28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
BORN TO BE A BACHELOR.
“The truth is, Madame,” began Lawrence Newt, addressing
Mrs. Bennet, “that I am ashamed of myself—I ought to
have called a hundred times. I ask your pardon, Sir,” he
continued, turning to Mr. Bennet, who was standing irresolutely
by the sofa, half-leaning upon the arm.
“Oh!—ah! I am sure,” replied Mr. Bennet, with the nervous
smile flitting across his face and apparently breaking out
all over him; and there he remained speechless and bowing,
while Mr. Newt hastened to seat himself, that every body else
might sit down also.
Mrs. Bennet said that she was really glad to see the face of
an old friend again whom she had not seen for so long.
“But I see you every day in Gabriel, my dear Madame,”
replied Lawrence Newt, with quaint dignity. Mother and son
both smiled, and the father bowed as if the remark had been
addressed to him.
Amy seated herself by Gabriel and Ellen, and talked very
animatedly with them, while the parents and Mr. Newt sat together.
She praised the roses, and smelled them very often;
and whenever she did so, her eyes, having nothing in particular
to do at the moment, escaped, as it were, under her brows
through the petals of the roses as she bent over them, and
wandered away to Lawrence Newt, whose kind, inscrutable
eyes, by the most extraordinary chance in the world, seemed
to be expecting hers, and were ready to receive them with
the warmest welcome, and a half-twinkle—or was it no twinkle
at all? which seemed to say, “Oh! you came—did you?”
And every time his eyes seemed to say this Amy burst out
into fresh praises of those beautiful roses to her younger cousins,
and pressed them close to her cheek, as if she found their
moist, creamy coolness peculiarly delicious and refreshing—
pressed them so close, indeed, that she seemed to squeeze
some of their color into her cheeks, which Gabriel and Ellen
both thought, and afterward declared to their mother, to be
quite as beautiful as roses.
Amy's conversation with her young cousins was very lively
indeed, but it had not a continuous interest. There were incessant
little pauses, during which the eyes slipped away again
across the room, and fell as softly as before, plump into the
same welcome and the same little interrogation in those other
eyes, twinkling with that annoying “did you?”
Amy Waring was certainly twenty-five, although Gabriel
laughed and jeered at any such statement. But mamma and
the Family Bible were too much for him. Lawrence Newt
was certainly more than forty. But the Newt Family Bible
was under a lock of which the key lay in Mrs. Boniface
Newt's bureau, who, in a question of age, preferred tradition,
which she could judiciously guide, to Scripture. When Boniface
Newt led Nancy Magot to the altar, he recorded, in a
large business hand, both the date of his marriage and his
wife's birth. She protested it was vulgar. And when the
bridegroom inquired whether the vulgarity were in the fact
of being born or in recording it, she said: “Mr. Newt, I am
ashamed of you,” and locked up the evidence.
There was a vague impression in the Newt family—Boniface
had already mentioned it to his son Abel—that there was
something that Uncle Lawrence never talked about—many
things indeed, of course, but still something in particular.
Outside the family nothing was suspected. Lawrence Newt
was simply one of those incomprehensibly pleasant, eccentric,
benevolent men, whose mercantile credit was as good as Jacob
Van Boozenberg's, but who perversely went his own way.
One of these ways led to all kinds of poor people's houses;
and it was upon a visit to the widow of the clergyman to
whom Boniface Newt had given eight dollars for writing a
tract entitled “Indiscriminate Almsgiving a Crime,” that Lawrence
Newt had first met Amy Waring. As he was leaving
money with the poor woman to pay her rent, Amy came in
with a basket of comfortable sugars and teas. She carried the
flowers in her face. Lawrence Newt was almost blushing at
being caught in the act of charity; and as he was sliding past
her to get out, he happened to look at her face, and stopped.
“Bless my soul! my dear young lady, surely your name is
Darro!”
The dear young lady smiled and colored, and replied,
“No, mine is not, but my mother's was.”
“Of course it was. Those eyes of yours are the Darro
eyes. Do you think I do not know the Darro eyes when I
see them?”
And he took Amy's hand, and said, “Whose daughter are
you?”
“My name is Amy Waring.”
“Oh! then you are Corinna's daughter. Your aunt Lucia
married Mr. Bennet, and—and—” Lawrence Newt's voice
paused and hesitated for a moment, “and—there was another.”
There was something so tenderly respectful in the tone
that Amy, with only a graver face, replied,
“Yes, there was my Aunt Martha.”
