East Angels: A Novel

"As a last wish?" said the Doctor, turning his profile towards her with his head on one side, in his canary-bird way.

"Yes. I see that you have begun upon the history of the Spaniards in Florida, and as I shall certainly fall asleep, I think I ought to protect, as far as possible beforehand, my own especial ancestors," she answered, still somnolent; "they always have that effect upon me – the Spaniards in Florida." And as she slowly pronounced these last words the long lashes drooped over her eyes, she let her head fall back against the block behind her, and was apparently lost in dreams.

In this seeming slumber she made a lovely picture. But its chief charm to Evert Winthrop lay in the fact that it had in it so much more of the sportiveness of the child than of the consciousness of the woman. "I am interested in the old Spaniards, I confess," he said, "but not to the extent of allowing them to put you to sleep in this fashion. We will leave them where they are for the present (of course Elysium), and ask you to take us to the crane; his powers of entertainment are evidently greater than our own." And he offered his hand as if to assist her to rise.

"I am not quite gone yet," replied Garda, laughing, as she rose without accepting it. "But we must take things in their regular order, the magnolias come next; the crane, as our greatest attraction, is kept for the last." And she led the way along a path which brought them to a grove of sweet-gum-trees; the delicately cut leaves did not make a thick foliage, but adorned the boughs with lightness, each one visible on its slender stalk; the branches were tenanted by a multitude of little birds, whose continuous carols kept the air filled with a shower of fine small notes.

"How they sing!" said Winthrop. "I am amazed at myself for never having been in Florida before. The Suwannee River can't be far from here.

"'’Way down upon de Suwannee River,
Far, far away – '

I must confess that Nilsson's singing it is the most I know about it."

"Nilsson!" said Garda, envyingly.

"You, sir, are too young, unfortunately too young, to remember the incomparable Malibran," said Dr. Kirby. "Ah! there was a voice!" And with recollections too rich for utterance, he shook his head several times, and silently waved his hand.

"Oh, when shall I hear something or somebody?" said Garda.

"We shall accomplish it, we shall accomplish it yet, my dear child," said the Doctor, coming briskly back to the present in her behalf. "Malibran is gone. Her place can never be filled. But I hope that you too may cross the seas some day, and find, if not the atmosphere of the grand style, which was hers and perished with her, at least an atmosphere more enlarging than this. And there will be other associations open to you in those countries besides the musical – associations in the highest degree interesting; you can pay a visit, for instance, to the scenes described in the engaging pages of Fanny Burney, incomparably the greatest, and I fear, from the long dearth which has followed her, the last of female novelists. For who is there since her day worthy to hold a descriptive pen, and what has been written that is worth our reading? With the exception of some few things by two or three ladies of South Carolina, which I have had the privilege of seeing, and which exist, I regret to say, only in manuscript as yet, I know of nothing – no one."

Winthrop glanced at Garda to see if her face would show merriment over the proposed literary pilgrimage. But no, the young girl accepted Miss Burney calmly; she had heard the Doctor declaim on the subject all her life, and was accustomed to think of the lady as a celebrated historical character, as school-boys think of Helen of Troy.

Beyond the grove, they came to the Levels. Great trees rose here, extending their straight boughs outward as far as they could reach, touching nothing but the golden air. For each stood alone, no neighbor near; each was a king. Black on the ground beneath lay the round mass of shadow they cast. Above, among the dense, dark foliage, shone out occasional spots of a lighter green; and this was the mistletoe. Besides these monarchs there were sinuous lines of verdure, eight and ten feet in height, wandering with grace over the plain. Most of the space, however, was free – wide, sunny glades open to the sky. The arrangement of the whole, of the great single trees, the lines of lower verdure, and the sunny glades, was as beautiful as though Art had planned and Time had perfected the work. Time's touch was there, but Art had had nothing to do with it. Each tree had risen from the ground where it and Nature pleased; birds, perhaps, with dropped seeds, had been the first planters of the lower growths. Yet it was not primeval; Winthrop, well used to primeval things, and liking them (to gratify the liking he had made more than one journey to the remoter parts of the great West), detected this at once. Open and free as the Levels were, he could yet see, as he walked onward, the signs of a former cultivation antecedent to all this soft, wild leisure. His eye could trace, by their line of fresher green, the course of the old drains crossing regularly from east to west; the large trees were sometimes growing from furrows which had been made by the plough before their first tiny twin leaves had sprouted from the acorn which had fallen there. "How stationary things are here!" he said, half admiringly. He was thinking of the ceaseless round of change and improvement which went on, year after year, on the northern farms he knew, of the thrift which turned every inch of the land to account, and made it do each season its full share. The thrift, the constant change and improvement, were best, of course; Winthrop was a warm believer in the splendid industries of the great republic to which he belonged; personally, too, there was nothing of the idler in his temperament. Still, looked at in another way, the American creed for the moment dormant, there was something delightfully restful in the indolence of these old fields, lying asleep in the sunshine with the low furrows of a hundred years before stretching undisturbed across them. Here was no dread, no eager speed before the winter. It was, in truth, the absence of that icy task-master which gave to all the lovely land its appearance of dreaming leisure. Growing could begin at any time; why, then, make haste?

"All this ground was once under cultivation," said the Doctor. "The first Edgar Thorne (your great-grandfather, Garda) I conjecture to have been a man of energy, who improved the methods of the Dueros; these Levels probably had a very different aspect a hundred years ago."

"A hundred years ago – yes, that was the time to have lived," said Garda. "I wish I could have lived a hundred years ago!"

"I don't know what we can do," said Winthrop. "Perhaps Dr. Kirby would undertake for a while the stately manners of your Spanish ancestors; I could attempt, humbly, those of the British colonist; I haven't the high-collared coat of the period, but I would do my best with the high-collared language which has been preserved in literature. Pray take my arm, and let me try."

