Chapter 9 No.9

I said he looked sharply at us two. He seemed to have a habit of investigating, at least to a certain extent; and he took us in at once, evidently. A country-parson and his wife. If I say his pretty wife, I will promise faithfully that it shall be the last time I will refer to myself or my prettiness, the whole way, further than may be absolutely necessary; and it isn't every woman who will do as much. For with this man and his belongings I came to have much to do in the course of the next five years.

Little thought I, as I heard him chatting soberly with my husband, and nodding from time to time gravely at me, as If to take me into the conversation,-little thought I of the shadow he would one day cast over both of our lives!

He showed us his travelling-apparatus for making a cup of tea in ten minutes, toasting bread, and boiling eggs. It was like a doll's cooking-stove six inches square, a curious invention, new then, and a wonderful convenience.

"With my tea and this," said he, "I can go over the United States. Good bread and sweet butter I can always get at your farm-houses, and I often walk fifty miles together."

We looked and spoke our New-English astonishment. In our part of the world nobody walked anywhere. Everybody, however poor, had a wagon, if not a chaise; and he must be miserable indeed who did not own at least one horse. Nobody in his sober senses demeaned himself to walking. Perhaps it was the climate. Perhaps our fathers instituted the custom, to be as unlike the British as possible,-as they did of making their houses like lanterns, to show they had no window-tax to pay.

This man's hearty voice and healthy frame, charged, as it seemed, with fresh air, jollity, and strength, made us think better of walking. We looked at his six feet of height, his broad chest, and his firmly knit limbs, and fancied how Antaeus gained supernatural vigor from natural contact: he trod the earth with a loving and free step, as a child approaches and caresses his mother. So, too, his voice, and the topics he chose in talking, gave us the feeling of out-door existence always connected with him: of singing-birds, and the breeze of mountain-tops, of great walnut- and chesnut-trees, and children gathering nuts beneath; never of the solemn hush of pines, or twilight, or anything "sough"-ing or whispering: no, all about him sounded like the free, dashing, rushing water. So were his bright blue eyes, merry lips, and wind-crimsoned cheeks, interpreters of his nature. They linked him firmly to the outward. The man's soul was made up of joyfulness, strength, and a sort of purposeless activity,-energy for its own sake. While his energies harmonized with the right, or were exercised in the pursuit of knowledge, one felt that he would have much power for good. But suppose his activities to take a wrong direction, all his powers would help him to be and enjoy the wrong. In either case, his nature would have the same harmonious energy, and the moral part of him would not disturb the balance of his character. He had no special liking for evil, I am sure; yet, according to all the theories, his intense love of Nature ought to have elevated and refined him far more than it had done.

Before we had been an hour together, I had also observed that he was good-natured, impulsive, and, in a sort, kindly,-that he loved himself and his own enjoyment too well ever knowingly to annoy or distress another. There is a little difference between this and kindness. No matter how I found him out. He who runs may read, if he looks sharply enough; and in travelling, people betray and assert character continually. I was also as sure as I was years afterwards, that he would walk rough-shod over heart-violets and -daisies, nor once notice them bleeding under his heel. It was in the grain of the man's nature. He had lived at least thirty-five years, and was too old to be made over into anything else by any experience.

His bag was half full of tulip-bulbs which he had bought and begged, he said. He had a passion at present for cultivating tulips, and was quite sure, that, if he had lived in the seventeenth instead of the nineteenth century, he would have ruined himself twenty times over for a favorite bulb, even without being a Dutchman.

His dominant idea, to which for the first hour he sacrificed without scruple every other, was flowers. I had a mischievous pleasure in professing a similar passion, on purpose to confound him with a description of a Weston flower-garden. If he talked of jessamine and Daphne odora, I talked of phlox and bachelor's-buttons. If he raved of azaleas and gladioluses, I told him of our China-asters, sunflowers, and hollyhocks.

"Ah, now I see you are laughing at me!" said he, good-humoredly, after I had said, that, after all, I could not get up an admiration for day-lilies or tulips; "promise me that I may show you my tulips, and I will promise you that you shall like botany hereafter."

We agreed at last to bury the hatchet at the foot of a rose-bush, which I said I would allow, excused the existence of other flowers. The bulbs he gave me on the top of the stage-coach that day made a revolution in the taste of Weston; and some climbing plants, from his house afterwards, took root in our rude homes, and have displaced the old glaring colors with soft beauty and grace. Before I left Weston, which happened in time, we had prairie-roses, honeysuckles, and woodbine clambering over half the houses in the place, and bouncing-Bets were extinguished forever.

