 | CHAPTER XL.
WE ENTER COLLEGE. Oldtown folks |  |
40. CHAPTER XL.
WE ENTER COLLEGE.
HARRY and I entered Cambridge with honor. It was a
matter of pride with Mr. Rossiter that his boys should go
more than ready, — that an open and abundant entrance should be
administered unto them in the classic halls; and so it was with
us. We were fully prepared on the conditions of the sophomore
year, and thus, by Mr. Rossiter's drill, had saved the extra expenses
of one year of college life.
We had our room in common, and Harry's improved means
enabled him to fit it up and embellish it in an attractive manner.
Tina came over and presided at the inauguration, and helped us
hang our engravings, and fitted up various little trifles of shell
and moss work, — memorials of Cloudland.
Tina was now visiting at the Kitterys', in Boston, dispensing
smiles and sunbeams, inquired after and run after by every son
of Adam who happened to come in her way, all to no purpose, so
far as her heart was concerned.
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.”
Tina's education was now, in the common understanding of
society, looked upon as finished. Harry's and mine were commencing;
we were sophomores in college. She was a young
lady in society; yet she was younger than either of us, and had,
I must say, quite as good a mind, and was fully as capable of
going through our college course with us as of having walked
thus far.
However, with her the next question was, Whom will she
marry? — a question that my young lady seemed not in the
slightest hurry to answer. I flattered myself on her want of
susceptibility that pointed in the direction of marriage. She
was apparently so perfectly devoid of passion.
She was so brilliant, and so fitted to adorn society, that one
would have thought she would have been ennuyée in the old Rossiter
house, with only the society of Miss Mehitable and Polly;
but Tina was one of those whose own mind and nature are sufficient
excitement to keep them always burning. She loved her
old friend with all her little heart, and gave to her all her charms
and graces, and wound round her in a wild-rose garland, like the
eglantine that she was named after.
She had cultivated her literary tastes and powers. She wrote
and sketched and painted for Miss Mehitable, and Miss Mehitable
was most appreciative. Her strong, shrewd, well-cultivated
mind felt and appreciated the worth and force of everything there
was in Tina, and Tina seemed perfectly happy and satisfied with
one devoted admirer. However, she had two, for Polly still survived,
being of the dry immortal species, and seemed, as Tina
told her, quite as good as new. And Tina once more had
uproarious evenings with Miss Mehitable and Polly, delighting
herself with the tumults of laughter which she awakened.
She visited and patronized Sam Lawson's children, gave
them candy and told them stories, and now and then brought
home Hepsie's baby for a half-day, and would busy herself
dressing it up in something new of her own invention and construction.
Poor Hepsie was one of those women fated always to
have a baby in which she seemed to have no more maternal
pleasure than an old fowling-piece. But Tina looked at her on
the good-natured and pitiful side, although, to be sure, she did
study her with a view to dramatic representation, and made no
end of capital of her in this way in the bosom of her own family.
Tina's mimicry and mockery had not the slightest tinge of
contempt or ill-feeling in it; it was pure merriment, and seemed
to be just as natural to her as the freakish instincts of the mocking-bird,
who sits in the blossoming boughs above your head, and
sends back every sound that you hear with a wild and airy
gladness.
Tina's letters to us were full of this mirthful, effervescent
amusement; and the margins of them were scrawled with droll
and lifelike caricatures, in which we recognized Sam Lawson,
and Hepsie, and Uncle Fliakim, and, in fact, all the Oldtown
worthies, — not even excepting Miss Mehitable and Polly, the
minister and his lady, my grandmother, Aunt Lois, and Aunt
Keziah. What harm was there in all this, when Tina assured
us that aunty read the letters before they went, and laughed
until she cried over them?
“But, after all,” I said to Harry one day, “it 's rather a steep
thing for girls that have kept step with us in study up to this
point, and had their minds braced just as ours have been, with
all the drill of regular hours and regular lessons, to be suddenly
let down, with nothing in particular to do.”
“Except to wait the coming man,” said Harry, “who is to
teach her what to do.”
“Well,” said I, “in the interval, while this man is coming,
what has Tina to do but to make a frolic of life? — to live like a
bobolink on a clover-head, to sparkle like a dewdrop in a thornbush,
to whirl like a bubble on a stream? Why could n't she as
well find the coming man while she is doing something as while
she is doing nothing? Esther and you found each other while
you were working side by side, your minds lively and braced,
toiling at the same great ideas, knowing each other in the very
noblest part of your natures; and you are true companions; it is
a mating of souls and not merely of bodies.”
