Beauty and The Beast - Bayard Taylor (story read aloud .TXT) 📗

world as he acknowledged. Beyond the community of his own sect, and a few personal friends who were privileged to live on its borders, he neither knew nor cared to know much more of the human race than if it belonged to a planet farther from the sun. In the discipline of the Friends he was perfect; he was privileged to sit on the high seats, with the elders of the Society; and the travelling brethren from other States, who visited Bucks County, invariably blessed his house with a family-meeting. His farm was one of the best on the banks of the Neshaminy, and he also enjoyed the annual interest of a few thousand dollars, carefully secured by mortgages on real estate. His wife, Abigail, kept even pace with him in the consideration she enjoyed within the limits of the sect; and his two children, Moses and Asenath, vindicated the paternal training by the strictest sobriety of dress and conduct. Moses wore the plain coat, even when his ways led him among “the world’s people;” and Asenath had never been known to wear, or to express a desire for, a ribbon of a brighter tint than brown or fawn-color. Friend Mitchenor had thus gradually ripened to his sixtieth year in an atmosphere of life utterly placid and serene, and looked forward with confidence to the final change, as a translation into a deeper calm, a serener quiet, a prosperous eternity of mild voices, subdued colors, and suppressed emotions.

He was returning home, in his own old-fashioned “chair,” with its heavy square canopy and huge curved springs, from the Yearly Meeting of the Hicksite Friends, in Philadelphia. The large bay farm-horse, slow and grave in his demeanor, wore his plain harness with an air which made him seem, among his fellow-horses, the counterpart of his master among men. He would no more have thought of kicking than the latter would of swearing a huge oath. Even now, when the top of the hill was gained, and he knew that he was within a mile of the stable which had been his home since colthood, he showed no undue haste or impatience, but waited quietly, until Friend Mitchenor, by a well-known jerk of the lines, gave him the signal to go on. Obedient to the motion, he thereupon set forward once more, jogging soberly down the eastern slope of the hill,— across the covered bridge, where, in spite of the tempting level of the hollow-sounding floor, he was as careful to abstain from trotting as if he had read the warning notice,—along the wooded edge of the green meadow, where several cows of his acquaintance were grazing,—and finally, wheeling around at the proper angle, halted squarely in front of the gate which gave entrance to the private lane.

The old stone house in front, the spring-house in a green little hollow just below it, the walled garden, with its clumps of box and lilac, and the vast barn on the left, all joining in expressing a silent welcome to their owner, as he drove up the lane. Moses, a man of twenty-five, left his work in the garden, and walked forward in his shirt-sleeves.

“Well, father, how does thee do?” was his quiet greeting, as they shook hands.

“How’s mother, by this time?” asked Eli.

“Oh, thee needn’t have been concerned,” said the son. “There she is. Go in: I’ll tend to the horse.”

Abigail and her daughter appeared on the piazza. The mother was a woman of fifty, thin and delicate in frame, but with a smooth, placid beauty of countenance which had survived her youth. She was dressed in a simple dove-colored gown, with book-muslin cap and handkerchief, so scrupulously arranged that one might have associated with her for six months without ever discovering a spot on the former, or an uneven fold in the latter. Asenath, who followed, was almost as plainly attired, her dress being a dark-blue calico, while a white pasteboard sun-bonnet, with broad cape, covered her head.

“Well, Abigail, how art thou?” said Eli, quietly giving his hand to his wife.

“I’m glad to see thee back,” was her simple welcome.

No doubt they had kissed each other as lovers, but Asenath had witnessed this manifestation of affection but once in her life— after the burial of a younger sister. The fact impressed her with a peculiar sense of sanctity and solemnity: it was a caress wrung forth by a season of tribulation, and therefore was too earnest to be profaned to the uses of joy. So far, therefore, from expecting a paternal embrace, she would have felt, had it been given, like the doomed daughter of the Gileadite, consecrated to sacrifice.

Both she and her mother were anxious to hear the proceedings of the meeting, and to receive personal news of the many friends whom Eli had seen; but they asked few questions until the supper-table was ready and Moses had come in from the barn. The old man enjoyed talking, but it must be in his own way and at his own good time. They must wait until the communicative spirit should move him. With the first cup of coffee the inspiration came. Hovering at first over indifferent details, he gradually approached those of more importance,—told of the addresses which had been made, the points of discipline discussed, the testimony borne, and the appearance and genealogy of any new Friends who had taken a prominent part therein. Finally, at the close of his relation, he said—

“Abigail, there is one thing I must talk to thee about. Friend Speakman’s partner,—perhaps thee’s heard of him, Richard Hilton,— has a son who is weakly. He’s two or three years younger than Moses. His mother was consumptive, and they’re afraid he takes after her. His father wants to send him into the country for the summer—to some place where he’ll have good air, and quiet, and moderate exercise, and Friend Speakman spoke of us. I thought I’d mention it to thee, and if thee thinks well of it, we can send word down next week, when Josiah Comly goes”

“What does THEE think?” asked his wife, after a pause

“He’s a very quiet, steady young man, Friend Speakman says, and would be very little trouble to thee. I thought perhaps his board would buy the new yoke of oxen we must have in the fall, and the price of the fat ones might go to help set up Moses. But it’s for thee to decide.”

