Helen and Arthur Part 17

"To be sure I do," replied Helen, with a brightening color, "more than any one else in the world, I believe. But do they call him the young doctor, yet?"

"Yes--and will till he is as old as Methuselah, I expect," replied Mittie, laughing.

"Brother is not more than five or six and twenty, now," cried Alice, with emphasis.

"Or seven," added Mittie. "Oh! he is sufficiently youthful, I dare say, but it is amusing to see how that name is fastened upon him. It is seldom we hear Doctor Hazleton mentioned. He does not look a day older than when he prescribed for you, Helen, in your yellow flannel night-gown. He had a look of precocious wisdom then, which becomes him better now."

Mittie began to think Helen very stupid, to say nothing of the dazzling Clinton, to whom she had taken particular pains to introduce her, when she suddenly asked her, "How long that very handsome young gentleman was going to remain?"

"You think him handsome, then," cried Mittie, making a veil of the flaxen ringlets of Alice, so that Helen could not see the high color that suffused her face.

"I think he is the handsomest person I ever saw," replied Helen, just as if she were speaking of a beautiful picture or statue; "and yet there is something, I cannot tell what, that I do not exactly like about him."

"You are fastidious," said Mittie, coldly, and the sudden gleam of her eye reminding her of the Mittie of other days, Helen closed her weary lips.

Tho next morning, she sprang from her bed light and early as the sky-lark. All traces of languor, indisposition and fatigue had vanished in the deep, tranquil, refres.h.i.+ng slumbers of the night. She awoke with the joyous consciousness of being at home beneath her father's roof. She was not a boarder, subject to a thousand restraints, necessary but irksome. She was not compelled any more to fas.h.i.+on her movements to the ringing of a bell, nor walk according to the square and compa.s.s. She was free. She could wander in the garden without asking permission. She could _run_ too, without incurring the imputation of rudeness and impropriety. The gyves and manacles of authority had fallen from her bounding limbs, and the joyous and emanc.i.p.ated school-girl sang in the gladness and glee of her heart.

Alice still slept--the door of Mittie's chamber was closed, and every thing was silent in the household, when she flew down stairs, rather than walked, and went forth into the dewy morn. The sun was not yet risen, but there was a deepening splendor of saffron and crimson above the horizon, fit tapestry for the pavilion of a G.o.d. The air was so fresh and balmy, it felt so young and inspiring, Helen could hardly imagine herself more than five years old. Every thing carried her back to the earliest recollections of childhood. There were the swallows flying in and out of their little gothic windows under the beetling barn-eaves; and there were the martins, morning gossips from time immemorial, chattering at the doors of their white paG.o.das, with their bright red roofs and black thresholds. The old England robin, with its plumage of gorgeous scarlet, dashed with jet, swung in its airy nest, suspended from the topmost boughs of the tall elms, and the blue and yellow birds fluttered with warbling throats among the lilac's now flowerless but verdant boughs. Helen hardly knew which way to turn, she was so full of ecstacy. One moment she wished she had the wings of the bird, the next, the petals of the flower, and then again she felt that the soul within her, capable of loving and admiring all these, was worth a thousand times more. The letters carved on the silver bark of the beech arrested her steps. They were new. She had never seen them before, and when she saw the blended ciphers, a perception of the truth dawned upon her understanding. Perhaps there never was a young maiden of sixteen years, who had more singleness and simplicity of heart than Helen. From her shy and timid habits, she had never formed those close intimacies that so often bind accidentally together the artless and the artful. She was aware of the existence of love, but knew nothing of its varying phases. Its language had never been breathed into her ear, and she never dreamed of inspiring it. Could it be that it was love, which had given such a glow and l.u.s.tre to Mittie's face, which had softened the harshness of her manners, and made her apparently accessible to sisterly tenderness?

While she stood, contemplating the wedded initials, in a reverie so deep as to forget where she was, she felt something fall gently on her head, and a shower of fragrance bathed her senses. Turning suddenly round, the first rays of the rising sun glittered on her face, and gilt the flower-crown that rested on her brow. Clinton stood directly behind her, and his countenance wore a very different expression from what it did the preceding evening. And certainly it was difficult to recognize the pale, drooping, spiritless traveler of the previous night, in the bright, beaming, blus.h.i.+ng, shy, wildly-sweet looking fairy of the morning hour.

