University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
MISS GILBERT GIVES AND RECEIVES VERY DECIDED IMPRESSIONS.

Mr. Kilgore's carriage stands before Mr. Kilgore's
door. There are affectionate leave-takings in Mr. Kilgore's
hall. Miss Fanny Gilbert, in her travelling dress,
is kissing her farewells upon the rosy lips of Mary's
little ones, and shedding tears as she parts from their
mother. Mr. Kilgore, in a fit of gallantry, claims a
kiss for himself, which Miss Gilbert not unwillingly
accords to him. The trunks have already been sent to
the boat, and Frank Sargent gives the young woman
his arm, and they descend to the street. They take
their seats, the steps are put up, handkerchiefs are waved
as telegraphs of affection by the separated groups, and
the carriage rolls off down the street, and turns a corner,
and is lost in the din and whirl of the great city.

After the publication of “Rhododendron,” and the
discovery on the part of Fanny that there was no satisfaction
in her new fame, she began to pine for the old
faces. She was tired for the first time of her New York
life. Its round of gayety, its excitements, its pursuit of
admiration, became a weariness to her. She felt self-condemned
for so long forsaking her father, and for

taking so little interest in her brother Fred. Especially,
now that she had achieved her objects, did she desire to
taste the love of those who took pride in her. If they
would only love her better for her fame, it would do
her good. Her heart craved love now. This she must
have, or life would lose all its meaning to her. She
turned her back on her New York associations with
little pain, anxious only, in her altered feelings, to nestle
once more at the heart of home.

There was another event that hastened her departure.
Her brother was soon to graduate, and he had already
received the honor of the highest appointment in his
class. This honor had always been accorded to him by
the students themselves; so, when he received it, there
was no surprise. Dr. Gilbert had written to his daughter
a glowing account of Fred's progress, and concluded
with an earnest request that she would return and witness
the coronation of his long-cherished hope. There
was something in her father's exclusive devotion to his
son that piqued the daughter, but she felt, in her conscience,
that he had treated her quite as well as she had
treated him. There was only a passing allusion to her
new book in the letter, and this half-offended her; but
she determined to return, and to try Crampton life
once more.

The ten years that had matured her had built railroads,
and her passage homeward was not the painful
and tedious one of former years. Coffee in New York
and tea in Crampton, on the same day, did not involve
great fatigue; and it was hardly past mid-afternoon when
Miss Gilbert made her last change of cars, and found
herself upon a train of the Crampton and Londonderry

Railroad, in the care of “the popular and gentlemanly
conductor,” Mr. Thomas Lampson. As Mr. Lampson
came along to collect the tickets, he recognized Miss
Gilbert by a slight touch of the forefinger upon the very
small visor of his blue cap, and a smile that illuminated
his whole face.

“Why, Cheek! Is that you?”

“Well, Fanny, 'tis. Glad to see you. How have
you been?” and Cheek took Miss Gilbert's hand, and
shook it as if it were a wild animal that he wanted to
shake the life out of. “Back in a minute,” said he, as
he passed along, and shouted “Tickets!” in his professional
way.

Now, Miss Fanny Gilbert was slightly shocked by
this familiarity; but her joy at seeing an old face had
betrayed her into undue cordiality, and she was obliged
to abide the consequences. She was shocked but not
displeased. There was genuine friendship in that
shake of the hand—a personal interest beyond the desire
to see and speak to a notoriety. So when Mr. Thomas
Lampson came back, shuffling his tickets in his hand, in
a way that showed his familiarity with “old sledge,”
and touched his visor again with his forefinger, she
made a place for him upon her own seat, and the conductor
and the authoress were soon engaged in conversation.

“I've read Rhody,” said Mr. Lampson, “and it's a
tall thing.”

“You mean Rhododendron?” said Miss Gilbert,
with a smile.

“Right again,” responded the conductor, rasping his
thumb-nail across the end of his package of tickets.