“I remember all. She is gone; my dear young lady, you
will forgive me, but your face recalls other years.” Then
turning to the widow, he said, “Mrs. Simmer, I am sure that
you could have no kinder, no better friend than this young
lady.”
The young lady looked at him with a gentle inquiry in her
eyes as who should say, “What do you know about it?”
Lawrence Newt's eyes understood in a moment, and he
answered:
“Oh, I know it as I know that a rose smells sweet.”
He bowed as he said it, and took her hand.
“Will you remember to ask your mother if she remembers
Lawrence Newt, and if he may come and see her?”
Amy Waring said Yes, and the gentleman, bending and
touching the tips of her fingers with his lips, said, “Good-by,
Mrs. Simmer,” and departed.
He called at Mrs. Waring's within a few days afterward.
He had known her as a child, but his incessant absence from
home when he was younger had prevented any great intimacy
with old acquaintances. But the Darros were dancing-school
friends and partners. Since those days they had become women
and mothers. He had parted with Corinna Darro, a
black-eyed little girl in short white frock and short curling
hair and red ribbons. He met her as Mrs. Delmer Waring, a
large, maternal, good-hearted woman.
This had happened two years before, and during all the
time since then Lawrence Newt had often called—had met
Amy in the street on many errands — had met her at balls
whenever he found she was going. He did not ask her to
drive with him. He did not send her costly gifts. He did
nothing that could exclude the attentions of younger men.
But sometimes a basket of flowers came for Miss Waring—
without a card, without any clue. The good-hearted mother
thought of various young men, candidates for degrees in Amy's
favor, who had undoubtedly sent the flowers. The good-hearted
mother, who knew that Amy was in love with none
of them, pitied them — thought it was a great shame they
should lose their time in such an utterly profitless business as
being in love with Amy; and when any of them called said,
with a good-humored sigh, that she believed her daughter
would never be any thing but a Sister of Charity.
Sometimes also a new book came, and on the fly-leaf was
written, “To Miss Amy Waring, from her friend Lawrence
Newt.” Then the good-hearted mother remarked that some
men were delightfully faithful to old associations, and that it
was really beautiful to see Mr. Newt keeping up the acquaintance
so cordially, and complimenting his old friend so delicately
by thinking of pleasing her daughter. What a pity he
had never married, to have had daughters of his own! “But
I suppose, Amy, some men are born to be bachelors.”
“I suppose they are, mother,” Amy replied, and found immediately
after that she had left her scissors, she couldn't possibly
remember where; perhaps in your room, mamma, perhaps
in mine.
They must be looked for, however, and, O how curious!
there they lay in her own room upon the table. In her own
room, where she opened the new book and read in it for half
an hour at a time, but always poring on the same page. It
was such a profound work. It was so full of weighty matter.
When would she ever read it through at this rate, for the
page over which she pored had less on it than any other page
in the book. In fact it had nothing on it but that very commonplace
and familiar form of words, “To Miss Amy Waring,
from her friend Lawrence Newt.”
Amy was entirely of her mother's opinion. Some men are
undoubtedly born to be bachelors. Some men are born to be
as noble as the heroes of romances—simple, steadfast, true;
to be gentle, intelligent, sagacious, with an experience that
has mellowed by constant and various intercourse with men,
but with a heart that that intercourse has never chilled, and a
faith which that experience has only confirmed. Some men
are born to possess every quality of heart, and mind, and person
that can awaken and satisfy the love of a woman. Yes,
unquestionably, said Amy Waring in her mind, which was so
cool, so impartial, so merely contemplating the subject as an
abstract question, some men—let me see, shall I say like Lawrence
Newt, simply as an illustration?—well, yes—some men
like Lawrence Newt, for instance, are born to be all that some
women dream of in their souls, and they are the very ones
who are born to be bachelors.
It might be very sad not to be aware of it, thought Amy.
What a profound pity it would be if any young woman
should not see it, for instance, in the case of Lawrence Newt.
But when a young woman is in no doubt at all, when she
knows perfectly well that such a man is not intended by nature
to be a marrying man, and therefore never thinks of such a
thing, but only with a grace, and generosity, and delicacy beyond
expression offers his general homage to the sex by giving
little gifts to her, “why, then—then,” thought Amy, and she
was thinking so at the very moment when she sat with Gabriel
and Ellen, talking in a half wild, lively, incoherent way,
“why, then—then,” and her eyes leaped across the room and
fell, as it were, into the arms of Lawrence Newt's, which caressed
them with soft light, and half-laughed “You came again,
did you?”—“why, then—then,” and Amy buried her face in
the cool, damp roses, and did not dare to look again, “then she
had better go and be a Sister of Charity.”
