Chapter 2

Pretty she was throughout, from the parting of her jet-black hair to the high instep of her slender foot; a glancing, brilliant, brunette beauty, with the piquant charm of perpetual spirits, and the equipoise of a perfectly healthy nature. She was altogether graceful, yet she had not the fresh, free grace of her cousin Hope, who was lithe and strong as a hawthorne spray: Kate’s was the narrower grace of culture grown hereditary, an in-door elegance that was born in her, and of which dancing-school was but the natural development. You could not picture Hope to your mind in one position more than in another; she had an endless variety of easy motion. When you thought of Kate, you remembered precisely how she sat, how she stood, and how she walked. That was all, and it was always the same. But is not that enough? We do not ask of Mary Stuart’s portrait that it should represent her in more than one attitude, and why should a living beauty need more than two or three?

Kate was betrothed to her cousin Harry, Hope’s brother, and, though she was barely twenty, they had seemed to appertain to each other for a time so long that the memory of man or maiden aunt ran not to the contrary. She always declared, indeed, that they were born married, and that their wedding-day would seem like a silver wedding. Harry was quiet, unobtrusive, and manly. He might seem commonplace at first beside the brilliant Kate and his more gifted sister; but thorough manhood is never commonplace, and he was a person to whom one could anchor. His strong, steadfast physique was the type of his whole nature; when he came into the room, you felt as if a good many people had been added to the company. He made steady progress in his profession of the law, through sheer worth; he never dazzled, but he led. His type was pure Saxon, with short, curling hair, blue eyes, and thin, fair skin, to which the color readily mounted. Up to a certain point he was imperturbably patient and amiable, but, when overtaxed, was fiery and impetuous for a single instant, and no more. It seemed as if a sudden flash of anger went over him, like the flash that glides along the glutinous stem of the fraxinella, when you touch it with a candle; the next moment it had utterly vanished, and was forgotten as if it had never been.

Kate’s love for her lover was one of those healthy and assured ties that often outlast the ardors of more passionate natures. For other temperaments it might have been inadequate; but theirs matched perfectly, and it was all sufficient for them. If there was within Kate’s range a more heroic and ardent emotion than that inspired by Harry, it was put forth toward Hope. This was her idolatry; she always said that it was fortunate Hope was Hal’s sister, or she should have felt it her duty to give them to each other, and not die till the wedding was accomplished. Harry shared this adoration to quite a reasonable extent, for a brother; but his admiration for Philip Malbone was one that Kate did not quite share. Harry’s quieter mood had been dazzled from childhood by Philip, who had always been a privileged guest in the household. Kate’s clear, penetrating, buoyant nature had divined Phil’s weaknesses, and had sometimes laughed at them, even from her childhood; though she did not dislike him, for she did not dislike anybody. But Harry was magnetized by him very much as women were; believed him true, because he was tender, and called him only fastidious where Kate called him lazy.

Kate was spending that summer with her aunt Jane, whose especial pet and pride she was. Hope was spending there the summer vacation of a Normal School in which she had just become a teacher. Her father had shared in the family ups and downs, but had finally stayed down, while the rest had remained up. Fortunately, his elder children were indifferent to this, and indeed rather preferred it; it was a tradition that Hope had expressed the wish, when a child, that her father might lose his property, so that she could become a teacher. As for Harry, he infinitely preferred the drudgery of a law office to that of a gentleman of leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned out, when she was left a widow, that she had secured for herself and Emilia whatever property remained, so that she suffered only the delightful need of living in Europe for economy.

The elder brother and sister had alike that fine physical vigor which New England is now developing, just in time to save it from decay. Hope was of Saxon type, though a shade less blonde than her brother; she was a little taller, and of more commanding presence, with a peculiarly noble carriage of the shoulders. Her brow was sometimes criticised as being a little too full for a woman; but her nose was straight, her mouth and teeth beautiful, and her profile almost perfect. Her complexion had lost by out-door life something of its delicacy, but had gained a freshness and firmness that no sunlight could impair. She had that wealth of hair which young girls find the most enviable point of beauty in each other. Hers reached below her knees, when loosened, or else lay coiled, in munificent braids of gold, full of sparkling lights and contrasted shadows, upon her queenly head.

