This conduct of Nettie’s was very seriously disapproved, not only by the matrons of Greyford, but by the young ladies of her set, who were understood in confidential moments to aver to each other that Nettie Sylva was a flirt, and that it really was abominable for her to trifle with gentlemen as she did.
But so long as Nettie found that the gentlemen rather liked to be trifled with, and that their hearts, however sorely scratched and lacerated by her claws, had a marvellous aptitude for healing, her own conscience was quite at ease in the matter. In fact, Nettie looked upon flirtation as the only providential compensation her case admitted of in her compulsory dull existence in Greyford.
Horace Vanzandt was, on the whole, rather more to her than any of her other beaux; but then Horace had no money, and there seemed no likelihood of his having any for years to come; so, as Nettie sensibly remarked, there was no sort of use in having any thing more than a friendship. But of course the gossips mated them, and they generally in point of fact were mated, as in the present sleigh-ride. Jeff Fleming never thought of such a thing as presuming to ask Nettie when Horace was evidently setting his cap in that direction; and Mark Hinsdale, though he had written a sonnet on her in “The Greyford Union Eagle,” did not so much as venture to think of driving her in his sleigh on this occasion.
Nettie winced a little at times under this state of things. She wanted variety. “Who wants to be tied always to one fellow?” she remarked. Jane Burgess, on the contrary, had been heard to assert, that, if she had a friend as devoted to her as Horace was to Nettie, she would take more care how she treated him.
Jane was, to say the truth, just one of those women whom good mothers and sisters always wish their sons and brothers would marry. She was pretty, she was witty, and she was wise; but all in such just proportions, that there was no salient point. She was a girl of scruples, careful what she said and did, true to the heart’s core, and without shadow of turning.
Nettie Sylva was a bundle of capabilities and perhapses. What she might become was a problem. She lived a life of impulse rather than reflection, and did things from morning till night for no other reason than that she felt like them at the moment. She belonged to the class celebrated by our respected friend Mr. Alexander Pope,-
“Ladies, like variegated tulips, show
’Tis to their changes half their charms they owe.”
Nettie certainly had as many streaks as a first-class tulip, and changes enough to make her extremely charming; and after Horace went away, she proceeded, with the aid of “Harper’s Bazar,” to compose a toilette for the next week’s fte of the most killing description.
CHAPTER III.
HENRIETTA SYLVA put on her hat one afternoon, and went over to old Miss Burgess’s. By “old Miss Burgess,” I don’t mean Jane. I never could bear to have people under any sort of misapprehension for a moment, even for the sake of an after agreeable surprise.
Old Miss Burgess is the aunt. Jane is the niece. Though, from living so long and so quietly with so prim and quaint a piece of the last generation, Jane had perhaps caught a flavor of the last generation herself, and mixed it up with her nineteen years in a certain gentle and odd suggestion of old-maidishness, that joins itself to her bloom and prettiness like a bit of thyme or lavender set in a bouquet; and she took on something aunt-like in her ways among the girls. That is why Nettie Sylva, I think, liked her, and came to her, with all her little snarls that she could not pick out herself. Not for the help alone, either; she liked to shock the proper Jane, mildly, with her freaks and flights. For Jane took every thing in a calm, saint-like fashion,-even her shocks.
Jane Burgess was a pretty girl of the years-gone-by sort; one that could wear her hair plain and smooth to her head, twisted up behind, and have a dark calico gown on, without making any difference. The prettiness was there,-a fact; in the clear, pure, healthily-tinted skin; the open, fair contour; the large, deep, soft blue-gray eyes, with black, easily-dropping lashes; the even brows, the demure little nose, with perfect profile, the same both ways; and the delicious mouth, playing with a peculiar, tender, fascinating little curve of its own over the faultless, shyly visible teeth.