“I am glad that you like it,” said Miss Gilbert.

“Well, I do like it—I like it first-rate. It's a tall
thing—it's a trump. Yes, I like it first-rate. I vow, I
wonder where you picked it all up. I told my wife it
was the strangest thing how a woman could spin such a
story right out of her head, and make every thing come
in right and come out right. She says it only happened
so; but I know better. Now, how—how d'ye go to
work to begin? I couldn't any more do it than I could
—a—a—well, what's the use talking?”

Miss Gilbert was much amused by this humble
tribute to her transcendent powers, and simply replied
that it was easy enough to write a novel when one
knew how.

“After all,” continued Mr. Lampson, “we don't
care half so much about the book up here in Crampton
as we do about you. I tell you we feel pretty crank
about having a book-writer in Crampton. The fact is,
Miss Gilbert, that we are just about as proud of you as
if we owned you, and when we see the papers talking
about you, and making a great fuss about your book,
we just say to ourselves: `That's a woman we raised.
It takes Crampton to set the world going.' Now I
don't s'pose you ever thought of such a thing, and, very
likely, it's ridiculous; but I'm just as proud of you—I
am, upon my word—as if I had a mortgage on you.”

Fanny Gilbert smiled, but her lip quivered, and she
turned her head toward the window, while two big tears
formed in her eyes, and dropped from her cheek. There
was something in this simple praise that touched her
more than all the reviews she had read.

Still Mr. Thomas Lampson, in the abundance of his

genial nature, went on. “I s'pose you've been living
among grand folks down to the city, and think Crampton
people are green; but they don't care half so much
about you there as we do, and it kind o' seems to me
that if I could write a book that would make my own
folks happy, it would do me more good than it would
to be purred over by a snarl of people that didn't care
any thing about me.”

“You are right—entirely right,” responded Miss
Gilbert, emphatically.

“Well, I guess I am,” said the conductor. “I know
how it is with me, now. You couldn't hire me to go
away from Crampton, for I was raised here, and everybody
knows me, and everybody is glad to see me get
along. If I was to go on to another road, I should be
like any other conductor; not but what I could make
friends, but I shouldn't care what they said about me.
Now, when a feller that has always known me comes
along, and slaps me on the shoulder, kind o' familiar,
and says, `Hullo! Tom; what's the state of your
vitals?' I know what it means, and it makes me feel
good all over. I s'pose all of us have a kind of hankering
after people's good words; but I tell you it makes
a mighty sight of difference with me who gets 'em off.
When that little wife of mine says, `Tom, you're a
good feller, God bless you,' it goes right in where I live.
Well, it does! O Lord! what's the use talking?”

The concluding exclamation of the conductor's little
speech was produced by his finding Miss Gilbert's eyes
fastened full upon him, and an indistinct apprehension
that he was getting silly.

“Tell me about your wife,” said Miss Gilbert.

“Oh! shoh! you don't want to hear any thing about
her.”

“Indeed I do,” replied Fanny, with a heartiness that
the conductor felt to be genuine.

“Well, you must see her, and make up your own
mind about her. All I can say is, she suits me. I tell
you,” and the conductor lowered his voice to an exceedingly
confidential tone, “we have mighty good times.
When I am through my trips at night, and we get into
our room together, and the curtains are down, and nobody
round to bother, I look at her sometimes by the
hour when she sits sewing, and I say to myself, `Tom
Lampson, that property is yours. That little live
woman thinks more of you than she does of all creation
besides. You're a king, Tom!' Oh! I tell you I
have seen that little room grow and grow, till all the
world outside looked mighty small—so small, that I
wouldn't give the skip of a tree-toad for the whole of it.
Now, you've had good luck, and done a splendid thing,
and everybody's talking about you, and I s'pose you
take real solid comfort in it; but if I'd got to choose
between writing Rhody, and owning that little woman
at home, I should say—oh! well—what's the use talking!
We are different, you know. One has his likes,
and another has his likes, and what is one man's meat is
another man's poison, and so it goes.”

