Читать книгу A Singular Life - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps - Страница 5

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It had always been considered a mistake that the Professors’ houses stood on the “morning side” of the street. But this, like many another architectural or social criticism, was of more interest to the critic than to the criticised. In point of fact, the western faces of the dwellings consecrated to the Faculty received the flood tide of the sea of sun that rose and ebbed between Cesarea and Wachusett. A man’s study, a child’s nursery, a woman’s sewing-room, fled the front of the house as a matter of course; and the “afternoon side” of the dwelling welcomed them bountifully.

As Professor Carruth had been heard to say, that side of the street on which a man is born may determine his character and fate beyond repeal. The observation, if true, is tenfold truer of a woman, to whom a house is a shell, a prison, or a chrysalis.

The Professor’s daughter, who had not been born in Cesarea, but in the city of New York, took turns at viewing her father’s home in one of these threefold aspects. On that winter day of which we have already spoken, she might, if urged to it, have selected the least complimentary of the three terms. The day had been bleak, bright, and interminable. She had tried to take the morning walk to the post-office, which all able-bodied Cesareans penitentially performed six days in the week; and had been blown home in that state just so far from adding another to the list of “deaths from exposure” that one gets no sympathy, and yet so near to this result that one must sit over the register the rest of the morning to thaw out.

After dinner she had conscientiously resumed her study of Herbert Spencer’s Law of Rhythm, but had tossed the book away impatiently—she was metaphysical only when she was bored—and had joined her mother at the weekly mending-basket. The cold, she averred, had struck in. Her brain was turning to an icicle—like that. She pointed to the snow-man which the boys in the fitting-school had built in front of the pump that supplied their dormitories with ice-water for toilet uses; this was carried the length of the street in dripping pails whose overflow froze upon one’s boots.

There had been a rain before this last freeze, and the head of the snow-man (carefully moulded, and quite Greek) had turned into a solid ball of ice.

This chilly gentleman rose, imposingly from behind a desk of snow. Manuscripts of sleet lay in his frozen hand. An old silk hat, well glazed with drippings from the elm-tree, was pitched irreverently upon the back of his head.

“They say,” replied Mrs. Carruth complainingly, “that the snow-man is meant to take off one of the Professors.”

“Do they? I should think he might be. Which one?” answered the Professor’s daughter. Her languid eyes warmed into merriment. “I call that fun.”

“I call it irreverent,” sighed the Professor’s wife. “I call it profane.”

“Now, Mother!” The young lady laid a green, theological stocking across her shapely knee, and pulled the toe through the foot argumentatively. “Don’t you think that is a little over-emphasized?”

Mrs. Carruth lifted her mild, feminine countenance from that shirt of the Professor’s which she always found absorbing—the one whose button-holes gave out, while the buttons stayed on. She regarded her daughter with a puzzled disapproval. She was not used to such phrases as “over-emphasis” when she was young.

“Helen, Helen,” she complained, “you do not realize what a trial you are to me. If there is anything sacrilegious or heretical to be found anywhere, you are sure to—to—you are certain to find it interesting,” ended the mother vaguely.

“See, Mother! See!” interrupted Helen. Her laugh bubbled merrily through the sewing-room. “Just look out of the window, and see! The boys have stuck a whisk broom for a feather in the snow professor’s hat! And now they’re giving him spectacles and a fountain pen. What delicious heresy, isn’t it, Mother? Come and look!”

But after these trifling and too frequent conflicts with her mother, Helen never failed to feel a certain reaction and depression. She evaded the mending-basket that afternoon as soon as possible, and slipped into her own room; which, as we have said, was in a wing of the house, and looked from east to west. She could not see the snow professor here. Nobody now accused her of heresy. The shouts of the boys had begun to die away. Only the mountains and the great intervale were peacefully visible from the warm window. Through the cold one the Theological Seminary occupied the perspective solidly.

