East Angels: A Novel

"How slow you are!" she said, giving his hand a little pull.

"It's a wild country for a blind man," Winthrop answered, continuing to advance with caution. "Please take both hands."

"Let me lead him, Garda," said the Doctor, preferring to join in this child's play rather than have her continue it alone.

But the child's play was over, the bend in the path had been but a short one, and they were now before her "heavenly wall." Winthrop, upon being told to open his eyes – he had perhaps kept them closed longer than was absolutely necessary – found himself standing before a wall of verdure, fifteen feet high, composed of a mass of shining little leaves set closely together in an almost even expanse; this lustrous green was spangled with white flowers widely open, the five petals laid flatly back like a star.

"The Cherokee rose," said Dr. Kirby. He had been greatly vexed by Garda's freak of taking Winthrop's hands and pulling him along, and as he added, explanatorily, "the wild white rose of the South," he glanced at him to see how he, as a northerner and stranger, regarded it.

But the stranger and northerner was gazing at the southern flowers with an interest which did not appear to depend at all upon the southern girl who had brought him thither.

Garda remained but a moment; while they were looking at the roses she walked slowly on, following her heavenly wall.

"She is but a child," said the Doctor, looking after her. "We have perhaps kept her one too long."

"On the contrary, that is her charm," replied Winthrop. "How old is she?"

"Barely sixteen. If her father had lived, it would perhaps have been better for her; she would have had in that case, probably, more seriousness – a little more. Mistress Thorne's ideas concerning the training of children are admirable, most admirable; but they presuppose a certain kind of child, and Garda wasn't that kind at all; I may say, indeed, the contrary. Mistress Thorne has therefore found herself at fault now and then, her precedents have failed her; she has been met by perplexities, sometimes I have even thought her submerged in them and floundering – if I may use such an expression of the attitude of a cultured lady. The truth is, her perceptions have been to blame."

"Yet I have thought her perceptions unusually keen," said Winthrop.

"So they are, so they are; but they all advance between certain lines, they are narrow. Understand me, however – I would not have them wider; I was not wishing that, I was only wishing that poor Edgar, the father, could have lived ten years longer. Too wide a perception, sir, in a woman, a perception of things in general – general views in short – I regard as an open door to immorality; women so endowed are sure to go wrong – as witness Aspasia. It was a beautiful provision of nature that made the feminine perceptions, as a general rule, so limited, so confined to details, to the opinions and beliefs of their own families and neighborhoods; in this restricted view lies all their safety."

"And ours?" suggested Winthrop.

"Ah, you belong to the new school of thought, I perceive," observed the Doctor, stroking his smoothly shaven chin with his plump gloved hand.

The two men had begun to walk onward again, following their guide who was now at the end of the rose wall. Here she disappeared; when they reached the spot they found that she had taken a path which turned northward along a little ridge – a path bordered on each side by stiff Spanish-bayonets.

"Garda's education, however, has been, on the whole, good," said the Doctor, as they too turned into this aisle. "Mistress Thorne, who was herself an instructress of youth before her marriage, has been her teacher in English branches; Spanish, of course, she learned from the Old Madam; my sister Pamela (whom I had the great misfortune to lose a little over a year ago) gave her lessons in embroidery, general deportment, and the rudiments of French. As regards any knowledge of the world, however, the child has lived in complete ignorance; we have thought it better so, while things remain as they are. My own advice has decidedly been that until she could enter the right society, the society of the city of Charleston, for instance – it was better that she should see none at all; she has therefore lived, and still continues to live, the life, as I may well call it, of a novice or nun."

"The young gentleman who has just joined her is then, possibly, a monk?" observed Winthrop.

The Doctor was near-sighted, and not at all fond of his spectacles; with his bright eyes and quickly turning glance, it humiliated him to be obliged to take out and put on these cumbrous aids to vision. On this occasion, however, he did it with more alacrity than was usual with him. "Ah," he said, when he had made out the two figures in front, "it is only young Torres, a boy from the next plantation."

"A well-grown boy," commented the northerner.

"A mere stripling – a mere stripling of nineteen. He has but lately come out from Spain (a Cuban by birth, but was sent over there to be educated), and he cannot speak one word of English, sir – not one word."

