Then I recollected abrupt was not a very suitable word to couple with temper. Taken altogether, I found this drive home with Faery and her master anything but enjoyable.

CHAPTER II.

OAKLANDS.

Faery's head was turned at last from the wide, dusty street into an imposing gateway, which lead through an avenue bordered thickly with evergreens mostly pine and hemlock. "These trees look a trifle hot in summer; but they are a capital protection in a winter's storm, I a.s.sure you," my companion said with an apologetic air.

I could think of no suitable reply; so merely said, "yes."

"It's a tradition among their acquaintances that the Winthrops believe in getting the very best possible good out of everything."

"Have they succeeded?"

"Better than the generality of folks; but they have come pretty near extinction, at least on this side the water. Mr. Winthrop is the last of his race."

"Has he no children?"

"He is a bachelor."

"But he may have children and a wife some day."

"You will probably be his heir, if he does not marry, I believe he is your heir by your father's will, in case you die without heirs."

I laughed merrily. "He will outlive me probably. What good would his money do me if I were old, or maybe dead?"

"Your children might enjoy it."

I wondered was it customary in this country to speculate on such remote possibilities, but said nothing. We soon reached the house, which stood on ground elevated to command a magnificent view of the sea, the distant headlands, and a wide stretch of hill and dale. The house itself reminded me more of old world buildings than any I had yet seen in America; and, on the spot, I took a fancy to it, and felt that here I could easily cultivate the home feeling, without which I should still be a wanderer on the earth. Mrs. Flaxman was standing to receive me as I ascended the granite steps that led to the main entrance. The great stone house had wings at either end while deep breaks in the heavy masonry of the walls occurred at regular intervals, and heavy pillars of granite made a ma.s.sive background for this fair, slight woman as I looked at her.

"I will commit Miss Selwyn to your care, mother, while I take a little longer drive with Faery," my companion said, graciously.

"I will accept your trust with a great deal of pleasure, Hubert," she said, receiving me with a cordiality that warmed my heart. "You are very welcome home. At least, I hope you will feel at home here."

"I have no other, now that I have left school," I said, gravely.

"Young ladies do not often waste much sentiment on their boarding-school home, so I think we shall succeed in making you content here with us at Oaklands."

"I have always been accustomed to find my own sources of content. We were left at school to amuse ourselves or not, as we willed."

"But I hope we shall not be so indifferent to your pleasure. Mr. Winthrop is not much of a society man, but we still see a good many visitors."

The main entrance of the house was finer than anything I had remembered to have seen, and at first I felt quite oppressed by the grandeur of my surroundings; but when Mrs. Flaxman had conducted me to my own room, its dainty furnishings and appointments made it appear to me, after the plain accommodations of the school, a perfect bower for any maiden. I went to one of the deep windows and looked out over the splendid stretch of land and sea scape spread before me. Drawing a long sigh of perfect content, I exclaimed: "I know I shall be happy here. How could I help it, with such pictures to look at?"

"If you admire the scenery so much at first, what will your sensations be when you have grown intimate with its beauty? Nature enters into our humanity like human acquaintances."

"What do you mean?" I asked, much mystified.

"There are some places like some people--the more we study them the more they are admired, we are continually discovering hidden beauties. But you must study nature closely, at all hours and seasons, to discover her subtle charms."

"Won't you teach me what you have learned?"

"If I can do so I shall be glad; but I think we must each study her for ourselves. She has no text books that I have ever seen."

"I wonder do we all see things alike? Does that sea, now a sheet of rose and amethyst, and the sky that seems another part of the same, and the green trees, and hills, and rocks, look to you as they do to me?"

"Not yet, my child. When you have studied them as long, and have the memories of years cl.u.s.tering around each well-remembered spot, they may look the same to you as they now do to me; but not till then," she added, I fancied a little sadly.

"Probably I shall enjoy this exquisite view better without the memories; they usually hold a sting."

"That depends on the way we use life. To live as G.o.d wills, leaves no sting for after thought."

"Not if death comes and takes our loved ones? How alone I am in the world because of him."

"There are far sadder experiences than yours. Death is not always our worst enemy; we may have a death in life, compared with which Death itself is an angel of light."