Her eyes were much darker than her hair, and had a way of opening naively and suddenly, with a perfectly infantine expression, as if she at that moment saw the sunlight for the first time. Her long lashes were somewhat like Emilia’s, and she had the same deeply curved eyebrows; in no other point was there a shade of resemblance between the half-sisters. As compared with Kate, Hope showed a more abundant physical life; there was more blood in her; she had ampler outlines, and health more absolutely unvaried, for she had yet to know the experience of a day’s illness. Kate seemed born to tread upon a Brussels carpet, and Hope on the softer luxury of the forest floor. Out of doors her vigor became a sort of ecstasy, and she walked the earth with a jubilee of the senses, such as Browning attributes to his Saul.

This inexhaustible freshness of physical organization seemed to open the windows of her soul, and make for her a new heaven and earth every day. It gave also a peculiar and almost embarrassing directness to her mental processes, and suggested in them a sort of final and absolute value, as if truth had for the first time found a perfectly translucent medium. It was not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in it a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home in daily life, and in a democratic society. To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of existence, like light or air. Kate’s nature was limited; part of her graceful equipoise was narrowness. Hope was capable of far more self-abandonment to a controlling emotion, and, if she ever erred, would err more widely, for it would be because the whole power of her conscience was misdirected. “Once let her take wrong for right,” said Aunt Jane, “and stop her if you can; these born saints give a great deal more trouble than children of this world, like my Kate.” Yet in daily life Hope yielded to her cousin nine times out of ten; but the tenth time was the key to the situation. Hope loved Kate devotedly; but Kate believed in her as the hunted fugitive believes in the north star.

To these maidens, thus united, came Emilia home from Europe. The father of Harry and Hope had been lured into a second marriage with Emilia’s mother, a charming and unscrupulous woman, born with an American body and a French soul. She having once won him to Paris, held him there life-long, and kept her step-children at a safe distance. She arranged that, even after her own death, her daughter should still remain abroad for education; nor was Emilia ordered back until she brought down some scandal by a romantic attempt to elope from boarding-school with a Swiss servant. It was by weaning her heart from this man that Philip Malbone had earned the thanks of the whole household during his hasty flight through Europe. He possessed some skill in withdrawing the female heart from an undesirable attachment, though it was apt to be done by substituting another. It was fortunate that, in this case, no fears could be entertained. Since his engagement Philip had not permitted himself so much as a flirtation; he and Hope were to be married soon; he loved and admired her heartily, and had an indifference to her want of fortune that was quite amazing, when we consider that he had a fortune of his own.

III. A DRIVE ON THE AVENUE.

OLDPORT AVENUE is a place where a great many carriages may be seen driving so slowly that they might almost be photographed without halting, and where their occupants already wear the dismal expression which befits that process. In these fine vehicles, following each other in an endless file, one sees such faces as used to be exhibited in ball-rooms during the performance of quadrilles, before round dances came in,--faces marked by the renunciation of all human joy. Sometimes a faint suspicion suggests itself on the Avenue, that these torpid countenances might be roused to life, in case some horse should run away. But that one chance never occurs; the riders may not yet be toned down into perfect breeding, but the horses are. I do not know what could ever break the gloom of this joyless procession, were it not that youth and beauty are always in fashion, and one sometimes meets an exceptional barouche full of boys and girls, who could absolutely be no happier if they were a thousand miles away from the best society. And such a joyous company were our four youths and maidens when they went to drive that day, Emilia being left at home to rest after the fatigues of the voyage.

“What beautiful horses!” was Hope’s first exclamation. “What grave people!” was her second.

“What though in solemn silence all Roll round--”

quoted Philip.

