East Angels: A Novel. Woolson Constance Fenimore
crossed the level, one from north to south, the other from east to west. The verge upon which they stood had once been a road also, though now narrowed and in some places blocked by the bushes which had grown across it. "A little farther on, beyond that point, you will find our ruin," said Garda. "There will not be time to sketch it, I will wait for you here."
"You are deserting me very soon."
"I am not deserting you at all, I intend to take you remorselessly over the entire place. But there are thorns in those bushes, and thorns are dangerous."
"I know it, I am already wounded."
"I mean that the briers might tear my dress," explained Miss Thorne, with dignity.
This stately rejection of so small and, as it were, self-made a pun entertained her companion highly; it showed how unfamiliar she was with the usual commonplaces. Talking with her would be not unlike talking with a princess in a fairy tale – one of those who have always lived mysteriously imprisoned in a tower; such a damsel, regarding her own rank, would be apt to have a standard which might strike the first comer as fantastically high. His entertainment, however, was not visible as, with a demeanor modelled upon the requirements of her dignity, he bent back the thorny bushes of the green cape, and made a passageway for her round its point. When his little roadway was finished, she came over it with her leisurely step, as though (he said to himself) it and the whole world, including his own poor individuality, belonged to her by inherited right, whenever she should choose to claim them. He was well aware that he was saying to himself a good many things about this girl; but was it not natural – coming unexpectedly upon so much beauty, set in so unfamiliar a frame? It was a new portrait, and he was fond of portraits; in picture-galleries he always looked more at the portraits than at anything else.
On the opposite side of the thorny cape the ruin came into view, standing back in a little arena of its own. Two of its high stone walls remained upright, irregularly broken at the top, and over them clambered a vine with slender leaves and long curling sprays that thrust themselves boldly out into the air, covered with bell-shaped, golden blossoms. This was the yellow jessamine, the lovely wild jessamine of Florida.
"You will look at it, please, from the other side," announced Garda; "it looks best from there. There will not be time to sketch it."
"Why do you keep taking it for granted that I sketch? Do I look like an artist?"
"Oh no; I've never seen an artist, but I'm sure you don't look like one. I suppose you sketch simply because I suppose northerners can do everything; I shall be fearfully disappointed if they cannot – when I see them."
"Do you wish to see them?"
"I wish to see hundreds," answered Miss Thorne, with great deliberation, "I wish to see thousands. I wish to see them at balls; I have never seen a ball. I wish to see them driving in parks; I have never seen a park. I wish to see them climbing mountains; I have never seen a mountain – "
"They don't do it in droves, you know," interpolated her companion.
" – I wish to see them in the halls of Congress; I have never seen Congress. I wish to see them at the Springs; I have never seen Springs. I wish to see them wearing diamonds; I have never seen diamonds – "
"The last is a wish easily gratified. In America, as one may say, the diamond's the only wear," remarked Winthrop, taking out a little linen-covered book.
Garda did not question this assertion, which reduced her own neighborhood to so insignificant an exception to a general rule that it need not even be mentioned. To her Florida was Florida. America? That was quite another country.
"You are going to sketch, after all," said the girl. She looked about her for a conveniently shaped fragment among the fallen blocks, and, finding one, seated herself, leaning against a second sun-warmed fragment which she took as her chair's back. "I thought I mentioned that there would not be time," she added, indolently, in her sweet voice.
"It will take but a moment," answered Winthrop. "I am no artist, as you have already mentioned; but, plainly, as a northerner, I must do something, or fall hopelessly below your expectations. There is no mountain here for me to climb, there is no ball at which I can dance. I'm not a Congressman and can't tell you about the 'halls,' and I haven't a diamond to my name, not one. Clearly, therefore, I must sketch; there is nothing else left." And with slow, accurate touch he began to pencil an outline of the flower-starred walls upon his little page. Garda, the handle of her white umbrella poised on one shoulder, watched him from under its shade. He did not look up nor break the silence, and after a while she closed her eyes and sat there motionless in the flower-perfumed air. Thus they remained for fully fifteen minutes, and Winthrop, going on with his work, admired her passiveness, he had never before seen the ability to maintain undisturbed an easy silence in a girl so young. True, the silence had in it something of that same element of indifference which he had noted in her before; but one could pardon her that for her tranquillity, which was so charming and so rare.
"Ah – sketching?" said a voice, breaking the stillness. "Yes – yes – the old mill has, I suppose, become an object of antiquity; we must think of it now as venerable, moss-grown."
Garda opened her eyes. "Jessamine-grown," she said, extending her hand.
The new-comer, whose footsteps had made no sound on the sand as he came round the cape of thorns, now crossed the arena, and made a formal obeisance over the little glove; then he threw back his shoulders, put his hands behind him, and remained standing beside her with a protecting, hospitable air, which seemed to include not only herself and the stranger artist, but the ruin, the sky, the sunshine, and even to bestow a general benediction upon the whole long, warm peninsula itself, stretching like a finger pointing southward from the continent's broad palm into the tropic sea.
But now Miss Thorne laid her white umbrella upon the heap of fallen blocks beside her, and rose; she did this as though it were something of a trouble, but a trouble that was necessary. She walked forward several steps, and turned first towards the new-comer, then towards the younger gentleman. "Let me present to you, Doctor, Mr. Evert Winthrop, of New York," she said, formally. "Mr. Winthrop, this is our valued friend, Mr. Reginald Kirby, surgeon, of Gracias-á-Dios." She then returned to her seat with the air of one who had performed an important task.
Dr. Kirby now advanced and offered his hand to Winthrop. He was a little man, but a little man with plenty of presence; he bore – if one had an eye for such things – a general resemblance to a canary-bird. He had a firm, plump little person, upon which his round, partly bald head (visible as he stood with hat doffed) was set, with scarcely any intervention of neck; and this plump person was attired in nankeen-colored clothes. His face showed a small but prominent aquiline nose, a healthily yellow complexion, and round, bright black eyes. When he talked he moved his head briskly to and fro upon his shoulders, and he had a habit of looking at the person he was addressing with one eye only, his face almost in profile, which was most bird-like of all. In addition, his legs were short in proportion to his body, and he stood on his small, well-shaped feet much as a canary balances himself on his little claws.
"I am delighted to meet you, sir," he said to Winthrop. "I esteem it a fortunate occurrence, most fortunate, which brought me to East Angels this evening to pay my respects to Mistress Thorne, thus obtaining for myself, in addition, the pleasure of your acquaintance. Mistress Thorne having mentioned to me that you were making a little tour of the place with Miss Garda, I offered to bear you company during a portion, at least, of your progress, for Miss Garda, though possessing an intelligence delicately keen, may not (being feminine) remember to present you with the statistics, the – as I may say – historical items, which would naturally be interesting to a northerner of discrimination." The Doctor had a fine voice; his words were borne along on it like stately ships on the current of a broad river.
"Do not praise me too highly," said the possessor of the delicate intelligence, from her block. "I could never live up to it, you know."
"Miss Thorne has said many interesting things," answered Winthrop, "but she has not as yet, I think, favored me with anything historical; her attention has perhaps been turned rather more to the agricultural side."
"Agricultural?" said Kirby, bringing to bear upon Winthrop a bright left eye.
"He