“It is of no use. In spite of all you have said, I feel sure that in time you could not help remembering. And it would make you miserable beyond bearing.
“Once your wife, I should not have the strength to leave you—as I can now.
EVE.”
XXXIII.
THE judge was waiting for the steamer at Warwick Landing. Attired in white duck, with his boy Pomp (Pomp was sixty) waiting respectfully in the background, he was once more himself. As the steamer drew near, he bowed with all his old courtliness, and he was immediately answered by the agitated smile of a lady on the deck, who, with her shawl blowing off and her veil blowing out, was standing at the railing, timid in spite of her fifty-three years. It could be no one but Miss Leontine, who had come over from Gary Hundred, with her maid, to pay a visit to her dear Sabrina at Romney. The maid was a negro girl of thirteen, attired in a calico dress and sun-bonnet; she did nothing save strive to see how far she could straddle on the deck, whose flat surface seemed to attract her irresistibly. Miss Leontine carried her own travelling-bag. Occasionally she would say: “Clementine, shush! draw yourself together immediately.” But Clementine never drew herself.
The judge assisted his guest to disembark—she ambled across the plank, holding his hand; they drove to Romney in the one-seated wagon, the judge acting as charioteer. Pomp and the maid were supposed to walk.
“Clementine, whatever you do, don’t cling on behind,” said Miss Leontine, turning her head once or twice unseemingly, to blink at the offender. But Clementine clung all the way; and brayed at intervals.
The judge, in his present state of joy, almost admired Miss Leontine,—she was so unlike Parthenia Drone! “Ah, my dear Miss Wingfield, how changed is society in these modern days!” he said, flicking the flank of the mule. “In my time who ever heard a lady’s voice three feet away? Who ever knew her opinions—if she had any? Who ever divined, at least in the open air, the texture of her cheek, modestly hidden under her bonnet, or saw more than the tip of her slipper under the hem of her robe? Now women think nothing of speaking in public—at least at the North; they attend conventions, pass resolutions, appear in fancy-dress at Fourth of July parades; their bonnets for the most part” (not so Miss Leontine’s) “are of a brazen smallness; and their feet, if I may so express it, are the centre of every room! When I was young, the most ardent suitor could obtain as a sign of preference, only a sigh;—at most some startled look, some smile, some reppurtee. All was timidity—timidity and retirement.”
Miss Leontine, in her gratification at this description of her own ideal, clasped her hands so tightly together under her shawl that her corset-board made a long red mark against her ribs in consequence.