The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863. Various
appears,
How lurid looks this soul, of mine!
MRS. LEWIS
When we returned from our journey, Lulu was among the first to greet us, and with a cordial animation quite unlike the gentle, dawdling way she used to have. Indeed, I was struck the first evening with a new impulse, and a healthful mental current, that gave glow and freshness to everything she said. Mr. Lewis was gone to Cuba, she told us, and would be away a month more, but "George" was with her continually, and the days were all too short for what they had to do. She seemed to have attacked all the arts and sciences simultaneously, and with an eagerness very amusing to see. George had begun a numismatic collection for her, and she had made out an historic table from the coins, writing down all that was most important under each king's reign. George had brought home some fine specimens of stones, and had interested her much in mineralogy. George liked riding, and had taught her to ride; and she now perpetually made her appearance in her riding-habit and little jockey-cap, wishing she could do something for me here or there. George moulded, and taught her to mould; and she was dabbling in clay and plaster of Paris all the morning. George painted beautifully in water-colors, and taught her to sketch from Nature, which she often did now, in their rides, when the days were pleasant enough. George not only thrummed a Spanish guitar, but liked singing; so music went on with wonderful force and improvement. Nothing that George liked better than botany, metaphysics, and micrology. And now Lulu was screaming at dreadful dragons' heads on a pin's point, or delighted with diamond-beetles and spiders' eyes. She fairly revelled in the new worlds that were opened to her eager eye and hungry mind. No more long, tiresome mornings now. Every hour was occupied. Intelligent smiles dimpled her beautiful mouth; the weary, unoccupied, childish look vanished from her eyes; and her talk was animated and animating. For though she might not tell much that was new, she told it in a new way and with the fresh light of recent experience. Thus she became in a wonderfully short time a quite different woman from the Lulu of the early winter.
We acknowledged that she was become an agreeable companion. In a few weeks of home-education her soul had expanded to a tropical and rich growth. This we were talking over one night, when Lulu had been with us, and when George had come for her and extinguished us with his great hearty laugh and abundant health and activity, as the sun's effulgence does a house-candle.
"I don't like that Remington, either," said the minister, after we were left in this state of darkness.
"But, surely, he has given Lulu's mind a most desirable impulse and direction. How glad Mr. Lewis will be to see her so happy, so animated, and so sensible, when he comes home!"
"If that makes him happy, he could have had it before, I suppose. But do you notice anything unhealthy in this mental cultivation,—anything forced in this luxuriant flowering? Now the light of heaven expands the whole nature, I hold, into healthy and proportioned beauty. If anything is lacking or exuberant, the influence is not heavenly, be sure. What do you think of this statement?"
"Very sensible, but very Hebrew to me."
"I never thought Lulu's were 'household eyes,'—but now she never speaks of husband or children, of house or home. Now that is not a suitable mental condition. Let us hope that this intellectual effervescence will subside, and leave her some thoughtfulness and care for others, and the meditation which will make her accomplishments something to enrich and strengthen, rather than excite and overrun her mind."
"Ah! well, it is only a few weeks, not more than six, since she found out she had a soul. No wonder she feels she has been such a laggard in the race, she must keep on the gallop now to make up for lost time."
"But,—about the husband and children?"
"Oh, they will come in in due time and take their true place. She is a young artist, and hasn't got her perspectives arranged. Be sure they will be in the foreground presently," said I, cheerfully.
"Let us hope so. For a wife, mother, and house-mistress to be racing after so many ologies, and ignoring her daily duties, is a spectacle of doubtful utility to me."
To tell the truth, this want of domestic interest had often struck me also. One day, as we were talking about my children, Lulu had said that she believed herself destitute of the maternal instinct; for although she liked to see the children, of course, yet she did not miss them when away from her. And after the death of young Lewis, which happened while they were at Cuba, and which distressed my Johnnie so much that he could not for a long time bear either books or play, for want of his beloved playmate, his mother, apparently, did not lament him at all.
"I never liked to have him with me," she said to me,—"partly, I suppose, because he reminded me of Montalli, and of a period of great suffering in my life. I should be glad never to think of him again. But William seemed to love and pity him always. Gave him his name, and always treated him like an only and elder son. And William is fond of the little girls, too. I don't mean that I am not fond of them, but not as he is. He will go and spend a week at a time playing and driving with them."
Indeed, she very often reminded me of Undine in her soulless days.
As she scarcely went into society, during the absence of Mr. Lewis, Lulu had time for all this multifarious culture that I have been describing, and she was gradually coming also to reason and reflect on what she read and heard, though her appetite for knowledge continued with the same keenness. Her artistic eye, which naturally grouped and arranged with taste whatever was about her, stood her in good stead of experience; and with a very little instruction, she was able to do wonders in both a plastic and pictorial way.
One day she showed me a fine drawing of the Faun of Praxiteles, with some verses written beneath. The lines seemed to me full of vigor and harmony. They implied and breathed, too, such an intimacy with classical thought, that I was astonished when, in answer to my inquiry, she told me she wrote them herself.
"How delighted Mr. Lewis will be with this!" I exclaimed, looking at the beautifully finished drawing; "to think how you have improved, Lulu!"
"You think so?" she answered, with glistening eyes. "I, too, feel that I have, and am so happy!"
"I am sure Mr. Lewis will be so, too," I continued, persistently.
She answered in a sharp tone, dropping her eyes, and, as it were, all the joy out of them,—
"Surely, I have told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-idéale; failing that, a housekeeper and drudge."
I cannot describe the scorn with which she said this. She changed the subject, however, at once, instead of pursuing it as she would formerly have done, and soon after left me for a drive over Milton Hills with George, with a hammer and sketch-book in the chaise.
Mr. Lewis's business in Cuba was prolonged into May. He had estates there, and desired to dispose of them, Lulu said, so that they might for the future live entirely at the North, which they both liked better.
I could not help seeing that her affections drifted farther and farther every week from their lawful haven, and I wished Mr. Lewis safe back again and overlooking his Northern estates. I guessed how, through her pride of awakened intellect, Lulu's gratitude had wrought a deep interest in her cousin. He had rescued her from the idleness and inanity of her daily life, pointed out to her the broad fields of literary enjoyment and excellence, and inevitably associated his own image with all the new and varied occupations with which her now busy days were filled. The poetry she read he brought to her; the songs she sang were of his selection. His mind and taste, his observations and reflections, were all written over every page she read, over every hour of her life. She had been on a desert island in her intellectual loneliness. She could hardly help loving the hand that had guided her to the palm-tree and the fountain, especially when she glanced back at the long sandy reach of her life.
Naturally enough, I watched and distrusted Mr. Remington, who was a man of the world, and knew very well what he was about. Of all things, he dearly loved to be excited, occupied, and amused. Of course, I was not disturbed about his