Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his father's ample wealth.
"What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?"
"No, sir, none whatever."
The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and concern.
Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself a true descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets he inherited, along with most of their faults, and not a few of their virtues. He was narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just in all his dealings. There were three subjects on which he could converse with more or less intelligence—politics, theology, and business. Beyond these, he knew nothing; and except American history and practical science, he had an indistinct idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted a foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but Milton and the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes; and he looked upon fiction as an emanation of the devil. To the list of the cardinal virtues he added another, namely, attention to business. In his early days, he had come from his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's father, who, seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded trust in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth of slow parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady habits, and a most unpliable conscience. He had no follies, allowed himself no indulgences, and could enjoy no other pleasures than business and church-going. He attended service morning, afternoon, and evening, and never smiled on Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked as might have been augured from such a youth. He thought the rising generation were in a very bad way, and once gave his son a scorching lecture on vanity and arrogance, because the latter, who had been two years at college, very modestly begged to be excused from carrying a roll of sample cotton, a yard and a half long, from his father's store at one end of the town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other.
"What, no profession, Mr. Morton?"
"None whatever, sir."
Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal words, and sought to arm himself with the needful patience. It would be folly, he knew, to debate the point with his guardian, who was tough and unmanageable as a hickory stump; who would never see any side of a question but his own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like rain drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and a due respect for what he called the general sense of the community, which, as he assured his auditor, demands that every one should have some fixed and stated calling, by which he may be recognized as a worthy and useful member of society. Sometimes he grew angry, and scolded his ward with great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic strain, and exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to grow old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate, heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing commerce and the professions, his life would by no means be an idle one, thanked him for his care of his property, and took his leave; while the old merchant sank back into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the son of his respected patron was on the road to perdition.
A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's recusancy.
On a May evening, some two months before the close of his college career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a wooden bench, by the classic border of Fresh Pond. By every canon of polite fiction, his meditation ought to have been engrossed by some object of romantic devotion; but in truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and sublunary.
He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a career for his future life. He liked none of the professions for itself, and had no need to embrace it for support. He loved action, and loved study; was ambitious and fond of applause. He had, moreover, enough of the American in his composition never to be happy except when in pursuit of something; together with a disposition not very rare among young men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere, joined to his abounding health and youthful spirits—a tendency to live for the future, and look at acts and things with an eye to their final issues.
Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon after he entered college. The whole delighted him; but he read and re-read the opening chapters, which exhibit the movements of the various races in their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse towards ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive art, literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his life to such studies.
Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond, he revolved, for the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and summed up what he regarded as its manifold advantages. It would enable him to indulge his passion for travel, lead him over rocks, deserts, and mountains, conduct him to Tartar tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with the most savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full swing to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his energies of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the rest of his days.
He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution deliberately adopted by him must needs be final and conclusive, and was fully convinced that his present determination was a species of destiny, involving one of three results—that he should meet an early death, which he thought very likely; that he should be wholly disabled by illness, which he thought scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness of time, say twenty or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue in some prodigious work, redounding to his own honor and the unspeakable profit of science.
A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters must forego. So, in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the story leap a chasm of some two years.
Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature spurred him into perpetual action; but his wanderings were over at length; and he and Meredith sat under the porch of Morton's house, a few miles from town. The features of the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of his friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one insufferably bored.
"Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you have been following the backbone of the continent from Darien to the head of the Missouri, mixing yourself up with Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks into the crater of Popocatapetl, and living hand and glove with Blackfeet and Assinnaboins, while I have been doing penance among bonds and mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown up responsibility and gone to Europe—and so has every body else—and left all on my shoulders."
"Your time will come."
"I hope so."
"But what news is there?"
"Nothing."
"What, nothing since I went away?"
"The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and then, a new engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and Mrs. B. didn't; and then characters were discussed on both sides. Something has been said of the balls, the opera, and what not; with the usual talk about the wickedness of the democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists."
"You appear to have led a gay life."
"Very!—we need a war, an invasion,—something of the sort. It would put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of nonsense. You were born with a stimulus in yourself, and can stand this stagnant sort of existence; but I need something more lively."
"Then go with me on my next journey."
"Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace, and thank Heaven that you have come home in a whole skin."
