A Little Girl of Long Ago - Amanda Minnie Douglas (top 100 novels of all time txt) 📗

a trifle into disfavour; and phrenology was making converts. It was the proper thing to go to Fowler's and have your head examined, and get a chart, which sort of settled you until something else came along. Young ladies were going into Combe's physiology and hygiene and cold bathing. Some very hardy and courageous women were studying medicine. Emerson was in a certain way rivalling Carlyle. Wendell Phillips was enchanting the cities with his silver tongue. There had been Brooke Farm; and Margaret Fuller had flashed across the world, married her Italian lover, who fought while she wrote for liberty; and husband, wife, and child had met their tragic death in very sight of her native land.

People were thinking really great thoughts; and there was a ferment of moral, transcendental, and aesthetical philosophy. Women met to discuss them in each other's parlours, prefiguring the era of clubs. Alice and Ph[oe]be Cary's receptions had grown to be quite the rage; and Anne C. Lynch was another figure in the social-literary world. Beecher was drawing large audiences in Brooklyn, and telling the old truths in a new fashion. There is always a great seething and tumult before the water fairly boils and precipitates the dregs to the bottom.

But whatever comes and goes, young girls are always growing up with the flush and fragrance and elusive fascinations of spring. To-day, a credulous tenderness and overwhelming faith in the past; to-morrow, a little doubtful, hesitatingly anticipative, with the watchwords of "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful;" and still concerned in the latest style of doing one's back hair, and if silver combs and gilt pins would keep in fashion; and flushing celestial rosy red, yet with an odd sense of importance, when men began to lift their hats in a gravely polite manner, as if the laughing, hoydenish girl of yesterday, who strung herself out four or five wide on the sidewalk with books in hand, was the shy, refined, hesitating, utterly delicious young woman of to-day.

There were times when Hanny stood on the mysterious borderland. She used to steal up and look at the wraith of a ball-dress hanging in the third-floor closet, put away with the "choice" garments. The skirt looked so long, almost uncanny. She could see the girl who had gone to the banquet, who had danced with young men who asked "the pleasure" with the politest inclination of the head. And, oh, the lovely dances she had with Mr. Andersen! The bewitching Spanish movement floated through her brain; and the young man's voice--what a curious, lingering sweetness it had--went over her like a wave of music. Of course his German cousin would fall in love with him,--how could she help it?--and they would marry. They would go to Paris once a year or so, when business took him; they would go over to London; but their real home would be in some German town, or maybe in the castle from which the pretty grandmother had run away with her American lover. She was so glad there were real romances left in the world. It wasn't likely any would happen to her. She was not tall, nor elegant, nor handsome; and though she could sing "Bonnie Doon," "Annie Laurie," "A Rose-tree in Full Bearing," and "The Girl I Left behind me," for her father, she was not a company singer. But she really didn't mind. Her father would want her. She wasn't quite resigned to being an old maid; but then she need not worry until she was twenty-five. And when you came to that, half the relatives were fighting for Miss Cynthia Blackfan; and Mr. Erastus Morgan had invited her over to Paris to see the new Emperor, who was copying in every way his granduncle who had ruled half Europe.

Then she would close the closet door and run blithely downstairs with a bit of song. That was Miss Nan Underhill up there; and in her short school-girl frock she was plain household Hanny.

But they had delightful times. Doctor Joe bought a new buggy, very wide in the seat, and used to take her and Daisy out when the days were pleasant. Then Charles and Josie came over evenings, or they went to Mrs. Dean's, and talked and sang and discussed their favourite poems and stories, and thought how rich the world was growing, and wondered how their grandfathers and grandmothers had existed!

The little rue in the Underhills' cup became sweetened presently with the balm of love and forbearance, that time or circumstances usually brings about when truth and good sense are at the helm.

Matters had gone rather hard with Delia Whitney of late. In a certain fashion, she had come to the parting of the intellectual ways. People were as eager then as now to discover new geniuses. There were not so many writing, and it was easier to gain a hearing. She had been successful. She had been praised; her stories and poems were accepted, published, and paid for. She had been made much of by her brother's friends, and some of the literary women she had met.

She began to realise it was not altogether wandering at one's sweet will, unless one had a garden of unfailing bloom in which to gather the flowers of poetry, or even prose. There were greater heights than even girlhood's visions. But there must be training and study to reach them, and she had been lilting along in a desultory way, like a careless child.

But had she any real genius? When she bent her whole mind to the cultivation of every energy, what if she should find it was energy and imagination merely? Her novel did not progress to her satisfaction. Characters might be common-place; but there was to be force enough in their delineation to keep the attention of the reader. They must be clear-cut, vivid; and hers seemed all too much alike, with no salient points.

