East Angels: A Novel

The live-oak avenue brought them to the open space which surrounded the house; crossing this space, they took a path that came up to its border from the opposite direction. This second avenue was a green arched walk, whose roof of leaves seemed, as one looked down it, sure to touch the head; but it never did, it was an illusion produced by the stretching vista of the long aisle. The same illusion made the opposite entrance at the far end – a half-circle of yellow light shining in from outside – seem so low, so near the ground, that one would inevitably be forced to creep through it on one's hands and knees when one had reached it, there would be no other way. This, again, was an illusion, the aisle was eight feet in height throughout its length. This long arbor had been formed by bitter-sweet orange-trees. Not a ray of the sunshine without could penetrate the thick foliage; but the clear light color of the shining leaves themselves, with the sunshine touching them everywhere outside, made a cheerful radiance within, and the aisle was further illuminated by the large, warm-looking globes of the fruit, thickly hanging like golden lamps from the roof of branches. There was an indescribably fresh youthfulness in this golden-green light, it was as different from the rich dark shade cast by the magnolias as from the gray stillness under the old live-oaks.

Through this orange aisle it pleased Miss Thorne to walk with Evert Winthrop. Mrs. Thorne came next, with the Rev. Dr. Moore; Dr. Kirby followed at a little distance, walking alone, and resting, if not his feet, at least his conversational powers. The two younger men were last, and some yards behind the others, Torres advancing with his usual woodenness of joint, not indulging in much conversation, but giving a guarded Spanish monosyllable now and then to his New World compatriot, who, still angry, let his slender cane strike the trunks of the orange-trees as they passed along, these strokes being carefully watched by Torres, who turned his thin neck stiffly each time, like an automaton, to see if the bark had received injury.

"We make quite a little procession," said Winthrop, looking back. "We have four divisions."

"What do you think of them?" inquired Garda.

"The divisions?"

"No; my four persons about here."

"Dr. Kirby is delightful, I don't know when I have met any one so much so."

"Delightful," said Garda, meditatively. "I am very fond of Dr. Reginald, he is almost the best friend I have in the world; but delightful? – does delightful mean – mean – " She paused, leaving her sentence unfinished.

"Does delightful mean Dr. Kirby?" said Winthrop, finishing it for her. "Dr. Kirby is certainly delightful, but he doesn't exhaust the capacity of the adjective; it has branches in other directions."

"And the others?"

"The other directions?"

"No; the other persons about here."

"I have seen Mr. Moore so few times that I have had scarcely opportunity to form an opinion."

"You formed one of Dr. Reginald the first time you saw him. But I was not speaking of Mr. Moore, I meant the others still."

"Those young natives? Really, I have not observed them."

"Now, there, I do not believe you," said Garda; "you have observed them, you observe everything. You say that to put them down – why should you put them down? You are very imperious, why should you be imperious?" And she looked at him, not vexed but frankly curious.

"Imperious," said Winthrop; "what extraordinary words you use? I am not imperious, as you call it, with you."

"No; but you would be if it were allowable," said the girl, nodding her head shrewdly. "Fortunately it isn't."

"Make the experiment – allow it; I might do better than you think."

"There is room for improvement, certainly," she answered, laughing. They had reached the end of the orange aisle, she passed under the green archway (which proved to be quite high enough), and went out into the sunshine beyond, calling "Carlos Mateo? Carlos, dear?" Then, in Spanish, "Angel of my heart, come to me."

The old garden had long been left untended. It was large, but seemed larger even than it was, because it had wandered out into the forest, and wild growths from there had come back with it; these had jumped boldly across the once well-guarded boundaries and overrun the cultivated verdure with their lawless green; oleanders were lost in thickets, fig-trees, pomegranates, and guavas were bound together in a tangle of vines; flower beds had become miniature jungles in which the descendants of the high-born blossoms that had once held sway there had forgotten their manners in the crowd of lusty plebeian plants that jostled against them. Even the saw-palmetto had pushed his way in from the barrens, and now clogged the paths with his rough red legs, holding up his stiff fans in the very faces of the lilies, who, being southern lilies, longed for the sun. A few paths had been kept open, however, round the great rose-tree, the pride of the place, a patriarch fifteen feet high, its branches covered with beautiful tea-roses, whose petals of soft creamy hue were touched at the edges with an exquisite pink. A little space of garden beds in comparative order encircled this tree; here, too, on the right, opened out the sweet-orange grove.