"I have done the North American continent; but there are four more left, not to mention the islands."
"And you mean to see them all?"
"Certainly."
"Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever you fancy to go."
"You could not do better than go with me."
"I know it; but, if wishes were horses—— I am training Dick to take my place. I am a model elder brother to that youngster in the way of cultivating his mind and morals; and when I have him up to the mark, I shall gain a year's furlough for my pains. But when is your next journey to begin—next week?"
"No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole, for the next ten months, at least."
"If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig you can be, I should set down your studies as mere humbug."
"But I wish to hear the news."
"I would tell it willingly, if I knew any."
"Have the Primroses come home from Europe yet?"
"Yes."
"And the Everills?"
"I believe not."
"Nor the Leslies, I suppose."
"For a reasonably sensible and straightforward fellow, you have a queer way of making inquiries. You question like a lady's letter, with the pith in the postscript. You ask after the Primroses and the Everills, a stupid, priggish set, for whom you care nothing, as earnestly as if you were in love with them, and then grow indifferent when you come to the Leslies, whom you like."
"Did I?" said Morton, in some discomposure; "I ask their pardon. Have they come home?"
"Not yet, but I believe they mean to come as soon as they have staid their year out."
"And that will be very soon—early in the spring, or sooner."
"Now I think of it, I made the acquaintance, a few evenings ago, of a person who, I believe, is a relation or connection of yours—Miss Fanny Euston."
"O, yes, she is my third, fourth, or fifth cousin, or something of that sort; but I have not seen her since she was ten years old. She was a great romp, then, and very plain."
"That last failing is cured. She has grown very handsome."
"The first failing ought to be cured, too, by this time."
"I am not so clear on that point. She is a girl with an abundance of education, and a good deal of a certain kind of accomplishment—music, and so on—but no breeding at all. If she had had the training of good society, she would have been one of a thousand. As it is she cares for nobody, and does and says whatever comes into her mind, without the least regard to consequences or appearances."
"Does she affect naturalness, independence, and all that?"
"No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It only needs to be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky, colonel, but in this world every thing worth having is broken in pieces and mixed with something that one doesn't want. It's an even balance, good and bad; there's no use in going off into raptures about any thing. One thing is certain, though; this cousin of yours has character enough to supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible diminution."
"I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow."
"You'd better. But now tell me something more about your journey."
And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded to relate such incidents as had befallen him.
Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest, for a few days, at a friend's house in town. By good fortune, as he thought it, he found her alone; and, as he conversed with her, he employed himself—after a practice usual with him—in studying her character, and making internal comments upon it. These insidious reflections, condensed into a paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows:—
"A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a lurking devil in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth." Here some ten minutes of animated dialogue ensued before his observations had shaped themselves into further results. "She is exceedingly clever; she knows how to think and act for herself. I should not like to cross her will. There is fire enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She is none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a man to the death, and hate him as well. She could be a heroine or a tigress. Every thing about her is wild and chaotic, the unformed elements of a superb woman."
Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more, his imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy, and he was no longer in a mood of just psychological analysis, when, to his vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss Jones, entering, brought histête-à-têteto a close. She displayed a marvellous fluency of discourse, and was eloquent upon books, parties, paintings, and the opera.
"I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's new poem."
"Yes—at the bookseller's."
"But surely you have read it."
"No, I am behind the age."
"Then thank Heaven for it," exclaimed his unceremonious cousin; "for of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun, wire-drawn trash, Tennyson carries away the palm. Every body reads him because he is the fashion, and every body admires him because he is the fashion. But he is a bubble, a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him."
This explosion called forth a protest from the poet's admirer.
"May I ask," said Morton to his cousin, "who are your literary favorites?"
"Not the latter-day poets—the Tennysonian school; their puling mannerism is an insult to the Saxon tongue."
"But," urged Miss Jones, "you are not quite reasonable."
"Of course I am not. It's not a woman's province to be reasonable."
"Do you subscribe to these poetical heresies, Mr. Morton?"
"On the contrary, I think that Tennyson has often great beauties."
"If he sometimes wrote like an angel," pursued Fanny Euston, "I should find no patience to see it in a man who could put upon paper such parrot rhymes as these:—
Bah! it puts one in a passion to hear such twaddle."
