East Angels: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

Winthrop happened to think of this little conversation—he knew not why—as he followed his guide through her green-walled path, which had now become so narrow that he could no longer walk by her side. As it came up in his mind he said to himself that here was a tea-rose, growing if not quite in the seclusion of untrodden forests where the wild flowers have their home, then at least in natural freedom, in the pure air and sunshine, under the open sky. There was—there could be—nothing of the conservatory, nothing artificial, in the only life Edgarda Thorne had known, the life of this remote southern village where she had been born and brought up. Her knowledge of the world outside was—must be—confined to the Spanish-tinted legends of the slumberous little community, to the limited traditions of her mother's small experience, and to the perceptions and fancies of her own imagination; these last, however numerous they might be in themselves, however vivid, must leave her much in the condition of a would-be writer of dramas who has never read a play nor seen one acted, but has merely evolved something vaguely resembling one from the dreaming depths of his own consciousness; Garda's idea of the world beyond the barrens must be equally vague and unreal. And then, as he looked at her, sweet-natured and indifferent, walking onward with her indolent step over her own land, under the low blue sky, it came over him suddenly that probably she had not troubled herself to evolve anything, to think much of any world, good or bad, outside of her own personality. And he said to himself that wherever she was would be world enough for most men. In which class, however, he again did not include Evert Winthrop.

The path made a sudden turn, and stopped. It had brought them to the borders of a waste.

"This was one of the sugar fields," said Garda, with her little air of uninterested proprietorship.

Two old roads, raised on embankments, 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.