 | Dashes at life with a free pencil |  |
BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS.
The guests at the Astor House were looking mournfully
out of the drawing-room windows, on a certain
rainy day of an October passed over to history. No
shopping—no visiting! The morning must be passed
in-doors. And it was some consolation to those who
were in town for a few days to see the world, that their
time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large
drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy
affair is the drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of
eyes as a peacock's tail—(which, by the way, is also a
very dressy affair). Strangers who wish to see and be
seen (and especially “be seen”) on rainy days, as well
as on sunny days, in their visits to New York, should,
as the phrase goes, “patronize” the Astor. As if
there was any patronage in getting the worth of your
money!
Well—the people in the drawing-room looked a
little out of the windows, and a great deal at each
other. Unfortunately, it is only among angels and
underbred persons that introductions can be dispensed
with, and as the guests of that day at the Astor House
were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was
very fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever
extremely conspicuous. There were four very silent
ladies on the sofa, two very silent ladies in each of the
windows, silent ladies on the ottomans, silent ladies in
the chairs at the corners, and one silent lady, very
highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her
back to the piano. There was here and there a gentleman
in the room, weather-bound and silent; but
we have only to do with one of these, and with the
last-mentioned much-embellished young lady.
“Well, I can't sit on this soft chair all day, cousin
Meg!” said the gentleman.
“'Sh!—call me Margaret, if you must speak so
loud,” said the lady. “And what would you do out
of doors this rainy day? I'm sure it's very pleasant
here.”
“Not for me. I'd rather be thrashing in the barn.
But there must be some `rainy-weather work' in the
city as well as the country. There's some fun, I know,
that's kept for a wet day, as we keep corn-shelling and
grinding the tools.”
“Dear me!”
“Well—what now?”
“Oh, nothing!—but I do wish you wouldn't bring
the stable with you to the Astor House.”
The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and
took a leaf of music from the piano, and commenced
diligently reading the mystic dots and lines. We have
ten minutes to spare before the entrance of another
person upon the scene, and we will make use of the
silence to conjure up for you, in our magic mirror,
the semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we
have just jotted down.
Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a
large share of what the French call la beauté du diable—youth
and freshness. (Though, why the devil
should have the credit of what never belonged to him,
it takes a Frenchman, perhaps, to explain.) To look
at, she was certainly a human being in very high perfection.
Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her
waist was as round as a stove-pipe; her shoulders had
two dimples just at the back, that looked as if they
defied punching to make them any deeper; her eyes
looked as if they were just made, they were so bright
and new; her voice sounded like “C sharp” in a new
piano; and her teeth were like a fresh break in a
cocoa-nut. She was inexorably, unabatedly, desperately
healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of uniting
all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress,
were her two principal afflictions in this world of care.
She had an ideal model, to which she aspired with
constant longings—a model resembling in figure the
high-born creatures whose never-varied face is seen
in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and
more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her
short wrist with the curve invariably given to the well-gloved
extremities of that mysterious and nameless
beauty; if she could but have sat with her back to
her friends, and thrown her head languishingly over
her shoulder without dislocating her neck; if she
could but have protruded from the flounce of her
dress a foot more like a mincing little muscle-shell,
and less like a jolly fat clam; in brief, if she could
have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of a
spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremities,
sold all her uproarious and indomitable roses for
a pot of carmine, and compelled the publishers of the
magazines to refrain from the distracting multiplicity
of their monthly fashions—with these little changes
in her allotment, Miss Pifflit would have realized all
her maiden aspirations up to the present hour.
A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman
in question. He was not much more than he looked
to be—a compact, athletic young man of twenty-one,
with clear, honest blue eyes, brown face, where it was
not shaded by the rim of his hat, curling brown hair,
and an expression of fearless qualities, dashed just
now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was
a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary,
and he wore his clothes in a way which betrayed that
he would be more at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands
were rough, and his attitude that of a man who was
accustomed to fling himself down on the nearest
bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence,
or the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of
his rusticity, however, for he had a printed card, “Mr.
Ephraim Bracely,” and he was a subscriber to the
“Spirit of the Times.” We shall find time to say a
thing or two about him as we get on.
“Eph.” Bracely and “Meg” Pifflit were “engaged.”
With the young lady it was, as the French
say, faute de mieux, for her beau-ideal (or, in plain
English, her ideal beau) was a tall, pale young gentleman,
with white gloves, in a rapid consumption. She
and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she
was an orphan, and had lived since childhood with his
father, and, moreover, had inherited the Pifflit farm,
which adjoined that of the Bracelys, and, moreover,
had been told to “kiss her little husband, and love
him always” by the dying breath of her mother, and
(moreover third) had been “let be” his sweetheart by
the unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it
seemed one of those matches made in Heaven, and
not intended to be travestied on earth. It was understood
that they were to be married as soon as the
young man's savings should enable him to pull down
the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a
fair season, that might be done in another year.