"I see," said her friend, "that nothing less than your own music will calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad which you set to music this morning."
"I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad."
And she seated herself before the open piano.
"What do you choose, Mr. Morton?"
"The Marseillaise. That, I think, is in your vein."
"Ah! you can choose well!"
And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at once into the warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her voice and execution were admirable; and though by no means unconscious that she was producing an effect, she sang with a fire, energy, and seeming recklessness that thrilled like lightning through her auditor's veins. He rose involuntarily from his seat. For that evening his study of character was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last stronghold.
Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood quite novel to his experience. He pushed his horse to a keen trot, as if by fierceness of motion to keep pace with the fiery influence that was kindling all his nerves.
"I have had my fancies before this," he thought,—"in fact I have almost been in love; but that feeling was no more like this than a draught from a clear spring is like a draught of spiced wine."
That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of Fanny Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.
Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin had returned to her home in the country. By this time he was conscious of a great abatement of ardor; and his equanimity was little moved by the disappointment. In a week he had learned to look back on his transient emotion as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light which could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned up all that he could recall of herself and her family, and chiefly of her father, whom he remembered in his boyhood as a rough, athletic man, whose black and bushy eyebrows were usually contracted into something which seemed like a frown. These boyish recollections were far from doing Euston justice. He was a man of masculine and determined character. His will was strong, his passions violent; he was full of prejudices, and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable. His honor was unquestioned; he was most bluntly and unmanageably honest. Yet through the rock and iron of his character, there ran, known to but few, a delicate vein of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or the verses of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern gray eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique and disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared nothing; but his fondness for his daughter was unbounded. He alone could control her; for she loved him ardently, and he was the only living thing of which she stood in awe.
Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche Blondel. They had been schoolmates when children; and as, at a later date, Miss Blanche had been fond of making long visits to a friend in Cambridge, during term time, Morton, in common with many others, had a college acquaintance with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy intercourse. Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had inspired him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather a skirmisher on the outposts of society, than enrolled in the main battalion, she was anxious to make the most of the acquaintance she had. She had the eyes of an Argus, and was as sly, smooth, watchful, andruséeas a tortoise shell cat; wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip, and unwearied in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.
One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge of suffocation. At length he found himself in a corner from which there was no retreat, while the stately proportions of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg barred his onward progress. But when that distinguished lady chanced to move aside, she revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming on him like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled. There was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and said, "Good evening." Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation, and, after a few commonplaces, she said, turning up her eyes at him with an arch expression,—
"I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton."
"Ah!" replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.
"A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear."
"Indeed."
"Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your heart, you are burning to hear it."
"If you think so, you are determined to give my patience a hard schooling."
"Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith Leslie sailed from Liverpool for home last Wednesday."
"Ah!"
"How cold you are again! Are you not glad to hear it?"
"Certainly—all her friends will be glad to hear it."
"Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse. When a gentleman dances twice with a young lady on class day, and twice at Mrs. Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the street besides, has she not a right to feel hurt when he hears with such profound indifference of her coming home after a year's absence?"
Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste and impatience.
"Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought upon the matter." And he hastened, first to change the conversation, and then to close it altogether.
Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided between pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the manner in which they had been told.
In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured during her absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly handsome, and was admired accordingly,—a fact which, though she could not but be conscious of it, seemed to affect her very little. Morton found her but slightly changed, with the same polished and quiet frankness, the same lively conversation, not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same enthusiasm of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner, and never by any extravagance of expression. He had many opportunities of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel being but rarely present, and, in his growing admiration of her, the charms of his unbridled cousin faded more and more from his memory.
When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening, drove to Morton's house, and, arrayed in linen and grass-cloth, smoked his cigar under his friend's veranda with as much contentment as the thermometer at ninety would permit. The window at his side was that of the room which Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with books.
"Colonel," said Meredith, "what a painstaking fellow you are! Ever since you left college—except when you were off on that journey, which was one of the most rational things you ever did in your life—you have been digging here among your books, as if you were some half-starved law student, with a prospect of matrimony."
"I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles to work much in July and August."
"What do you mean to do?"
"Set out on a journey."
"I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow."
"Give yourself a vacation, and come with me."
"No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will have my revenge before long."
"Three days from your office will never ruin you or your family. Come with me to New Baden, if you can't do better."