“Hope is thinking,” said Harry, “whether ‘in reason’s ear they all rejoice.’”

“How COULD you know that?” said she, opening her eyes.

“One thing always strikes me,” said Kate. “The sentence of stupefaction does not seem to be enforced till after five-and-twenty. That young lady we just met looked quite lively and juvenile last year, I remember, and now she has graduated into a dowager.”

“Like little Helen’s kitten,” said Philip. “She justly remarks that, since I saw it last, it is all spoiled into a great big cat.”

“Those must be snobs,” said Harry, as a carriage with unusually gorgeous liveries rolled by.

“I suppose so,” said Malbone, indifferently. “In Oldport we call all new-comers snobs, you know, till they have invited us to their grand ball. Then we go to it, and afterwards speak well of them, and only abuse their wine.”

“How do you know them for new-comers?” asked Hope, looking after the carriage.

“By their improperly intelligent expression,” returned Phil. “They look around them as you do, my child, with the air of wide-awake curiosity which marks the American traveller. That is out of place here. The Avenue abhors everything but a vacuum.”

“I never can find out,” continued Hope, “how people recognize each other here. They do not look at each other, unless they know each other: and how are they to know if they know, unless they look first?”

“It seems an embarrassment,” said Malbone. “But it is supposed that fashion perforates the eyelids and looks through. If you attempt it in any other way, you are lost. Newly arrived people look about them, and, the more new wealth they have, the more they gaze. The men are uneasy behind their recently educated mustaches, and the women hold their parasols with trembling hands. It takes two years to learn to drive on the Avenue. Come again next summer, and you will see in those same carriages faces of remote superciliousness, that suggest generations of gout and ancestors.”

“What a pity one feels,” said Harry, “for these people who still suffer from lingering modesty, and need a master to teach them to be insolent!”

“They learn it soon enough,” said Kate. “Philip is right. Fashion lies in the eye. People fix their own position by the way they don’t look at you.”

“There is a certain indifference of manner,” philosophized Malbone, “before which ingenuous youth is crushed. I may know that a man can hardly read or write, and that his father was a ragpicker till one day he picked up bank-notes for a million. No matter. If he does not take the trouble to look at me, I must look reverentially at him.”

“Here is somebody who will look at Hope,” cried Kate, suddenly.

A carriage passed, bearing a young lady with fair hair, and a keen, bright look, talking eagerly to a small and quiet youth beside her.

Her face brightened still more as she caught the eye of Hope, whose face lighted up in return, and who then sank back with a sort of sigh of relief, as if she had at last seen somebody she cared for. The lady waved an un-gloved hand, and drove by.

“Who is that?” asked Philip, eagerly. He was used to knowing every one.

“Hope’s pet,” said Kate, “and she who pets Hope, Lady Antwerp.”

“Is it possible?” said Malbone. “That young creature? I fancied her ladyship in spectacles, with little side curls. Men speak of her with such dismay.”

“Of course,” said Kate, “she asks them sensible questions.”

“That is bad,” admitted Philip. “Nothing exasperates fashionable Americans like a really intelligent foreigner. They feel as Sydney Smith says the English clergy felt about Elizabeth Fry; she disturbs their repose, and gives rise to distressing comparisons,--they long to burn her alive. It is not their notion of a countess.”

“I am sure it was not mine,” said Hope; “I can hardly remember that she is one; I only know that I like her, she is so simple and intelligent. She might be a girl from a Normal School.”

“It is because you are just that,” said Kate, “that she likes you. She came here supposing that we had all been at such schools. Then she complained of us,--us girls in what we call good society, I mean,--because, as she more than hinted, we did not seem to know anything.”

“Some of the mothers were angry,” said Hope. “But Aunt Jane told her that it was perfectly true, and that her ladyship had not yet seen the best-educated girls in America, who were generally the daughters of old ministers and well-to-do shopkeepers in small New England towns, Aunt Jane said.”

