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Queechy

<h1> Chapter V. </h1> <blockquote> Ynne London citye was I borne, Of parents of grete note; My fadre dydd a nobile arms Emblazon onne hys cote. </blockquote> <blockquote> Chatterton. </blockquote> In the snuggest and best private room of the House at Montepoole a party of ladies and gentlemen were gathered, awaiting the return of the sportsmen. The room had been made as comfortable as any place could be in a house built for "the season," after the season was past. A splendid fire of hickory logs was burning brilliantly and making amends for many deficiencies; the closed wooden shutters gave the reality if not the look of warmth, for though the days might be fine and mild the mornings and evenings were always very cool up there among the mountains; and a table stood at the last point of readiness for having dinner served. They only waited for the lingering woodcock-hunters. It was rather an elderly party, with the exception of one young man whose age might match that of the absent two. He was walking up and down the room with somewhat the air of having nothing to do with himself. Another gentleman, much older, stood warming his back at the fire, feeling about his jaws and chin with one hand and looking at the dinner-table in a sort of expectant reverie. The rest, three ladies, sat quietly chatting. All these persons were extremely different from one another in individual characteristics, and all had the unmistakable mark of the habit of good society; as difficult to locate and as easy to recognize as the sense of freshness which some ladies have the secret of diffusing around themselves;--no definable sweetness, nothing in particular, but making a very agreeable impression. One of these ladies, the mother of the perambulating young officer (he was a class-mate of Rossitur's), was extremely plain in feature, even more than ordinary. This plainness was not however devoid of sense, and it was relieved by an uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of heart. In her son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of heart retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of his nature; for it very rarely shewed itself in open expression. That is, to an eye keen in reading the natural signs of emotion; for it cannot be said that his manner had any want of amenity or politeness. The second lady, the wife of the gentleman on the hearth-rug, or rather on the spot where the hearth-rug should have been, was a strong contrast to this mother and son; remarkably pretty, delicate and even lovely; with a black eye however that though in general soft could shew a mischievous sparkle upon occasion; still young, and one of those women who always were and always will be pretty and delicate at any age. The third had been very handsome, and was still a very elegant woman, but her face had seen more of the world's wear and tear. It had never known placidity of expression beyond what the habitual command of good-breeding imposed. She looked exactly what she was, a perfect woman of the world. A very good specimen,--for Mrs. Carleton had sense and cultivation and even feeling enough to play the part very gracefully; yet her mind was bound in the shackles of "the world's" tyrannical forging and had never been free; and her heart bowed submissively to the same authority. "Here they are! Welcome home," exclaimed this lady, as her son and his friend at length made their appearance;--"Welcome home--we are all famishing; and I don't know why in the world we waited for you, for I am sure you don't deserve it. What success? What success, Mr. Rossitur?" "'Faith ma'am, there's little enough to boast of, as far as I am concerned. Mr. Carleton may speak for himself." "I am very sorry, ma'am, you waited for me," said that gentleman. "I am a delinquent I acknowledge. The day came to an end before I was at all aware of it." "It would not do to flatter you so far as to tell you why we waited," said Mrs. Evelyn's soft voice. And then perceiving that the gentleman at whom she was looking gave her no answer she turned to the other. "How many woodcock, Mr. Rossitur?" "Nothing to shew, ma'am," he replied. "Didn't see a solitary one. I heard some partridges, but I didn't mean to have room in my bag for them." "Did you find the right ground, Rossitur?" "I had a confounded long tramp after it if I didn't," said the discomfited sportsman, who did not seem to have yet recovered his good humour. "Were you not together?" said Mrs. Carleton. "Where were you, Guy?" "Following the sport another way, ma'am; I had very good success too." "What's the total?" said Mr. Evelyn. "How much game did you bag?" "Really, sir, I didn't count. I can only answer for a bag full." "Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Rossitur, bursting forth,--"What will you say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted me and the sport in a most unceremonious manner, and that he,--the cynical philosopher, the reserved English gentleman, the gay man of the world,--you are all of 'em by turns, aren't you, Carleton?