"I think I can manage that,—and I will."
Accordingly, on Monday morning, they took the train thitherward.
On reaching New Baden, towards night, they learned that there was to be a dance that evening, in the hall.
"The deuse!" ejaculated Meredith, as they entered; "have we come all this distance to find old faces again at New Baden? Look at that corner."
Morton looked, and beheld a solemn group taking no part in the amusements, but scrutinizing the scene with the air of superior beings. He recognized the familiar countenance of Mrs. Primrose, with her daughter, Miss Constance Primrose, and her daughter's friend, Miss Wallflower. There, too, was Mr. Benjamin Stubb, Morton's classmate, and Miss Primrose's reputed admirer, with several other kindred spirits. Stubb was a tall and very slender young man, with a grave and pallid visage, and an uncompromising rigidity of cravat. Though his brain was unfurnished, his morals were reasonably good, and he went regularly to church, believing that there was, he could not tell how, an inseparable connection between good society and the ritual of the English church. He prided himself on his gentlemanly deportment, and regarded a lady as a being who is under no circumstances to be approached, except through the medium of certain prescribed forms and ceremonies. He seldom noticed those whom he thought his inferiors, and was very formal and exact towards the select few whom he acknowledged as his equals. As to superiors, he confessed none, except in the highest ranks of the English aristocracy, upon whom he looked with great reverence. He thought that there was no really good society in America, except the society of Boston, of which he regarded himself and his connections as thecrême, de la crême. He cherished a just hereditary scorn of upstarts and parvenus; for already nearly half a century had expired since the Stubbs began to rise on golden wings from their native mud. Nor was this their only claim to ancestral eminence; since a judicious investment of a little surplus income at the College of Heralds had revealed the gratifying truth that the Stubbs of Boston were lineal descendants of King Arthur.
Mrs. Primrose was a very benevolent and estimable person, who knew nothing of the world beyond her own circle, and looked with dire reprehension on any deviation from the standard of morals and manners which she had been accustomed to regard as the correct and proper one. Miss Constance Primrose realized Stubb's most exalted ideal of a young lady. She was very pretty, but with a face cold and unchanging as marble. She carried an unquestionable air of good, not to say of high breeding; having in this point an advantage over her mother, whose style savored a little of the simplicity of her early surroundings. The material, indeed, was very slender; but it had received a creditable polish; and though she had nothing to say, she said it with an undeniable grace.
Morton and Meredith paid their compliments to the group, the former hastening to mingle with the crowd again, while Meredith remained to exchange a few words with the pretty, modest, and too-much-neglected Miss Wallflower.
"Upon my word, Mr. Meredith," said Mrs. Primrose, "Mr. Morton has found a singular pair of acquaintances."
"O, yes," said Meredith; "those are particular friends of his."
"Very singular!" murmured Mrs. Primrose.
Morton was walking slowly up the hall, conversing with an odd-looking couple—a heavy, thick set man, in the fantastic finery of a Broadway swell, and a woman of five feet ten, thin and gaunt, with a yellow complexion, and a pair of fierce, glittering eyes, like an Indian squaw in ill humor. She was gorgeous in silk, brocade, and diamonds, and her huge, gloveless, bony fingers sparkled with jewelry. Her husband, on his part, displayed a mighty breastpin, in the shape of a war horse rampant, in diamond frostwork.
"Mr. Meredith," murmured the horrified Mrs. Primrose, "pray who are those persons?"
"Aborigines from Red River. Mr. and Mrs. Major Orson, of Natchitoches. He is a speculator, I believe, of more wealth than reputation."
"Andarethey friends of Mr. Morton?"
"O, Morton is a student of humanity. He met them at the tea table, and thinks them remarkable specimens of natural history."
Mrs. Primrose did not hear this explanation. The trio had now approached within a few yards; and her whole attention was absorbed in listening to the high, penetrating voice of the female ogre.
"There's one great and glorious thing about Natchitoches," remarked Mrs. Orson.
"What's that?" asked Morton.
"You can get every thing there to eat that heart can wish."
"That's a fact," said the major; "there ain't no discount on that."
"Game, and fish, and fruit, and vegetables," pursued the lady; "any thing and every thing. The north can't compete with it, I tellyou. There's the pompano! O, my! Did you ever eat a pompano?"