“I know that,” said Harry, “I know, too, that in these very
things that I set my heart on in the college course Esther is by
far my superior. You know, Horace, that she was ahead of us
in both Greek and mathematics; and why should she not go
through the whole course with us as well as the first part? The
fact is, a man never sees a subject thoroughly until he sees what
a woman will think of it, for there is a woman's view of every
subject, which has a different shade from a man's view, and that
is what you and I have insensibly been absorbing in all our
course hitherto. How splendidly Esther lighted up some of those
passages of the Greek tragedy! and what a sparkle and glitter
that it is confoundedly dull being without them; these fellows
are well enough, but they are cloddish and lumpish.”
“Well,” said I, “that is n't the worst of it. When such a gay
creature of the elements as Tina is has nothing earthly to do to
steady her mind and task her faculties, and her life becomes
a mere glitter, and her only business to amuse the passing hour,
it throws her open to all sorts of temptations from that coming
man, whoever he may be. Can we wonder that girls love to
flirt, and try their power on lovers? And then they are fair
game for men who want to try their powers on them, and some
man who has a vacation in his life purpose, and wants something
to amuse him, makes an episode by getting up some little romance,
which is an amusement to him, but all in all to her. Is that fair?”
“True,” said Harry, “and there 's everything about Tina to
tempt one; she is so dazzling and bewildering and exciting that
a man might intoxicate himself with her for the mere pleasure
of the thing, as one takes opium or champagne; and that sort
of bewilderment and intoxication girls often mistake for love! I
would to Heaven, Horace, that I were as sure that Tina loves
you as I am that Esther loves me.”
“She does love me with her heart,” said I, “but not with her
imagination. The trouble with Tina, Harry, is this: she is a
woman that can really and truly love a man as a sister, or as
a friend, or as a daughter, and she is a woman that no man can
love in that way long. She feels nothing but affection, and she
always creates passion. I have not the slightest doubt that she
loves me dearly, but I have a sort of vision that between her
and me will come some one who will kindle her imagination;
and all the more so that she has nothing serious to do, nothing to
keep her mind braced, and her intellectual and judging faculties
in the ascendant, but is fairly set adrift, just like a little flowery
boat, without steersman or oars, on a bright, swift-rushing river.
Did you ever notice, Harry, what a singular effect Ellery Davenport
seems to have on her?”
“No,” said Harry, starting and looking surprised. “Why,
Horace, Ellery Davenport is a good deal older than she is, and
a married man too.”
“Well, Harry, did n't you ever hear of married men that liked
to try experiments with girls? and in our American society they
can do it all the more safely, because here, thank Heaven! nobody
ever dreams but what marriage is a perfect regulator and
safeguard.”
“But,” said Harry, rubbing his eyes like a person just waking
up, “Horace, it must be the mere madness of jealousy that
would put such a thing into your head. Why, there has n't
been the slightest foundation for it.”
“That is to say, Harry, you 've been in love with Esther, and
your eyes and ears and senses have all run one way. But
I have lived in Tina, and I believe I have a sort of divining
power, so that I can almost see into her heart. I feel in myself
how things affect her, and I know, by feeling and sensation, that
from her childhood Ellery Davenport has had a peculiar magnetic
effect upon her.”
“But, Horace, he is a married man,” persisted Harry.
“A fascinating married man, victimized by a crazy wife, and
ready to throw himself on the sympathies of womanhood in this
affliction. The fair sex are such Good Samaritans that some
fellows make capital of their wounds and bruises.”
“Well, but,” said Harry, “there 's not the slightest thing
that leads me to think that he ever cared particularly about
Tina.”
“That 's because you are Tina's brother, and not her lover,”
said I. “I remember as long ago as when we were children,
spending Easter at Madam Kittery's, how Ellery Davenport's
eyes used to follow her, — how she used constantly to seem to
excite and interest him; and all this zeal about your affairs, and
his coming up to Oldtown, and cultivating Miss Mehitable's
acquaintance so zealously, and making himself so necessary to
her; and then he has always been writing letters or sending
messages to Tina, and then, when he was up in Cloudland, did n't
you see how constantly his eyes followed her? He came there
for nothing but to see her, — I 'm perfectly sure of it.”
“Well, Horace, you are about as absurd as a lover need be!”
said Harry. “Mr. Davenport is rather a conceited man of the
this about Tina is a romance of your own spinning, you may be
sure of it.”
This conversation occurred one Saturday morning, while we
were dressing and arraying ourselves to go into Boston, where
we had engaged to dine at Madam Kittery's.
From the first of our coming to Cambridge, we had remembered
our old-time friendship for the Kitterys, and it was an
arranged thing that we were to dine with them every Saturday.
