 | II. Beauty and the beast |  |
2. II.
At the end of ten days he came.
In the under-sized, earnest, dark-haired and dark-eyed
young man of three-and-twenty, Abigail Mitchenor at
once felt a motherly interest. Having received him as a
temporary member of the family, she considered him entitled
to the same watchful care as if he were in reality an
invalid son. The ice over an hereditary Quaker nature
is but a thin crust, if one knows how to break it; and in
His only embarrassment, in fact, arose from the
difficulty which he naturally experienced in adapting himself
to the speech and address of the Mitchenor family.
The greetings of old Eli, grave, yet kindly, of Abigail,
quaintly familiar and tender, of Moses, cordial and slightly
condescending, and finally of Asenath, simple and natural
to a degree which impressed him like a new revelation
in woman, at once indicated to him his position among
them. His city manners, he felt, instinctively, must be
unlearned, or at least laid aside for a time. Yet it was
not easy for him to assume, at such short notice, those
of his hosts. Happening to address Asenath as “Miss
Mitchenor,” Eli turned to him with a rebuking face.
“We do not use compliments, Richard,” said he; “my
daughter's name is Asenath.
“I beg pardon. I will try to accustom myself to your
ways, since you have been so kind as to take me for a
while,” apologized Richard Hilton.
“Thee's under no obligation to us,” said Friend Mitchenor,
in his strict sense of justice; “thee pays for what
thee gets.”
The finer feminine instinct of Abigail led her to interpose.
“We'll not expect too much of thee, at first, Richard,”
she remarked, with a kind expression of face, which had
the effect of a smile: “but our ways are plain and easily
learned. Thee knows, perhaps, that we're no respecters
of persons.”
It was some days, however, before the young man
could overcome his natural hesitation at the familiarity
implied by these new forms of speech. “Friend Mitchenor”
and “Moses” were not difficult to learn, but it
seemed a want of respect to address as “Abigail” a woman
of such sweet and serene dignity as the mother, and
he was fain to avoid either extreme by calling her, with her
cheerful permission, “Aunt Mitchenor.” On the other
hand, his own modest and unobtrusive nature soon won
the confidence and cordial regard of the family. He occasionally
busied himself in the garden, by way of exercise,
or accompanied Moses to the corn-field or the woodland
on the hill, but was careful never to interfere at inopportune
times, and willing to learn silently, by the simple
process of looking on.
One afternoon, as he was idly sitting on the stone wall
which separated the garden from the lane, Asenath, attired
in a new gown of chocolate-colored calico, with a double-handled
willow work-basket on her arm, issued from
the house. As she approached him, she paused and
said—
“The time seems to hang heavy on thy hands, Richard.
If thee's strong enough to walk to the village and
back, it might do thee more good than sitting still.”
Richard Hilton at once jumped down from the wall.
“Certainly I am able to go,” said he, “if you will allow
it.”
“Haven't I asked thee?” was her quiet reply.
“Let me carry your basket,” he said, suddenly, after
lane.
“Indeed, I shall not let thee do that. I'm only going
for the mail, and some little things at the store, that make
no weight at all. Thee mustn't think I'm like the young
women in the city, who, I'm told, if they buy a spool of
cotton, must have it sent home to them. Besides, thee
mustn't over-exert thy strength.”
Richard Hilton laughed merrily at the gravity with
which she uttered the last sentence.
“Why, Miss—Asenath, I mean—what am I good for;
if I have not strength enough to carry a basket?”
“Thee's a man, I know, and I think a man would almost
as lief be thought wicked as weak. Thee can't help
being weakly-inclined, and it's only right that thee should
be careful of thyself. There's surely nothing in that that
thee need be ashamed of.”
While thus speaking, Asenath moderated her walk, in
order, unconsciously to her companion, to restrain his
steps.
“Oh, there are the dog's-tooth violets in blossom?”
she exclaimed, pointing to a shady spot beside the brook;
“does thee know them?”
Richard immediately gathered and brought to her a
handful of the nodding yellow bells, trembling above their
large, cool, spotted leaves.
“How beautiful they are!” said he; “but I should
never have taken them for violets.”
“They are misnamed,” she answered. “The flower is
name, and like it. Did thee ever study botany?”
“Not at all. I can tell a geranium, when I see it,
and I know a heliotrope by the smell. I could never mistake
a red cabbage for a rose, and I can recognize a hollyhock
or a sunflower at a considerable distance. The
wild flowers are all strangers to me; I wish I knew something
about them.”
“If thee's fond of flowers, it would be very easy to
learn. I think a study of this kind would pleasantly occupy
thy mind. Why couldn't thee try? I would be very
willing to teach thee what little I know. It's not much,
indeed, but all thee wants is a start. See, I will show
thee how simple the principles are.”
Taking one of the flowers from the bunch, Asenath,
as they slowly walked forward, proceeded to dissect it,
explained the mysteries of stamens and pistils, pollen,
petals, and calyx, and, by the time they had reached the
village, had succeeded in giving him a general idea of
the Linnæan system of classification. His mind took
hold of the subject with a prompt and profound interest.