--he!--has gone and made a very cavaliero servante of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to-day in helping a little girl pick up chestnuts!" "Mr. Carleton would be a better man if he were to spend a good many more days in the same manner," said that gentleman, dryly enough. But the entrance of dinner put a stop to both laughter and questioning for a time, all of the party being well disposed to their meat. When the pickerel from the lakes, and the poultry and half-kept joints had had their share of attention, and a pair of fine wild ducks were set on the table, the tongues of the party found something to do besides eating. "We have had a very satisfactory day among the Shakers, Guy," said Mrs. Carleton; "and we have arranged to drive to Kenton to-morrow--I suppose you will go with us?" "With pleasure, mother, but that I am engaged to dinner about five or six miles in the opposite direction." "Engaged to dinner!--what with this old gentleman where you went last night? And you too, Mr. Rossitur?" "I have made no promise, ma'am, but I take it I must go." "Vexatious! Is the little girl going with us, Guy?" "I don't know yet--I half apprehend, yes; there seems to be a doubt in her grandfather's mind, not whether he can let her go, but whether he can keep her, and that looks like it." "Is it your little cousin who proved the successful rival of the woodcock to-day, Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "What is she?" "I don't know, ma'am, upon my word. I presume Carleton will tell you she is something uncommon and quite remarkable." "Is she, Mr. Carleton?" "What, ma'am?" "Uncommon?" "Very." "Come! That is something, from you," said Rossitur's brother officer, Lieut. Thorn. "What's the uncommonness?" said Mrs. Thorn, addressing herself rather to Mr. Rossitur as she saw Mr. Carleton's averted eye;--"Is she handsome, Mr. Rossitur?" "I can't tell you, I am sure, ma'am. I saw nothing but a nice child enough in a calico frock, just such as one would see in any farm-house. She rushed into the room when she was first called to see us, from somewhere in distant regions, with an immense iron ladle a foot and a half long in her hand with which she had been performing unknown feats of housewifery; and they had left her head still encircled with a halo of kitchen-smoke. If as they say 'coming events cast their shadows before,' she was the shadow of supper." "Oh Carleton, Carleton!" said Mrs. Evelyn, but in a tone of very gentle and laughing reproof,--"for shame! What a picture! and of your cousin!" "Is she a pretty child, Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton, who did not relish her son's grave face. "No ma'am--something more than that." "How old?" "About ten or eleven." "That's an ugly age." "She will never be at an ugly age." "What style of beauty?" "The highest--that degree of mould and finish which belongs only to the finest material." "That is hardly the kind of beauty one would expect to see in such a place," said Mrs. Carleton. "From one side of her family to be sure she has a right to it." "I have seen very few examples of it anywhere," said her son. "Who were her parents?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Her mother was Mrs. Rossitur's sister,--her father--" "Amy Carleton!" exclaimed Mrs. Evelyn,--"O I knew her! Was Amy Carleton her mother? O I didn't know whom you were talking of. She was one of my dearest friends. Her daughter may well be handsome--she was one of the most lovely persons I ever knew; in body and mind both. O I loved Amy Carleton very much. I must see this child." "I don't know who her father was," Mrs. Carleton went on. "O her father was Major Ringgan," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I never saw him, but I have heard him spoken of in very high terms. I always heard that Amy married very well." "Major Ringgan!" said Mrs. Thorn;--"his name is very well known; he was very distinguished." "He was a self-made man entirely," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone that conveyed a good deal more than the simple fact. "Yes, he was a self made man," said Mrs. Thorn, "but I should never think of that where a man distinguishes himself so much; he was very distinguished." "Yes, and for more than officer-like qualities," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I have heard his personal accomplishments as a gentleman highly praised." "So that little Miss Ringgan's right to be a beauty may be considered clearly made out," said Mr. Thorn. "It is one of those singular cases," said Mr. Carleton, "where purity of blood proves itself, and one has no need to go back to past generations to make any inquiry concerning it." "Hear him!" cried Rossitur;--"and for the life of me I could see nothing of all this wonder. Her face is not at all striking." "The wonder is not so much in what it is as in what it indicates," said Mr. Carleton. "What does it indicate?" said his mother. "Suppose you were to ask me to count the shades of colour in a rainbow," answered he. "Hear him!" cried