The old Kittery mansion we had found the same still, charming,
quaint, inviting place that it seemed to us in our childhood. The
years that had passed over the silvery head of dear old Madam
Kittery had passed lightly and reverently, each one leaving only
a benediction.
She was still to be found, when we called, seated, as in days
long ago, on her little old sofa in the sunny window, and with
her table of books before her, reading her Bible and Dr. Johnson,
and speaking on “Peace and good-will to men.”
As to Miss Debby, she was as up and down, as high-stepping
and outspoken and pleasantly sub-acid as ever. The French
Revolution had put her in a state of good-humor hardly to be
conceived of. It was so delightful to have all her theories of the
bad effects of republics on lower classes illustrated and confirmed
in such a striking manner, that even her indignation at the destruction
of such vast numbers of the aristocracy was but a
slight feature in comparison with it.
She kept the newspapers and magazines at hand which contained
all the accounts of the massacres, mobbings, and outrages,
and read them, in a high tone of voice, to her serving-women,
butler, and footman after family prayers. She catechized more
energetically than ever, and bore more stringently on ordering
one's self lowly and reverently to one's betters, enforcing her
remarks by the blood-and-thunder stories of the guillotine in
France.
We were hardly seated in the house, and had gone over the
usual track of inquiries which fill up the intervals, when she
burst forth on us, triumphant.
“Well, my English papers have come in. Have you seen the
last news from France? They 're at it yet, hotter than ever.
One would think that murdering the king and queen might have
satisfied them, but it don't a bit. Everybody is at it now, cutting
everybody's else throat, and there really does seem to be a prospect
that the whole French nation will become extinct.”
“Indeed,” said Harry, with an air of amusement. “Well,
Miss Debby, I suppose you think that would be the best way
of settling things.”
“Don't know but it would,” said Miss Debby, putting on her
spectacles in a manner which pushed her cap-border up into a
bristling, helmet-like outline, and whirling over her file of papers,
seemingly with a view to edifying us with the most startling morsels
of French history for the six months past.
“Here 's the account of how they worshipped `the Goddess
of Reason'!” she cried, eying us fiercely, as if we had been part
and party in the transaction. “Here 's all about how their
philosophers and poets, and what not, put up a drab, and worshipped
her as their `Goddess of Reason'! And then they
annulled the Sabbath, and proclaimed that `Death is an Eternal
Sleep'! Now, that is just what Tom Jefferson likes; it 's
what suits him. I read it to Ellery Davenport yesterday, to
show him what his principles come to.”
Harry immediately hastened to assure Miss Debby that we
were stanch Federalists, and not in the least responsible for any
of the acts or policy of Thomas Jefferson.
“Don't know anything about that; you see it 's the Democrats
that have got the country, and are running as hard as they can
after France. Ah, here it is,” Miss Debby added, still turning
over her files of papers. “Here are the particulars of the execution
of the queen. You can see, — they had her on a common
cart, hands tied behind her, rattling and jolting, with all the vile
fishwomen and dirty drabs of Paris leering and jeering at her,
and they even had the cruelty,” she added, coming indignantly
at us as if we were responsible for it, “to stop the cart in front
of her palace, so that she might be agonized at seeing her former
home, and they might taunt her in her agonies! Anybody that
know what they are made of!”
“Well,” said Harry, undismayed by the denunciations; “the
French are an exceedingly sensitive and excitable people, who
had been miseducated and mismanaged, and taught brutality and
cruelty by the examples of the clergy and nobility.”
“Excitable fiddlesticks!” said Miss Debby, who, like my
grandmother, had this peculiar way of summing up an argument.
“I don't believe in softening sin and iniquity by such
sayings as that.”
“But you must think,” said Harry, “that the French are
human beings, and only act as any human beings would under
their circumstances.”
“Don't believe a word of it!” said she, shortly. “I agree
with the man who said, `God made two kinds of nature, —
human nature and French nature.' Voltaire, was n't it, himself,
that said the French were a compound of the tiger and
the monkey? I wonder what Tom Jefferson thinks of his beautiful,
darling French Republic now! I presume he likes it. I
don't doubt it is just such a state of things as he is trying to bring
to pass here in America.”
“O,” said I, “the Federalists will head him at the next
election.”
“I don't know anything about your Democrats and your Federalists,”
said she. “I thank Heaven I wash my hands of this
government.”
“And does King George still reign here?” said Harry.
“Certainly he does, young gentleman! Whatever happens to
this government, I have no part in it.”
Miss Debby, upon this, ushered us to the dinner-table, and
said grace in a resounding and belligerent voice, and, sitting
down, began to administer the soup to us with great determination.
Old Madam Kittery, who had listened with a patient smile to
all the preceding conversation, now began in a gentle aside to
me.