Helen was not angry, but she was unaffectedly frightened at finding herself in such close proximity with this very oppressively handsome young man; and without pausing to reflect on the silliness and childishness of the act, she flew away as rapidly as a startled bird. It seemed as if all the reminiscences of her childhood pressed home upon her in the s.p.a.ce of a few moments. Just as she had been arrested years before, when fleeing from the snake that invaded her strawberry-bed, so she found herself impeded by a restraining arm; and looking up she beheld her friend, the young doctor, his face radiant with a thousand glad welcomes.

"Oh! I am _so glad_ to see you once again," exclaimed Helen, yielding involuntarily to the embrace, which being one moment withheld, only made her heart throb with double joy.

"My sister, my Helen, my own dear pupil," said Arthur Hazleton, and the rich glow of the morning was not deeper nor brighter than the color that mantled his cheek. "How well and blooming you look! They told me you were ill and could not be disturbed last night. I did not hope to see you so brilliant in health and spirits. And who crowned you so gayly, the fair queen of the morning?"

"I don't know," she cried, taking the chaplet from her head and shaking the dew-drops from its leaves, "and yet I suspect it was Mr. Clinton, who came behind me while I was standing by yonder beech tree."

Arthur's serious, dark eye rested on the young girl with a searching, anxious expression, as Clinton approached and paid the compliments of the morning with more than his wonted gracefulness of manner. He apologized for the freedom he had taken so sportively and naturally, that Helen felt it would be ridiculous in her to a.s.sume a resentment she did not feel, and yielding to her pa.s.sionate admiration for flowers, she wreathed them again round her sun-bright locks.

It was thus the trio approached the house. Mittie saw them from the window, and the keenest pang she had ever known penetrated her heart.

She saw the beech tree shorn of its morning garland, that garland which was blooming triumphantly on her sister's brow. She saw Clinton walking by her side, calling up her smiles and blushes according to his own magnetic will.

She accused Helen of deceit and guile. Her languor and illness the preceding evening was all a.s.sumed to heighten the blooming contrast of the present moment. Her morning ramble and meeting with Clinton were all premeditated, her seeming artlessness the darkest and deepest hypocrisy.

For a few weeks Mittie had revelled in the joy of an awakened nature.

She had reigned alone, with no counter influence to thwart the sudden and luxuriant growth of pa.s.sion. She, alone, young, beautiful and attractive, had been the magnet to youth, beauty and attraction. She had been the centre of an island world of her own, which she had tried to keep as inaccessible to others as the granite coast in the Arabian Nights.

Poor Mittie! The flower of pa.s.sion has ever a dark spot on its petals, a dark, purple spot, not always perceptible in the first unfolding and glory of its bloom; but sooner or later it spreads and scorches, and shrivels up the heart of the blossom.

She tried to control her excited feelings. She was proud, and had a conviction that she would degrade herself by the exhibition of jealousy and envy. She tried to call up a bloom to her pale cheek, and a smile to her quivering lip, but she was no adept in the art of dissimulation, and when she entered the sitting room, Helen was the first to notice her altered countenance. It was fortunate for all present that Alice had seated herself at the piano, at the solicitation of Louis, and commenced a brilliant overture.

Alice had always loved music, but now that she had learned it as an art, in all its perfectness, it had become the one pa.s.sion of her life. She lived in the world of sound, and forgot the midnight that surrounded her. It was impossible to look upon her without feeling the truth, that if G.o.d closes with Bastile bars one avenue of the senses, He opens another with widening gates "on golden hinges moving." Alice trembled with ecstacy at her own exquisite melody, like the nightingale whose soft plumage quivers on its breast as it sings. She would raise her sightless eyes to Heaven, following the upward strain with feelings of the most intense devotion. She called music the wind of the soul, the breath of G.o.d--and said if it had a color it must be _azure_.

One by one they all gathered round the blind songstress. Arthur stood behind her, and Helen saw tears glistening in his eyes. She did not wonder at his emotion, for accustomed as she was to hear her, she never could hear Alice sing without feeling a desire to weep.