“I suppose we could take him,” said Abigail, seeing that the decision was virtually made already; “there’s the corner room, which we don’t often use. Only, if he should get worse on our hands—”

“Friend Speakman says there’s no danger. He is only weak-breasted, as yet, and clerking isn’t good for him. I saw the young man at the store. If his looks don’t belie him, he’s well-behaved and orderly.”

So it was settled that Richard Hilton the younger was to be an inmate of Friend Mitchenor’s house during the summer.

 

II.

 

At the end of ten days he came.

In the under-sized, earnest, dark-haired and dark-eyed young man of three-and-twenty, Abigail Mitchenor at once felt a motherly interest. Having received him as a temporary member of the family, she considered him entitled to the same watchful care as if he were in reality an invalid son. The ice over an hereditary Quaker nature is but a thin crust, if one knows how to break it; and in Richard Hilton’s case, it was already broken before his arrival. His only embarrassment, in fact, arose from the difficulty which he naturally experienced in adapting himself to the speech and address of the Mitchenor family. The greetings of old Eli, grave, yet kindly, of Abigail, quaintly familiar and tender, of Moses, cordial and slightly condescending, and finally of Asenath, simple and natural to a degree which impressed him like a new revelation in woman, at once indicated to him his position among them. His city manners, he felt, instinctively, must be unlearned, or at least laid aside for a time. Yet it was not easy for him to assume, at such short notice, those of his hosts. Happening to address Asenath as “Miss Mitchenor,” Eli turned to him with a rebuking face.

“We do not use compliments, Richard,” said he; “my daughter’s name is Asenath.

“I beg pardon. I will try to accustom myself to your ways, since you have been so kind as to take me for a while,” apologized Richard Hilton.

“Thee’s under no obligation to us,” said Friend Mitchenor, in his strict sense of justice; “thee pays for what thee gets.”

The finer feminine instinct of Abigail led her to interpose.

“We’ll not expect too much of thee, at first, Richard,” she remarked, with a kind expression of face, which had the effect of a smile: “but our ways are plain and easily learned. Thee knows, perhaps, that we’re no respecters of persons.”

It was some days, however, before the young man could overcome his natural hesitation at the familiarity implied by these new forms of speech. “Friend Mitchenor” and “Moses” were not difficult to learn, but it seemed a want of respect to address as “Abigail” a woman of such sweet and serene dignity as the mother, and he was fain to avoid either extreme by calling her, with her cheerful permission, “Aunt Mitchenor.” On the other hand, his own modest and unobtrusive nature soon won the confidence and cordial regard of the family. He occasionally busied himself in the garden, by way of exercise, or accompanied Moses to the cornfield or the woodland on the hill, but was careful never to interfere at inopportune times, and willing to learn silently, by the simple process of looking on.

One afternoon, as he was idly sitting on the stone wall which separated the garden from the lane, Asenath, attired in a new gown of chocolate-colored calico, with a double-handled willow work-basket on her arm, issued from the house. As she approached him, she paused and said—

“The time seems to hang heavy on thy hands, Richard. If thee’s strong enough to walk to the village and back, it might do thee more good than sitting still.”

Richard Hilton at once jumped down from the wall.

“Certainly I am able to go,” said he, “if you will allow it.”

“Haven’t I asked thee?” was her quiet reply.

“Let me carry your basket,” he said, suddenly, after they had walked, side by side, some distance down the lane.

“Indeed, I shall not let thee do that. I’m only going for the mail, and some little things at the store, that make no weight at all. Thee mustn’t think I’m like the young women in the city, who, I’m told, if they buy a spool of Cotton, must have it sent home to them. Besides, thee mustn’t over-exert thy strength.”

Richard Hilton laughed merrily at the gravity with which she uttered the last sentence.

“Why, Miss—Asenath, I mean—what am I good for; if I have not strength enough to carry a basket?”

“Thee’s a man, I know, and I think a man would almost as lief be thought wicked as weak. Thee can’t help being weakly-inclined, and it’s only right that thee should be careful of thyself. There’s surely nothing in that that thee need be ashamed of.”

While thus speaking, Asenath moderated her walk, in order, unconsciously to her companion, to restrain his steps.

“Oh, there are the dog’s-tooth violets in blossom?” she exclaimed, pointing to a shady spot beside the brook; “does thee know them?”

Richard immediately gathered and brought to her a handful of the nodding yellow bells, trembling above their large, cool, spotted leaves.

“How beautiful they are!” said he; “but I should never have taken them for violets.”

“They are misnamed,” she answered. “The flower is an Erythronium; but I am accustomed to the common name, and