The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866

"Can you paint?"

"A little. Cannot you?"

"No; I can't do anything."

"Shall we make a bargain, then?" I ventured to say, as she looked and seemed so much like the poor baby the Doctor had called her. "We will each of us try to do something for the other. If I succeed in painting your flowers, and you succeed in following your directions, you shall have the picture."

She blushed deeply, looked half ashamed and half gratified, but altogether more alive than she had done till now, and finally managed to stammer out: "It's too good an offer—too kind—to refuse; but it's more than I deserve, a great deal. So I'll try to mind Dr. Physick, to please you; and then—if you liked to give me the picture, I should prize it very much."

I nodded, laughed, went home, put the flowers in water on Julia's work-table, read to her, and went into the heart of the town to do some shopping for her. After our early dinner, I said I was a little tired; and she drove with her husband. I took out my paper, brushes, and palette, set Nelly's nosegay in a becoming light, and began to rub my paints; when wheels and hoofs came near and stopped, and presently the door-bell rang.

"Are the ladies at home?" asked a smooth, silvery, feminine voice, with a peculiarly neat, but unaffected enunciation.

"No'm, he ain't," returned the portress, mechanically; "an' he's druv Missis out, too. Here's the slate; or Miss Kitty could take a message, I s'pose, without she's went out lately ago."

"Take this card," resumed the first voice, "if you please, to Miss Morne, and say that, if she is not engaged, I should be glad to see her."

I rose in some confusion, pushed my little table into the darkest corner of the room, received the white card from Rosanna's pink paw, in which it lay like cream amidst five half-ripe Hovey's seedlings, read "Miss Dudley" upon it, told Rosanna to ask her to please to walk in, and took up my position just within the door, in a state of some palpitation.

In another minute a gray-haired, rather tall and slight, and very well-made lady, with delicate, regular, spirited features, was before me, telling me with a peculiar kind of earnest cordiality, and a sympathy that expressed itself fully in tones, though not in words, that she could not content herself with writing her acknowledgments to me; she must come and see me herself, to tell me how pleased and gratified and touched she was by the offering that I had sent her.

I felt myself too much moved by the associations connected with it, and called up by her, to answer readily; and she, as if conjecturing this, led the conversation gently off, at first to painting in general, and afterwards, as I grew more at my ease with her, back again, with an appearance of genuine interest, to mine.

"There was one little shell," said she, "in your native group, which was quite new to me, and—which is more remarkable—to my brother."

"Was it like this?" asked I, taking a specimen from my paint-box.

"Precisely. We felt sure the portrait must be true to life, because all its companions were such faithful likenesses; and then it had itself such an honest, genuine, individual look. But is it to be found on this coast?"

"Yes. If Mr. Dudley has not met with it, it must no doubt be very rare; but, near the same spot always, just beyond Cedar Point, under the rocks in the little cove that lies farthest to the south, I have found it more than once."

"You must be quite an enthusiast in natural history. Have you studied it long?"

"No, ma'am, never. I mean," continued I, answering her look of surprise, "never from books. I believe I should enjoy it more than any other study; but I know so little yet of other things, and there are so many other things that one needs more to know." I felt my cheeks burn; for no sooner was I helplessly launched into this speech, than I perceived what an awkward one it was to make to the sister of an eminent naturalist. Notwithstanding, as I thought it was true, I could not take it back.

"I agree with you entirely," said she with a reassuring smile. "Such studies are fitted much more for the coping-stones than the foundation-stones of a good education. But then, if you will not think me too inquisitive, pray let me ask you one thing more; and that is, where and how you came by all the information that that group showed."

"Only by playing on the beaches and in the woods when I was a child. My mother did not like to keep me in, because she thought that that had impaired my sister"—here my voice would break, but I would go on,—Fanny's dear name should not die out of memory while I lived—"my sister Fanny's health; but they were afraid to let me run quite wild, and so she—my sister—led me out often wherever I wished to go, and helped me fill a little pasteboard museum which she made for me."

Miss Dudley's large, soft, trusty brown eyes met mine tenderly, as she said: "These things must indeed possess a more than common interest for you then. Have you that museum now?"

"No, ma'am; I sometimes wish I had. I gave it away when I went to Greenville to keep school," I added; not that I supposed it would matter anything to her, but that I thought it just as well to make sure of her understanding my position in life.