It was a new and wonderful world which suddenly opened
before him. How surprised he was to learn that there
were signs by which a poisonous herb could be detected
from a wholesome one, that cedars and pine-trees blossomed,
that the gray lichens on the rocks belonged to the
vegetable kingdom! His respect for Asenath's knowledge
thrust quite out of sight the restraint which her youth and
sex had imposed upon him. She was teacher, equal,
natural expression of her dignity and purity thoroughly
harmonized with this relation.
Although, in reality, two or three years younger than
he, Asenath had a gravity of demeanor, a calm self-possession,
a deliberate balance of mind, and a repose of
the emotional nature, which he had never before observed,
except in much older women. She had had, as
he could well imagine, no romping girlhood, no season
of careless, light-hearted dalliance with opening life, no
violent alternation even of the usual griefs and joys of
youth. The social calm in which she had expanded had
developed her nature as gently and securely as a seaflower
is unfolded below the reach of tides and
storms.
She would have been very much surprised if any one
had called her handsome: yet her face had a mild, unobtrusive
beauty which seemed to grow and deepen from
day to day. Of a longer oval than the Greek standard,
it was yet as harmonious in outline; the nose was fine
and straight, the dark-blue eyes steady and untroubled,
and the lips calmly, but not too firmly closed. Her brown
hair, parted over a high white forehead, was smoothly
laid across the temples, drawn behind the ears, and
twisted into a simple knot. The white cape and sun-bonnet
gave her face a nun-like character, which set her
apart, in the thoughts of “the world's people” whom she
met, as one sanctified for some holy work. She might
have gone around the world, repelling every rude word,
and truth which inclosed her.
The days went by, each bringing some new blossom
to adorn and illustrate the joint studies of the young man
and maiden. For Richard Hilton had soon mastered
the elements of botany, as taught by Priscilla Wakefield,
—the only source of Asenath's knowledge,—and entered,
with her, upon the text-book of Gray, a copy of which he
procured from Philadelphia. Yet, though he had overtaken
her in his knowledge of the technicalities of the
science, her practical acquaintance with plants and their
habits left her still his superior. Day by day, exploring
the meadows, the woods, and the clearings, he brought
home his discoveries to enjoy her aid in classifying and
assigning them to their true places. Asenath had generally
an hour or two of leisure from domestic duties in
the afternoons, or after the early supper of summer was
over; and sometimes, on “Seventh-days,” she would be
his guide to some locality where the rarer plants were
known to exist. The parents saw this community of interest
and exploration without a thought of misgiving.
They trusted their daughter as themselves; or, if any
possible fear had flitted across their hearts, it was allayed
by the absorbing delight with which Richard Hilton pursued
his study. An earnest discussion as to whether a
certain leaf was ovate or lanceolate, whether a certain
plant belonged to the species scandens or canadensis, was,
in their eyes, convincing proof that the young brains were
touched, and therefore not the young hearts.
But love, symbolized by a rose-bud, is emphatically a
botanical emotion. A sweet, tender perception of beauty,
such as this study requires, or develops, is at once the
most subtile and certain chain of communication between
impressible natures. Richard Hilton, feeling that his
years were numbered, had given up, in despair, his boyish
dreams, even before he understood them: his fate
seemed to preclude the possibility of love. But, as he
gained a little strength from the genial season, the pure
country air, and the release from gloomy thoughts which
his rambles afforded, the end was farther removed, and a
future—though brief, perhaps, still a future—began to
glimmer before him. If this could be his life,—an endless
summer, with a search for new plants every morning,
and their classification every evening, with Asenath's help
on the shady portico of Friend Mitchenor's house,—he
could forget his doom, and enjoy the blessing of life unthinkingly.
The azaleas succeeded to the anemones, the orchis
and trillium followed, then the yellow gerardias and the
feathery purple pogonias, and finally the growing gleam
of the golden-rods along the wood-side and the red umbels
of the tall eupatoriums in the meadow announced
the close of summer. One evening, as Richard, in displaying
his collection, brought to view the blood-red leaf
of a gum-tree, Asenath exclaimed—
“Ah, there is the sign! It is early, this year.”
“What sign?” he asked.
“That the summer is over. We shall soon have
the asters and gentians and golden-rods.”
Was the time indeed so near? A few more weeks,
and this Arcadian life would close. He must go back to
the city, to its rectilinear streets, its close brick walls, its
artificial, constrained existence. How could he give up
the peace, the contentment, the hope he had enjoyed
through the summer? The question suddenly took a
more definite form in his mind: How could he give up
Asenath? Yes—the quiet, unsuspecting girl, sitting beside
him, with her lap full of the September blooms he
had gathered, was thenceforth a part of his inmost life.
Pure and beautiful as she was, almost sacred in his regard,
his heart dared to say—“I need her and claim
her!”
“Thee looks pale to-night, Richard,” said Abigail,
as they took their seats at the supper-table. “I hope
thee has not taken cold.”
| II. Beauty and the beast | |