This grove was by no means in good condition, many of its trees were ancient, some were dead; still, work had been done there, and the attempt, such as it was, had been persisted in, though never effectually. The persistence had been due to the will of Mrs. Thorne, the ineffectualness to the will of old Pablo. His mistress, by a system of serene determination, had been able to triumph, to a certain extent, over the ancient and well-organized contrariness of this old man – a dumb opposition whose existence she never in the least recognized, though its force she well knew. Each season the obstinate old servant began by disapproving regularly of everything she ordered; next, he carried out her orders slowly, and with as many delays as possible – this not so much from any reasonable objection to her ideas as from his general principles of resistance, founded upon family pride. For Pablo, who was Raquel's husband – a bent little negro of advanced age – could never forget that "Marse Edgar's wife" was but an interloper after all, an importation from New England, and not "ob de fambly c'nection," not even of southern birth. The memory of majestic "Old Madam," Edgar Thorne's Spanish aunt, kept her "Young Miss" still in the estimation of the two old slaves, though "Ole Miss" had now been for a number of years safely in her coquina tomb – "let us hope enjoying rest and peace – as that poor little Mistress Thorne will now enjoy them too, at last," as an old friend of the family, Mrs. Betty Carew, had remarked with much feeling, though some ambiguity of phrase (the latter quite unintentional), the day after the funeral.

"Young Miss 'lows dese yere's yappul-trees," Pablo said to Raquel, with a fine scorn, as he dug objectingly round their roots. "An' 'lowing it, 'lowing it, Raquel, she orders accordin'!"

But the southern trees had lived, and had even, some of them, thrived a little under the unwonted northern methods applied to them; Mrs. Thorne, therefore, was able to rise above old Pablo's disapprovals – a feat, indeed, which she had been obliged to perform almost daily, and with regard to many other things than oranges, ever since her first arrival at East Angels, seventeen years before.

This lady now seated herself on a bench under the rose-tree. She had tied on, over her neat little widow's cap, the broad-brimmed palmetto hat which she usually wore in the garden; this hat had fallen slightly back, and now its broad yellow brim, standing out in a circle round her small face, looked not unlike the dull nimbus with which the heads of the stiff, sweet little angels in the early Italian paintings are weighted down. The clergyman, Mr. Moore, stood beside her.

The Rev. Middleton Moore, rector of St. Philip and St. James's, Gracias-á-Dios, was a tall gentleman, with narrow, slightly stooping shoulders, long thin hands, a long smooth face, and thin dry brown hair which always looked long (though it was not), because it grew from the top of his head down to his ears in straight flat smoothness, the ends being there cut across horizontally. His features were delicately moulded. His long feet were slender and well-shaped. There was a charming expression of purity and goodness in his small, mild blue eyes. He was attired in clerical black, all save his hat, which was brown – a low-crowned, brown straw hat adorned with a brown ribbon. Mrs. Penelope Moore, his wife, profound as was her appreciation of the dignity of his position as rector of the parish, could yet never quite resist the temptation of getting for him, now and then, a straw hat, and a straw hat, too, which was not black; to her sense a straw hat was youth, and to her sense the rector was young. It was in a straw hat that she had first beheld and admired him as the handsomest, as well as the most perfect, of men; and so in a straw hat she still occasionally sent him forth, gazing at the back view of it and him, from the rickety windows of her Gothic rectory, with much satisfaction, as he went down the path towards the gate on his way to some of the gentle Gracias entertainments. For of course he wore it only on such light, unofficial occasions.

Dr. Kirby, meanwhile, was making the circuit of the orange grove. He stopped and peered up sidewise into each tree, his head now on one shoulder, now on the other; then he came back, his hands and pockets filled with oranges, which he offered to all; seating himself on the low curb of an old well, he began to peel one with the little silver knife which he kept for the purpose, doing it so deftly that not a drop of the juice escaped, and looking on calmly meanwhile as the other bird, Carlos Mateo, went through his dance for the entertainment of the assembled company. Carlos Mateo was a tall gray crane of aged and severe aspect; at Garda's call he had come forward with long, dignified steps and stalked twice round the little open space before the rose-tree, following her with grave exactitude as she walked before him. She then called him to a path bordered with low bushes, and here, after a moment, the company beheld him jumping slowly up and down, aiding himself with his wings, sometimes rising several feet above the ground, and sometimes only hopping on his long thin legs; he advanced in this manner down the path to its end, and then back again, Garda walking in front, and raising her hand as he rose and fell, as though beating time. Nothing could have been more comical than the solemnity of the old fellow as he went through these antics; it was as if a gray-bearded patriarch should suddenly attempt a hornpipe.

His performance ended, he followed his mistress back to the company, to receive their congratulations.

"What can we give him?" said Winthrop. "What does he like?"

