Chapter 26. The Portrait And The Miniature

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_ CHAPTER XXVI. THE PORTRAIT AND THE MINIATURE

The golden days of September glimmered through the dark sighing trees, and relieved the white brightness that had burned upon the hills during the dog-days. Mr. Burt drove into town and drove out. Dr. Peewee called at short intervals, played backgammon with his parishioner, listened to his stories, told stories of his own, and joined him in his little excursions to the West Indies. Mrs. Simcoe was entirely alone.

One day Hiram brought her a letter, which she took to her own room and sat down by the window to read.

"SARATOGA.

"DEAR AUNTY,--We're about going away, and we have been so gay that you would suppose I had had 'society' enough. Do you remember our talk? There have been a great many people here from every part of the country; and it has been nothing but bowling, walking, riding, dancing, dining at the lake, and listening to music in the moonlight, all the time. Aunt Dinks has been very kind, but although I have met a great many people I have not made many friends. I have seen nobody whom I like as much as Amy Waring or Mr. Lawrence Newt, of whom I wrote you from New York, and they have neither of them been here. I think of Pinewood a great deal, but it seems to me long and long ago that I used to live there. It is strange how much older and different I feel. But I never forget you, dearest Aunty, and I should like this very moment to stand by your side at your window as I used to, and look out at the hills, or, better still, to lie in your lap or on my bed, and hear you sing one of the dear old hymns. I thought I had forgotten them until lately. But I remember them very often now. I think of Pinewood a great deal, and I love you dearly; and yet somehow I do not feel as if I cared to go back there to live. Isn't that strange? Give my love to Grandpa, and tell him I am neither engaged to a foreign minister, nor a New York merchant, nor a Southern planter--nor to any body else. But he must keep up heart, for there's plenty of time yet. Good-by, dear Aunty. I seem to hear you singing,

"'Oh that I now the rest might know!'

"Do you know how often you used to sing that? Good-by.

"Your affectionate, HOPE."

Mrs. Simcoe held the letter in her hand for a long time, looking, as usual, out of the window.

Presently she rose, and went to a bureau, and unlocked a drawer with a key that she carried in her pocket. Taking out an ebony box like a casket, she unlocked that in turn, and then lifted from it a morocco case, evidently a miniature. She returned to her chair and seated herself again, swaying her body gently to and fro as if confirming some difficult resolution, but with the same inscrutable expression upon her face. Still holding the case in her hands unopened, she murmured:

"I want a sober mind,
A self-renouncing will,
That tramples down and casts behind
The baits of pleasing ill."

She repeated the whole hymn several times, as if it were a kind of spell or incantation, and while she was yet saying it she opened the miniature.

The western light streamed over the likeness of a man of a gallant, graceful air, in whom the fires of youth were not yet burned out, and in whose presence there might be some peculiar fascination. The hair was rather long and fair--the features were handsomely moulded, but wore a slightly jaded expression, which often seems to a woman an air of melancholy, but which a man would have recognized at once as the result of dissipation. There was a singular cast in the eye, and a kind of lofty, irresistible command in the whole aspect, which appeared to be quite as much an assumption of manner as a real superiority. In fact it was the likeness of what is technically called a man of the world, whose frank insolence and symmetry of feature pass for manly beauty and composure.

The miniature was in the face of a gold locket, on the back of which there was a curl of the same fair hair. It was so fresh and glossy that it might have been cut off the day before. But the quaintness of the setting and the costume of the portrait showed that it had been taken many years previous, and that in the order of nature the original was probably dead.

As Mrs. Simcoe held the miniature in both hands and looked at it, her body still rocked over it, and her lips still murmured.

Then rocking and murmuring stopped together, and she seemed like one listening to music or the ringing of distant bells.

And as she sat perfectly still in the golden September sunshine, it was as if it had shone into her soul; so that a softer light streamed into her eyes, and the hard inscrutability of her face melted as by some internal warmth, and a tender rejuvenescence somehow blossomed out upon her cheeks until all the sweetness became sadness, and heavy tears dropped from her eyes upon the picture.