Once in a while of a warm summer’s day, busy in her garden, or coming home from a walk; or in a crisp winter wind; or over the fire or the ironing board, in the flush of her work,-Jane’s smooth brown hair would ruffle and wave itself into a soft mistiness and lightness about her forehead, and perhaps get pushed back in her forgetfulness from off her delicate temples; and then you saw one of those accidents of loveliness that never happen in these deliberately got-up days. Once, girls were liable to bewitching little unconscious changes; Nature had her own cunning tricks and manners with them; excitement or exercise lit them up, tossed them into pretty bewilderments of arrangement and color, and gave the looker-on little blessed revelations and surprises prises: but now there must be bewilderment all the time; they must turn away from their looking-glasses all fluffed up with a cloudy confusion of carefully dishevelled charms, that will not let any line be traced throughout, but leaves artfully so much to the imagination,-makes so many breaks, like the shimmer of a veil,-that a general jumble and sparkle imposes itself almost as a universal beauty. There is a certain amount of beauty about; but you do not know exactly where it is, any more than you do where the specie is that the currency stands for. Everybody gets temporarily credited for a little. It is pretty much so with all our living,-even our thinking. Life is broken up into delusive rainbows. There is hardly any steady, pure, white light anywhere.
Old Miss Burgess met Nettie Sylva at the door, her glasses pushed up against her cap, and her long gray knitting-work in her hands.
“Jane has gone abroad this afternoon,” she said. “But walk in; lay off your things, and stay and drink tea. She’ll be proper glad to see you when she comes. You’re quite a stranger.”
Nettie Sylva knew what the old lady meant. Jane had not gone to Europe. We have not quite arrived at the time, though it looks as if we might be near it, when one can leave word with the family, or with the serving-maid, as one puts one’s gloves on,-”I am going over in this afternoon’s catapult; shall be back to tea,”-take a shoot through the Liverpool tunnel and a half-hourly balloon to London,-make a few friendly calls, and hurry back at dusk.
No. Miss Burgess only meant,-in the old-fashioned way, used when nobody went more than a mile or two from home, except with grave preparation of scrip and staff, and making one’s will beforehand, for weighty cause of life or love or property,-that Jane had gone for a walk in the village.
“I most wonder you didn’t come across her somewheres,” said the old lady, drawing her glasses down again, and poring over a dropped stitch. “She must be in to Squire Holley’s.”
When one of these three girls-Jane Burgess, Nettie Sylva, or Rachel Holley-missed another, she was pretty sure to turn up in company with the third. They were as different as the three angles of a scalene triangle, and just as essential to each other in the making up; especially at a time like this, when a grand frolic was afoot, invitations given and pending, and gowns to be decided on; to say nothing of feminine tactics and councils of war for the campaign.
Nettie Sylva came to Jane Burgess for nice little moral lectures and wise counsel; but then in a sly, keen fashion, she often turned round upon her before they finished their talk, and gave quite as good as she got.
“Now, what on earth am I to do with that Horace?” she says to Jane, leaning over the bureau while that particular young lady folded up and put away her shawl and gloves; Nettie, meantime, taking sidelong peeps at the looking-glass, trying to examine her own profile, which she was never quite satisfied with when she saw Jane’s.
“It’s the fox and the goose and the basket of corn. If I say no, and stay at home, there’s my own poor little nose cut off, you see,-if it’s pretty to say so; if I go with anybody else,-oh, my gracious! wouldn’t there be a ferment and a rumpus? And if I undertake to go all that six miles with him alone
, I shall either have to jump out into a snowbank and run home, or keep up such a squabble as I really haven’t conscience or constitution for, or else hear all he’s got to say; and I ain’t ready, Jane Burgess! I’ve quarrelled with him till I’m tired.”
“What do you quarrel with him for?”
“What else can I do? It isn’t safe to stay made up with him half an hour. It’s the only way a girl has to get time for herself. There’s no fairness in it. A man can stand off, and look, and consider, till he’s made up his mind; and then he can come forward, and ‘be particular;’ and you can’t let him begin to be the least bit particular without giving him claims; and how on earth you ‘re to be fair to yourself and decent with him, I can’t make out!”
“I suppose the girl has the same time to look and consider that the man has,” said quiet Jane.
“Yes, indeed! And then what if he never begins? I tell you it’s all on one side, and I believe I won’t have any thing to do with it!”
And Nettie pouted, and felt the tears coming into her eyes, and saw the pins on Jane’s cushion begin to glitter and grow big; and then she glanced round into the glass again, to find out how she looked when she was crying.
“I think it is ordered, if we only try to do what is right,” said Jane, virtuously.