"That is so natural to us all,—to part with these little relics when we are still very young, and then to wish them back again before we are much older! You would smile to see a little museum that I keep for my brother,—not his scientific collection, which I hope some day to have the pleasure of showing you,—but 'an olla podrida in an ancestral wardrobe,' as my little Paul calls it, of his and my two little nieces' first baby-shoes, rattles, corals, and bells, wooden horses, primers, picture-books, and so forth, down to the cups and balls, and copy-books, which they have cast off within a month or two, each labelled with the owner's name, and the date of deposit. No year goes by without leaving behind some memento of each of them, or even without my laying aside there some trifling articles of dress that they have worn. It is a fancy of my brother's. He says that others may claim their after-years, but their childhood is his own,—all of it that is not mine,—and he must keep it for himself, and for them when they come back to visit him in his old age. It is a birthday treat to them already to take the key from my split-ring, and look together over the half-forgotten things. But there is one thing there—a manuscript on the topmost shelf—which they do not know about, but which we take out and laugh over sometimes when they are all in bed,—a record that I have kept of all the most diverting things which we have heard them say, ever since they began to learn to talk." She checked herself,—I fancied because she remembered that, in her enthusiasm about the children, she had forgotten to what a new acquaintance she was speaking. She rose to take leave, and resumed, shaking hands with me cordially,—she had, I observed, a remarkably cordial and pleasant, earnest way of shaking hands,—"But upon the subject of my museum, Miss Morne, I need hardly beg you to be more discreet than I, and not to mention a domestic trifle of so little general interest."

I could only bow, but longed, as I attended her to the door, to assure her of the particular interest which I had already begun to feel in every trifle which belonged to her.

Her little barouche, and long-tailed, dark-gray ponies, vanished with her down the road; and I was left walking up and down the room. The "kind o' poor-lookin', pale-lookin', queer-lookin' lady," that Miss Mehitable had described,—was this she? How are we ever to know people by descriptions, when the same person produces one impression on one mind and quite another on another,—nay, may have one set of inherent qualities brought out by contact with one character, and quite another set by contact with another character? Have I described Miss Dudley? No,—and I cannot. She was both unique and indescribable.

Most people impress us more, perhaps, by their outward and physical, than by their inward and psychical life. On a first interview with them, especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or uncouthness of manner. These are the common people, whether ladies and gentlemen, or simple men and women. There are, however, others, in all ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we chiefly feel, when they have come in our way, that a spirit has passed by,—that a new life has been brought in contact with our own life.

Of these was Miss Dudley. But because, ever since the day I write of, I have loved to think of her, and because I know that, when I rejoin her, I shall leave some behind me who will still love, and have a right to hear of her, I will indulge myself in saying something more. That something shall be what I said to myself then, as I promenaded to and fro,—that bodily exercise was one of my safety-valves in those times,—in the endeavor to work off so much of my superfluous animation as to be in a state to sit down and paint again; and thus I spake: "I must have had before me an uncommonly fine specimen of a class whose existence I have conjectured before, but by no means including all the wealthy, who wear their purple and fine linen both gracefully and graciously, fare not more sumptuously than temperately every day, and do a great deal, not only directly by their ready beneficence, but indirectly by their sunny benignity, to light up the gloomy world of Lazarus." And though I was but a budding theorist in human nature, and often made mistakes before and afterwards, I never found myself mistaken there.

When Julia came in an hour after, she said to me, as I looked up from my roses and my rose-colored revery, "Katy, you look like an inspired sibyl! What has come over you?"

"Miss Dudley," said I.

"What! has she really—been here? How I wish I had seen her! What did she wear?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. Wait, I will try. O yes! it comes back to me;—a silver-gray shot poplin, or silk, made full, but, I think, quite plain; a large red Cashmere shawl, rather more crimson and less scarlet than they usually are,—it glowed gloriously out from the gray;—then some kind of a thin, gray bonnet, with large gray and crimson crape and velvet flowers in it,—hibiscus or passion-flowers, or really I don't know what,—that seemed just to marry the dress to the shawl."

"Pretty well for you, Katy! Rather heavy for the season; but I suppose she was afraid of this east wind. You liked her, then?"

"Very much."

"So does the Doctor, always. Some people call her proud; but he says, that is only their way of expressing their view of the fact that she has a good deal to make her so, and more than enough to make them so, if they had it instead of her."

"I dare say. I should not think she was a person to take liberties with; but she was very sweet and kind to me."

"You are not a person to take liberties with anybody, nor to have any taken with you; and so I dare say she recognized a kindred spirit."

"Now, Julia, by your paying me such a compliment as that, I am certain you must want to have your bonnet taken up stairs for you; and so you shall."

"Ah! now I shall always know what string to pull when I wish to put a skilful attendant in motion. Phil would take my bonnet up stairs for me in a moment, if I bade him; but when I went up myself after it, it would be sure to stare me in the face, topsy-turvy, dumped bolt upright on the feather."

CHAPTER VI

In another fortnight we had another Physick in the family. His papa called him "a little dose," and his mamma a "pill," in contradistinction to her previous "Phil." Proving peaceful and reflective, he also soon earned for himself the title of "the infant Philosopher."

Mrs. Physick did not like the society of Mrs. Rocket, the nurse, whom the Doctor had chosen "on account of the absence of her conversational powers." Mrs. Physick was accordingly always trying to get me into her chamber to sit with her. Mrs. Rocket accordingly did not like me, and was always trying to get me out. Between these two contending powers above, and the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker below, I was neither solitary nor idle.