"He will not take anything except from me," answered Garda; she gathered a rose, and stood holding it by the stem while Carlos Mateo pecked gravely at the petals. The sun was sinking, his horizontal rays shone across her bright hair; she had taken off her hat, which was hanging by its ribbon from her arm; Winthrop looked at her, at the rose-laden branches above her head, at the odd figure of the crane by her side, at the background of the wild old garden behind her. He was thinking that he would give a good deal for a picture of the scene.

But while he was thinking it, Manuel had spoken it. "Miss Garda, I would give a year out of my life for a picture of you as you are at this moment!" he said, ardently. Winthrop turned away.

He went to look at some camellias, whose glossy leaves formed a thicket at a little distance; on the other side of this thicket he discovered a crape-myrtle avenue, the delicate trees so choked and hustled by the ruder foliage which had grown up about them that they stood like captives in the midst of a rabble, broken-hearted and dumb; with some pushing he made his way within, and followed the lost path. It brought him to a mound of tangled shrubbery which rose like a small hill at this end of the garden, decked here and there, in what seemed inaccessible places, with brilliant flowers. But the places had not been inaccessible to Torres. Winthrop met him returning from the thorny conflict with a magnificent stalk of blossoms which he had captured there, and was now bringing back in triumph; it was a long wand of gorgeous spurred bells, each two inches in length, crimson without, cream-color within, the lip of the flaring lower petal lined with purple, and spotted with gold. Torres carried his prize to Garda, and offered it in silence. She thanked him prettily in Spanish, and he stood beside her, his dark face in a dull glow from pleasure.

"Perhaps it is poisonous," murmured Manuel, taking good care, however, to murmur in English.

"Oh, my dearest child! pray put it down," said Mrs. Thorne, anxiously.

"It is quite harmless," said the clergyman, "I know the family to which it belongs. It is not indigenous here; probably the original shrub was planted in the garden many years ago, and has run wild."

Garda took the stalk in her right hand, extended her left rigidly, and, stiffening her light figure in a wooden attitude, looked meekly upward.

"Bravo! bravo!" said the Doctor from his well-curb, laughing, and beginning on a second orange.

She stood thus for a few instants only. But it was very well done – an exact copy of a dark, grim old picture in the little Spanish cathedral of Gracias, a St. Catherine with a stalk of lilies in her hand.

Winthrop, who had returned, was standing on the other side of the open space. Apparently he had not noticed this little pantomime. Garda looked at him for a moment. Then she left her place, went across, and gravely decorated him with her stalk of blossoms, the large stem going through three of the button-holes of his coat before it could hold itself firmly; the brilliant flowers extended diagonally across his breast, past his chin, and above one ear.

"Your hat will break the top buds," said Garda, surveying her handiwork. "Please take it off."

He obeyed. "For what sacrifice am I thus adorned?" he asked.

"It's no sacrifice," answered Garda, "it's a rebellion – a rebellion against your constant objections to everything in the world!"

"But I haven't opened my lips."

"That is the very thing; you object silently – which is much worse. I'm not accustomed to people who object silently. Everybody here talks; why don't you talk?"

This little dialogue went on apart, the others could not hear it.

"I do – when you give me an opportunity," Winthrop answered.

"I'll give you one now," responded Garda; "we'll go back to the house, we'll go through the orange-walk as we came, and the others can follow as they came." Without waiting for reply, she went towards the garden gate. Winthrop followed her; and then Carlos Mateo, stalking across the open space, followed Winthrop. He followed him so closely that Winthrop declared he could feel his beak on his back. When they reached the house they paused; Carlos then took up his station a little apart, and stood on one leg to rest himself, watching Winthrop meanwhile with a suspicious eye.

Mrs. Thorne was crossing the level with the Rev. Mr. Moore. Following them, at a little distance, came Dr. Kirby, with his hands behind him. Manuel and Torres, forced to be companions a second time, formed the rear-guard of the returning procession. But as it approached the house, Manuel, raising his hat to Mrs. Thorne, turned away; he went down the live-oak avenue to the river landing, where his skiff was waiting. Manuel had his ideas, he did not care to be one of five. Torres, who also had his ideas, and many more of them than Manuel had, was not troubled by considerations of this sort; in his mind a Torres was never one of five, or one of anything, but always a Torres, and alone. Left to himself, he now took longer steps, passed the others, and came first to the doorway where Garda was standing.

"Why do you always look so serious, Mr. Torres?" she said, in Spanish, as he came up.

"It is of small consequence how I look, while the señorita herself remains so beautiful," answered the young man, bowing ceremoniously.