“Yes,” said Kate, “she said that the best of those girls went to High Schools and Normal Schools, and learned things thoroughly, you know; but that we were only taught at boarding-schools and by governesses, and came out at eighteen, and what could we know? Then came Hope, who had been at those schools, and was the child of refined people too, and Lady Antwerp was perfectly satisfied.”

“Especially,” said Hope, “when Aunt Jane told her that, after all, schools did not do very much good, for if people were born stupid they only became more tiresome by schooling. She said that she had forgotten all she learned at school except the boundaries of ancient Cappadocia.”

Aunt Jane’s fearless sayings always passed current among her nieces; and they drove on, Hope not being lowered in Philip’s estimation, nor raised in her own, by being the pet of a passing countess.

Who would not be charmed (he thought to himself) by this noble girl, who walks the earth fresh and strong as a Greek goddess, pure as Diana, stately as Juno? She belongs to the unspoiled womanhood of another age, and is wasted among these dolls and butterflies.

He looked at her. She sat erect and graceful, unable to droop into the debility of fashionable reclining,--her breezy hair lifted a little by the soft wind, her face flushed, her full brown eyes looking eagerly about, her mouth smiling happily. To be with those she loved best, and to be driving over the beautiful earth! She was so happy that no mob of fashionables could have lessened her enjoyment, or made her for a moment conscious that anybody looked at her. The brilliant equipages which they met each moment were not wholly uninteresting even to her, for her affections went forth to some of the riders and to all the horses. She was as well contented at that moment, on the glittering Avenue, as if they had all been riding home through country lanes, and in constant peril of being jolted out among the whortleberry-bushes.

Her face brightened yet more as they met a carriage containing a graceful lady dressed with that exquisiteness of taste that charms both man and woman, even if no man can analyze and no woman rival its effect. She had a perfectly high-bred look, and an eye that in an instant would calculate one’s ancestors as far back as Nebuchadnezzar, and bow to them all together. She smiled good-naturedly on Hope, and kissed her hand to Kate.

“So, Hope,” said Philip, “you are bent on teaching music to Mrs. Meredith’s children.”

“Indeed I am!” said Hope, eagerly. “O Philip, I shall enjoy it so! I do not care so very much about her, but she has dear little girls. And you know I am a born drudge. I have not been working hard enough to enjoy an entire vacation, but I shall be so very happy here if I can have some real work for an hour or two every other day.”

“Hope,” said Philip, gravely, “look steadily at these people whom we are meeting, and reflect. Should you like to have them say, ‘There goes Mrs. Meredith’s music teacher’?”

“Why not?” said Hope, with surprise. “The children are young, and it is not very presumptuous. I ought to know enough for that.”

Malbone looked at Kate, who smiled with delight, and put her hand on that of Hope. Indeed, she kept it there so long that one or two passing ladies stopped their salutations in mid career, and actually looked after them in amazement at their attitude, as who should say, “What a very mixed society!”

So they drove on,--meeting four-in-hands, and tandems, and donkey-carts, and a goat-cart, and basket-wagons driven by pretty girls, with uncomfortable youths in or out of livery behind. They met, had they but known it, many who were aiming at notoriety, and some who had it; many who looked contented with their lot, and some who actually were so. They met some who put on courtesy and grace with their kid gloves, and laid away those virtues in their glove-boxes afterwards; while to others the mere consciousness of kid gloves brought uneasiness, redness of the face, and a general impression of being all made of hands. They met the four white horses of an ex-harness-maker, and the superb harnesses of an ex-horse-dealer. Behind these came the gayest and most plebeian equipage of all, a party of journeymen carpenters returning from their work in a four-horse wagon. Their only fit compeers were an Italian opera-troupe, who were chatting and gesticulating on the piazza of the great hotel, and planning, amid jest and laughter, their future campaigns. Their work seemed like play, while the play around them seemed like work. Indeed, most people on the Avenue seemed to be happy in inverse ratio to their income list.