There was much to do, moreover, in answering the kind inquiries, and receiving and disposing of the whips, jellies, blanc-mangers, and other indigestible delicacies, sent in by anxious friends. These the grateful Doctor pronounced, in the privacy of domestic life, "poison for the patient, but not quite so bad for the attendants." Accordingly, we ate them together sociably, at almost every meal; after which we went up stairs and told "the patient" how good they were, while I presented her gruel, and he would ask her, with an earnest air of judicial and dispassionate investigation, whether that was not "nice." This conduct she declared most unfeeling and ungrateful in us both, and bound herself by many a vow to make us pay for it as soon as she had the ordering of our dinners again. So we all made merry together over the little cradle that was called "the pill-box." Its small tenant was from the first, as I have hinted, a virtuous child, cried little, slept much, and when awake rewarded our attentions by making such preposterous faces as rendered it a most grateful task to watch him. I soon, therefore, became much attached to him; and I enjoyed one at least of the chief elements of the happiness of the individual,—the happiness of those among whom the individual lives.

In the mean time my guardian sometimes discussed with me some other things besides the jellies. For instance, "Katy," said he at one of our tête-à-tête dinners, "you walk out every day, I suppose; or, at least, you ought. I wish you would call now and then, and take Nelly Fader with you. She can hardly be a very entertaining companion to you, I own, but it would be a charity; and, for your mother's daughter, that's enough."

"Certainly I will. By the way, speaking of her, what did you mean by what you said that day about female physicians?"

"I meant what I said," returned he, bluntly. "I meant just what I said. We need them, and we shall have them. It is an experiment that has got to be tried, and will be probably, within your lifetime, if not in mine. I don't want you to be one of them, though. You ought to be as much cleverer than yourself as you are now than Nelly Fader, in order to carry it through; and even then it might be the carrying of a cross through life,—a grievous, in the view of most men perhaps an ignominious cross, to the pioneers. Especially it will be so, if other good but uninformed and thoughtless women are going to cry out upon it, as you and Julia did the other day. Whether the experiment is to succeed or not depends, under Providence, very much on you and such as you. But if that sort of outcry is to be raised, it will probably have the effect of keeping out of the profession such women as, from their integrity, ability, culture, and breeding, could be ornaments to it, and leave us shallow and low-minded smatterers, that I wouldn't trust with the life of a canary-bird,—who will ask which is likely to be the most lucrative calling, medicine or millinery, and take their choice accordingly,—and, for want of better, poor dupes will employ them. If you can't bear female practitioners, you'll have to bear female quacktitioners." He paused and looked at me.

I knew how jealous he always was for the honor of his craft. He did not often come so near giving me a scolding; and I began to be afraid I might deserve one, though I could not see how. "I am sorry," said I; "I did not mean—I did not think—I did not know—"

"Precisely, kitten on the hearth," returned he, good-humoredly; "and as you are sorry, and as you are besides usually rather less unmeaning and unthinking and unknowing than most other chits of your age, I forgive you. Learn to think and know before you hiss or purr, and you will be wiser than most chits of any age or sex. But now, consider: you, such as you are, yourself little more than a child, have, in two or three short visits, roused, interested, and done that other poor child more good, and, I strongly suspect, inspired her with more confidence, than I—I trust as upright a person and as sincere a well-wisher—have been able to do in a score. And this you have been able to do, in great part, simply by virtue of your womanhood. It comes more natural to her, no doubt, to talk with you. Nelly's is a case in point, though by no manner of means so strong a case as others that I have in my mind. Now imagine another woman with your good-will and natural tact, vivacity, and sympathy; multiply these by double your age and intellect, and again by triple your experience and information; calculate from these data her powers of doing good in such cases, and then see whether, in helping to brand her and fetter her in the exercise of such powers, you may not 'haply be found to fight against God.'"

"I will not speak so again,—at least before I think and know. You have forgiven me. Now appoint me my penance."

"Do what more you can for Nelly, then. I can do little or nothing. In fact, my visits seem to embarrass and agitate her so much, that I am sometimes afraid they hurt her more than they help her. She suffers more in mind than body, I suspect. How, she will not tell me, and perhaps she cannot. It may be that she is sick from sorrow; or, on the other hand, her sorrow may be only an illusion of her sickness. It is all, from first to last, a mere miserable groping and working in the dark. In the mean time her constitution and character are forming for life. It is enough to make one's heart ache to look at the poor baby, and think what an unsatisfactory, profitless, miserable life that may be. I need not remind you, Katy, that all this is a little piece of Freemasonry between ourselves. You are one of the exceptional and abnormal human people before whom one can safely think aloud."

I went to Nelly that very afternoon, with some curiosity and with no unwillingness. I had already begun to like her better than the Doctor did, as I began to know her better. At first I had been somewhat at a loss as to her real disposition, between the constant civility of her manners, and the occasional sullenness of her manner. I was fast making up my mind that the civility was genuine; the sullenness, apparent only, the result of extreme shyness, despondency, and languor. As fast as she became more and more at her ease with me, just so fast did she become more and more engaging. She was chaotic enough, and like a different creature on different days; but I found her, though sometimes very childish, often sweet and never sour, unvaryingly patient towards her very trying aunt, and only too subservient to her.