“I really don't think it is good for Debby to read those bloody-bone
“She really almost takes away my appetite some days, and it
does seem as if she would n't talk about anything else. Now,
Horace,” she said to me, appealingly, “the Bible says `Charity
rejoiceth not in iniquity,' and I can't help feeling that Debby
talks as if she were really glad to see those poor French making
such a mess of things. I can't feel so. If they are French,
they 're our brothers, you know, and Debby really seems to go
against the Bible, — not that she means to, dear,” she added,
earnestly, laying her hand on mine; “Debby is an excellent
woman; but, between you and me, I think she is a little excitable.”
“What 's that mother 's saying?” said Miss Debby, who kept
a strict survey over all the sentiments expressed in her household.
“What was mother saying?”
“I was saying, Debby, that I did n't think it did any good for
you to keep reading over and over those dreadful things.”
“And who does keep reading them over?” said Miss Debby,
“I should like to know. I 'm sure I don't; except when it is
absolutely necessary to instruct the servants and put them on
their guard. I 'm sure I am as averse to such details as anybody
can be.”
Miss Debby said this with that innocent air with which good
sort of people very generally maintain that they never do things
which most of their acquaintances consider them particular nuisances
for doing.
“By the by, Horace,” said Miss Debby, by way of changing
the subject, “have you seen Ellery Davenport since he came
home?”
“No,” said I, with a sudden feeling as if my heart was sinking
down into my boots. “Has he come home to stay?”
“O yes,” said Miss Debby; “his dear, sweet, model, Republican
France grew too hot to hold him. He had to flee to England,
and now he has concluded to come home and make what mischief
he can here, with his democratic principles and his Rousseau
and all the rest of them.”
“Debby is n't as set against Ellery as she seems to be,” said
he 's her cousin.”
“And you really think he intends to live in this country for
the future?” said I.
“Well, I suppose so,” said Miss Debby. “You know that
poor, miserable, crazy wife of his is dead, and my lord is turned
loose on society as a widower at large, and all the talk here in
good circles is, Who is the blessed woman that shall be Mrs.
Ellery Davenport the second? The girls are all pulling caps
for him, of course.”
It was perfectly ridiculous and absurd, but I suddenly lost all
appetite for my dinner, and sat back in my chair playing with
my knife and fork, until the old lady said to me compassionately:
—
“Why, dear, you don't seem to be eating anything! Debby,
put an oyster-paté on Horace's plate; he don't seem to relish
his chicken.”
I had to submit to the oyster-paté, and sit up and eat it like a
man, to avoid the affectionate importunity of my dear old friend.
In despair, I plunged into the subject least agreeable to me, and
remarked: —
“Mr. Davenport is a very brilliant man, and I suppose in
very good circumstances; is he not?”
“Yes, enormously rich,” said Miss Debby. “He still passes
for young, with that face of his that never will grow old, I believe.
And then he has a tongue that could wheedle a bird out
of a tree; so I don't know what is to hinder him from having as
many wives as Solomon, if he feels so disposed. I don't imagine
there is anybody would say `No' to him.”
“Well, I hope he will marry a good girl,” said the old lady,
“poor dear boy. I always loved Ellery; and he would make
any woman happy, I am sure.”
“That depends,” said Miss Debby, “on what the woman
wants. If she wants laces and cashmere shawls, and horses and
carriages, and a fine establishment, Ellery Davenport will give
her those. But if she wants a man to love her all her life, that 's
what Ellery Davenport can't do for any woman. He is a man
that he has n't got that he 's after. It 's the `pot of money at the
end of the rainbow,' or the `philosopher's stone,' or any other
thing that keeps a man all his life on a canter, and never getting
anywhere. And no woman will ever be anything to him but a
temporary diversion. He can amuse himself in too many ways
to want her.”
“Yes,” said the old lady, “but when a man marries he promises
to cherish her.”
“My dear mother, that is in the Church Service, and I assure
you Ellery Davenport has got beyond that. He 's altogether
too fine and wise and enlightened to think that a man should
spend his days in cherishing a woman merely because he
went through the form of marriage with her in church. Much
cherishing his crazy wife got of him! but he used his affliction
to get half a dozen girls in love with him, so that he might be
cherished himself. I tell you what, — Ellery Davenport lays
out to marry a real angel. He 's to swear and she 's to pray!
He is to wander where he likes, and she is always to meet him
with a smile and ask no questions. That is the part for Mrs
Ellery Davenport to act.”
“I don't believe a word of it, Debby,” said the old lady.
“You 'll see now, — you 'll see.”
| CHAPTER XL.
WE ENTER COLLEGE. Oldtown folks | |