第7章

HE had learned a great deal about her past, and held it mirrored in his memory.The general picture of it rose before his eyes now, as he leaned on the fence this pleasant afternoon in May and watched her restoring to its place, with delicate strokes of her finger-tips, the lock of her soft, shining hair.How could any one so fine have thriven amid conditions so exhausting? Those hard toiling fingers, now grasping the heavy hoe, once used to tinkle over the spinet; the small, sensitive feet, now covered with coarse shoe-packs tied with leather thongs, once shone in rainbow hues of satin slippers and silken hose.A sunbonnet for the tiara of osprey plumes;a dress spun and woven by her own hand out of her own flax, instead of the stiff brocade; log hut for manor-house; one negro boy instead of troops of servants: to have possessed all that, to have been brought down to all this, and not to have been ruined by it, never to have lost distinction or been coarsened by coarseness never to have parted with grace of manner or grace of spirit, or been bent or broken or overclouded in character and ideals,--it was all this that made her in his eyes a great woman, a great lady.

He held her in such reverence that, as he caught the serious look in her eyes at his impulsive question, he was sorry he had asked it: the last thing he could ever have thought of doing would have been to intrude upon the privacy of her reflections.

"What was I thinking of?"

There was a short silence and then she turned to him eagerly, brightly, with an entire change of voice and expression--"But the news from town--you haven't told me the news.""Oh, there is any amount of news!" he cried, glad of a chance to retreat from his intrusion.And he began lightly, recklessly:

"A bookbinder has opened a shop on Cross Street--a capital hand at the business, by the name of Leischman--and he will bind books at the regular market prices in exchange for linen rags, maple sugar, and goose-quills.Iadvise you to keep an eye on your geese, if the major once takes a notion to have his old Shakespeare and his other volumes, that had their bindings knocked off in crossing the Alleghanies, elegantly rebound.You can tell him also that after a squirrel-hunt in Bourbon County the farmers counted scalps, and they numbered five thousand five hundred and eighty-nine; so that he is not the only one who has trouble with his corn.And then you can tell him that on the common the other day Nelson Tapp and Willis Tandy had a fearful fight over a land-suit.Now it was Tandy and Tapp; now it was Tapp and Tandy; but they went off at last and drowned themselves and the memory of the suit in a bowl of sagamity.""And there is no news for me, I suppose?""Oh yes! I am happy to inform you that at McIllvain's you can now buy the finest Dutch and English letter-paper, gilt, embossed, or marbled.""That is not very important; I have no correspondents.""Well, a saddlery has been opened by two fellows from London, England, and you can now buy Amy a new side-saddle.She needs one.""Nor is that! The major buys the saddles for the family.""Well, then, as I came out on Alain Street, I passed some ladies who accused me of being on my way here, and who impressed it upon me that I must tell you of the last displays of women-wear: painted and velvet ribbons, I think they said, and crepe scarfs, and chintzes and nankeens and moreens and sarcenets, and--oh yes!-some muslinette jackets tamboured with gold and silver.They said we were becoming civilized--that the town would soon be as good as Williamsburg, or Annapolis, or Philadelphia for such things.You see I am like my children: I remember what I don't understand.""I understand what I must not remember! Don't tell me of those things," she added."They remind me of the past; they make me think of Virginia.I wear homespun now, and am a Kentuckian.""Well, then, the Indians fired on the Ohio packet-boat near Three Islands and killed--""Oh!" she said, with pain and terror, "don't tell me of that, either! It reminds me of the present.""Well, in Holland two thousand cats have been put into the corn-stores, to check the ravages of rats and mice," he said, laughing.