"Oh, what a strange, sad thing life is at the best! Is it worth being born and suffering so much for all the joy we find?"

"No, indeed, if this life were all; but it is only the faint dawn of a brighter, grander existence, more worthy the gift of a G.o.d."

"But we must die to get to that fuller, higher life;" I said, suddenly remembering poor Blake's dead wife.

She smiled compa.s.sionately.

"It is hard convincing you young people that even death may be a tender friend, a welcome messenger. But we won't talk in this strain any longer, I scarce know why we drifted into it. I want your first impressions of home to be joyous, for they are apt to haunt us long after we make the discovery that they were not correct."

"I wonder if you are not something of a philosopher? I never heard any one talk just like you."

"Certainly not anything so formidable, and learned as that. I am only a plain little woman, with no special mission except to make those around me happy."

"That is a very beautiful mission, and I am sure you meet with success, which is not the fate of every one with a career."

"Ah, if you begin praising me I must leave; but first let me tell you dinner will be served at six. Mr. Winthrop is a great student, and is already, for so young a man, a very successful author; and he likes dinner late so as to have all the longer time for hard work. The evenings he takes for light reading and rest."

I must confess I was beginning to get afraid of my guardian. I expected to find him in manners and appearance something like our school professors, with a tendency to criticise my slender literary acquirements.

However I proceeded with my toilet quite cheerfully, and was rather glad than sorry that I had found him absent from Oaklands; but after I left my room and wandered out into the dim, s.p.a.cious hall and down the long stairway, the heavy, old-fashioned splendors of the house chilled me. How could I occupy myself happily through the coming years in this great, gloomy house? I vaguely wondered, while life stretched out before my imagination, in long and tiresome perspective.

With no school duties to occupy my time, my knowledge of amus.e.m.e.nts, needlework, or any other of the softer feminine accomplishments, exceedingly limited, I was suddenly confronted with the problem how I was to fill up the days and years with any degree of satisfaction. Hitherto every thought had been strained eagerly towards this home coming. After that fancy was a blank. Now I had got here, what then? I had been a fairly industrious pupil and graduated with commendable success; but it had been a tradition at our school that once away from its confinement, text-books and the weariness of study were at an end. I went out on the lawn, and was standing, a trifle homesick for the companionship of the merry crowd of schoolmates, when a side glance revealed to me an immense garden, such as I had often seen, but not near enough to sufficiently enjoy. I soon forgot my lonely fancies as I strayed admiringly through the well kept walks, amid beds of old-fashioned sweet smelling flowers, which now-a-days are for the most part relegated to the humble cottages; but farther on I discovered the rarer plants of many climes, some of them old acquaintances, but others utter strangers, only so far as I could remember some of them from my lessons in botany. Still stretching beyond on the hill side I saw the vegetable and fruit gardens. Huge strawberry beds attracted me, the ripe fruit I found tempting; but feeling still a stranger, the old weakness that comes down to us from Mother Eve to reach forth and pluck, was restrained. "What a perfect Eden it is!" I could not help exclaiming, though no ears save the birds, and mult.i.tudinous insects existences, were within reach of my voice, and probably for the latter, any sound I could make would be as unheard by them as the music of the spheres must be to me until another body, with finer intuitions to catch such harmonies, shall be provided. Ere the dinner bell rang I found a new wonderland of beauty reaching away beyond me. To watch from early spring till winter's icy breath destroyed them, these multiplied varieties of vegetable life gradually pa.s.sing through all their beautiful changes of bud and blossom, and ripened seed or fruit would be a training in some respects, equalling that of the schools. What higher lessons in botany I might take, day by day exploring the secrets of plant life! I went back to the house in a happier mood than I had left it. At the dinner table I expressed, no doubt with amusing enthusiasm, my gladness at this garden of delight.

"You should become a practical botanist, Miss Selwyn. But then your heart might prove too tender to tear your pets to pieces in order to find out their secrets."

"I did not know my heart was specially tender."

"I only judged so from your sympathy for the Blakes. Only think, mother, Miss Selwyn was prophesying the time when I should be mourning over a departed wife."