The next day brought Mr. Remington himself, fresh and handsome as ever, saying that a carriage was waiting, and his tulips were at their best, and the ladies expecting to see us,—adding, with an informality which I had not associated with New York, that the day was all planned out for us,—tulips and lunch at the Oaks, Hoboken in the afternoon.
That was a white day, and one long to be remembered. First of all, for Hoboken, which, whatever it may be now, was then a spot full of picturesque beauty and sweet retirement, relieving and contrasting the roar and tumult of the city; second, for the tulips, which were the most glorious things I ever saw, and still remain the pattern of exceeding beauty, though I have since seen wealth of floral splendor, but none that came up to the Royal Adelaide,—nothing so queenly and so noble as the large white cup, fit for Hebe to bear and the gods to drink out of, and holding at least a pint within the snowy radiance of its ample brim. I did not wonder Mr. Remington had a passion for tulips. He flitted about among his brilliant brigade like a happy butterfly, rejoicing in our delight and exulting in our surprise like a pleased child.
"And is each of these different?"
"Not a duplicate among them. Fifteen hundred varieties."
If he had said fifteen thousand, it would not have added to my astonishment. To be sure, no king was ever arrayed like one of these. And fifteen hundred! each gorgeous enough for a king's ransom! It took my breath away to look at the far-reaching parterre of nodding glories, moved by the breath of the south-wind.
"I am satisfied. I see you are sufficiently impressed with my tulips, Mrs. Prince," said Mr. Remington, gleefully, "and I shall send you no end of bulbs for your Weston garden."
Mr. Remington had taken us directly to the garden on our arrival, and now led the way, through large evergreens, and by a winding path, to the house. The land was not half an acre in size, yet I was sure that I had been over a large estate. The same delusion clung to the house, which was in looks like one of Gainsborough's cottages, and ought to have been at least two hundred years old, instead of two. But Downing's advent had already wrought miracles here and there in our land; and a little while before Mr. Remington had been bitten with an architectural mania. So under the transplanted trees, and beneath trailing vines of Virginia creeper and Boursault roses, there peeped the brown gables of a cottage, which arose and stood there as reposeful and weather-stained as if it had been built before the Revolution. Mr. Remington showed us twenty unexpected doors, and juttings-out here and there, to catch a view, or to let in the sun, and rejoiced in our pleasure, as he had in the garden, like a child. In the library, Mrs. Remington received us, looking pale, and being very silent.
I sat down by her without being attracted at all—rather repelled by the faint sickliness of everything connected with her appearance. But neither her pale blue eyes, nor her yellow hair, nor her straw-colored gown and blue ribbons would have repelled me; I could not make her talk at all. I never saw such reticence before or since. As if she were determined "to die and make no sign," she sat, bowing and smiling, and amounting to nothing, one way or another,—giving no opinion, if asked, and asking no question. She was passively polite, but so very near nothing that I was rejoiced when Mr. Remington entered with my husband, and proposed that we should go into the dining-room. He carelessly introduced Mrs. Remington, but further than that seemed not to know she was in existence; and I must confess, I did not wonder. While my husband made, or tried to make, some conversation with her, Mr. Remington showed me an exquisite Clytie in marble, and a landscape by Cole, which hung in a good light, and showed its wonderful wild beauty. And now for the third reason that this was a white day.
VII.
In a little room connected with the refreshment-room there stood before a large mirror somebody winding a red scarf about her head. I had only time to see that the head was small and shapely, and the figure full of flexible grace, when it turned and nodded to the party. Of course, it could only be Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet voice, and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl characteristic of Northern tongues.