I stopped; for I saw by her impatient nodding that she understood me.
"Yes, yes. I knew it must be so. Now, if William would ever bring me books, instead of jewels, or talk to me and with me, I might have been a rational being too, instead of being absolutely ashamed to open my mouth!"
She clasped the jewel-case and went out; and I heard her chatting a minute after with some gentlemen in the house, as if she were perfectly and childishly happy.
IX.
How I wished I could give Mr. Lewis some hint of what had passed between his wife and myself! But that I could not do. Besides that it was always best to let matrimonial improvements originate with the parties themselves, I had an inability to interfere usefully. I could talk to her a little,—not at all to him. He seemed fond and proud of her as she was, and her dissatisfaction with herself was a good sign. It was strange to me, accustomed to intellectual sympathy, that he could do without that of his wife. But I suppose he had come to feel that she would not understand him, and so did not try to hit her apprehension, much less to raise or cultivate her intellect. He had lived too long at the South.
Her moral nature was very oddly developed, showing how starved and stunted some of the faculties, naturally good, become without their proper nourishment. As, intellectually, she seemed not to comprehend herself, except that she had a vague sense of want and waste, so, from the habit of occupying herself with the external, she had not only a keen sense of the beautiful in outward form, but as ready a perception of character as could consist with a want of tact. Adaptation she certainly had. Tact she could not have, since her sympathies were so limited and her habit so much of external perception and appreciation. All this desolate tract in her nature might yet possibly be cultivated. But thus far it had never been. Beyond a small circle of thoughts and feelings, she was incapable of being interested. She didn't say, "Anan!" but she looked it.
There was the same want of comprehension, I may call it, in reference to propriety of conduct. A certain nobleness, and freedom from all that was petty and cold, kept her from coquetry. At the same time she had a womanish vanity about her admirers, and entire freedom in speaking of them. In vain I endeavored to insinuate the unpleasant truth, that the fervency of her adorers was no compliment to her. She could not understand that she ought to shrink from the implied imputation of such manifestations.
Somewhat out of patience, one day, at her pleasure in receiving a bouquet of rare flowers from one of these adorers, I said,—
"Isn't this the person who you said professed an attachment to you, or rather sent heliotrope to you and told you it meant je vous aime?"