Volume I Part 16 (1/2)
”Uneducated!” exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.
”Don't mistake me, mother, ? I do not mean that it shows any want of reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character ? a mind unprepared for the exigencies of life.”
”She met those exigencies indifferently well, too,” observed Mr. Thorn.
”Ay ? but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life.”
”Well, she had no such part to play,” said Mrs. Carleton.
”Certainly, mother ? but I am comparing faces.”
”Well ? the other face?”
”It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but ? to compare them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that has come to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hothouse ? it would lose its beauty in the strong free air ? it would change and droop if it lacked careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement; ? the other,”
said Mr. Carleton, musingly, ? ”is a flower of the woods, raising its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has placed it, with an air of quiet patient endurance; a storm wind may bring it to the ground, easily, ?
but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again, unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and sweetness to the end.”
”The exotic for me!” cried Rossitur, ? ”if I only had a place for her. I don't like pale elegancies.”
”I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton,”
said Mr. Thorn.
”Mr. Carleton has done that already,” said Mrs. Evelyn, smoothly.
”I never heard you talk so before, Guy,” said his mother, looking at him. His eyes had grown dark with intensity of expression while he was speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through the dinner-table mahogany. He looked up and laughed as she addressed him, and rising, turned off lightly with his usual air.
”I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton,” Mrs. Evelyn whispered as they went from the table, ”that this little beauty is not a few years older.”
”Why?” said Mrs. Carleton, ”If she is all that Guy says, I would give anything in the world to see him married.”
”Time enough,” said Mrs. Evelyn, with a knowing smile.
”I don't know,” said Mrs. Carleton, ? ”I think he would be happier. He is a restless spirit ? nothing satisfies him. ?
nothing fixes him. He cannot rest at home ? he abhors politics ? he flits away from country to country and doesn't remain long anywhere.”
”And you with him.”
”And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to stay at home.”
”I guess you have petted him too much,” said Mrs. Evelyn, slyly.
”I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me.”
”No, of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him.”
”No one ever succeeded in doing that,” said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile, that was anything but an ungratified one. ”He never wanted driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may try it; and while you think you are going to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that he is leading you. It is so with everybody ? in some inexplicable way.”
Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable, as far as the mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.