Thorn again. "Well, I hope she will go with us and we shall have a chance of seeing her," said Mrs. Carleton. "If she were only a few years older it is my belief you would see enough of her, ma'am," said young Rossitur. The haughty coldness of Mr. Carleton's look at this speech could not be surpassed. "But she has beauty of feature too, has she not?" Mrs. Carleton asked again of her son. "Yes, in very high degree. The contour of the eye and brow I never saw finer." "It is a little odd," said Mrs. Evelyn with the slightest touch of a piqued air, (she had some daughters at home)--"that is a kind of beauty one is apt to associate with high breeding, and certainly you very rarely see it anywhere else; and Major Ringgan, however distinguished and estimable, as I have no doubt he was,--And this child must have been brought up with no advantages, here in the country." "My dear madam," said Mr. Carleton smiling a little, "this high breeding is a very fine thing, but it can neither be given nor bequeathed; and we cannot entail it." "But it can be taught, can't it?" "If it could be taught it is to be hoped it would be oftener learned," said the young man dryly. "But what do we mean, then, when we talk of the high breeding of certain classes--and families? and why are we not disappointed when we look to find it in connection with certain names and positions in society?" "I do not know," said Mr. Carleton. "You don't mean to say, I suppose, Mr. Carleton," said Thorn bridling a little, "that it is a thing independent of circumstances, and that there is no value in blood?" "Very nearly--answering the question as you understand it." "May I ask how you understand it?" "As you do, sir." "Is there no high breeding then in the world?" asked good-natured Mrs. Thorn, who could be touched on this point of family. "There is very little of it. What is commonly current under the name is merely counterfeit notes which pass from hand to hand of those who are bankrupt in the article." "And to what serve then," said Mrs. Evelyn colouring, "the long lists of good old names which even you, Mr. Carleton, I know, do not disdain?" "To endorse the counterfeit notes," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Guy you are absurd!" said his mother. "I will not sit at the table and listen to you if you talk such stuff. What do you mean?" "I beg your pardon, mother, you have misunderstood me," said he seriously. "Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary conformity to what the world requires, but of that fine perfection of mental and moral constitution which in its own natural necessary acting leaves nothing to be desired, in every occasion or circumstance of life. It is the pure gold, and it knows no tarnish; it is the true coin, and it gives what it proffers to give; it is the living plant ever-blossoming, and not the cut and art-arranged flowers. It is a thing of the mind altogether; and where nature has not curiously prepared the soil it is in vain to try to make it grow. This is not very often met with?" "No indeed," said Mrs. Carleton;--"but you are so fastidiously nice in all your notions!--at this rate nothing will ever satisfy you." "I don't think it is so very uncommon," said Mrs. Thorn. "It seems to me one sees as much of it as can be expected, Mr. Carleton." Mr. Carleton pared his apple with an engrossed air. "O no, Mrs. Thorn," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't agree with you--I don't think you often see such a combination as Mr. Carleton has been speaking of--very rarely!--but, Mr. Carleton, don't you think it is generally found in that class of society where the habits of life are constantly the most polished and refined?" "Possibly," answered he, diving into the core of his apple. "No, but tell me;--I want to know what you think." "Cultivation and refinement have taught people to recognize and analyze and imitate it; the counterfeits are most current in that society,--but as to the reality I don't know--it is nature's work and she is a little freaky about it." "But Guy!" said his mother impatiently;--"this is not selling but giving away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of birth if breeding is not supposed to go along with it. Where the parents have had intelligence and refinement do we not constantly see them inherited by the children? and in an increasing degree from generation to generation?" "Very extraordinary!" said Mrs. Thorn. "I do not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother, believe me, nor deny the general doctrine; though intelligence does not always descend, and manners die out, and that invaluable legacy, a name, may be thrown away. But this delicate thing we are speaking of is not intelligence nor refinement, but comes rather from a happy combination of qualities, together with a peculiarly fine nervous constitution;--the essence of it may consist with an omission, even with an awkwardness, and with a sad ignorance of conventionalities." "But even if that be so, do you think it can ever reach its full development but in the circumstances that are favourable to it?