"Never."
"Then youhavegot something to look forward to. That's a fish thatisa fish. Why, sir, you can begin at the tail, and eat him clean away to the head, and the bones is just like marrow! It makes my mouth water to think of it!"
"O, hush!" cried the major, with sympathetic emotion.
"And then the fruit! Think of the peaches! They beat your nasty little northern peaches all holler!"
"Yes," added the major, and to have your own boys to shin up the tree and throw 'em down to you; and to sit under the shade all the afternoon eating 'em;—that's the way to live!"
"It's all the little niggers is good for, just to pick fruit."
"Troublesome animals, I should think," observed Morton.
"Well, they be; and the growed-up niggers ain't much better. To think of that girl, Cynthy, major. My! wasn't she one of 'em! The major is, out of all account, too tender to his niggers, and if it warn't for me, they wouldn't get a speck of justice done. Why, what are all those folks moving for? My! supper's ready. I'll go in with this gentleman, major, and you may foller with any pretty gal that you can get to come with you. I ain't a jealous woman"—turning to Morton—"I let the major do pretty much what he pleases."
Mrs. Primrose drew a deep breath. "There must be"—thus she communed with herself—"something essentially vulgar in the mind of that young man, if he can neglect a cultivated and refined young lady like Constance, and at the same time find pleasure in the conversation of a person like that." And she considered within herself whether it would not be best to warn Constance not to encourage any advances which he might in future make. On second thoughts, reflecting that his position was unquestionable, his wealth great, and that she had never heard any thing against his morals, she determined to suspend all action for the present, keeping a close watch, meanwhile, on his behavior.
While Morton was thus brought to the bar in the matronly breast of Mrs. Primrose, while the jury were bringing in a verdict of guilty, joined to a recommendation to mercy, the unconscious young man was leading his companion to the supper room; where, furnishing her with a huge plate of oysters, he left her in perfect contentment.
Not long after, he encountered Meredith.
"How do you like your friend in the diamonds?"
"She's a superb specimen; about as civilized, with all her jewelry, as a Pawnee squaw. She has a vein of womanhood, though. I saw her, in the tea room, fondle a kitten whose foot had been trodden upon, as tenderly as if it had been a child."
"If you had not been so busy with her, you would have met a person much better worth your time."
"Who's that?"
"Miss Fanny Euston."
"Do you mean that she is here?"
"Shewashere,—in that room adjoining. But she has gone; you'll see nothing of her to-night."
"Will not her being here induce you to stay?"
The question, as he spoke it, had a sound of frankness; but the shameful truth must be confessed, that, in spite of his friendship for Meredith, and his admiration of Miss Leslie, he was a little jealous of his friend.
"No," replied Meredith, "it's out of the question. I must be off the day after to-morrow. By the way, you never told me how you liked Miss Euston."
"A rough diamond, needing nothing but to be cut, polished, and set!"
"It's too late, I think, for that. The polishing should have begun before eighteen. She is quite unformed, and quite unconscious of being so. I'll leave you here to fall in love with her, if you like; but if you do, colonel, you'll be a good deal younger than I take you for."
There was something in his friend's tone which led Morton half to suspect the truth. Meredith had himself apenchantfor Miss Fanny Euston, held in abeyance by a very lively perception of her faults.
Will you woo this wildcat?—Katharine and Petruchio.
Will you woo this wildcat?—Katharine and Petruchio.
Meredith went away, as he had proposed, leaving Morton at New Baden. The latter soon came to the opinion that he had never yet found so interesting a subject of psychological observation as that afforded him in the person of his relative, Miss Euston. She seemed to him the most wayward of mortals; yet in the midst of this lawlessness, generous instincts were constantly betraying themselves, and a certain native grace, a charm of womanhood, followed her wildest caprices. She often gave great offence by her brusqueries; yet those who best knew her were commonly her ardent friends.
Mrs. Primrose looked upon her with her most profound and unqualified disapprobation. Her daughter copied her sentiments; while Stubb thought her an outside barbarian of the most alarming character. Fanny Euston's perceptions were very acute. She saw the effect she had produced, and seemed to take peculiar delight in aggravating it, and shocking the prejudices of her critics still more.