"I believe Miss Thorne speaks Spanish, doesn't she?" remarked Winthrop.

CHAPTER II

The Doctor admitted that Garda could converse in Spanish. He suggested that they should walk on and join her; joining her, of course, meant joining Torres. The Cuban proved to be a dark-skinned youth, with dull black eyes, a thin face, and black hair, closely cut, that stood up in straight thickness all over his head, defying parting. He was tall, gaunt, with a great want of breadth in the long expanse of his person; he was deliberate in all his motions; ungainly. Yet he could not have been described as insignificant exactly; a certain deep reticent consciousness of his own importance, which was visible in every one of his slow, stiff movements, in every glance of his dull, reserved eyes, saved him from that. He bowed profoundly when introduced to the northerner, but said nothing. He did not speak after the others came up. When Garda addressed him, he contented himself with another bow.

They all walked on together, and after some minutes the little ridge, winding with its sentinel bayonets across old fields, brought them to the main avenue of the place. This old road, broad as it was, was completely overarched by the great live-oaks which bordered it on each side; the boughs rose high in the air, met, interlaced, and passed on, each stretching completely over the centre of the roadway and curving downward on the opposite side; looking east and looking west was like looking through a Gothic aisle, vaulted in gray-green. The little party entered this avenue; Garda, after a few moments, again separated herself from Winthrop and Dr. Kirby, and walked on in advance with Torres. The Doctor looked after them, discomfited.

"We should have spoken Spanish," said Winthrop, smiling.

"I do not know a word of the language!" declared the Doctor, with something of the exasperation of fatigue in his voice.

For the Doctor was not in the habit of walking, and he did not like to walk; the plump convexes of his comfortable person formed, indeed, rather too heavy a weight for his small feet in their little boots. But he was far too devoted a family friend to be turned back from obvious duty by the mere trifle of physical fatigue; he therefore waved his hand towards the live-oaks, and (keeping one eye well upon Garda and her companion in front) resumed with grace his descriptive discourse. "These majestic old trees, Mr. Winthrop, were set out to adorn the main avenue of the place, leading from the river landing up to the mansion-house. You will find a few of these old avenues in this neighborhood; but far finer ones – the finest in the world – at the old places on the Ashley and Cooper rivers, near the city of Charleston."

"But there are no trees near the house," said Winthrop; "I noticed that particularly."

"The road goes to the door, the trees stop at the edge of the open space; that space was left, as you have probably divined, as a protection against surprises by Indians."

The younger man laughed. "I confess I was thinking more of the traditional Spanish jealousy than of Indians. You are right, of course; I must not allow my fancies, which are, after all, rather operatic in their origin, to lead me astray down here."

"You will find, I think, very little that is operatic among us," said Kirby, a trace of sombreness making itself felt for the first time through the courteous optimism of his tone. Truly there had been little that was operatic in their life at the South for some years past.

"I don't know," said Winthrop. "Isn't that rather an operatic personage who has just stopped Miss Thorne? The Tenor himself, I should say."

The spectacles were safely in their case, and back in the Doctor's pocket. But he now made haste to take them out a second time, he knew of no Tenors in Gracias. When he had adjusted them, "It's only Manuel Ruiz," he said, with both relief and vexation in his tone. He was relieved that it was only Manuel, but vexed that he should have been led, even for a moment, to suppose that it might be some one else, some one who was objectionable (as though objectionable persons could penetrate into their society!); and he asked himself inwardly what the deuce this northerner meant by calling their arrangement of their land "operatic," and their young gentlemen "Tenors." "Manuel Ruiz is the son of an old friend of ours; their place is on Patricio, opposite," he said, frigidly. "The Ruiz family were almost as well known here in the old Spanish days as the Dueros."

He had no time for more, for, as Garda had stopped, they now came up with the little party in front.

Manuel Ruiz was older than Torres. Manuel was twenty-one. He was a tall, graceful youth, with a mobile face, eloquent dark eyes, and a manner adorned with much gesture and animation. He undoubtedly cherished an excellent opinion of Manuel Ruiz; but undoubtedly also there was good ground for that opinion, Manuel Ruiz being a remarkably handsome young man. That Winthrop should have called him operatic was perhaps inevitable. He wore a short black cloak, an end of which was tossed over one shoulder after the approved manner of the operatic young gentleman when about to begin, under the balcony of his lady-love, a serenade; on his head was a picturesque sombrero, and he carried, or rather flourished, a slender cane, which might have been a rapier; these properties, together with his meridional eyes, his gestures, and the slight tendency to attitude visible in his graceful movements, made him much like the ideal young Tenor of the Italian stage, as he comes down to the foot-lights to sing in deepest confidence, to the sympathetic audience, of his loves and his woes.