"Do you suppose no one ever felt discouraged before?" asked Ben, with his brave, sweet smile. "That's no sign."

"But if I really wasn't a genius? And I have had so many splendid plans and plots in my brain; but when they come out, they are flat and weak. I don't ever expect to stand on the top-most round; but I can't stay down at the bottom always. I would rather not be anywhere."

Ben comforted her in his quiet fashion.

"Oh, what should I do without you!" she cried. "I want to achieve something for your sake."

"You will achieve. And if you do not, there is enjoyment left. You inspire other people."

"With a kind of girlish nonsense that passes for wit. But older minds demand the real article."

"You have a certain brightness of talk that brings out the best in other people. That is a rare gift, I am beginning to observe. Put the novel by for a little while."

"But every time I take it out, it seems worse," she returned ruefully.

Then she admitted another worry.

"Aunt Patty stumbled and fell about a month ago in her room. She was lame for some days; and I can see she isn't quite the same. Mother thinks it was a stroke. She is old, you know, and if she should be laid up! She clings to me so. You see, she misses Nora, who was running in and out, and the young girls who came here, and--oh, Ben, I am afraid I am growing stupid!"

Ben laughed and kissed her, and told her not to cross bridges until she came to them.

Then Theodore went to Washington for a fortnight; and Ben felt that it was hard for Delia to be bereft of that useful article, a man around the house. When Theodore returned, there was an imperative journey to the West. Already there were clouds rising that disquieted the wisest statesmen who were studying how to prevent any outward clashing. Mr. Whitney, with his _savoir faire_, was considered one of the best men to send on a _quasi_ political mission.

"You just drop in to supper every evening, Ben," he said with his Good-bye. "Dele has a head worth that of any half-dozen women; but I like to feel some one is looking after her. Mother is away a good deal."

The. had a misgiving Ben and Delia might want to marry; but they couldn't possibly spare Delia. So he was very friendly and obliging to Ben.

"Mother," oddly enough, was taking a great interest in the small end of the woman question, that was pushing its way in among other things. Mr. Whitney had been the most indulgent of husbands, and her sons had accepted household discomforts with no grumbling. But she took most kindly to the emancipation of women. She had a friend in Brooklyn who was lecturing on the subject; and she had vague aspirations that way herself. She was still a woman of fine presence and a fair share of intelligence.

Bridget had married, and been superseded by an untrained Katy. Aunt Patty was growing rather weak-hearted and childish, so Delia did have her hands full, and but little time for writing.

Theodore had been absent hardly a week when the stroke came. One morning, Aunt Patty was unable to move hand or foot on one side, and could hardly speak intelligibly, though her face kept its sweet expression. Mrs. Whitney had gone away somewhere with her friend.

When Ben heard the sad story that night, and folded the trembling, sobbing girl to his heart, his resolve was taken. A nurse had come, to be sure; but Delia should not bear this trial alone. He must live here, and comfort her with his love.

He went home quite early that evening. His father and Hanny were in Joe's study; his mother sat alone, darning stockings.

She glanced up and smiled; but when she saw his grave face, she said, "Oh, Ben, what has happened?"

"They are in great trouble down at Beach Street. Old Aunt Boudinot has had a stroke of paralysis. Mrs. Whitney has gone on a little journey with a friend; and Delia is alone. Mother, I have resolved to be married and help her bear her burthen. There is no immediate danger of Miss Boudinot dying, I believe; but since The. is away--they need some one--"

"Ben!"

Then she looked in her boy's face. Benny Frank and Jim were still boys to her. There was Joe to be married before it came their turn, and poor George, if he should live to come back. But it was not a boy's face, nor a boy's pleading eyes, that met hers. A man's grave sweetness, and sense of responsibility, shone in the clear, deep grey orbs, and the whole face had matured, so that she was amazed, bewildered.

"Mother dear," he began, "can't you wish me God speed, as you have the others? I've never loved any one but Delia; I never shall. I know I can make her happy; and isn't there some duty on my side? Am I to demand everything, and throw out a few crumbs of comfort now and then? We have known each other long enough to be quite sure, quite satisfied. But she has said all along she would not marry me until she could be considered a daughter of the house. I shall persuade her to now, unless--mother, can't you give her a welcome?"

He put his arms about his mother's neck. Was there some mysterious strength and manliness in him she had not realised before, even in his very voice. When had she lost her boy? What a pang went to her inmost heart. Yes, he was a man, and he