Then, with the old harshness stealing into her face again, she rose calmly, carrying the miniature in her hand, and went out of the room, and down the stairs into the library, which was opposite the parlor in which Abel Newt had seen the picture of old Grandpa Burt at the age of ten, holding a hoop and book.

There were book-shelves upon every side but one--stately ranges of well-ordered books in substantial old calf and gilt English bindings, and so carefully placed upon the shelves, in such methodical distribution of shapes and sizes, that the whole room had an air of preternatural propriety utterly foreign to a library. It seemed the most select and aristocratic society of books--much too fine to permit the excitement of interest in any thing they contained--much too high-bred to be of the slightest use in imparting information. Glass doors were carefully closed over them and locked, as if the books were beatified and laid away in shrines. And the same solemn order extended to the library table, which was precisely in the middle of the room, with a large, solemn family Bible precisely in the middle of the table, and smaller books, like satellites, precisely upon the corners, and precisely on one side an empty glass inkstand, innocent of ink spot or stain of any kind, with a pen carefully mended and evidently carefully never used, and an exemplary pen-wiper, which was as unsullied as might be expected of a wiper which had only wiped that pen which was never dipped into that inkstand which had been always empty. The inkstand was supported on the other side of the Bible by an equally immaculate ivory paper-knife.

The large leather library chairs were arranged in precisely the proper angle at the corners of the table, and the smaller chairs stood under the windows two by two. All was cold and clean, and locked up--all--except a portrait that hung against the wall, and below which Mrs. Simcoe stopped, still holding the miniature in her hand.

It was the likeness of a lovely girl, whose rich, delicate loveliness, full of tender but tremulous character, seemed to be a kind of foreshadowing of Hope Wayne. The eyes were of a deep, soft darkness, that held the spectator with a dreamy fascination. The other features were exquisitely moulded, and suffused with an airy, girlish grace, so innocent that the look became almost a pathetic appeal against the inevitable griefs of life.

As Mrs. Simcoe stood looking at it and at the miniature she held, the sadness which had followed the sweetness died away, and her face resumed the old rigid inscrutability. She held the miniature straight before her, and directly under the portrait; and, as she looked, the apparent pride of the one and the tremulous earnestness of the other indescribably blended into an expression which had been long familiar to her, for it was the look of Hope Wayne.

While she thus stood, unconscious of the time that passed, the sun had set and the room was darkening. Suddenly she heard a sound close at her side, and started. Her hand instinctively closed over the miniature and concealed it.

There stood a man kindly regarding her. He was not an old man, but there was a touch of quaintness in his appearance. He did not speak when she saw him, and for several minutes they stood silent together. Then their eyes rose simultaneously to the picture, met again, and Mrs. Simcoe, putting out her hand, said, in a low voice,

"Lawrence Newt!"

He shook her hand warmly, and made little remarks, while she seemed to be studying into his face, as if she were looking for something she did not find there. Every body did it. Every body looked into Lawrence Newt's face to discover what he was thinking of, and nobody ever saw. Mrs. Simcoe remembered a time when she had seen.

"It is more than twenty years since I saw you. Have I grown very old?" asked he.

"No, not old. I see the boy I remember; but your face is not so clear as it used to be."

Lawrence Newt laughed.

"You compliment me without knowing it. My face is the lid of a chest full of the most precious secrets; would you have the lid transparent? I am a merchant. Suppose every body could look in through my face and see what I really think of the merchandise I am selling! What profit do you think I should make? No, no, we want no tell-tale faces in South Street."

He said this in a tone that corresponded with the expression which baffled Mrs. Simcoe, and perplexed her only the more. But it did not repel her nor beget distrust. A porcupine hides his flesh in bristling quills; but a magnolia, when its time has not yet come, folds its heart in and in with over-lacing tissues of creamy richness and fragrance. The flower is not sullen, it is only secret.

"I suppose you are twenty years wiser than you were," said Mrs. Simcoe.

"What is wisdom?" asked Lawrence Newt.

"To give the heart to God," replied she.

"That I have discovered," he said.