I forgot that we had never heard this man's name, though it did not matter at all. He was a cultivated gentleman, and we had no occasion for introduction. We met freely on that platform, and it was pleasant to us to talk on so many subjects outside of personal interest. He had travelled, and gave us results, in a sketchy, off-hand way, of much that he had observed that was extremely entertaining in foreign manners.

Suddenly his loud, cheery voice rang out,-

"Halloo, old boy, get up here!"

He did get up, a languid, pale man, with sharp features, and a frame so attenuated that I involuntarily placed a soft bag for him to lean against, and removed a cane and umbrella that seemed likely to hurt his bones.

It was about half an hour before I saw that the new man was not at all an invalid, but of the natural gaunt frame and pallid complexion of my countrymen. My eyes had become so full of the fresh, rosy life of the Englishman's face, that the new man's face was bleached and unhealthy to me. I happened to glance back from him to the Dominie, and saw, that, allowing for green spectacles, they were both of a color. We were so arranged on the top of the coach, that with reasonable twisting of necks we were able to maintain an animated conversation, and soon found our account in the new element.

"Well, Remington!"

"Well, Lewis!"

"Where from now?"

"From Niagara, and home by the White Hills."

"And what of the last, or of both?"

"Miss Rugg has fallen into the one, and Miss Somebody has been to the top of the other. Had to be brought down, though. Women shouldn't climb mountains."

"There has been some talk of a road, or practicable path at least, to the top of Mount Washington."

"Never'll be done. Impossible on the face of the thing."

"Nothing is impossible to Yankees, Remington."

"This is. And now, Lewis, whence come you, and whither go?"

"From Weston, and to New York."

Here was a denouement! We looked at him with new interest, and saw at once, such was the force of imagination, the very eyes and eyebrows of Gus Lewis. However, it proved afterwards to be only imagination. When we told him we came from Weston only two days and a half before, the conversation assumed the native style of New England, and for the next quarter of an hour we talked of each other and each other's affairs.' Mr. Lewis was delighted to see us, had stayed only an hour in Weston, and there heard of our trip from Auguste,-profanely called Gus,-took the box of maple-sugar in charge at once, laughed at the boy-like direction without even a surname, and ended with recommending us to go at once to Miss Post's, on Broadway, where himself and his wife were at present boarding. All the particulars of life, character, and relative interests were discussed between ourselves and Mr. Lewis with the relish and zest of compatriots. I had forgotten how close a tie was that of Yankee birth, and how like an unknown tongue our talk was to the Englishman, till we stopped and turned to him to say something, and found him fast asleep. Then I was glad that he hadn't heard my satirical description of "donation-parties" at Weston, nor the account I gave of our two boys, our salary of five hundred dollars, and the various comical shifts we had to make to live comfortably on that sum and support aged parents and graceless relations. Little touches told Mr. Lewis the whole story. I knew very well that Mr. Remington would be entirely abroad about such a social existence as ours in Weston, travel he ever so long or widely.

Mr. Lewis had black eyes and hair, and bent like an habitual student. He had a scar on his right eyebrow, which he had got by a fall, and by which he had saved the life of Mr. Remington, who was a connection of his wife's. This he told us, afterwards, and I amused myself with drawing parallels between his face and his mind. One side was gentle, sweet-humored, sentimental, with a touch of melancholy. The other, disfigured with the scar, seemed to have been turned harsh, suspicious, proud, reserved, and unrelenting. These were many qualities, all to depend on a scar, to be sure; but they generally herd together, and he might be one man or another, as life presented its dark or sunny side to him. To me, he was very interesting, from the first; and my husband was delighted with him. The Dominie starved in Weston for congenial intellectual nutriment. Nobody but myself could tell what a drain it was on him always to impart, always to simplify, to descend, to walk on the ground with wings folded flat to his back, and the angel in him habitually kept out of view. The most he could do was to insinuate now and then a thought above the farming interest, and in a direction aside from Bombay. More than that exposed him to suspicion, and hindered his usefulness in Co?s County.

Somehow, we got talking of Mr. Remington, which we might well do, seeing him there before us, sleeping like a baby.

"That he could always do, like Napoleon," said Mr. Lewis, "and so can accomplish much without fatigue."

"Is he married?" said I.

"Yes. His wife is in delicate health."

I was surprised to hear that he was married.

"He hasn't a married look, has he?"

"You are talking about me," said Remington, waking up. "I felt it mesmerically. And, to give you a good opportunity, I will walk a mile or two. Give me a good character, Lewis. Hold up, driver!"

Springing down, he went on, laughing, before us, now and then calling back to ask if we were nearly through?