Here the conductor rose to his feet, gave a sharp
scrape upon the end of his package of tickets, and
shouted “Littleton!”

Fanny Gilbert felt that she was indeed approaching
home, but home, with all its newly-awakened charms,
did not interest her so deeply as the conversation she

had had with the simple-hearted Tom Lampson. She
had been weighing vital values in new scales. Now
that her long hallucination relating to the value of popularity
and fame was dissolved, her mind was open to
the reception of truth—nay, she was thirsty for truth,
and was ready to drink it from the humblest fountains.
She comprehended what the honest conductor meant
when he told her that his wife's praise “went right in
where he lived;” for she felt that the praise she had
sought for and found did not go in where she lived. It
did not touch the deep places of her life.

There is never a train of cars with a notoriety upon
it whom somebody does not detect; and, entirely without
Miss Gilbert's consciousness, it became known to all
upon the train that the writer of “Rhododendron”—
old Dr. Gilbert's famous daughter—had been enjoying
a cosy chat with the conductor. On the arrival of the
train at Littleton, it was whispered upon the platform
that Miss Gilbert was in a certain car. The train
paused for some minutes, as it was an important station,
and at length Fanny became aware that curious
eyes were looking at her, not only from the seats
around, but from the platform outside. Young men
with canes in their hands and cigars in their mouths loitered
by with affected carelessness, and gave her a
brazen stare; and others stood at a distance and made
their comments. Straight out of her woman's nature
there sprang a sense of shame and indignation, and by
almost an involuntary movement she drew her veil
down before her face.

Yet precisely this notoriety had she sought. Not a
page of “Rhododendron” had been written in which

she had not indulged in dreams of this kind of reward.
Nay, she had imagined herself in precisely these circumstances,
with assumed unconsciousness receiving the
homage of the curious crowd. Once behind her veil, she
analyzed her feelings. Having weighed the value of her
newly-found fame with relation to her truer life, it
became in a degree offensive to her. The moment the
woman's heart within her became dominant, she shrank
from the demonstrations which her long-sought position
so naturally evoked. Those curious eyes invaded the
sanctity of her womanhood. She felt them as a degradation.

The whistle sounded, the bell rang, and the train
moved on. Tom Lampson hurried through and collected
his tickets, and then respectfully resumed his seat
by the side of Miss Gilbert. “I s'pose you hear all the
news from Crampton?” said the conductor, interrogatively.

“I hear very little,” replied Miss Gilbert.

“Mr. Blague has had a pretty hard life of it,” said
her interlocutor.

“I suppose he has; tell me what you know about
him.”

“Well, he sticks to that little boy as if he were his
mother; and he has done it for years and years. There
isn't another man in the world that would do as he has
done; yet he doesn't seem to mind it, but keeps right
along. Well, there's no use talking, he's a great man,
and is bound to make his mark. I've known Arthur
Blague a good while, and I used to be kind of intimate
with him you know, but he's got ahead of my time.
Now I think I don't know any thing, and ain't anybody,

when he's round—if you know what sort of a feeling
that is. I don't pretend to be a very good man, you
know, and I'm always spilling my nonsense around;
but I never see that man walking through the street, so
sort o' splendid, and kind, and good, but what I think
of Jesus Christ. I vow I never do. Now that's a fact.”

“I have been told that he has commenced preaching,”
said Miss Gilbert quietly.

“Yes, and you ought to hear him. I don't know
how he does it, but he gets hold of me awful. If I ever
get pious and join the church, Arthur Blague is the man
that'll bring me to it. I tell you, when a man gets in
front of him on Sunday, he catches it—no use dodging
—might as well cave.”

“I shall hear him, I hope,” said Miss Gilbert. “By
the way,” she added with affected indifference, “Mr.
Blague is to be married, I believe.”

