wrong it is. Now, I’m very sorry, I’m sure. But I must speak the truth, this time. But it is — I can’t tell you how — disagreeable to me to have you treat me as you have since you’ve been here!”

  “Miss Gordon!” said Mr. Carson, “I am positively astonished! I — I don’t know what to think!”

  “Well, I only want you to think I am in earnest; and that, though I can like you very well as an acquaintance, and shall always wish you well, yet anything else is just as far out of the question as that moon there is from us. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I’ve made you all this trouble. I really am,” said she ‘good naturedly; “but please now to understand how we stand.” She turned, and tripped away.

  “There!” said she to herself, “at any rate, I’ve done one thing!”

  Mr. Carson stood still, gradually recovering from the stupor into which this communication had thrown him. He stretched himself, rubbed his eyes, took out his watch and looked at it, and then began walking off with a very sober pace in the opposite direction from Nina. Happily constituted mortal that he was, nothing ever could be subtracted from his sum of complacence that could not be easily balanced by about a quarter of an hour’s consideration. The walk through the shrubbery in which he was engaged was an extremely pretty one, and wound along on the banks of the river through many picturesque points of view, and finally led again to the house by another approach. During the course of this walk Mr. Carson had settled the whole question for himself. In the first place, he repeated the comfortable old proverb, that there were as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. In the second place, as Mr. Carson was a shrewd business man, it occurred to him, in this connection, that the plantation was rather run down, and not a profitable acquisition. And in the third place, contemplating Nina as the fox of old did his bunch of sour grapes, he began to remember that, after all, she was dressy, expensive, and extravagant. Then, as he did not want that imperturbable good nature which belongs to a very shallow capability of feeling, he said to himself that he shouldn’t like the girl a bit the less. In fact, when he thought of his own fine fortune, his house in New York, and all the accessories which went to make up himself, he considered her, on the whole, as an object of pity; and by the time that he ascended the balcony steps again, he was in as charitable and Christian a frame as any rejected suitor could desire.

  He entered the drawing-room. Aunt Nesbit had ordered candles, and was sitting up with her gloves on, alone. What had occurred during his walk he did not know; but we will take our readers into confidence.

  Nina returned to the house with the same decided air with which she went out, and awakened Mr. Clayton from a reverie with a brisk little tap of her fan on his shoulder.

  “Come up here with me,” she said, “and look out of the library window, and see this moonlight.”

  And up she went, over the old oaken staircase, stopping on each landing, and beckoning to Clayton, with a whimsically authoritative gesture, threw open the door of a large, black-wainscoted room, and ushered him in. The room lay just above the one where they had been sitting, and, like that, opened on to the veranda by long-sashed windows, through which, at the present moment, a flood of moonlight was pouring. A large mahogany writing-table, covered with papers, stood in the middle of the room, and the moon shone in so brightly that the pattern of the bronze inkstand a
nd the color of the wafers and sealing-wax were plainly revealed. The window commanded a splendid view of the river over the distant tree-tops, as it lay shimmering and glittering in the moonlight.

  “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?” said Nina in a hurried voice.

  “Very beautiful!” said Clayton, sitting down in the large lounging-chair before the window, and looking out with the abstracted air which was habitual with him.

  After a moment’s thought, Nina added, with a sudden effort, —

  “But, after all, that was not what I wanted to speak to you about. I wanted to see you somewhere, and say a few words which it seems to me it is due to you that I should say. I got your last letter, and I’m sure I am very much obliged to your sister for all the kind things she says; but I think you must have been astonished at what you have seen since you have been here.”

  “Astonished at what?” said Clayton quietly.

  “At Mr. Carson’s manners towards me.”

  “I have not been astonished at all,” replied Clayton quietly.