Nature had done a good deal for the Christian religion, or at least for that view of it represented by our Seminary, when that institution was established at Cesarea, a matter of nearly a century ago. But art had not in this instance proved herself the handmaid of religion. The theological buildings, a row of three—Galilee and Damascus Halls to right and left of the ancient chapel—rose grimly against the cold Cesarea sky. These buildings were all of brick, red, rectangular, and unrelieved; as barren of ornament or broken lines as a packing-box, and yet curiously possessed of a certain dignity of their own; such as we see in aged country folk unfashionably dressed, but sure of their local position. Not a tremor seemed ever to disturb the calm, red faces of these old buildings, when the pretty chapel and the graceful library of modern taste crept in under the elms of the Seminary green to console the spirit of the contemporary Cesarean, who has visited the Louvre and the Vatican as often as the salary will allow; who has tickets to the Symphony Concerts in Boston, and feels no longer obliged to conceal the fact that he occasionally witnesses a Shakespearean play.

Helen Carruth, for one, did not object to the old red boxes, and held them in respect; not for their architectural qualities, it must be owned, nor because of the presence therein of a hundred young men for whose united or separate personalities she had never cared a fig. But of the Cesarean sunsets, which are justly famous, she was observant with the enthusiasm of a girl who has so little social occupation that a beautiful landscape is still an object of attention, even of affection. And where does reflected sunset take to itself the particular glory that it takes on Cesarea Hill?

The Professor’s daughter was in the habit of watching from her eastern window to see that row of old buildings take fire from the western sky behind her; window after window, four stories of them, thirty-two to a front on either side, and the solemn disused chapel in the midst. It would have been a pleasant sight to any delicate eye; but to the girl, with her religiously trained imagination and unoccupied fancy, it was a beautiful and a poetic one. She had learned to watch for it on sunny days in her lonely Cesarea winters—between her visits to New York or Boston. Now Damascus Hall, and now Galilee, received the onset of flame; now this floor reflected it, and now that; certain windows became refracting crystals, and flung the gorgeous color back; certain others drew it in and drank it down into their glowing hearts. One—belonging to a northwest corner room in Galilee Hall—blazed magnificently on that evening of which we tell. It attracted her eye, and held it, for the fiery flood rolled up against that old sash and seemed to break there, and pour in, deep into the unseen room, deeper than any other spot could hold. That window breathed fire as martyrs do, in ecstasy. It seemed to inhale and exhale beauty and death like a living thing whose doom was glory, and whose glory was doom. But the splendid panorama was always swift; she had to catch it while it lasted; moments unrolled and furled it. She stood with uplifted arm between her lace curtains; her eyes smiled, and her lips were parted. The old Bible similes of her childhood came inevitably even upon her lighter moods. It was not religious emotion, but the power of association and poetic perception which made her say aloud:—

“And the city had no need of the sun … to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it.”

As the words fell from her lips the sun dropped beyond Wachusett. The fire flashed, and ran, and faded. Cold, dull, delicate colors replaced the glory on Galilee Hall; the burst of gold had burned out and melted; the tints of cool precious stones crept upon the window whose display had pleased her. She passed her hand over her eyes, for she was blinded by the dazzling effect. When she looked again, she noticed that the old white shade in the northwest corner room was drawn.

She turned away, feeling an unreasonable sense of discomfort, as if she had been rebuffed in an unconscious intrusion. At that moment she heard her father moving about his study, which was below her room. The sound of flying slippers and the creak of his whirling study-chair indicated that his work was over for the day, and that he was about to take his evening pilgrimage to the post-office. His daughter ran down to see him.

He glanced up from the arctic overshoes which he was tugging on over his boots, with a relieved and pleasant look.

“Ah, Helen! You are just in time. I need you, my child. Just write out some invitations for me, will you?—in your mother’s name. She seems to be too much absorbed in some domestic duties to attend to it, and I must have those omitted men to tea this week. Your mother says she can’t have them to-morrow on account of—I have forgotten the reason, but it was an important one.”

“She has some preserves to scald over. Yes,” said Helen, with ripples in her eyes, “I think they are quinces. At any rate, it is of national importance. Friday, did you say? Certainly. I will have them written by the time you have selected your cane, Father. Who are these? The A’s? Or the C’s?”