One afternoon, Miss Primrose, Mr. Stubb, Fanny Euston, Morton, and several others, set out on a horseback excursion, matronized by Mrs. Primrose. At a few miles from New Baden, Morton found himself riding at his cousin's side, a little behind the rest.
"Do you know, I came this morning, to ask you to join us on our walk to Elk Ridge."
"Ah, I am sorry I was not there."
"You were there; but you seemed so deep in Ivanhoe, or some other of your favorites, that I had no heart to interrupt you."
"But that was quite absurd. I should like to have gone."
"I am curious to know what book you were so busy with. Something of Scott's—was it not?"
"Not precisely."
"Nor one of the new novels," pursued Morton—"those are not after your taste."
"Not at all; they are all full of some grand reform or philanthropic scheme, or the sorrows of some destitute, uninteresting little wretch, with whom you are required to sympathize."
"You are not moulded after the philanthropic model. But may I ask, what book was entertaining you so much?"
"Napier's Life of Montrose."
"And do you like it?"
"Indeed I do."
"And you like Montrose?"
"Certainly I like him."
"I could have sworn it. Do you remember his verses to the lady of his heart?"
"That I do," said Fanny Euston,—
"Admirable! I thought I had a good memory, but you beat me hollow. You repeat the lines as if you liked them."
"Who would not like them?"
"And yet his fashion of wooing would be a little peremptory for the nineteenth century."
"There are no Montroses in the nineteenth century."
"They are out of date, like many a good thing besides. Not long ago, I saw some verses in a magazine—a kind of ballad on Montrose's execution."
"Can you repeat it?"
"I cannot compete with you; but I think I can give you a stanza or two:—
Fanny Euston's eye kindled, as if at a strain of warlike music.
"Go on."
"I have forgotten the rest."
"Then pray find the verses and send them to me. Why is it that, as you say, such men are out of date?"
"What place, or what career, could they find in a commercial country?"
"Then why were we born in a commercial country?"
"You seem to make an ideal hero of Montrose."
"Not I. I am not the school girl you take me for. I have no ideal hero. I do not believe in ideal heroes. Montrose was a man, with the faults of a man; full of faults, and yet not a bad man either."
"Very far from it."
"He had great faults, but grand qualities to match them,—worth a thousand of the small, tame, correct virtues that one sees hereabouts."
"Dangerous ideas, those, Mrs. Primrose would tell you."
"Deliver me from Mrs. Primrose!" ejaculated Fanny.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, Morton's companion murmuring to herself fragments of the lines which he had just repeated.
"Look!" she cried, suddenly. "How slowly our horses have been walking! The rest are almost out of sight. We had better join them. Will you race with me?"
"Any thing you please."
"Come on, then."
She touched her horse with the whip, and they set forward at full speed. Fanny, who was by far the better mounted, soon gained the day.
"Rein up," cried Morton, as they came near the party, "or your horse will startle the others."
Fanny drew the curb, but not quite successfully; and her rapid arrival produced some commotion. Stubb's horse, in particular, began to prance and curvet in a manner which greatly disturbed his rider's equanimity.
"Whoa! Whoa, boy!" said Stubb. "Steady, now! steady, sir! Whoa!"
Fanny's eyes twinkled with malicious delight. She had a great contempt for Stubb, who, on his part, was mortally afraid of her.
"That's a good horse of yours," pushing close to his side.
"Yes, a very fine horse, indeed. Steady, boy! Steady, now!"
"A capital horse; but he needs a spirited hand like yours to manage him."
"Whoa! Quiet, now!—poor fellow!"
This last endearing address was checked by a sudden jolt, produced by a spasmodic movement of the horse, which shook the cavalier to his very centre.
"Punish him well with your spurs, Mr. Stubb, and let him run; that's the way to cure him of his tricks. Suppose we try a race together."
"Thank you, Miss Euston, but the fact is— Whoa, boy! whoa!— I mean, the stableman told me that he is rather short of breath."
"O, never mind the stableman. Come, let's go."
"Thank you, Miss Euston, I believe not to-day."
"You astonish me. I will lay any bet you like—you shall name the wager—any thing you please."
"Really, this is a little too bad!" soliloquized the horrified Mrs. Primrose. "Miss Euston, I entreat of you—I beg—that we may have no more racing. It is very dangerous, besides being——"
"What is it besides being dangerous, Mrs. Primrose?"