  “I think, at all events,” said Nina, “I think it is no more than honorable that I should tell you exactly how things have stood. Mr. Carson has thought that he had a right to me and mine; and I was so foolish as to give him reason to think so. The fact is, that I have been making a game of life, and saying and doing anything and everything that came into my head, just for frolic. It don’t seem to me that there has been anything serious or real about me, until very lately. Somehow, my acquaintance with you has made things seem more real to me than they ever did before; and it seems to me now perfectly incredible, the way we girls used to play and trifle with everything in the world. Just for sport, I was engaged to that man; just for sport, too, I have been engaged to another one.”

  “And,” said Clayton, breaking the silence, “just for sport have you been engaged to me?”

  “No,” said Nina, after a few moments’ silence, “not in sport, certainly; but yet, not enough in earnest. I think I am about half waked up. I don’t know myself. I don’t know where or what I am, and I want to go back into that thoughtless dream. I do really think it’s too hard to take up the responsibility of living in good earnest. Now, it seems to me just this, — that I cannot be bound to anybody. I want to be free. I have positively broken all connection with Mr. Carson; I have broken with another one, and I wish” —

  “To break with me?” said Clayton.

  “I don’t really know as I can say what I do wish. It is a very different thing from any of the others, but there’s a feeling of dread, and responsibility, and constraint, about it; and though I think I should feel very lonesome now without you, and though I like to get your letters, yet it seems to me that I cannot be engaged, — that is a most dreadful feeling to me.”

  “My dear friend,” said Clayton, “if that is all, make yourself easy. There’s no occasion for our being engaged. If you can enjoy being with me and writing to me, why, do it in the freest way, and to-morrow shall take care for the things of itself. You shall say what you please, do what you please, write when you please, and not write when you please, and have as many or as few letters as you like. There can he no true love without liberty.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’m much obliged to you!” said Nina, with a sigh of relief. “And now, do you know, I like your sister’s postscript very much; but I can’t tell what it is in it, for the language is as kind as can be, that would give me the impression that she is one of those very proper kind of people, that would be dreadfully shocked if she knew of all my goings on in New York.”

  Clayton could hardly help laughing at the instinctive sagacity of this remark.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said he, “where you could have seen that, — in so short a postscript, too.”

  “Do you know, I never take anybody’s handwriting into my hand that I don’t feel an idea of them come over me, just as you have when you see people? And that idea came over me when I read your sister’s letter.”

  “Well, Nina, to tell you the truth, sister Anne is a little bit conventional — a little set in her ways; but, after all, a large-hearted, warm-hearted woman. You would like each other, I know.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Nina. “I am very apt to shock proper people. Somehow or other, they have a faculty of making me contrary.”

  “Well, but, you see, Anne isn’t merely a conventional person; there’s only the slightest crust of conventionality, and a real warm heart under it.”

  “Whereas,” said Nina, “most conventional people are like a shallow river, frozen to the bottom. But now, really, I should like very much to have your sister come and visit us, if I could think that she would come as any other friend; but, you know, it isn’t very agreeable to have anybody come to look one over to see if one will do.” Clayton laughed at the naïve undisguised frankness of this speech.

  “You see,” said Nina, “though I’m nothing but an ignorant schoolgirl, I’m as proud as if I had everything to be proud of. Now, do you know, I don’t much like writing to your sister, because I don’t think I write very good letters! I never could sit still long enough to write.”

  “Write exactly as you talk,” said Clayton. “Say just what comes into your head, just as you would talk it. I hope you will do that much, for it will be very dull writing all on one side.”

  “Well,” said Nina, rising, with animation, “now, Mr. Edward Clayton, if we have settled about this moonlight, we may as well go down into the parlor, where Aunt Nesbit and Mr. Carson are tête-à-tête.”

  “Poor Carson!” said Clayton.