“Is he?”

Fanny blushed in spite of herself; and to evade the
responsibility of starting a report she had never heard,
asked the conductor if he had not heard it before.

“No,” said he decidedly, “and—no disrespect to
you—I don't know a woman in the world good enough
for him.”

Fanny made a low bow, looking archly in blushing
Tom Lampson's face, and said: “I thank you.”

“Well, now, you needn't take a feller up so; you
know what I mean. I don't say but what you're handsome
enough, and smart enough, and genteel enough, and
good company, and all that; but you ain't one of his kind;
you ain't—a—well you know what I mean—you ain't—a
—you sort o' look out for number one, you know, and kind

o' like to have a good many strings to your bow, and
wouldn't love to buckle into such a life as he's chalked
out for himself.”

Tom Lampson grew redder in the face from the
time he commenced his apology, or explanation, until
he closed—an embarrassment which Miss Gilbert, in
some moods, would have enjoyed excessively. As it
was, she could not avoid the consciousness that she was
regarded, even by her humbler friends, as a selfish
woman. She could not be offended with Tom Lampson;
for, while he blurted out the most humiliating
truths, it seemed to be done under protest, and with a
tone that deprecated her displeasure. She, the gifted
and famous Fanny Gilbert, was not good enough to be
the wife of a humble minister of the Gospel!

If Tom Lampson had a simple nature, it was also a
sensitive one, and he was not slow to recognize the fact
that Miss Gilbert did not wish to extend the conversation.
So he excused himself, and visited another part
of his train. Fanny had looked from her window but
a few minutes when familiar objects began to show
themselves, and soon the spires of Crampton were in
sight. The whistle sounded, the train slacked its speed,
and soon came up to the Crampton station. On the
platform, awaiting her arrival, she saw her father and
her slender, fair-haired brother. The old doctor greeted
his daughter with unusual demonstrations of joy as she
alighted, and she kissed her tall and bashful brother so
heartily that he blushed to the tips of his ears. Leaving
Fred to see to her luggage, she took her father's
arm, and walked homeward to the old mansion. One
would naturally suppose that a parent, with such a specimen

of womanhood upon his arm as Fanny Gilbert,
would have been very proudly conscious of the fact, as
he promenaded the fresh brick sidewalks of Crampton.
The truth was, however, that Dr. Gilbert was not
thinking of his daughter at all. He was glad to see her
for her own sake, always; but he was specially rejoiced
at this juncture, because she had an interested
pair of ears into which he could pour his talk about that
prodigy of scholarship, Fred Gilbert. All the way
from the station to the house, he entertained his daughter
with what the president of the college had told him;
and what a certain professor had written to him; and
how certain gentlemen, who had talented sons in the
class, were piqued at Fred's triumph, and what he proposed
to do with Fred as soon as he got out of college,
all of which interested Fanny not a little, and grieved
her a good deal.

She had felt this exclusive devotion of her father to
the son of his hope many times, but never so keenly as
now. She now wanted love—her father's love. She
wanted to warm her heart in the same paternal interest
with which her brother was indued.

Aunt Catharine's greeting was one that did her good.
She kissed her a dozen times at the first onset, and
called her “dear heart,” and helped her off with her hat,
and went to her chamber with her, and was “so glad
she had come home.” “Your father,” said Aunt Catharine,
“is just about crazy over Fred; and he won't see
that the poor boy is killing himself, and ruining his constitution
besides.”

Fanny could not help smiling at the order of dissolution
which the good woman suggested; but her own

impressions from Fred's appearance coincided essentially
with those of her affectionate aunt.