“They are the B’s,” answered the Professor, looking over his assortment of handsome canes with the serious interest of a sophomore. If the Professor of Theology had one human weakness, it was for handling a fine cane. This luxury was to him what horses, yachts, and dry wines may be to different men. His daughter was quite right in assuming that the notes of invitation would be written before he had suited himself out of a dozen possibilities to his delicate Oriental grapestick with the heavy ivory handle.

“They are the B’s,” he repeated abstractedly. “Two B’s, and—yes, one C. One of the B’s I would not overlook on any account. He is that B who was preëngaged, for some reason, in the autumn. He must be invited again. His uncle is one of the Trustees. There’s the catalogue; you’ll find the address—Galilee Hall, Bayard, Emanuel. Don’t make a mistake, my dear; and I hope you will take pains to be at home and help us entertain them.”

“I was going in to the concert,” said Helen disappointedly, pausing with her pen suspended. “I meant to spend the night with Clara Rollins. But—no, I won’t, Father, if you care about it.”

“Thank you, my dear,” he said gently. He kissed her as he went out, and Helen smiled contentedly; she was deeply attached to her father. In his home the Professor of Theology was the most loving and beloved of men.

There came up a warm storm that week, and by Friday Cesarea Hill swam in a sea of melted snow. The two B’s and one C waded their way to their Professor’s house to tea that evening, across rills and rivers of ice-water, and through mounds of slush. Bayard sank over rubbers amid-stream more than once; he wore the usual evening shoe of society. He was always a well-dressed man, having never known any other way of living. It was different with his fellow-students. That one C, for example, who strode across the Seminary green in comfort and rubber boots, had provided, it seemed, no other method of appearance within doors. His pantaloons were tucked into the rubber boots at the knees, and had the air of intending to stay there.

“Look here, man!” gasped Bayard, as the young men removed their overcoats in the large and somewhat stately hall of the Professor’s house. “You have forgotten your shoes!”

“I have some slippers in my pockets, if you think them necessary,” replied the other. “You know more about such things than I do.”

The speaker produced a pair of slippers, worked in worsted by his sister; a white rose ornamented the toe of each. As he stooped to put them on, Bayard observed that the man wore a flannel shirt of the blue-gray tint at that time preferred by day laborers, and that he was guiltless of linen.

The three guests entered the drawing-room, headed by the flannel shirt. The one C sat down on the largest satin easy-chair, stretching his embroidered slippers on the Persian rug with such dignified unconsciousness of the unusual as one might go far to see outside of Cesarea, and might not witness once in a lifetime there. Occupied with the embarrassment of this little incident, Bayard did not notice at first that the daughter of the house was absent from the parlor. He fell to talking with his favorite Professor eagerly; they were deep in the discussion of the doctrine of election as taught in a rival seminary, by a more liberal chair, when Mrs. Carruth drew the attention of her husband to the gentleman of the flannel shirt, and seated herself by Bayard.

“I hope you are not very hungry?” she began in her literal voice. “We are waiting for my daughter. She attends the Symphony Concerts Fridays, and the coach is late to-night from the five o’clock train.”

“Oh, that coach!” laughed Bayard. “I walk—if I want my supper.”

“And so did I,” said a soft voice at his side.

“Why, Helen, Helen!” complained the Professor’s wife.

The young lady stood serenely, awaiting her father’s introduction to the three students. She bowed sedately to the other B and the C. Her eyes scintillated when she turned back to Bayard. She seemed to be brimming over with suppressed amusement. She took the chair beside him, for her mother (who never trusted Cesarea service to the exclusion of the old-fashioned, housewifely habit of looking at her table before her guests sat down) had slipped from the room.

“You walk from the station—a mile—in this going?” began Bayard, laughing.

“No;” she shook her head. “I waded. But I got here. The coach had nine inside and five on top. It hasn’t come yet. I promised Father I’d be here, you see.”

Bayard’s quick eye observed that Miss Carruth was in dinner dress; her gown was silk, and purple, and fitted her remarkably well; she had a sumptuous figure; he reflected that she had taken the time and trouble to dress for these three theologues as she would have done for a dinner in town. He saw that she gave one swift glance at the man in the flannel shirt, who was absorbed in the Professor’s story about the ordination of somebody who was rejected on the doctrine of probation.