“Yes; and how are you going to know? If you look at a thing all round, there are so many rights. It’s right for me to work myself out, and find out what I am, and what I want, and let him see. I ‘ve no business to be all Sylva and no Nettie, till after I’m married, and then drop it, as I’ve got to do. And he ought to be willing; it’s for his good: he ought to take time for his own sake; but men never do. They are always in a hurry.”
It is funny to see how a girl who comes to have affairs to manage with one man, talks immediately of the whole sex in a generalizing way, and feels as if she had all mankind at once upon her hands; and vice versa.
Well, it is true in a sense. They do stand to each other, representatively and inclusively, as man and woman; it is always, in each new experiment, Adam and Eve again, whatever else they may happen to have been christened.
“There is one thing that is always right,” said Jane. “Not to do any thing, ever so little, to draw a man on, unless you are sure you are”-She paused shyly, with a bit of a blush rising.
“Smashed yourself!” said Nettie, boldly. “And how are you going to know when you are smashed? Or how are you ever likely to be till you have knocked round a little? That’s the point. You can’t buy a pair of shoes without trying ’em on. It’s ridiculous!”
She began again presently.
“Mrs. Sylva says it’s very ‘shallow’ of me not to know my own mind. That’s a great word of my stepmother’s. But if I were shallow, really, I don’t think I should have any trouble. I tell you it’s just sounding, and doubting, and considering that makes me act so. There are so many sides to every thing; and somehow I always see the opposite one. That’s the reason I quarrel; and then, again, that’s the reason I make up.”
“If I imagined I ever might marry a person,” said Jane thoughtfully, “I shouldn’t want to have all these little fusses beforehand. I shouldn’t think he would depend so much on me afterwards.”
“I don’t want to be depended on. I want him to be thankful every day for what he gets, as we all are; not knowing how long it’s going to last. That’s Christian.”
“Christian for him,” said Jane quietly.
“And if I sanctify him, what better can I do? That brings up the ‘ordering’ again. Do you believe people are cut out for each other, Jane? I don’t. If they are, I should like to know who does it.”
“I think the Lord does,” said Jane. “At any rate, he brings people together.”
“It’s fixed very queer,” said Nettie meditatively, with a puzzled frown knit up into her forehead. “Because you can’t allow for the growing. It has to be all settled before you really come to any thing. As if things had been fitted on to me when I was five years old to last all my lifetime. That’s no way for-anybody-to cut out! And I don’t believe anybody can. How do I know what I shall be ten years from now? Or Horace Vanzandt zandt, either? It is an awful long measuring! Now I think of it, that was the way mother used to do with my gowns when she first came. She made them down to my heels, for fear I should outgrow them. And I hated them: they were never right. I won’t begin life so, all of a draggle, because I shall be up higher by and by; neither do I want to be left anyways unprovided for or out in the cold, when I do get bigger. It isn’t fair! We ought to be made so as to keep pretty longer, and have some chances!” And Nettie ended, as usual, with a look in the glass.
“The best way is to make things that can be let out and let down for the growing,” Jane said. “There is more in everybody than they know of, I suppose. And the Lord, making the measures, knows it all, doesn’t he?”
“I presume it’s proper to say he does,” said Nettie. “Jane! what are you going to wear Thursday?”
“My stone-colored brilliantine, with blue ribbons, and some white chrysanthemums in my hair.”
“There, now! That’s just you! All so easy and quiet, and ready beforehand, and no-kind-of-consequence-what; and, after all, you’ll be the very prettiest one. Rachel is going to be wonderful, though. Did she tell you! That new dazzle-blue merino, with swan’s-down round the neck and sleeves.”
“I saw it. What is yours?”
“Crimson, with a flash in it. Tea-rosebuds and coral flowers. My roses are just blooming on purpose. I shall carry them in a box on wet cotton-wool. Won’t Horace get into a fry while he’s waiting down stairs for me to put them on? And then, while he’s getting over it, I’ll be promising for half the dances to everybody that asks. He always loses the next thing while he’s rebelling about the last. He’s got lots to learn. Jane! I’ll just tell you what,-I’ve as good a mind as ever was to take Jeff Fleming in the pairing-off.”
Jane colored up suddenly; then as suddenly calmed down and smiled.