Garda, looking merrily at the Doctor, accepted it.

"Arms were not taken in those days," said the Doctor, stiffly. "Ladies were led, delicately led, by the tips of their fingers." He was not pleased with Garda's ready acceptance; but they had kept her a child, and she did not know. He flattered himself that it would be an easy matter to bring about a withdrawal of that too freely accorded hand from the northerner's arm; he, Reginald Kirby, man of the world and noted for his tact, would be able to accomplish it. In the mean while, the hand remained where it was.

Beyond the Levels they came to the edge of a bank. Below, the ground descended sharply, and at some distance forward on the lower plateau rose the great magnolias, lifting their magnificent glossy foliage high in the air. "The Magnolia Grandiflora," said the Doctor, as if introducing them. "You no doubt feel an interest in these characteristically southern trees, Mr. Winthrop, and if you will walk down there and stand under them for a moment – the ground is too wet for your little shoes, Garda – you will obtain a very good idea of their manner of growth."

Miss Thorne made no objection to this suggestion. But neither did she withdraw her hand from Winthrop's arm.

"I can see them perfectly from here," answered that gentleman. "They are like tremendous camellias."

"When they are in bloom, and all the sweet-bays too, it is superb," said Garda; "then is the time to come here, the perfume is enchanting."

"Too dense," said the Doctor, shaking his head disapprovingly; "it's fairly intoxicating."

"That is what I mean," Garda responded. "It's as near as I can come to it, you know; I have always thought I should love to be intoxicated."

"What is your idea of it?" said Winthrop, speaking immediately, in order to prevent the Doctor from speaking; for he saw that this gentleman was gazing at Garda with amazement, and divined the solemnity his words would assume after he should have got his breath back.

"I hardly know how to describe my idea," Garda was answering. "It's a delicious forgetting of everything that is tiresome, an enthusiasm that makes you feel as if you could do anything – that takes you way above stupid people. Stupid people are worse than thieves."

"You describe the intoxication, or rather, to give it a better name, the inspiration of genius," said Winthrop; "all artists feel this inspiration at times – musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, all who have in them a spark, great or small, of the creative fire; even I, when with such persons – as by good fortune I have been once or twice – have been able to comprehend a little of it, have caught, by reflection at least, a tinge of its glow."

"Oh, if you have felt it, it is not at all what I mean," answered Garda, with one of her sudden laughs. She drew her hand from his arm, and walked down the slope across the lower level towards the magnolias.

As soon as her back was turned, Dr. Kirby tapped Winthrop on the back impressively, and raising himself on tiptoe, spoke in his ear. "She has never, sir, been near – I may say, indeed, that she has never seen– an intoxicated person in her life." He then came down to earth again, and folding his arms, surveyed the northerner challengingly.

"Of course I understood that," Winthrop answered.

When Garda reached the dark shade under the great trees she paused and turned. Winthrop had followed her. She gave him a bright smile as he joined her. "I wanted to see if you would come," she said, with her usual frankness.

"Of course I came; what did you suppose I would do?"

"I did not know, that was what I wanted to find out. You are so different, I should never know."

"Different from whom? From your four persons about here? I assure you that I am not different, I have no such pretension; your four are different, perhaps, but I am like five thousand, fifty thousand, others – as you will see for yourself when you come north."

"I don't believe it," said Garda, beginning to retrace her steps. She looked at him reflectively, then added, "I don't believe they are like you."

"What is it in me that you dislike so much?"

"Oh, I haven't thought whether I dislike it or not," responded Garda, with what he called in his own mind her sweet indifference. "What I meant was simply that I do not believe there are fifty thousand, or five thousand, or even five hundred other men, who are as cold as you are."

"Do I strike you in that way?"

"Yes; but of course you cannot help it, it is probably a part of your nature – this coldness," said the girl, excusingly. "It was that which made me say that you could never have felt the feeling I was trying to describe, you know – intoxication; it needs a certain sort of temperament; I have it, but you haven't."

"I see you are an observer," said her companion, inwardly smiling, but preserving a grave face.

"Yes," responded Garda, serenely, "I observe a great deal; it helps to pass the time."

"You have opportunities for exercising the talent?"

"Plenty."

"The four persons about here?"

Garda's laugh rippled forth again. "My poor four – how you make sport of them! But I should have said five, because there is the crane, and he is the wisest of all; he is wiser than any one I know, and more systematic, he is more systematic even than you are, which is saying a great deal. His name is Carlos Mateo, and you must be careful not to laugh at him when he dances, for a laugh hurts his feelings dreadfully. His feelings are very deep; you might not think so from a first glance, but that will be because you have not looked deep into his eyes – taken him round the neck and peered in. He has a great deal of expression; you have none at all – what has become of it? Did you never have any, or have you worn it all out? Perhaps you keep it for great occasions. But there will be no great occasions here."

"No, great occasions are at the North, where they are engaged in climbing mountains, walking on frozen lakes, wearing diamonds, and attending the halls of Congress," Winthrop answered.

Dr. Kirby was waiting for them on the bank, he had not stained his brightly polished little boots with the damp earth of the lower level. He had surveyed with inward disfavor the thick-soled walking shoes of the northerner, and the rough material of his gray clothes. The northerner's gloves were carelessly rolled together in his pocket, but the Doctor's old pair were on.

Garda led the way westward along the bank. After they had proceeded some distance, in single file owing to the narrowness of the path, she suddenly left her place, and, passing the Doctor, took Winthrop's hand in hers. "Close your eyes," she commanded; "I am going to lead you to a heavenly wall."

Winthrop obeyed; but retarded his steps.