The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells
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W. D. Howells >> The Lady of the Aroostook
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Staniford's choice long remained a mystery to his acquaintances, and
was but partially explained by Mrs. Dunham, when she came home. "Why,
I suppose he fell in love with her," she said. "Of course, thrown
together that way, as they were, for six weeks, it might have happened
to anybody; but James Staniford was always the most consummate flirt
that breathed; and he never could see a woman, without coming up,
in that metaphysical way of his, and trying to interest her in him.
He was always laughing at women, but there never was a man who cared
more for them. From all that I could learn from Charles, he began
by making fun of her, and all at once he became perfectly infatuated
with her. I don't see why. I never could get Charles to tell me
anything remarkable that she said or did. She was simply a country
girl, with country ideas, and no sort of cultivation. Why, there
was _nothing_ to her. He's done the wisest thing he could by
taking her out to California. She never would have gone down, here.
I suppose James Staniford knew that as well as any of us; and if he
finds it worth while to bury himself with her there, we've no reason
to complain. She did _sing_, wonderfully; that is, her voice was
perfectly divine. But of course that's all over, now. She didn't seem
to care much for it; and she really knew so little of life that I
don't believe she could form the idea of an artistic career, or feel
that it was any sacrifice to give it up. James Staniford was not
worth any such sacrifice; but she couldn't know that either. She was
good, I suppose. She was very stiff, and she hadn't a word to say for
herself. I think she was cold. To be sure, she was a beauty; I really
never saw anything like it,--that pale complexion some brunettes have,
with her hair growing low, and such eyes and lashes!"
"Perhaps the beauty had something to do with his falling in love
with her," suggested a listener. The ladies present tried to look
as if this ought not to be sufficient.
"Oh, very likely," said Mrs. Dunham. She added, with an air of being
the wreck of her former self, "But we all know what becomes of
_beauty_ after marriage."
The mind of Lydia's friends had been expressed in regard to her
marriage, when the Stanifords, upon their arrival home from Europe,
paid a visit to South Bradfield. It was in the depths of the winter
following their union, and the hill country, stern and wild even in
midsummer, wore an aspect of savage desolation. It was sheeted in
heavy snow, through which here and there in the pastures, a craggy
bowlder lifted its face and frowned, and along the woods the stunted
pines and hemlocks blackened against a background of leafless oaks
and birches. A northwest wind cut shrill across the white wastes,
and from the crests of the billowed drifts drove a scud of stinging
particles in their faces, while the sun, as high as that of Italy,
coldly blazed from a cloudless blue sky. Ezra Perkins, perched on the
seat before them, stiff and silent as if he were frozen there, drove
them from Bradfield Junction to South Bradfield in the long wagon-body
set on bob-sleds, with which he replaced his Concord coach in winter.
At the station he had sparingly greeted Lydia, as if she were just
back from Greenfield, and in the interest of personal independence had
ignored a faint motion of hers to shake hands; at her grandfather's
gate, he set his passengers down without a word, and drove away,
leaving Staniford to get in his trunk as he might.
"Well, I declare," said Miss Maria, who had taken one end of the trunk
in spite of him, and was leading the way up through the path cleanly
blocked out of the snow, "that Ezra Perkins is enough to make you wish
he'd _stayed_ in Dakoty!"
Staniford laughed, as he had laughed at everything on the way
from the station, and had probably thus wounded Ezra Perkins's
susceptibilities. The village houses, separated so widely by the one
long street, each with its path neatly tunneled from the roadway to
the gate; the meeting-house, so much vaster than the present needs
of worship, and looking blue-cold with its never-renewed single coat
of white paint; the graveyard set in the midst of the village, and
showing, after Ezra Perkins's disappearance, as many signs of life
as any other locality, realized in the most satisfactory degree his
theories of what winter must be in such a place as South Bradfield.
The burning smell of the sheet-iron stove in the parlor, with its
battlemented top of filigree iron work; the grimness of the horsehair-
covered best furniture; the care with which the old-fashioned fire-
places had been walled up, and all accessible character of the period
to which the house belonged had been effaced, gave him an equal
pleasure. He went about with his arm round Lydia's waist, examining
these things, and yielding to the joy they caused him, when they
were alone. "Oh, my darling," he said, in one of these accesses of
delight, "when I think that it's my privilege to take you away from
all this, I begin to feel not so very unworthy, after all."
But he was very polite, as Miss Maria owned, when Mr. and Mrs. Goodlow
came in during the evening, with two or three unmarried ladies of
the village, and he kept them from falling into the frozen silence
which habitually expresses social enjoyment in South Bradfield when
strangers are present. He talked about the prospects of Italian
advancement to an equal state of intellectual and moral perfection
with rural New England, while Mr. Goodlow listened, rocking himself
back and forth in the hair-cloth arm-chair. Deacon Latham, passing
his hand continually along the stove battlements, now and then let
his fingers rest on the sheet-iron till he burnt them, and then
jerked them suddenly away, to put them, back the next moment, in his
absorbing interest. Miss Maria, amidst a murmur of admiration from
the ladies, passed sponge-cake and coffee: she confessed afterwards
that the evening had been so brilliant to her as to seem almost
wicked; and the other ladies, who owned to having lain awake all
night on her coffee, said that if they _had_ enjoyed themselves
they were properly punished for it.
When they were gone, and Lydia and Staniford had said good-night,
and Miss Maria, coming in from the kitchen with a hand-lamp for her
father, approached the marble-topped centre-table to blow out the
large lamp of pea-green glass with red woollen wick, which had shed
the full radiance of a sun-burner upon the festival, she faltered at
a manifest unreadiness in the old man to go to bed, though the fire
was low, and they had both resumed the drooping carriage of people
in going about cold houses. He looked excited, and, so far as his
unpracticed visage could intimate the emotion, joyous.
"Well, there, Maria!" he said. "You can't say but what he's a master-
hand to converse, any way. I'd know as I ever see Mr. Goodlow more
struck up with any one. He looked as if every word done him good; I
presume it put him in mind of meetin's with brother ministers: I don't
suppose but what he misses it some, here. You can't say but what he's
a fine appearin' young man. I d'know as I see anything wrong in his
kind of dressin' up to the nines, as you may say. As long's he's got
the money, I don't see what harm it is. It's all worked for good,
Lyddy's going out that way; though it did seem a mysterious providence
at the time."
"Well!" began Miss Maria. She paused, as if she had been hurried too
far by her feelings, and ought to give them a check before proceeding.
"Well, I don't presume you'd notice it, but she's got a spot on her
silk, so't a whole breadth's got to come out, and be let in again
bottom side up. I guess there's a pair of 'em, for carelessness."
She waited a moment before continuing: "I d'know as I like to see a
husband puttin' his arm round his wife, even when he don't suppose any
one's lookin'; but I d'know but what it's natural, too. But it's one
comfort to see't she ain't the least mite silly about _him_. He's
dreadful freckled." Miss Maria again paused thoughtfully, while her
father burnt his fingers on the stove for the last time, and took them
definitively away. "I don't say but what he talked well enough, as far
forth as talkin' _goes_; Mr. Goodlow said at the door't he didn't
know's he ever passed _many_ such evenin's since he'd been in
South Bradfield, and I d'know as _I_ have. I presume he has his
faults; we ain't any of us perfect; but he _does_ seem terribly
wrapped up in Lyddy. I don't say but what he'll make her a good
husband, if she must _have_ one. I don't suppose but what people
might think, as you may say, 't she'd made out pretty well; and if
Lyddy's suited, I d'know as anybody else has got any call to be over
particular."
THE END.
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