And this was the woman whom Mittie disdained to honor with the title of mother!
Helen had recovered from the double shock she had received the night previous to Clinton’s departure, but she was not the same Helen that she was before. Her childhood was gone. The flower leaves of her heart unfolded, not by the soft, genial sunshine, but torn open by the whirlwind’s power. Never more could she meet Arthur Hazleton with the innocent freedom which had made their intercourse so delightful. If he took her hand, she trembled and withdrew it. If she met his eye, she blushed and turned away her glance—that eye, which though it flashed not with the fires of passion, had such depth, and strength, and intensity in its expression. Her embarrassment was contagious, and constraint and reserve took the place of confidence and ingenuousness; like the semi-transparent drapery over a beautiful picture, which suffers the lineaments to be traced, while the warm coloring and brightness of life are chilled and obscured.
The sisters were as much estranged as if they were the inmates of different abodes. Mrs. Gleason had prepared a room for Helen adjoining her own, resolved she should be removed as far as possible from Mittie’s dagger tongue. Thus Mittie was left to the solitude she courted, and which no one seemed disposed to disturb. She remained the most of her time in her own chamber, seldom joining the family except at table, where she appeared more like a stranger than a daughter or a sister. She seemed to take no interest in any thing around her, nor did she seek to inspire any. She looked paler than formerly, and a purplish shade dimmed the brilliancy of her dazzling eyes.
“You look pale, my daughter,” her father would sometimes say. “I fear you are not well.”
“I am perfectly well,” she would answer, with a manner so cold and distant, sympathy was at once repelled.
“Will you not sit with us?” Mrs. Gleason would frequently ask, as she and Helen drew near the blazing fire, with their work-baskets or books, for winter was now abroad in the land. “Will you not read to us, or with us?”
“I prefer being in my own room,” was the invariable answer; and usually at night, when the curtains were let down, and the lamps lighted in the apartment, warm and glowing with the genialities and comforts of home, the young doctor would come in and occupy Mittie’s vacant seat. Notwithstanding the comparative coldness and reserve of Helen’s manners, his visits became more and more frequent. He seemed reconciled to the loss of the ingenuous, confiding child, since he had found in its stead the growing charms of womanhood.
Arthur was a fine reader. His voice had that minor key which touches the chords of tenderness and feeling—that voice so sweet at the fireside, so adapted to poetry and all deep and earnest thoughts. He did not read on like a machine, without pausing to make remark or criticism, but his beautiful, eloquent commentaries came in like the symphonies of an organ. He drew forth the latent enthusiasm of Helen, who, forgetting herself and Mittie’s withering accusations, expressed her sentiments with a grace, simplicity and fervor peculiar to herself. At the commencement of the evening she generally took her sewing from the basket, and her needle would flash and fly like a shooting arrow, but gradually her hands relaxed, the work fell into her lap, and yielding to the combined charms of genius and music, the divine music of the human voice, she gave herself up completely to the rapture of drinking in
“Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear,
The listener held her breath to hear.”
If Arthur lifted his eyes from the page, which he had a habit of doing, he was sure to encounter a glance of bright intelligence and thrilling sensibility, instantaneously withdrawn, and then he often lost his place, skipped over a paragraph, or read the same sentence a second time, while that rich mantling glow, so seldom seen on the cheek of manhood, stole slowly over his face.