"If having no wife is to be free, you can hardly call him a bondman.
Yes."
"What has he ever done to distinguish himself, then? Can you tell me that, Miss Hyde?"
"He is considered a man of brilliant parts, certainly," I answered; "but at his age few men have won permanent distinction, I fancy."
"At his age! Why, the man must be over eight-and-twenty, and half the great men that ever lived had made their mark in the world before they reached that age."
"Well, that may be," I replied; "but in these times greatness is not so easily won. The level of general intelligence, in our country at least, is raised, and it requires great genius, indeed, to lift a man suddenly above his fellows. In a dead sea of ignorance, superior ability looms up with imposing conspicuousness. This is why the great men of past times have cast the reflection of their minds on history;--not entirely because they excelled men of the present age, but from the low grade of popular intelligence that existed around them."
"Why, you talk like a statesman," said the widow, laughing. "I had no idea that anything so near politics existed in the ladies of this house."
"What is history but the politics of the past?" said Jessie. "What is politics but a history of the present?"
"Perhaps you are right," said the widow, flinging off her careless manner, and sitting down on one of the rustic chairs, where she began to dust her skirt with the fanciful whip fastened to her wrist. "I have often wondered why it should be considered unfeminine for an educated woman to understand the inst.i.tutions of her own or any other country."
Mrs. Dennison looked at me as she spoke. Was the woman playing with my weakness? Or, did she really speak from her heart? If the former, she must have been amused at my credulity, for I answered in honest frankness:
"Nor I, either; except in evil, which is always better unknown. I can fancy no case where ignorance is a merit. Imagine Queen Victoria pluming herself on lady-like ignorance of the political state of her kingdom, when she opens Parliament in person."
Mrs. Dennison laughed, and chimed in with, "Or the Empress of France being appointed Regent of a realm, the position of which it was deemed unwomanly to understand; yet, on the face of the earth, there are not two females more womanly than Victoria of England, and Eugenie of France."
"What true ideas this woman possesses!" I said to myself. "How could I dislike her so? Really, the most charming person in the world is a woman who, under the light, graceful talk of conventional society, cultivates serious thought." While these reflections pa.s.sed through my mind, the widow was looking at me from under her eyelashes, as if she expected me to speak again; so I went on,--
"It is not the knowledge of politics in itself of which refined people complain; but its pa.s.sion and the vindictive feelings which partisanship is sure to foster. The woman who loves her country cannot understand it too well. The unwomanliness lies in the fact that she sometimes plunges into a turmoil of factions, thus becoming pa.s.sionate and bitter."
"How plainly you draw the distinction between knowledge and prejudice!"
she said, with one of her fascinating smiles. "But you must have discussed this subject often--with Mr. Lee, perhaps?"
"Yes, we talk on all subjects here. Nothing is forbidden, because few things that are not n.o.ble and true ever present themselves."
"I was sure of it!" exclaimed the lady, starting up with enthusiasm. "I have never been in a house where everything gave such evidence of high-toned intelligence."
She sat down again thoughtfully, dusting her habit with the little whip.
"I have not yet seen my hostess, but that does not arise from increased ill health, I trust. She seemed very feeble when we met on the sea-sh.o.r.e, last season--somewhat consumptive, we all thought."
I did not like the tone of her voice. There was something stealthy and creeping in it which checked the rising confidence in my heart.
"Mrs. Lee is very far from well," I answered, coldly.
"Not essentially worse, I trust."
She was looking at me keenly from the corners of her almond-shaped eyes.
It was only a glance, but a gleam of suspicion sprung from my heart and met it half-way.
"It is difficult to tell. In a lingering disease like hers, one can never be sure."
"Mr. Lee must find himself lonesome at times without his lady"s society, for she struck us all as a very superior person."
"On the contrary," I replied, with a quick impulse, for she still kept that sidelong glance on my face; "on the contrary, he spends most of his leisure time in her chamber, reads to her when she can bear it, and sits gently silent when she prefers that. A more devoted husband I never knew."
I saw that she was biting her red lips, but as my glance caught hers, the action turned to a smile.
"There is Mr. Lee going to his wife"s room now," I remarked, as that gentleman pa.s.sed the hall-door, with a little basket in his hand filled with delicate wood-moss, in which lay two or three peaches, the first of the season.
The exclamation that broke from Mrs. Dennison at the sight of the fruit arrested his steps, and he turned into the hall, asking if either of us had called.