That the ideal young Tenor has often encountered wide-spreading admiration, no one would venture to deny. Still, there have been, now and then, those among his audiences who have not altogether shared this feeling. They have generally been men; not infrequently they have been men of a somewhat lighter complexion, with visual orbs paler, perhaps, and not so expressive; a grace in attitude less evident. Evert Winthrop cared nothing for Tenors, real or imitative. But he was a man made with more pretensions to strength than to sinuousness; he had no gestures; his complexion, where not bronzed by exposure, was fair; his eyes were light. They were gray eyes, with, for the most part, a calm expression. But they easily became keen, and they could, upon occasion, become stern. He opposed a short, thick, brown beard to Manuel's pointed mustache, and thick, straight hair, closely cut, of the true American brown, to the little luxuriant rings, blue-black in color, short also, but curling in spite of shortness, which the breeze stirred slightly on the head of the handsome young Floridian as he stood, sombrero in hand, beside Garda Thorne.

Manuel was not another Torres; he was an American, and spoke English perfectly. Upon this occasion, after his introduction, he offered to the northerner with courtesy several well-turned sentences as the beginning of an acquaintance, and then they all walked on together up the old road.

"I believe we have now finished our little tour, Miss Garda, have we not?" said the Doctor, in a cheerful voice. Though very tired, he was walking onward with his usual trim step, his toes well turned out, his shoulders thrown back, his head erect, but having no perception of the fact (plump men never have) that, as seen from behind, his round person appeared to be projected forward into space as he walked with something of an overweight in front, and his little legs and feet to have been set on rather too far back to balance this weight properly, so that there seemed to be always some slight danger of an overthrow.

"Oh no," answered Garda; "I have promised to take Mr. Winthrop over the entire place, and we have still the orange walk, the rose garden, the edge of the swamp, the wild cattle, and the crane."

"I doubt whether Mr. Wintup will find much to amuse him in the wild cattle," remarked Manuel, laughing.

It was certainly a slight offence: Manuel had never been north, and did not know the name; in addition, owing to the mixture of races, much liberty of pronunciation was allowed in Gracias, Manuel himself seldom hearing his own name in proper form, the Spanish names of Florida, like the Huguenot names of South Carolina, having undergone more than one metamorphosis on New World shores. Winthrop walked on without replying, he seemed not to have heard the remark.

"You do want to see the wild cattle, don't you, Mr. Winthrop?" said Garda. "They're beautiful – in glimpses."

"If – ah – somebody should ride one of them – in glimpses – it might be entertaining," answered Winthrop. "Perhaps one of these young gentlemen would favor us?"

Garda's laugh pealed forth; Manuel looked angry, Torres watched the scene, but prudently gave no smile to what he did not understand. Even the Doctor joined in Garda's laugh.

"What in the world are you thinking of?" he said to Winthrop. "Bull-fighting? I am afraid we shall not be able to gratify you in that way just now."

At this moment, round a bend in the road, appeared the small figure of Mrs. Thorne; she was advancing towards them, accompanied by a gentleman in clerical attire.

"Here is mamma, with Mr. Moore," said Garda. She left the others, and went across to Winthrop. "The whole four," she murmured; "my four persons about here."

"So I supposed," Winthrop answered, in the same tone.

The two parties now met, and it was decided that the wild cattle and the swamp should be postponed for the present, and that they would all go together to the rose-garden, where, at this hour, Carlos Mateo was generally to be found disporting himself. Garda explained that he was disporting himself with the roses – he was very fond of roses, he was often observed gazing with fixed interest at unclosing buds. When they were fully opened, he ate them; this, however, was not gluttony, but appreciation; it was his only way of showing his admiration, and a very expressive one, Garda thought.

"Remarkably," observed the Doctor. "Captain Cook was of the same opinion."