"I feel so many wants," she said, "that I never had before."

While Alice was singing, Helen stole softly behind Mittie, and gently put the flowers on her hair.

"I have stolen your roses," she whispered, "but I do not mean to keep them."

Mittie's first impulse was to toss them upon the floor, but something in the eye of Clinton arrested her. She dared not do it. And looking steadfastly downward, outblushed the roses on her brow.

The cloud appeared to have pa.s.sed away, and the family party that surrounded the breakfast table was a gay and happy one.

"I told you," said Mr. Gleason, placing Helen beside him, and smiling affectionately on her gladsome countenance, "that we should have a very different looking girl this morning from our poor, little sick traveler.

All Helen wants is the air of home to revive her. Who would want to see a more rustic looking la.s.sie than she is now?"

"I should like to see how Helen would look now in a yellow flannel robe," said Louis, mischievously, "and whether she will make as great a sensation on her entrance into society as she did when she burst into this room in such an impromptu manner?"

The remembrance of the _yellow flannel robe_, and the eventful evening to which Louis alluded, was a.s.sociated with the mother whom she had never ceased to mourn, and Helen bent her head to hide the tears which gathered into her eyes.

"You are not angry, gentle sister?" said Louis, seeking her downcast face.

"Helen was never angry in her life," cried her father, "it is her only fault that she has not anger enough in her nature for self-preservation."

"Is that true, Helen?" asked the young doctor. "Has your father read your nature aright?"

"No," answered Helen, looking up with an ingenuous smile. "I have felt very angry with you, and judged you very harshly several times. Yet I was most angry with myself for doing what you wished in spite of my vexation and rebellion."

"Yet you believed me right all the time?"

"I believe so. At least you always said so."

Helen conversed with Arthur Hazleton with the same freedom and childishness as when an inmate of his mother's family. She was so completely a child, she could not think of herself as an object of importance in the social circle. She was inexpressibly grateful for kindness, and Arthur Hazleton's kindness had been so constant and so deep, she felt as if her grat.i.tude should be commensurate with the gifts received. It was the moral interest he had manifested in her--the influence he exercised over her mind and heart which she most prized. He was a kind of second conscience to her, and it did not seem possible for her to do any thing which he openly disapproved.

What Mittie could not understand was the playful, unembarra.s.sed manner with which she met the graceful attentions of Clinton, after his fascinations had dispersed her natural shyness and reserve. She neither sought nor avoided him, flattered nor slighted him. She appeared neither dazzled nor charmed. Mittie thought this must be the most consummate art, when it was only the perfection of nature. Because the gla.s.s was so clear, so translucent, she imagined she was the victim of an optical illusion.

There was another thing in Helen, which Mittie believed the most studied policy, and that was the affection and respect she manifested for her step-mother. Nothing could be sweeter or more endearing than the "mother!" which fell from her lips, whenever she addressed her--that name which, had never yet pa.s.sed her own. Mittie had never sought the love of her step-mother. She had rejected it with scorn, and yet she envied Helen the caressing warmth and maternal tenderness which was the natural reward of her own loving nature.

"Poor Miss Thusa!" exclaimed Helen, near the close of the day, "I must go and see her before the sun sets; I know, I am sure she will be glad to see me."

"Supposing we go in a party," said Clinton. "I should like to pay my respects to the original old lady again."

"I should think the rough reception she gave you, would preclude the desire for a second visit," said Mittie.

"Oh! I like to conquer difficulties," he exclaimed. "The greater the obstacles, the greater the triumph."

Perhaps he meant nothing more than met the ear, but Mittie's omnipotent self-love felt wounded. She had been too easy a conquest, whose value was already beginning to lessen.

"Miss Thusa and Helen are such especial friends," she added, without seeming to have heard his remark, "that I should think their first meeting had better be private. I suspect Miss Thusa has manufactured a new set of ghost stories for Helen's peculiar benefit."

"Are you a believer in ghosts?" asked Clinton of Helen. "If so, I envy you."

"Envy me!"

"Yes! There is such a pleasure in credulity. I sigh now over the vanished illusions of my boyhood."