"And have you given it?"

"I hope so."

"Yes, but haven't you the assurance?" asked she, earnestly.

"I hope so," responded Lawrence Newt, in the same kindly tone.

"But assurance is a gift," continued she.

"A gift of what?"

"Of Peace," replied Mrs. Simcoe.

"Ah! well, I have that," said the other, quietly, as his eyes rested upon the portrait.

There was moisture in the eyes.

"Her daughter is very like her," he said, musingly; and the two stood together silently for some time looking at the picture.

"Not entirely like her mother," replied Mrs. Simcoe, as if to assert some other resemblance.

"Perhaps not; but I never saw her father."

As Lawrence Newt said this, Mrs. Simcoe raised her hand, opened it, and held the miniature before his eyes. He took it and gazed closely at it.

"And this is Colonel Wayne," said he, slowly. "This is the man who broke another man's heart and murdered a woman."

A mingled expression of pain, indignation, passionate regret, and resignation suddenly glittered on the face of Mrs. Simcoe.

"Mr. Newt, Mr. Newt," said she, hurriedly, in a thick voice, "let us at least respect the dead!"

Lawrence Newt, still holding the miniature in his hand, looked surprised and searchingly at his companion. A lofty pity shot into his eyes.

"Could I speak of her otherwise?"

The sudden change in Mrs. Simcoe's expression conveyed her thought to him before her words:

"No, no! not of her, but--"

She stopped, as if wrestling with a fierce inward agony. The veins on her forehead were swollen, and her eyes flashed with singular light. It was not clear whether she were trying to say something to conceal something, or simply to recover her self-command. It was a terrible spectacle, and Lawrence Newt felt as if he must veil his eyes, as if he had no right to look upon this great agony of another.

"But--" said he, mechanically, as if by repeating her last word to help her in her struggle.

The sad, severe woman stood before him in the darkening twilight, erect, and more than erect, drawn back from him, and quivering and defiant. She was silent for an instant; then, leaning forward and reaching toward him, she took the miniature from Lawrence Newt, closed her hand over it convulsively, and gasped in a tone that sounded like a low, wailing cry:

"But of him."

Lawrence Newt raised his eyes from the vehement woman to the portrait that hung above her.

In the twilight that lost loveliness glimmered down into his very heart with appealing pathos. Perhaps those parted lips in their red bloom had spoken to him--lips so long ago dust! Perhaps those eyes, in the days forever gone--gone with hopes and dreams, and the soft lustre of youth--had looked into his own, had answered his fond yearning with equal fondness. By all that passionate remembrance, by a lost love, by the early dead, he felt himself conjured to speak, nor suffer his silence even to seem to shield a crime.

"And why not of him?" he began, calmly, and with profound melancholy rather than anger. "Why not of him, who did not hesitate to marry the woman whom he knew loved another, and whom the difference of years should rather have made his daughter than his wife? Why not of him, who brutally confessed, when she was his wife, an earlier and truer love of his own, and so murdered her slowly, slowly--not with blows of the hand, oh no!--not with poison in her food, oh no!" cried Lawrence Newt, warming into bitter vehemence, clenching his hand and shaking it in the air, "but who struck her blows on the heart--who stabbed her with sharp icicles of indifference--who poisoned her soul with the tauntings of his mean suspicions--mean and false--and the meaner because he knew them to be false? Why not of him, who--"

"Stop! in the name of God!" she cried, fiercely, raising her hand as if she appealed to Heaven.

It fell again. The hard voice sank to a tremulous, pitiful tone:

"Oh! stop, if you, are a man!"

They stood opposite each other in utter silence. The light had almost faded. The face in the picture was no longer visible.

Bewildered and awed by the passionate grief of his companion, Lawrence Newt said, gently,

"Why should I stop?"

The form before him had sunk into a chair. Both its hands were clasped over the miniature. He heard the same strange voice like the wailing cry of a child:

"Because I am the woman he loved--because I loved him." _

Read next: Chapter 27. Gabriel At Home

Read previous: Chapter 25. A Statesman--And Stateswoman

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