Chapter 8 No.8

Mrs. Lang returned from her wedding-journey happy and beautiful, charmed by all she had seen, and Mr. Lang was unusually demonstrative to every one in the excess of his joy; but I had reason to suppose that the announcement of our engagement reduced his exuberance considerably. Miss Darry did not, however, admit the least disappointment in their manner of receiving it; her own judgment was an estimate, from which, for herself, there was no appeal. She was the most entirely self-sustained woman I have ever met.

Having decided that I was a genius, and that she loved me, the opinion of others was of no moment in her eyes. Mr. Lang merely offered his congratulations to me by saying,-

"Well, Sandy, my dear fellow, you are to obtain, it seems, what many a man of wealth and position will envy you. You must pardon me for saying that Miss Darry's choice is quite astonishing to her friends. If you possess the genius of Raphael, I shall still regard you as two very peculiar persons to come together; but I am in no mood to cavil at love."

Mrs. Lang said, kindly,-

"We must see more of you than ever, Mr. Allen, if you are finally to deprive us of Miss Darry. She has lived with me ever since the death of her parents, who were old friends of my mother, and we shall miss her very much. She is a splendid woman. You are sure you understand her?" she added, naively; "I freely confess I don't."

My pride swelled at all this. Frank Darry's love was the most blissful proof yet afforded of the personal power of the man who had captivated her, and more vehemently than was perhaps natural under the circumstances, I professed to comprehend, love, nay, worship Miss Darry.

The efforts for my culture were now redoubled. In order to demonstrate the wisdom of Miss Darry's choice, I must give palpable proof of superiority. I had earned enough for present support, and my forge must be given up. I must cut off all my old connections, go to the city, visit studios, draw from casts, attend galleries of paintings, have access to public libraries, make literary and artistic acquaintances, pursue my classical studies, and display the powers which Miss Darry, by her own force of will, projected into me. Such were the business-like plans which usurped the place of those mutual adulatory confidences presumed to occupy the first elysian hours of an engagement. Miss Darry's love was not of that caressing, tendril description, so common with her sex, which plays in tender demonstrativeness around the one beloved; it helped constantly to keep the highest standard before him, and to sustain rather than depend.

About a week after Mr. and Mrs. Lang's return, Mr. Leopold, who had accompanied them, came back; and Miss Darry intimated that it would be well for me to inform him of our engagement. I said to him, therefore, rather abruptly one afternoon, as I was about leaving to seek Miss Darry, (who was never quite ready to see me, if my painting-hours were abridged,)-

"Mr. Leopold, I have sold my forge to-day. I wanted to ask your advice about the course to be pursued in town; but I am under orders now of the most binding kind, I am engaged to Miss Darry."

Mr. Leopold was busy at his easel, his profile toward me. I was certainly not mistaken; the blood rushed over his face, subsided, leaving it very pale, and he made a quick, nervous movement which overthrew his palette. He rose quietly and replaced it, however, saying, in his usual tone,-

"Very well, Sandy. I am ready to help you in any way I can."

"But you do not-no one congratulates me," I said, deceived by his calmness, and supposing the momentary suspicion that his was the love rejected by Miss Darry must have been a mistaken one.

"If they do not, it is not because of any lack appreciation for either of you," he answered slowly, "but that they fail to see the point of union. I admire the pine; it is straight, strong, self-reliant, and yet wind-haunted by many tender and melancholy sentiments; I like the peach-tree, too, with its pink tufts of fanciful blooming in the spring-time: but if these two should grow side by side, I am not sure but I should wonder a little."

His smile, as he looked me full in the eye, had genuine good-will mingled with its humor; and it softened the indignation I felt at the implied comparison.

"You make me out the weaker vessel of the two, then?" I asked, resentfully.

"No, Sandy, I don't say that; possibly, as whatever power we have runs parallel with Providential forces or against them, it makes mortal strength or weakness. But may you become a truly noble man, if you are to be Miss Darry's husband!" he answered, rising and extending his hand.

I believe he was one to scorn a lack of self-control in himself; but I do not think he cared either to reveal or to hide the love which I read at that moment. I grasped his hand as cordially as it was given, and hurried down stairs, out of the door, and over the hill, with a strong conviction that Miss Darry was a mistaken and foolish woman, and a prompting to disinterestedness not quite compatible with my relations to her. I was in no mood for her society, so I resolved to delay seeing her until evening, and conclude my arrangements at the forge, as I was to go to the city the next week.

Approaching the village, I overtook Miss Dinsmore; and though my new pretensions had not increased my popularity among the villagers, I had reason to consider her my firm friend and advocate; so I was quite willing to escape my unpleasant train of thought in listening to her.

"Well, Sandy, nobody gets a sight of you nowadays down this way. I never was so set up as when I heard tell you was goin' to marry the schoolmarm. Why, I was always certain sure you'd take to Annie Bray. Such a sweet little lamb as she is; not a bit high-strung 'cause she's made much of at the great house on the hill, though she does sing like a bird in an apple-tree every Sunday, when Louisy Purdo doesn't drown her voice with screechin'; but she's grown more sober an' quiet-like than ever. Miss Bray says she helps a powerful deal about house, and Amos don't swear so much now he sees it hurts her."

"She's a dear little thing," I interrupted, impatiently; "but, Miss Dinsmore, do you know Mr. Bray may have all the blacksmith-work to himself now? for I'm going to town for the rest of the summer and autumn."

"You don't say so, Sandy! Well, old Dr. Allen wasn't one of us, as I tell 'em, and there's no sort of reason why you should be; and your mother was a real born lady, though she was so gentle-spoken 't wasn't half the women could tell the difference between her and them."

"But, Miss Dinsmore," I said, "I don't expect to forget my old friends, because I hope to do better somewhere else than here. I shall often come down to Warren."

"Oh, yes, you'll come down, I don't mistrust that," she replied, slowly nodding her green calash, "as long as the schoolmarm is at the Hill; but Annie will look paler than ever. She thinks a sight of you, poor thing, and it will never be the same to her. She loves you like-a sister," added Miss Dinsmore, the tears in her faded blue eyes, and her sense of womanly modesty supplying the familiar title.

We were very near the Variety Store. If I could for a moment drift away from this annoying theme!

"How did you like Mr. Leopold, that afternoon I introduced him to you, Miss Dinsmore?" I asked, in desperation.

"Oh! ah! Well, Sandy, to speak plain, I've seen him a matter of three or four times, may-be, since. He set down, quite friendly-like, to a bit of supper, last time he come. I suppose he feels lonely; he seems pleasant-spoken, and is liked by everybody round here; poor man, he oughtn't to be without a mate. He's taken a great likin' to Annie Bray; but then, of course, he's got some sense of what's becomin'; she's years too young for him."

"Too young! I should think so," indignantly; "he's old enough to be her grandfather."

"No, Sandy,-no, I think not," said Miss Dinsmore, pausing thoughtfully at her door-step. "Old Mr. Bray would have been nigh upon eighty come next harvest; but then Annie has nobody to look out for her now you know, exceptin' Amos, who a'n't over wide-awake, between you and me, though an honester man never lived."

I was very willing to part with Miss Dinsmore.

"Another afternoon experience like this will make a hermit of me," I muttered, impatiently, as I strode away in the same direction from which I had come.

Miss Darry, Mr. Leopold, anybody, was better than Annie Bray, with her sweet, pale face, in my present mood.

"Annie has nobody to look out for her now, you know": many a day I remembered with a pang that this was too true.