Meantime, Eph. was a loyal keeper of his troth,
though never having the trouble to win the young
whether or no; and was, besides, somewhat unsusceptible
of the charms of moonlight, after a hard
day's work at haying or harvesting. The neighbors
thought it proof enough of his love that he never
“went sparking” elsewhere, and as he would rather
talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his
crop, pigs, politics, or anything else, than of love or
matrimony, his companions took his engagement with
his cousin to be a subject upon which he felt too
deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his domain
by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought
by allusions to her. It was in the progress of this
even tenor of engagement, that some law business
had called old Farmer Bracely to New York, and the
young couple had managed to accompany him. And
of course nothing would do for Miss Pifflit but “the
Astor.”
And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told
whose carriage is at the Vesey street door, and
who sends up a dripping servant to inquire for Miss
Pifflit.
It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to
have one fashionable female friend in the city—somebody
to correspond with, somebody to quote, somebody
to write her the particulars of the last elopement,
somebody to send her patterns of collars, and the rise
and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not
entered into by the monthly magazines. How these
apparently unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as
much a mystery as the eternal youth of post-boys,
and the eternal duration of donkeys. Far be it from
me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners of
the machinery of the world. I go no farther than
the fact, that Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance
of Miss Pifflit's.
Everybody knows “Hampson and Co.”
Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had
tried to make her. If she had not been admirably
well dressed, it would have been by violent opposition
to the united zeal and talent of dressmakers and milliners.
These important vicegerents of the Hand that
reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and
lily, make distinctions in the exercise of their vocation.
Wo be to an unloveable woman, if she be not
endowed with taste supreme. She may buy all the
stuffs of France, and all the colors of the rainbow,
but she will never get from those keen judges of fitness
the loving hint, the admiring and selective persuasion,
with which they delight to influence the
embellishment of sweetness and loveliness. They
who talk of “anything's looking well on a pretty
woman,” have not reflected on the lesser providence
of dressmakers and milliners. Woman is never mercenary
but in monstrous exceptions, and no tradeswoman
of the fashion will sell taste or counsel; and,
in the superior style of all charming women, you see,
not the influence of manners upon dress, but the affectionate
tribute of these dispensers of elegance to
the qualities they admire. Let him who doubts, go
shopping with his dressy old aunt to-day, and to-morrow
with his dear little cousin.
Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance
came as naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned
as little speculation as to the whence or how, was as
unconsciously elegant, of course, as a well-dressed
lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl, though
in a very delicate and unconspicuous style; and by
dint of absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her
beauty, by common observers at least, would be half
given to her fashionable air and unexceptionable toilet.
The damsel and her choice array, indeed, seemed
the harmonious work of the same maker. How much
was nature's gift, and how much was bought in Broadway,
was probably never duly understood by even her
most discriminate admirer.
But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the
stairs.
The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to
the surprise of those who had previously observed
Miss Mifflit) there was no smack of the latest fashion.
“My dear Julia!”
“My dear Margerine!” (This was a romantic variation
of Meg's, which she had forced upon her
intimate friends at the point of the bayonet.)
Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin,
and she introduced him with the formula which she
had found in one of Miss Austin's novels.
“Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that
deep courtesy,” thought Eph. (and so there was—for
Miss Hampson took an irresistible cue from the inflated
ceremoniousness of the introduction).
Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse-blanket.
And if he could have commanded the
blood in his face, it would have been as dignified and
resentful as the eloquence of Red Jacket—but that
rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask dropped
over his features.
“A bashful country-boy,” thought Miss Hampson,
as she looked compassionately upon his redhot forehead,
and forthwith dismissed him entirely from her
thoughts.
With a consciousness that he had better leave the
room, and walk off his mortification under an umbrella,
Eph. took his seat, and silently listened to the
conversation of the young ladies. Miss Hampson had
come to pass the morning with her friend, and she
took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her
dazzling neck a profusion of the most adorable brown
ringlets. Spite of his angry humiliation, the young
farmer felt a thrill run through his veins as the heavy
curls fell indolently about her shoulders. He had
never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He
hated her—oh, yes! for she had given him a look
that could never be forgiven—but for somebody, she
must be the angel of the world. Eph. would have
given all his sheep and horses, cows, crops, and haystacks,
to have seen the man she would fancy to be
her equal. He could not give even a guess at the
height of that conscious superiority from which she
individually looked down upon him; but it would
have satisfied a thirst which almost made him scream,
to measure himself by a man with whom she could
be familiar. Where was his inferiority? What was
it? Why had he been blind to it till now? Was
there no surgeon's knife, no caustic, that could carve
out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the vulgarities she
looked upon so contemptuously? But the devil take
her superciliousness, nevertheless!