  “Oh, don’t pity him! Good soul! he’s a man that one night’s rest would bring round from anything in creation. He’s so thoroughly good natured! Besides, I shall like him better, now. He did not use to seem to me so intrusive and disagreeable. We girls used to like him very well, he was such a comfortable, easy-tempered, agreeable creature, always brisk and in spirits, and knowing everything that went on. But he is one of those men that I think would be really insufferable, if anything serious were the matter with me. Now, you heard how he talked coming from that funeral! Do you know, that if he had been coming from my funeral it would have been just so?”

  “Oh no, not quite so bad,” said Clayton.

  “Indeed he is,” said Nina. “That man! why, he just puts me in mind of one of these brisk blue-flies, whirring and whisking about, marching over pages of books, and alighting on all sorts of things. When he puts on that grave look, and begins to talk about serious things, he actually looks to me just as a fly does when he stands brushing his wings on a Bible! But come, let’s go down to the good soul,”

  Down they went, and Nina seemed like a person enfranchised. Never had she seemed more universally gracious. She was chatty and conversable with Carson, and sang over for him all her old opera-songs, with the better grace that she saw that Clayton was listening intently.

  As they were sitting and conversing together, the sound of a horse’s heels was heard coming up the avenue.

  “Who can that be, this time of night?” said Nina, springing to the door, and looking out.

  She saw Harry hastening in advance to meet her, and ran down the veranda steps to speak to him.

  “Harry, who is coming?”

  “Miss Nina, it’s Master Tom,” said Harry in a low voice.

  “Tom! Oh, mercy!” said Nina in a voice of apprehension. “What sent him here, now?”

  “What sends him anywhere?” said Harry.

  Nina reascended the steps, and stood looking apprehensively towards the horseman, who approached every moment nearer. Harry came up on the veranda, and stood a little behind her. In a few moments the horse was up before the steps.

  “Hallo, there!” said the rider. “Come, take my horse, you rascal!”

  Harry remained perfectly still, put his arms by his side, and stood with a frowning expression on his forehead.

  “Don’t you hear?” said the horseman, throwing himself off, with an oath.
“Come here, boy, and take my horse!”

  “For pity’s sake,” said Nina, turning and looking in Harry’s face, “don’t have a scene here! Do take his horse, quick! Anything to keep him quiet!”

  With a sudden start, Harry went down the steps, and took the bridle from the hand of the newly arrived in silence.

  The horseman sprang up the steps.

  “Hallo, Nin, is this you?” And Nina felt herself roughly seized in the arms of a shaggy greatcoat, and kissed by lips smelling of brandy and tobacco. She faintly said, as she disengaged herself, —

  “Tom, is it you?”

  “Yes, to be sure! Who did you think it was? Devilish glad to see me, ain’t you? Suppose you was in hopes I wouldn’t come!”

  “Hush, Tom, do! I am glad to see you. There are gentlemen in there; don’t speak so loud!”

  “Some of your beaux, hey? Well, I am as good a fellow as any of ‘em! Free country, I hope! No, I ain’t going to whisper, for any of them. So now, Nin — If there isn’t old Starchy, to be sure!” said he, as Aunt Nesbit came to the door. “Hallo, old girl, how are you?”

  “Thomas!” said Mrs. Nesbit softly, “Thomas!”

  “None of your Thomasing me, you old pussy-cat! Don’t you be telling me, neither, to hush! I won’t hush, neither! I know what I am about, I guess! It’s my house as much as it is Nin’s, and I’m going to do as I have a mind to here! I ain’t going to have my mouth shut on account of her beaux! So, clear out, I tell you, and let me come in!” and Aunt Nesbit gave back. He pushed his way into the apartment.

  He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, who evidently had once possessed advantages of face and figure; but every outline in the face was bloated and rendered unmeaning by habits of constant intemperance. His dark eyes had that muddy and troubled expression which in a young man too surely indicates the habitual consciousness of inward impurity. His broad, high forehead was flushed and pimpled, his lips swollen and tumid, and his whole air and manner gave painful evidence that he was at present too far under the influence of stimulants justly to apprehend what he was about.