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Probably not often; the diamond in some instances wants the graver;--but it is the diamond. Nature seems now and then to have taken a princess's child and dropped it in some odd corner of the kingdom, while she has left the clown in the palace." "From all which I understand," said Mr. Thorn, "that this little chestnut girl is a princess in disguise." "Really, Carleton!"--Rossitur began. Mrs. Evelyn leaned back in her chair and quietly eating a piece of apple eyed Mr. Carleton with a look half amused and half discontented, and behind all that, keenly attentive. "Take for example those two miniatures you were looking at last night, Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on;--"Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette--what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more animal, than the face of that descendant of a line of kings?" Mrs. Evelyn bowed her head acquiescingly and seemed to enjoy her apple. "He had a pretty bad lot of an inheritance sure enough, take it all together," said Rossitur. "Well," said Thorn,--"is this little stray princess as well-looking as t'other miniature?" "Better, in some respects," said Mr. Carleton coolly. "Better!" cried Mrs. Carleton. "Not in the brilliancy of her beauty, but in some of its characteristics;--better in its promise." "Make yourself intelligible, for the sake of my nerves, Guy," said his mother. "Better looking than Marie Antoinette!" "My unhappy cousin is said to be a fairy, ma'am," said Mr. Rossitur; "and I presume all this may be referred to enchantment." "That face of Marie Antoinette's," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "is an undisciplined one--uneducated." "Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton. "Don't mistake me, mother,--I do not mean that it shows any want of reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character--a mind unprepared for the exigencies of life." "She met those exigencies indifferent well too," observed Mr. Thorn. "Ay--but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life." "Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton. "Certainly, mother--but I am comparing faces." "Well--the other face?" "It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but--to compare them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that has come to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hot-house--it would lose its beauty in the strong free air--it would change and droop if it lacked careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement;--the other," said Mr. Carleton musingly,--is a flower of the woods, raising its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has placed it, with an air of quiet patient endurance;--a storm wind may bring it to the ground, easily--but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again, unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and sweetness to the end." "The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur,--"if I only had a place for her. I don't like pale elegancies." "I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton," said Mr. Thorn. "Mr. Carleton has done that already," said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly. "I never heard you talk so before, Guy," said his mother looking at him. His eyes had grown dark with intensity of expression while he was speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through the dinner-table mahogany. He looked up and laughed as she addressed him, and rising turned off lightly with his usual sir. "I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton," Mrs. Evelyn whispered as they went from the table, "that this little beauty is not a few years older." "Why?" said Mrs. Carleton. "If she is all that Guy says, I would give anything in the world to see him married." "Time enough," said Mrs. Evelyn with a knowing smile. "I don't know," said Mrs. Carleton,--"I think he would be happier. He is a restless spirit--nothing satisfies him--nothing fixes him. He cannot rest at home--he abhors politics--he flits way from country to country and doesn't remain long anywhere." "And you with him." "And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to stay at home." "I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn slyly. "I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me." "No--of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him." "No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile that was anything but an ungratified one. "He never wanted driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may try it, and while you think you are going to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that he is leading you. It is so with everybody--in some inexplicable way." Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable as far as the mother was concerned; and changed the conversation. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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