"He has not the 'subdued domestic smile upon his features mild', that marks the man who has a wife at home," said I.

"No. He is a man, however, born under a lucky star, and his cup filled with good-fortune to the brim. His self-lordship has been to him no heritage of woe, thus far."

"A certain happiness, but necessarily of a poor quality, comes from being able to gratify our wishes. If he has no more, it is poor enough."

"Do you mean that pleasure must be an outgrowth of pain to be properly appreciated?" said Mr. Lewis.

"Somewhat,-mostly," said the minister; "since the insensibility that protects one from pain prevents also delicate picture. I think, indeed, a rational being must suffer in order to enjoy, after infancy."

"His eyes don't look as if they had been in training of any sort," said I, without knowing what my words implied, till I saw the harsh expression on Mr. Lewis's face.'

"I mean that they have a sort of undisciplined expression, as if he had never been tamed by suffering or sorrow of any sort," said I.

"That sadness is the true human look," said the minister, "the look that redeems us from the mere animal expression of enjoyment. It is the stamp God puts on those He loves. He chastens them; after that, they are no more servants, but sons of the house."

I saw by Mr. Lewis's eyes that he understood and felt this. Also, that from his nature he bought his enjoyments every step of the way of life. How differently his cousin laid hold on the cornucopia of enjoyment, and covered himself with bountiful beauty, drinking in at every sense pleasure! The former, as could be seen too, held his title to happiness by the most uncertain tenure; the nervous quiver betraying, and the sensitive blood witnessing, how keenly he felt and how dearly he paid for every passing pleasure. I remember, as I saw his purple, thrilling face, that I hoped his home-life was happy, feeling that to such a man it must be everything. Yet I was sure, from what he did not say, with eye or lips, that he had not learned religious trust. Still, he did not listen to the mere minister, but to the friend; and there sprang up between the two the corresponding interest and respect belonging to natures kindred in depth and sensibility, though of widely differing experience. In after-years, he who had already attained was able frequently to hold out a helping hand to his younger brother; but now, only a smile and a look told much. This acquaintance of the soul is very fascinating. In the two or three steps we take together, with cognizance and measure of each other, what a long path opens before us of alternate shade and sunshine, and how imagination borders every step of the way with richest heart-blossoms! In friendship, all is glowing and enriching. As it has not the depth of love, it neither anticipates nor requires sacrifice. We do not think of doing or suffering for a friend; but the friend ministers to our weakness, and exalts our strength. He sympathizes gently with our self-love, he magnifies every excellence. He is perpetually charmed, alike with the novelty and the similarity of our experience, and unwearied in comparing thoughts and balancing opinions. All, and more, that he gives us, he receives; and so an incipient friendship is one of the most intoxicating delights of life. What long leaps in acquaintance we took during our first hour, and while Mr. Remington still walked up-hill before us!

"You will probably have an opportunity to see and judge for yourselves of Mr. Remington, as we are together a great deal, and he is a cousin of Mrs. Lewis's. This will be better than for me to attempt a description, I think, and, on the whole, more satisfactory. He annoys me, and offends me frequently; and then I am not just to him, of course. But he is a fine fellow, honorable and agreeable; and with a love of natural science that leads him, for the time, like a dog. Just now, he is wild with floriculture. Last year, it was geology. You will see."

And then, as if he feared to trust himself with his cousin's character, or that it was a distasteful subject for some reason, he turned to the minister, and began talking about Cherry Mountain and the scenery in Co?s.

Mr. Remington called out, at the top of the hill,-

"Now it is my turn! Let me ride, and I will give your character!"

"Oh! we don't need it, I assure you," said I; "we understand him entirely."

"Not a bit of it!" said he, shaking his brown curls; "I am the transparent one."

He stepped up on the wheel-hub to get his bag, and to say he should strike off for Middleton on foot. He would see us very soon in New York, and claim our promise to visit him.

Being relieved from the fascination of personal beauty and presence, with only the impression of character remaining, I was a little ashamed to find how much I had liked, without being at all able to esteem him. It was with a very different feeling that I looked at Mr. Lewis, whose ugly, positively ugly face was being perpetually transfigured with emotion and variety. Without grace of feature or figure, he impressed one as a living soul; and this inward light gave a translucent beauty to the frail, chance-shapen vase, which all Mr. Remington's personal advantages of form and color failed to impress us with. Only dark eyes of un-sounded depth, and a voice whose rich cadences had an answering rhythm in the inward man, showed what his attractions might be, or were, to a woman. We became curious to see Mrs. Lewis, of whom we gained no idea from his casual references to her.

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LYRICS OF THE STREET.