As our youths and maidens passed the hotel, a group of French naval officers strolled forth, some of whom had a good deal of inexplicable gold lace dangling in festoons from their shoulders,--“topsail halyards” the American midshipmen called them. Philip looked hard at one of these gentlemen.

“I have seen that young fellow before,” said he, “or his twin brother. But who can swear to the personal identity of a Frenchman?”

IV. AUNT JANE DEFINES HER POSITION.

THE next morning had that luminous morning haze, not quite dense enough to be called a fog, which is often so lovely in Oldport. It was perfectly still; the tide swelled and swelled till it touched the edge of the green lawn behind the house, and seemed ready to submerge the slender pier; the water looked at first like glass, till closer gaze revealed long sinuous undulations, as if from unseen water-snakes beneath. A few rags of storm-cloud lay over the half-seen hills beyond the bay, and behind them came little mutterings of thunder, now here, now there, as if some wild creature were roaming up and down, dissatisfied, in the shelter of the clouds. The pale haze extended into the foreground, and half veiled the schooners that lay at anchor with their sails up. It was sultry, and there was something in the atmosphere that at once threatened and soothed. Sometimes a few drops dimpled the water and then ceased; the muttering creature in the sky moved northward and grew still. It was a day when every one would be tempted to go out rowing, but when only lovers would go. Philip and Hope went.

Kate and Harry, meanwhile, awaited their opportunity to go in and visit Aunt Jane. This was a thing that never could be done till near noon, because that dear lady was very deliberate in her morning habits, and always averred that she had never seen the sun rise except in a panorama. She hated to be hurried in dressing, too; for she was accustomed to say that she must have leisure to understand herself, and this was clearly an affair of time.

But she was never more charming than when, after dressing and breakfasting in seclusion, and then vigilantly watching her handmaiden through the necessary dustings and arrangements, she sat at last, with her affairs in order, to await events. Every day she expected something entirely new to happen, and was never disappointed. For she herself always happened, if nothing else did; she could no more repeat herself than the sunrise can; and the liveliest visitor always carried away something fresher and more remarkable than he brought.

Her book that morning had displeased her, and she was boiling with indignation against its author.

“I am reading a book so dry,” she said, “it makes me cough. No wonder there was a drought last summer. It was printed then. Worcester’s Geography seems in my memory as fascinating as Shakespeare, when I look back upon it from this book. How can a man write such a thing and live?”

“Perhaps he lived by writing it,” said Kate.

“Perhaps it was the best he could do,” added the more literal Harry.

“It certainly was not the best he could do, for he might have died,--died instead of dried. O, I should like to prick that man with something sharp, and see if sawdust did not run out of him! Kate, ask the bookseller to let me know if he ever really dies, and then life may seem fresh again.”

“What is it?” asked Kate.

“Somebody’s memoirs,” said Aunt Jane. “Was there no man left worth writing about, that they should make a biography about this one? It is like a life of Napoleon with all the battles left out. They are conceited enough to put his age in the upper corner of each page too, as if anybody cared how old he was.”

“Such pretty covers!” said Kate. “It is too bad.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Jane. “I mean to send them back and have new leaves put in. These are so wretched, there is not a teakettle in the land so insignificant that it would boil over them. Don’t let us talk any more about it. Have Philip and Hope gone out upon the water?”

“Yes, dear,” said Kate. “Did Ruth tell you?”

“When did that aimless infant ever tell anything?”

“Then how did you know it?”

“If I waited for knowledge till that sweet-tempered parrot chose to tell me,” Aunt Jane went on, “I should be even more foolish than I am.”

“Then how did you know?”

“Of course I heard the boat hauled down, and of course I knew that none but lovers would go out just before a thunder-storm. Then you and Harry came in, and I knew it was the others.”

“Aunt Jane,” said Kate, “you divine everything: what a brain you have!”

“Brain! it is nothing but a collection of shreds, like a little girl’s work-basket,--a scrap of blue silk and a bit of white muslin.”