第93章 MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS.EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD(6)
The rector has come out,in a quiet way,as an evolutionist.He has always been rather "broad "in his views,but cautious in their expression.You can tell the three branches of the mother-island church by the way they carry their heads.The low-church clergy look down,as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust;the high-church priest drops his head on one side,after the pattern of the mediaeval saints;the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him,as if he felt himself the heir of creation.Our rector carries his head in the broad-church aspect,which I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation,--in fact,is the natural and manly way of carrying it.
The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before.Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors,so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects,poems and stories in large numbers.I know all about it,for she often consults me as to the merits of a particular contribution.
What is to be the fate of Lurida?I often think,with no little interest and some degree of anxiety,about her future.Her body is so frail and her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or the other will give way.I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever being married.She grows more and more zealous in behalf of her own sex,and sterner in her judgment of the other.She declares that she never would marry any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage,and as these gentlemen are not very common hereabouts the chance is against her capturing any one of the hostile sex.
What do you think?I happened,just as I was writing the last sentence,to look out of my window,and whom should I see but Lurida,with a young man in tow,listening very eagerly to her conversation,according to all appearance!I think he must be a friend of the rector,as I have seen a young man like this one in his company.Who knows?
Affectionately yours,etc.
DR.BUTTS TO MRS.BUTTS.
MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would have thought could have been got together in this little village during the short time you have been staying away from it.
Lurida Vincent is engaged!He is a clergyman with a mathematical turn.The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the mathematical journals,and that Lurida presented such a neat solution that the young man fell in love with her on the strength of it.Idon't think the story is literally true,nor do I believe that other report that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the blackboard;but that it was an intellectual rather than a sentimental courtship I do not doubt.Lurida has given up the idea of becoming a professional lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking that her future husband's parish will find her work enough to do.Acertain amount of daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse with simple-minded people will be the best thing in the world for that brain of hers,always simmering with some new project in its least fervid condition.
All our summer visitors have arrived.Euthymia Mrs.Maurice Kirkwood and her husband and little Maurice are here in their beautiful house looking out on the lake.They gave a grand party the other evening.You ought to have been there,but I suppose you could not very well have left your sister in the middle of your visit:All the grand folks were there,of course.Lurida and her young man--Gabriel is what she calls him--were naturally the objects of special attention.Paolo acted as major-domo,and looked as if he ought to be a major-general.Nothing could be pleasanter than the way in which Mr.and Mrs.Kirkwood received their plain country neighbors;that is,just as they did the others of more pretensions,as if they were really glad to see them,as I am sure they were.The old landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves,and I saw Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at the dancers and out at the little groups in the garden,and evidently enjoying it as much as her old employers.It was a most charming and successful party.We had two sensations in the course of the evening.One was pleasant and somewhat exciting,the other was thrilling and of strange and startling interest.
You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his fever,in that first season when he was among us.He was out in a boat one day,when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place where the water was rather shallow."Jake"--you know Jake,--everybody knows Jake--was rowing him.He promised to come to the spot and fish up the ring if he could possibly find it.He was seen poking about with fish-hooks at the end of a pole,but nothing was ever heard from him about the ring.It was an antique intaglio stone in an Etruscan setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna.Mr.
Kirkwood valued it highly,and regretted its loss very much.
While we were in the garden,who should appear at the gate but Jake,with a great basket,inquiring for Mr.Kirkwood."Come,"said Maurice to me,"let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us.What have you got there,Jake?""What I 've got?Wall,I 'll tell y'what I've got:I 've got the biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year.