Not a word had thus far been spoken about “Rhododendron,”
and Fanny realized more and more how
much the world of affection overshadowed the world in
which she had had so much of her life. After dressing
for tea, she descended to the drawing-room, and found
Arthur Blague, whom Aunt Catharine had invited to
meet her, in conversation with the doctor. As usual,
Dr. Gilbert was pouring into Arthur's ear the praises
of his boy. As the queenly girl made her advent,
Arthur rose, and greeted her with such easy grace and
thorough self-respect and self-possession, that Fanny,
almost hackneyed in the forms of polite life, found herself
dumb. Arthur took her hand, and did not relinquish
it at once, but looked down into her face, and told
her how glad he was to see her, and, more than all,
spoke of “Rhododendron,” and thanked her for writing
it. He had read it, every word; and had read not
only the book, but the most important reviews of it
that had appeared.

In the collision of these fresh, strong natures, the
other elements of the family circle fell back into commonplace.
Fanny was tired, but there was something
in Arthur's presence which stimulated her, and, without
design or effort, the reunited old friends found themselves
at once in the most animated and delightful conversation.
Arthur gave his arm to Fanny, as they
passed out to the tea-table, in a way so courtly and unembarrassed
that Fanny could not help wondering
where the recluse had learned all this. She had seen
nothing of Arthur for years. She remembered him as

the bright particular star of her girlish dreams, but supposed
that he had become bashful, and, in a degree,
timid. It did not occur to her that his old reserve had
passed away, not by the development of the element of
self esteem in his character, but by the actual measurement
of himself with relation to the personalities among
which he moved. He had modestly weighed his own
character and gauged his own power. He had risen
into the self-assertion of his own manhood. He was
not, in reality, versed in the conventionalisms of society;
but he was a law unto himself. Out of a sense
of propriety, which he had learned to trust, and a heart
of earnest good-will, his actions in society all sprang;
and it was not in his nature to do a good thing ungracefully.
What Fanny had learned in society as the result
of cultured habit, he had learned at home, and comprehended
intuitively.

It quite astonished the doctor and Aunt Catharine,
and the slender collegian, to see Arthur Blague so much
at home with the polished young woman. He talked
as they had never heard him talk before. He unveiled
a life which they had never suspected. He had found
a mind well versed in current literature, and it was a
luxury that he had not enjoyed in Crampton for many
a day. They talked of authors and of books, and finally
of the reviews that had been written of Miss Gilbert's
book. These the young clergyman took up, one after
another, and pointed out their excellencies and their
mistakes, betraying the most thorough insight into the
aims of the authoress, and showing that he had not only
read her book, but comprehended its whole scope and
aim.

The consciousness that a single sound, good mind
had actually dissected and carefully estimated the pet
product of her brain and heart, gave Fanny a fresh happinest.
Was it unmaidenly in her to think how, in the
companionship of such a nature as that of Arthur Blague,
she could develop both her heart and her mind? Was
it unnatural for her, in her new mood, to feel what a
blessed thing it would be to be overshadowed by such
a mind—how sweet it would be to sit beneath its
branches, and scan the heaven of thought as their sway
unveiled it? If so, she had not greatly sinned, for it was
the first time she had ever been similarly moved. She
comprehended, for the first time, how sweet a thing it
is to develop, reveal, express one's self in the presence
of a great soul that measures with an appreciative, admiring,
and loving eye, every utterance and every
power.

The meal was unusually prolonged. Here and there
a suggestive fact or a seminal thought was uttered, leading
the vivacious pair into fresh fields of conversation
and discussion, in which they seemed to revel, while the
remainder of the family listened in delighted silence.
Occasionally, Arthur Blague turned to Fred for his
opinion, or to ask a question, or to drop a suggestion
that would bring him into the circle of conversation.
But Fred only spoke in monosyllables, and seemed to
be utterly unacquainted with the realm of thought
through which the talk of the hour was leading him.