"Veryindecorous."
"I am very sorry, for I have set my heart on a race with Mr. Stubb."
"Mr. Morton," said the distressed lady, aside to that young gentleman, "you are a prudent and sober-minded person; pray use your influence."
She was interrupted by a most uncanonical ejaculation from the author of her embarrassments, which, though couched in a foreign language, petrified her into silence. A sharp gust of wind had blown away Fanny's veil, and she was on the point of dashing off in pursuit of it.
"Stop!" cried Morton, "you'll break your neck. Let me get it for you."
The veil sailed away before the wind, and Morton spurred in pursuit, delighted to display his horsemanship before ladies, though it had no other merit than a tenacious seat and a kind of recklessness, the result of an excitable temperament. The ground was rough and broken, and studded with rocks and savin bushes, and as he galloped at a breakneck speed down the side of the hill, in a vain attempt to catch the veil flying, even Fanny held her breath. He secured his prize, as it caught against a bush, and returned to the road.
"Now, Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, looking folios at the offender, "I trust we shall be allowed to go on in peace."
There was an interval of repose. Stubb regained his peace of mind. Miss Primrose, with whom he fancied himself in love, smiled upon him, and his self-conceit, before shaken in its stronghold, was returning in full force, when Fanny, who nourished a peculiar spite against this harmless blockhead, and whom that afternoon a very Satan of mischief seemed to possess, again rode to his side, and renewed her solicitations for a race.
"Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, "I am certain you would do nothing so unladylike as to force Mr. Stubb to race against his will. Consider the example you would set to Georgiana Gosling, who always imitates what she sees you do."
The words were mild and motherly; but the countenance of the outraged matron had an uncompromising look of reprehension, which exasperated Fanny's wayward humor beyond measure. She began, it is true, a lively conversation on general topics with the intelligent Stubb, but, meantime, by alternately checking and exciting her horse, and urging him to play a variety of antics, she contrived to infect her companion's steed with the like contagion. He pranced, plunged, and chafed, till his rider was brought to the verge of despair.
The road had become quite narrow, running through a thick forest, frequented chiefly by woodcutters in the winter, and hunters of the picturesque in summer. Fanny's imitator, the adventurous Miss Gosling, a little girl of fourteen, had ridden a few rods in advance of the rest, when suddenly they saw her returning, astonished and disconsolate.
"We can't go any farther; there's a great tree fallen across the road."
A severe thundergust of the night before had overthrown a hemlock, the trunk of which, partly sustained by the roots and branches, formed a barrier about four feet from the ground. It was impossible to pass through the woods on either side, as they were very dense, and choked with a tangled growth of laurel bushes.
"How very annoying!" said Miss Primrose.
"What shall we do?" inquired Miss Gosling.
"Why, jump over it, to be sure," said Fanny. "Mr. Stubb and I will show you the way."
"You are surely not in earnest!" cried Mrs. Primrose.
"Of course I am. I have taken higher leaps at the riding school, twenty times."
"You had better not," said Morton, who had alighted by the roadside to draw his saddle girth.
"It is too dangerous to be thought of for a single moment," added Mrs. Primrose.
"Our horses," pursued the indiscreet Stubb, "are not used to leaping, and some of the ladies would certainly be hurt."
"The fool!" thought Morton. "He has done it now."
Fanny threw a laughing, caustic glance at her victim.
"Minewill leap, I know; and you are not a lady. Come, Mr. Stubb."
"Miss Euston," interposed the excited Mrs. Primrose, "this must not be. I am here in your mother's place, and she will hold me responsible for your safety. I forbid you to go, Miss Euston."
Fanny looked for a moment in her face. Morton caught the expression. It was one of unqualified, though not ill-natured, defiance.
"Come," cried Fanny again, and ran her horse towards the tree. She leaped gallantly, and cleared the barrier; but it was evident that she had lost control of the spirited animal, who galloped at a furious rate down the road.
Morton was still on foot, busied with his saddle girth.
"The crazy child!" exclaimed Mrs. Primrose; "her horse is running away. Go after her—pray!—Mr. Stubb—somebody."
"O, quick! quick!—do," cried little Miss Gosling, who idolized Fanny, and was in an agony of fright for her.