“You think he won’t? We’ll see. Jane, you’re altogether too settled. You’re just as bad, the other way, as I am. And there’s one thing,-I dare say you’ve no idea of it,-but I doubt if any thing makes much difference to you, after all. It happens to be Jeff, because you’ve had him at your elbow all your days, and it’s ‘cut out.’ The truth is, you a’n’t cut out for anybody in particular so much as just for a pattern. You’ll be sweet and mild, and you’ll be married, and you’ll housekeep, just because it’s all a part of perfect living for a woman; and that’s what you’re in love with. Jeff will do as well to hang it on to as anybody; and you’ll live and die in a frame of mind like a pan of milk. And you’ll set, and you’ll just turn to solid, tranquil bonny-clabber. Now, I’m going to be either butter or cheese; I haven’t made my mind up which. I’ve got ’em both in me. Isn’t that queer?”
And she followed Jane downstairs into the corner sitting-room, where Miss Burgess was cutting up spice-cake for tea; and of course there was not much more said except about how her mother did, and whether the doctor thought old Deacon Chowle was any better, and how Jane had found Mrs. Holley this afternoon; Mrs. Holley being an invalid, and so always a staple of conversation. And at six o’clock, the starlight already shining over the snow, Nettie set off for home, meeting Jeff Fleming at the gate as she went out, and encountering Horace Vanzandt afterwards at the post-office, as she had every reason to expect she might, and letting him walk home with her for such consolation as he could get by the way, with all her little defensive prickles set up and alert whichever way he tried to stroke her.
If Horace Vanzandt had not been of the inventive order of mind, fond of puzzles, and given to combating little wearying obstacles with a most fine and patient and delicate ingenuity, the mere man that was in him must have revolted long ago at Nettie’s whims, and thrown the whole thing over. But I thing the mechanician could not give up the fascinating perplexity. The more he was baffled, the more the wheels would not run and the
cogs would not catch, the more he was irresistibly drawn to pursue the reason why,-the more nicely and curiously he tried time after time to adapt his experiments. If he flung every thing by in a pet, it was only to make himself more work in repairing intricate and involved damages, when he came back, penitent and patient, as in the nature of him he could not help doing, to his task again.
CHAPTER IV.
RACHEL HOLLEY sat reading to her mother in the little bedroom that opened from the long sitting-room, until five o’clock; then Roxana came in with Mrs. Holley’s tea, and Rachel kissed her mother, and went off to her own room to dress. For this was Thursday evening; and Mark Hinsdale was to come for her at half-past six, to drive her to North Denmark for the sleigh-ride dance.
Rachel Holley’s toilet was even a prettier thing than the result; but we have no right to look at it,-to see the fresh pink of her face, and the white of her arms and shoulders as they come clear and blooming from under the dashes of cold water and the soft wrapping and pattings of the towel; to watch her brush her little set of pearls, and hear the pure, whole sound that tells of their perfection and entireness; but when the little pink sack is on, and that sunshine of hair is tossed down over it, like the golden over the rose in a fair sunset,-then, if I am ever to take author’s privilege, and give you a peep at any picture you could not have without me, it becomes my duty to let you in.
Rachel’s hair “did itself.” It rippled and poured over her shoulders like an amber waterfall, with all the million little braided lines in it that curl and twist in running water; and the comb stroked through, just proving that it was not a tangle, but leaving every little curl and twist to reassert itself in its wake, precisely as the running water would if you drew your fingers through it. And then Rachel gathered it all up in her two little hands, that had to clutch and grasp to do it, and gave it a turn one way, and set in a little trident of shell to hold it, and after that a turn another way, burying the tiny comb, and now a long, slender hairpin was pushed in; and so round and round, here and there, caught and looped and fastened just as it seemed to be determined to go, until it was one beautiful, bewildering, shining heap, lying gracefully around the natural curves of her head, and dropping with a lovely, glistening shimmer about her brows and temples. You can’t do it with tails and cushions and hot slate-pencils, and you needn’t try; Rachel Holley just had that hair, and it was a piece of her. Jane Burgess’s was pretty in its soft, modest, shadowy smoothness. Why don’t you all keep what is your own? Then everybody would have something.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 417