But after that she looked at the student’s head, which was good. Upon the details of his costume no eye in the drawing-room rested that evening, again. That student went out from Cesarea Seminary to be a man of influence and intellect; his name became a distinguished one, and in his prime society welcomed him proudly. But if the Professor’s family had been given the catalogue and the Inquisition to identify him, it may be questioned whether thumbscrews would have wrung his name from them. It being one of the opportunities of Christianity that it may make cultivated gentlemen out of poor and ignorant boys, Cesarea ladies take pride in their share of the process.

At tea—for Cesarea still held to her country tradition of an early dinner—Bayard found himself seated opposite the Professor’s daughter. The one C sat beside her, and she graciously proceeded to bewitch that gentleman wholly out of his wits, and half out of his theology. Bayard heard her talking about St. Augustine. She called him an interesting monomaniac.

The table was served in the manner to which Bayard was used, and was abundantly lighted by candles softly shaded in yellow. In the pleasant shimmer, in her rich dress, with the lace at her throat and wrists, she seemed, by pretty force of contrast with the prevailing tone of the village, the symbol of beauty, ease, and luxury. Bayard thought how preëminent she looked beside that fellow in the shirt. He could not help wondering if she would seem as imposing in Beacon Street. After a little study of the subject he concluded that it would not make much difference. She was not precisely a beautiful woman, but she was certainly a woman of beauty. What was she? Blonde? She had too much vigor. But—yes. Her hair was as yellow as the gold lining of rich silverware. She was one of the bright, deep orange blondes; all her coloring was warm and brilliant. Only her eyes struck him as inadequate; languid, indifferent, and not concerned with her life. She gave the unusual effect of dark eyes with bright hair.

While he was thinking about her in the interludes of such chat as he could maintain with her mother, who had asked him twice whether he graduated this year, Miss Carruth turned unexpectedly and addressed him. The remark which she made was not original; it was something about the concerts: Did he not go in often? She had not asked the one C if he attended the Symphony Concerts. But Mrs. Carruth now inquired of that gentleman if he liked the last preparatory lecture. The Professor was engaging the attention of the other B. And Bayard and Helen Carruth fell to conversing, undisturbed, across the pleasant table.

He felt at home despite himself, in that easy atmosphere, in that yellow light. The natural sense of luxury crept around him softly. He thought of his northwest room over there, rocking in the gale, and of the big dish of apples at the club table. He thought of the self-denials and deprivations, little and large, which had accompanied his life at Cesarea; he tried to remember why he had chosen to do this or suffered that.

His ascetic ideals swam and blurred a little before the personality of this warm, rich, human girl. There was something even in the circumstance of eating quail on toast, and sipping chocolate from a Dresden cup in an antique Dutch spoon, which was disturbing to the devout imagination—in Cesarea.

Over his sensitive face his high, grave look passed suddenly, like the reflection thrown from some unseen, passing light.

“I had better be at my room and at work,” he thought.

At that moment he became aware of a change in the expression of the Professor’s daughter. Her languid eye had awaked. She was regarding him with puzzled but evident attention. He threw off his momentary depression with ready social ease, and gayly said:—

“You look as if you were trying to classify a subject, Miss Carruth; as if you wanted to put something in its place and couldn’t do it.”

“I am,” she admitted. “I do.”

“And you succeed?”

“No.” She shook her head again. “I do not find the label. I give it up.” She laughed merrily, and Bayard joined in the laugh. But to himself he said:—

“She does me the honor to investigate me. Plainly I am not the one C. Clearly I am not the other B. Then what? She troubles herself to wonder.”

Then he remembered how many generations of theological students had been the subject of the young lady’s gracious and indifferent observation. She was, perhaps, twenty-five years old, and they had filed through that dining-room alphabetically—the A’s, the B’s, the C’s, the X’s and the Z’s—since she came, in short dresses, to Cesarea, when her father gave up his New York parish for the Chair of Theology. It occurred to Bayard that she might have ceased to find either the genus or the species theologus of thrilling personal interest, by this time.