She went forward at once, sweeping the cloth skirt after her like the train of an empress.
"Oh, what splendid peaches--and the basket! The bijou!" She held out both hands to receive the fruit, quite in a glow of pleasure.
"I am very sorry," said Mr. Lee, drawing back a step, "but this is--is for my wife. She is an invalid, you know."
"You misunderstand," replied the lady, coloring to the temples. "I only wish to admire the arrangement. It is really the prettiest fancy I ever saw."
He hesitated an instant; then held out the basket and placed it between her hands, with some little reluctance, I thought. Her side-face was toward me; but the look, half grieved, half reproachful, which she lifted to his face did not escape me.
"Shall I take the basket to Mrs. Lee?" I said, reaching out my hand.
"She must have heard the horses return some time ago, and will expect some one."
"No," said the gentleman, bending his head, and taking the fruit. "I cannot allow you to deprive me of that pleasure."
"And I," rejoined the widow, with animation, "I must take off this c.u.mbersome riding-dress."
I went to my room early that evening. Indeed, I had no heart to enter the parlor. Anxieties that I could not define pressed heavily upon me--so heavily that I longed for solitude. In pa.s.sing through the hall, I met Mrs. Dennison"s mulatto maid, who had, I forgot to say, followed our guest with the luggage. She was going to her mistress"s chamber, carrying something carefully in her hand. When she saw me, her little silk ap.r.o.n was slyly lifted, and the burdened hand stole under it, but in the action something was disturbed, and the half of a peach fell at my feet.
I took up the cleft fruit very quietly, told the girl to remove her ap.r.o.n, that I might see what mischief had been done, and discovered a second basket filled with mossrose-buds from which the half peach had fallen.
I laid the fruit in its bed, saw the girl pa.s.s with it to her lady"s chamber, and then went to my own room sick at heart. The half of a peach, offered among the Arabs, means atonement for some offence. What offence had Mr. Lee given to our guest in carrying a little fruit to his invalid wife?
CHAPTER XII.
BREAKFAST WITH OUR GUEST.
Mrs. Dennison was late the next morning. Indeed, she generally was late.
It was sure to produce a little excitement when she entered, if the family were grouped in expectation, and her system of elegant selfishness rendered any consideration of the convenience of others a matter of slight importance. She was always lavish in apologies, those outgrowths of insincerity; and, in fact, managed to weave a sort of a fascination out of her own faults.
This certainly was the case here. If Mr. Lee was resolute about anything in his household, it was that punctuality at meals should be observed: indeed, I have seldom seen him out of humor on any other subject. But this morning he had been moving about in the upper hall a full hour, glancing impatiently at the papers which always reached us before breakfast, and walking up and down with manifest annoyance. Yet the moment that woman appeared with her coquettish little breakfast-cap just hovering on the back of her head, and robed in one of the freshest and most graceful morning dresses you ever saw, his face cleared up. With a smile that no one could witness without a throb of the heart, he received her apologies and compliments all mingled together on her lips like honey in the heart of a flower, as if they had been favors of which we were all quite undeserving.
We went down to breakfast at last; but just as we were sitting down, our guest took a fancy to run out on the terrace and gather a handful of heliotrope which she laid by her plate, exhaling the odor sensuously between the pauses of the meal. I don"t know what the rest thought of all this, but I was disgusted. It is a strong word, I know, but I have no other for the repulsion that seizes upon me even now when I think of that woman. Her very pa.s.sion for flowers, to me almost a heavenly taste in itself, was so combined with materialism, that the perfume of the heliotrope sickened me.
Jessie did not seem to sympathize in these feelings, nor care that her own choice flower-plot had been rifled of its sweetest blossoms. In fact, the fascination of that woman"s manner seemed more powerful with her than it had proved with the proud, strong man who sat opposite me.
Jessie, the darling, either because she did not like the restraint, or, what was more like her, wishing to give me dignity in the household, always insisted that I should preside at the table; Mrs. Lee, from her feeble state of health, being at all times unequal to the task. Three times did that insatiable woman return her coffee-cup: first, for an additional lump of sugar, again for a few drops more cream, and then for the slightest possible dilution of its strength. While I performed these smiling behests, she sat brushing a branch of heliotrope across her lips, exclaiming at the beauty of the scene from an opposite window, and behaving generally like an empress who had honored her subjects with a visit, and was resolved to put them quite at ease in her presence.