Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1886-05-21
CHAPTER V.

smooth, very often runs slowly. No one can
say that Car or Sibyl Temple married fol-
love; we need not assert that they sold them
selves; marriages such as theirs are made
every day, with the sanction of the church
and the praise of the world; but they are net
ideal marriages, not romantic-not the stuff
out of which love can be made. Sweet
Sophia Temple, the beauty and heroine OF
this tale, was not proposed to so abruptly,
nor married so hastily.
Young Brent was shy. To increase his shy
ness he was passionately in love. and love
made a thousand things delights to him which
a well-informed modern man might do for
his lady once, but not twice, certainly. For
Instance, young Brent would stroll about the
town half a morning waiting for a chance
meeting; and if, after he had executed a
perfect walking match in slow time, he met
Sophia, and she gave him a smile, or ex-
changed a few words, he would return home
all aglow, and could hardly sit down to his
geology, so hot his flame would burn. Week
after week this went on. Silly young fellow,
when he might have been bathing in the full
tide of courtship, to be thus timidly treading
the margin of the golden sea! Yet perhaps
not so silly after all; since most people agree
that loves preludes are so delicious that they
may well be heightened; and some say that
the water is pellucid near the shore and tur-
bid when we venture further out.
This / will say in defense of him. Sophia,
more than most women, was fitted for this
slow, worshiping kind of courtship. It often
struck me that she was already what one
might imagine a good, warm-hearted and
beautiful woman becoming in a more ex-
allied state of existence. She had the gold of
oar nature, with very little of its droSs. From
her, more than from any woman l ever
knew, or man either, did | learn how comely
human nature may be when tremendously
developed; how various qualities Of mind and
soul, which We are apt to think conflicting,
such as humor and devotion, passion and
purity, may, when combined in proper pro-
portions, be each the complement of the
other. Sophia changed from mood to
mood with an ease, ali absence of
constraint, which was the sign of a
nature ~reconciled to life in the best sense.
l am going to mention a trivial occurrence,
but to me it was significant. | saw her
one morning greatly interested in ar account
of a wedding robe, its color, tri innings, and
the usual sequels-just as serio usly inter
ested as the most dressy of her sex could have
been. A little while after, when a piece of
poetry was read aloud by somebody in the
~company-one of Tom Hoods, | think, lust
published, a little fragment written in that
note of mingled humor and sadness which
was so much his OWL saw Sophia's face
with a ripple of fun on it passing, with the
poem, into seriousness. 1t seemed as if the
soul of the poet, in its double mood of laugh
ter and tears, were expressing itself in her
lovely features. 1t is a small matter to men
ti~on-laughable, perhaps-but it impressed
me, and it was indeed a disclosure of her char
acter. She had a frank, spontaneous sym
pathy with life all round and in every part,
such as l never met in any one beside herself.
By reason Of this virtue she was always in
terested in what was going on, and the very
quality which subdued her individuality in
one way made her character fresh and de-
lightful in another. Sophia charmed, by her
constellation of charms, the grouping of vir-
tues and graces of body and mind, which
seemed to make her sympathetic with the
most opposite persons, and at home in the
most various scenes.
Was there a key to all this. or was she a
Phoenix in muslin, a paragon, admirable and
inexplicable3 1t is my conviction that her
mothers constant lectures on the subject of
women making themselves fa~scinating-lec-
lures which fell on ears that interpreted
eYery word into new and higher language
than the original-gave that bent to her dis
position which made her what she was. The
little morning room dispositions, with ball
rooms and lawns and dinner tables for texts,
concerning dresses and marriages and car
rjages and fortunes and smiles and p~ostures
and witty answers and complaisancy-these
all Sophia carried up to a higher level of idea
and aspiration. She resolved to charm others
with happiness and goodness in view, not
mere society ~conquests. Mrs. Barbara Tenn
pies projections were delivered in the spirit
Of Lord Chesterfield, low and selfish,
under a thin disguise of good humor.
Sophia, by the instinct of a lofty
nature, resolved to use the means her
mother recommended, but with a diff
ferent end in view. And here was the pleas
ing originality of her life; she used worldly
methods for most unworldly ends. The
polish, the graces, the social attractions, the
accomplishments, literature and wit, which
saints either despise or at best only tolerate,
she used as the very material out of which
her noble purpose must be woven. And so
she remained rather worldly than otherwise
on tie face of her life, and serious people
declared she needed conversion. But in the
secret interior of her intentions she was truly
devoted, trying, by the spell of a beautiful
womanbcod, to make those with whom she
lived better and happier. Certain wise men
explain the miracle of Pentecost as having
lain in the ear; that heard, not in the tongues
that spoke, the listeners clothing the speech
with a sense Of their own. So worldly, good
humored Mrs Barbara Temple said her
shrewd say; but the words, as they battered
from her lips, caught from the daughters
finer ear a music and a meaning which the
speaker never understood.
With slow delight, with many a blush,
with stolen glances and few shy words, the
courtship Of Percival and Sophia progressed,
and each had commended the other in their
inmost souls long before any love was ex-
pressed. Brent senior had quite recovered
his spirits in the presence of Mrs. Barbara
Temple, and his easy-moved laughter was
heard in dining room and drawing room as
of old. Accordingly, to and fro, from house
to house the families went; and the young
people had plenty of occasions of making
lose, though it was as yet love unspoken.
There are, then, two schools Of lovers
those who plunge, and those who inch; and
those who plunge are wise, but those who
inch are wiser.
Percival, either by foresight or simply
through circumstance, was an "incher."