The doctor noticed the embarrassed silence of his
son, and did what he could to draw him out; but, in
truth, there was nothing to draw out that had relation
to the things discussed. From his youngest childhood

he had been forced into a receptive attitude and habit of
mind. Acquisition from text-books had been the single
work of his life. Use, demonstration, action—these he
knew nothing of whatever. Words, forms, rules, processes—these
he had gorged himself with; but he had
been allowed no time for their digestion, and they had
in no way become disciplinary of those powers which
are the legitimate measure of every man's manhood.
Of the questions that touch the heart and life of society,
he knew nothing; and he sat before Arthur Blague and
his accomplished sister as weak, and impassive, and
dumb as the babe of a day. He was, too, painfully
conscious of his deficiencies. Among students, measured
by the standard of the college faculty, he was at
home—the peer of his associates. In the life of the
world, he was lost.

Dr. Gilbert looked on and listened in wonder. In
Arthur Blague, he apprehended a mind bubbling and
brimming with wealth. In his pet child—the brilliant
collegian—he saw nothing but an intellectual stripling,
entirely overshadowed by the robust nature, and varied
culture, and demonstrative powers, of the home-grown
man. One had become an intellectual pigmy on his
advantages; the other, an intellectual giant on his disadvantages.

Arthur Blague took early leave of the family, after
rising from the tea-table, from consideration of Miss
Gilbert's fatigue. As he left the door, and slowly
walked homeward, where the accustomed night of
watching awaited him, he felt that he had met with one
of the most refreshing passages of his life. For long
years he had, whenever he met Fanny Gilbert, been

aware of something in her character which was repulsive
to his sense of that which is best in womanhood. She
had always appeared heartless and selfish. There was
a certain boldness—a certain masculine forwardness—
that impressed him most unpleasantly. What had produced
the change? He felt that he had found his way
into her nature and character through a different avenue,
or that he had found a new side to her character, or
that she had changed. He felt, indeed, that it would
not be wise for him to see very much of her. Such society
would not only tend to divert him from the aims
of his life, but it might endanger his peace. He could
not think of Fanny Gilbert as the wife of a minister.
He would not think of her as the wife of Arthur Blague.

As for Fanny herself, she went to her bed delighted
and satisfied. She felt that she had been talking with
a man, and that that which was best in her had been
seen and appreciated by him. She had received from
him no vapid compliments, uttered for the purpose of
pleasing her. Not one word of flattery had been breathed
by him; but, out of a sound judgment and a true conscience,
he had uttered that which nourished her self-respect,
and gave her an impetus toward those nobler
ends of life that were dawning upon her. He had met
her as an intellectual equal. He had probed her mind
with question and suggestion; and under the stimulus
of his genial presence it had abundantly responded to
their research. Moreover, she saw that the peerless
boy of her early dreams—so long forgotten and so long
slighted—might easily become the peerless man of her
maturer judgment. But he was a minister, and she was
not good enough for him! She and Mr. Thomas Lampson

had the mutual honor that night of agreeing in
opinion upon this point.

A few days passed away, bringing no opportunity
for enlarging the acquaintance so happily renewed between
the young minister and Miss Gilbert. It seemed
to the young woman that he shunned her, as, indeed, he
did. They met occasionally on the street, and she always
detected in him an air of restraint, very unlike
the easy and happy manner in which he had carried
himself on the evening of their meeting—an air which
equally mystified and piqued her.

As soon as Fanny's old acquaintances found that
her heart was open to them, they flocked around her,
invited her to their dwellings, vied with each other in
their cordial attentions to her, and were happy in her
society. At every fresh fountain of love thus opened
to her, she drank with delight. Softened by every
day's experience, and rejoicing in the grateful aliment
which her new life brought to her, and the humble love
that paid her tribute, she could only wonder at the long
delusion that had inthralled her.

In the mean time, the young valedictorian had returned
to college, to make ready for the approaching
anniversary, which was to witness his triumph, and set
him free from the bondage of his college life. In the
few days he spent with his sister, she found that the
triumph which lay before him would in all probability
be the last of his life. He had overtasked himself, and
had well-nigh expended the stock of vitality with which
nature had endowed him.