Thus exhorted, the desperate Stubb cried, "Get up," and galloped for the tree; but his horse balked, and, leaping aside, tumbled him into the mud. The ladies screamed. Morton would have laughed, if he had not been too anxious for Fanny.
"Get out of the way, Stubb," he cried, mounting with all despatch.
Miss Primrose's admirer gathered himself up, regained his hat, which had taken refuge in a puddle, and looked with horror at a ghastly white rent across his knee. Morton spurred his hack against the barrier, which the beast cleared with difficulty, striking his hind hoofs as he went over. After riding a short distance, he discovered Fanny, and saw, to his great relief, that she was regaining control over her horse. Half a mile farther on, the road divided. The larger branch led to the right, Morton did not know whither; the smaller turned to the left, and after circling through the woods for two or three miles, issued upon the high road. Fanny, who was ignorant of the way, took the right hand branch. In a few minutes after, she had brought her horse to a trot, and Morton rode up to her side.
"You are wiser than I am, if you know where we are going."
"I thought you knew the way. You were to have been our guide."
"We are on the wrong road. You should have turned to the left."
"But have you no idea where this will lead us?"
"Into a cedar swamp, for what I know. Had we not better turn back?"
"O, don't speak of turning back. I am in no mood for turning back. Let us keep on. I am sure this will bring us out somewhere."
"As you please," said Morton, knowing himself to be in the position of an angler, whose only chance of managing his salmon is to give it line.
"Where are all the rest?"
"Holding a convention behind the tree, I suppose. At least, I left them there."
"And did not Mr. Stubb dare the fatal leap?"
"He tried, and was thrown into a mud puddle."
"No bodily harm, I hope."
"No; beaver and broadcloth were the principal sufferers. But his conceit is shaken out of him for twenty-four hours, at least."
"Then I have wrought a miracle, and can claim to be canonized on the strength of it."
"I hope you may be; but I never expected to see your name in the calendar of saints."
"As you will not allow me to be a saint, I suppose you consider me as mad. Sanctity and madness, they say, are of kin."
"A hair's breadth, or so, on this side madness."
"Then I am entitled to great credit for keeping my wits at all. What reasonable girl would not be driven mad with Mrs. Primrose to watch her, and disapprove of her, and correct her? Strange—is it not?—that some people—if Mrs. Primrose will allow me to use so inelegant an expression—are always rubbing one against the grain."
"To give you your due, I think you have paid off handsomely any grudge you may owe in that quarter."
"There is consolation in that. Tell me—you are of the out-spoken sort—are you not of my opinion? Let me know your mind. Mr. Stubb is——"
"A puppy."
"And the Primroses are——"
"Uninteresting."
"For uninteresting, say insufferable. If Lucifer wishes to gain me over to his side, let Mrs. Primrose be made my guardian angel, and his work is done."
"Your horse has cast a shoe," said Morton, abruptly,—"yes; and he is lame besides."
"It is this broken, stony road. I wish we were at the end of it."
"So do I. If the clouds would break for a moment, and show us the sun, I could form some idea of the direction we are following."
"Why," said Fanny, in alarm, looking at her watch, "the sun must be very near setting."
Morton began to be very anxious, for his companion's sake, when, a moment after, they came upon a broader track, which intersected the other, and seemed a main thoroughfare of the woodcutters.
"This looks more promising," said Morton; and turning to the left, they pushed their horses to their best pace. Twilight came on, and it was quite dark when they emerged at length upon the broad and dusty highway. In a few minutes they saw a countryman, with his hands in his pockets, and a long nine between his lips, lounging by the roadside.
"How far is it to New Baden?"
"Wal," replied the man, after studying his querist in silence for about half a minute, "it's fifteen mile strong."
Morton looked at Fanny, whose horse was very lame, and who, in spite of her spirit, began to show unmistakable signs of fatigue.
"Is there a public house any where near?"
"Yas; it ain't far ahead to Mashum's."
"How far?"
"Rather better nor a mile."
On coming to the inn, Morton commended Fanny to the care of the landlady, an honest New Hampshire woman, remounted without delay, and urged his tired horse to such speed that he reached the hotel before half past nine. His arrival relieved the anxieties, or silenced the tattle of the inmates; and in the morning Fanny's uncle drove to the inn, and brought back the adventurous damsel to New Baden.