Hills of the Shatemuc Part 75

"That may do for some things," said Elizabeth. "It won't for others."

"This would work well along with my mother's recipe," he said.

"What is that?" said Elizabeth harshly. "You didn't tell me."

"I am hardly fit to tell you," he answered, "for I do not thoroughly know it myself. But I know she would send you to the Bible, --and tell you of a hand that she trusts to do everything for her, and that she knows will do all things well, and kindly."

"But does that hinder disagreeables from being disagreeables?"

said Elizabeth with some impatience of tone. "Does that hinder aches from being pain?"

"Hardly. But I believe it stops or soothes the aching. I believe it, because I have seen it."

Elizabeth stood still, her bosom swelling, and that fluttering of her throat growing more fluttering. It got beyond her command. The mixed pa.s.sions and vexations, and with them a certain softer and more undefined regret, reached a point where she had no control over them. The tears would come, and once arrived at that, they took their own way; with such a rush of pa.s.sionate indulgence, that a thought of the time and the place and the witness, made nothing, or came in only to swell the rush. The flood poured over the barrier with such joy at being set free, that it carried all before it.

Elizabeth was just conscious of being placed on a seat, near to which it happened that she was standing; and she knew nothing more. She did not even know how completely she was left to herself. Not till the fever of pa.s.sion was brought a little down, and recollection and shame began to take their turn, and she checked her tears and stole a secret glance around to see what part of the gravel walk supported a certain pair of feet, for higher than the ground she dared not look.

Her surprise was a good deal to find that her glance must take quite a wide range to meet with them; and then venturing a single upward look, she saw that her companion standing at a little distance was not watching her, nor apparently had been; his att.i.tude bespoke him quietly fixed upon something else and awaiting her leisure. Elizabeth brought her eyes home again.

"What a strange young man!" was her quick thought; -- "to have been brought up a farmer's boy, and to know enough and to dare enough to put me on this seat, and then to have the wit to go off and stand there in that manner!"

But this tribute of respect to Winthrop was instantly followed by an endeavour to do herself honour, in the way of gaining self-possession and her ordinary looks as speedily as possible. She commanded herself well after once she got the reins in hand; yet however it was with a grave consciousness of swollen eyes and flushed cheeks that she presently rose from her place and went forward to the side of the quiet figure that stood there with folded arms watching the rolling waters of the bay. Elizabeth stood at his elbow a minute in hesitation.

"I am ready now, Mr. Landholm. I am sorry I have kept you by my ridiculousness."

"I have not been kept beyond my pleasure," he said.

"I lost command of myself," Elizabeth went on. "That happens to me once in a while."

"You will feel better for it," he said, as they turned and began to walk homewards.

"He takes things coolly!" thought Elizabeth.

"Do you men ever lose command of yourselves?"

"Sometimes -- I am afraid," he said with a smile.

"I suppose your greater power of nerve and of guarding appearances, is one secret of the triumphant sort of pride you wear upon occasion. There --I see it in your face now."

"I hope not," said Winthrop laughing. "The best instance of self-control that I ever saw, was most unaccompanied with any arrogance of merit or power."

"He means his mother again," thought Elizabeth.

"Was that instance in a man or a woman, Mr. Landholm?"

"It was in a woman -- unfortunately for your ground."

"Not at all," said Elizabeth. "Exceptions prove nothing."

Winthrop said nothing, for his thoughts were busy with that image of sweet self-guidance which he had never known to be unsteady or fail; and which, he knew, referred all its strength and all its stableness to the keeping of another hand. Most feminine, most humble, and most sure.

"Mr. Winthrop, your mother puzzles me," said Elizabeth. "I wish I knew some of her secrets."

"I wish I did," he answered with half a sigh.

"Why, don't you!"

"No."

"I thought you did."

"No; for she says they can only be arrived at through a certain initiation which I have not had -- after certain preliminary steps, which I have not yet taken."

Elizabeth looked at him, both surprised and curious.

"What are they?"

Winthrop's face was graver than usual, as he said,

"I wish my mother were here to answer you."

"Why, cannot you?"

"No."

"Don't you know the preliminary steps, Mr. Landholm?"

He looked very grave again.

"Not clearly enough to tell you. In general, I know she would say there is a narrow way to be pa.s.sed through before the treasures of truth, or its fair prospects, can be arrived at; but I have never gone that way myself and I cannot point out the way-marks."

"Are you referring to the narrow gate spoken of in the Bible?"

"To the same."

"Then you are getting upon what _I_ do not understand," said Elizabeth.

They had mounted the steps of No. 11, and were waiting for the door to be opened. They waited silently till it was done, and then parted with only a 'good night.' Elizabeth did not ask him in, and it hardly occurred to Winthrop to wonder that she did not.

Mr. Landholm read no cla.s.sics that night. Neither law.

Neither, which may seem more strange, did he consult his Book of books at all. He busied himself, not exactly with the study of the human mind, but of two human minds, -- which, though at first sight it may seem an enlargement of the subject, is in fact rather a contracted view of the same.

CHAPTER XXII.

_Sir Toby_. Do not our lives consist of the four elements?

_Sir And._ 'Faith, so they say, but, I think, it rather consists of eating and drinking.

TWELFTH NIGHT.

"Dear, Mr. Winthrop, -- what makes all this smoke here?"