It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it
went like a dream. The hotel parlor was no longer
a stupid place. His cousin Meg had gained a consequence
in his eyes, for she was the object of caress
from this superior creature—she was the link which
kept her within his observation. He was too full of
other feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the
superiority of this girl to his cousin. He felt it in
his after thoughts, and his destiny then, for the first
time, seemed crossed and inadequate to his wishes.
(We hereby draw upon your imagination for six
months, courteous reader. Please allow the teller to
show you into the middle of the following July.)
Bracely farm, ten o'clock of a glorious summer
morning—Miss Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair.
But let us go back a little.
A week before, a letter had been received from
Miss Hampson, who, to the delight and surprise of
her friend Margerine, had taken the whim to pass a
month with her. She was at Rockaway, and was
sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer
Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl?
But Miss Pifflit's “sober second thought” was utter
consternation. How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia
Hampson? No French bed in the house, no boudoir,
no ottomans, no pastilles, no baths, no Psyche to
dress by. What vulgar wretches they would seem to
her. What insupportable horror she would feel at
the dreadful inelegance of the farm. Meg was pale
with terror and dismay as she went into the details of
anticipation.
Something must be done, however. A sleepless
night of reflection and contrivance sufficed to give
some shape to the capabilities of the case, and by
daylight the next morning the whole house was in
commotion. Meg had fortunately a large bump of
constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual
dilemmas-toilet. A boudoir must be constructed.
Farmer Bracely slept in the dried apple-room, on
the lower floor, and he was no sooner out of his
bed than his bag and baggage were tumbled up stairs,
his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their
nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling whitewashed.
Eph. was by this time returned from the
village with all the chintz that could be bought, and a
paper of tacks, and some new straw carpeting; and by
ten o'clock that night the four walls of the apartment
were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the
carpet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely
thought it a mighty nice, cool-looking place. Eph.
was a bit of a carpenter, and he soon knocked together
some boxes, which, when covered with chintz, and
stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans; and,
with a handsome cloth on the round-table, geraniums
in the windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the
light, it was not far from a very charming boudoir,
and Meg began to breathe more freely.
But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in
his temples. Was that proud woman coming to look
again upon him with contempt, and here, too, where
the rusticity, which he presumed to be the object of
her scorn, would be a thousand times more flagrant
and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip
that his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart
had checked the utterance—for an irresistible desire
sprung suddenly within him to see her, even at the
bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification.
Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hampson
went on, other thoughts took possession of his
mind. Eph. was not a man, indeed, to come off second
best in the long pull of wrestling with a weakness.
His pride began to show its colors. He remembered
his independence as a farmer, dependant
on no man, and a little comparison between his pursuits,
and life, such as he knew it to be, in a city, soon
put him, in his own consciousness at least, on a par
with Miss Hampson's connexions. This point once
attained, Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling
about the farm as usual—receiving without reply,
however, a suggestion of his cousin Meg's, that he
had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit of absence,
he might possibly put it on while Miss Hampson
was there.
Well, it was ten o'clock on the morning after
Miss Hampson's arrival at Bracely farm, and, as we
said before, Miss Pifflit was in despair. Presuming
that her friend would be fatigued with her journey,
she had determined not to wake her, but to order
breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely
and Eph. must have their breakfast at seven, however,
and what was the dismay of Meg, who was pouring
out their coffee as usual, to see the elegant Julia rush
into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly to the old
man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being
late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing
two newly-hatched chickens from her bosom! She
had been up since sunrise, and out at the barn, down
by the river, and up in the haymow, and was perfectly
enchanted with everything, especially the dear little
pigs and chickens!
“A very sweet young lady!” thought old Farmer
Bracely.
“Very well—but hang your condescension!” thought
Eph., distrustfully.
“Mercy on me!—to like pigs and chickens!” mentally
ejaculated the disturbed and bewildred Miss Pifflit.
But with her two chicks pressed to her breast
with one hand, Miss Hampson managed her coffee
and bread and butter with the other, and chattered
away like a child let out of school. The air was so
delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in
the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff
sidewalks, and no brick houses, and no iron railings,
and so many dear speckled hens, and funny little
chickens, and kind-looking old cows, and colts, and
calves, and ducks, and turkeys—it was delicious—it
was enchanting—it was worth a thousand Saratogas
and Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city
to the country, was to Miss Hampson matter of incredulous
wonder.
“Will you come into the boudoir?” asked Miss
Pifflit, with a languishing air, as her friend Julia rose
from breakfast.
“Boudoir!” exclaimed the city damsel, to the infinite
delight of old Bracely, “no, dear! I'd rather go
out to the barn! Are you going anywhere with the
oxen to-day, sir?” she added, going up to the gray-headed
farmer caressingly, “I should so like to ride
in that great cart!”
Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected
agreeableness, but he was naturally too courteous not
to give way to a lady's whims. He put on his old
straw hat, and tied his handkerchief over his shoulder
(not to imitate the broad riband of a royal order, but
to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing), and offering
Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the
door, he begged her to be ready when he came by
with the team. He and his father were bound to the
far meadow, where they were cutting hay, and would
like her assistance in raking.
It was a “specimen” morning, as the magazines
say, for the air was temperate, and the whole country
was laden with the smell of the new hay, which somehow
or other, as everybody knows, never hinders or
overpowers the perfume of the flowers. Oh, that
winding green lane between the bushes was like an
avenue to paradise. The old cart jolted along
through the ruts, and Miss Hampson, standing up
and holding on to old Farmer Bracely, watched the
great oxen crowding their sides together, and looked
off over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses
of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably
and unaffectedly enchanted. The old farmer, at least,
had no doubt of her sincerity, and he watched her,
and listened to her, with a broad honest smile of admiration
on his weather-browned countenance.
The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the
dew dried off the hay, and Eph. and his father turned
to mowing, leaving Miss Hampson to ramble about
over the meadow, and gather flowers by the river-side.
In the course of an hour, they began to rake up, and
she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly
followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths,
till her face glowed under her sunbonnet as it never
had glowed with waltzing. Heated and tired at last,
she made herself a seat with the new hay under a
large elm, and, with her back to the tree, watched the
labors of her companions.
Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he
did in the way of his vocation, he did with a fine display
of muscular power, and (a sculptor would have
thought) no little grace. Julia watched him as he
stepped along after his rake on the elastic sward, and
man was young Bracely, and how much more finely
a man looked when raking hay, than a dandy when
waltzing. And for an hour she sat watching his motion,
admiring the strength with which he pitched up
the hay, and the grace and ease of all his movements
and postures; and, after a while, she began to feel
drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fragrant
pillow, she lay down and fell fast asleep.
It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old
farmer, who, of late years, had fallen into the habit
of taking a short nap before dinner, came to the big
elm to pick up his waistcoat and go home. As he approached
the tree, he stopped, and beckoned to his son.
Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking
at the lovely picture before him. With one delicate
hand under her cheek, and a smile of angelic content
and enjoyment on her finely cut lips, Julia Hampson
slept soundly in the shade. One small foot escaped
from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish
and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her
sleeve. Her slight waist bent to the swell of the hay,
throwing her delicate and well-moulded bust into
high relief; and all over her neck, and in large clusters
on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown ringlets,
admirably beautiful and luxuriant.
And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of
loveliness, the passion, already lying perdu in his
bosom, sprung to the throne of heart and reason.
(We have not room to do more than hint at the
consequences of this visit of Miss Hampson to the
country. It would require the third volume of a
novel to describe all the emotions of that month at
Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point,
gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch
here and there a point only, giving the reader's imagination
some gleaning to do after we have been over
the ground.)
Eph. Bracely's awakened pride served him the good
turn of making him appear simply in his natural character
during the whole of Miss Hampson's visit. By
the old man's advice, however, he devoted himself to
the amusement of the ladies after the haying was
over; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery-hunting
in the neighborhood, the young people were
together from morning till night. Miss Pifflit came
down unwillingly to plain Meg, in her attendance on
her friend in her rustic occupations, and Miss Hampson
saw as little as possible of the inside of the boudoir.
The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all
the out-door belongings of the farm, interested her
daily, and with no diminution of her zeal. She
seemed, indeed, to have found her natural sphere in
the simple and affectionate life which her friend Margerine
held in such superfine contempt; and Eph.,
who was the natural mate to such a spirit, and himself,
in his own home, most unconsciously worthy of
love and admiration, gave himself up irresistibly to
his new passion.
And this new passion became apparent, at last, to
the incredulous eyes of his cousin. And that it was
timidly, but fondly returned by her elegant and high-bred
friend, was also very apparent to Miss Pifflit.
And after a few jealous struggles, and a night or two
of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly—for, a city
life and a city husband, truth to say, had long been
her secret longing and secret hope, and she never had
fairly looked in the face a burial in the country with
the “pigs and chickens.”
She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit—but the rich
merchant, Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with
the disastrous times, has found a kindly and pleasant
asylum for his old age with his daughter, Mrs. Bracely.
And a better or lovelier farmer's wife than Julia,
or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be found
in the valley of the Susquehannah.
| Dashes at life with a free pencil | |