Hills of the Shatemuc Part 71

"By whom?" said Winthrop.

"Why! -- by very good men; -- by everybody."

"Not by everybody."

"By what sort of people is it not done?"

"By you and me," said Winthrop smiling.

"You think then that a poor man should never marry a rich woman?"

"Never, -- unless he can forget that she is rich and he poor."

Rufus walked for some time in silence.

"Well," he said, in a tone between dry and injured, -- "I am going off to the West again, luckily; and I shall have no opportunity for the present to disturb you by making false pretences, of any sort."

"Is opportunity all that you lack?" said Winthrop looking up, and with so simple an expression that Rufus quitted his walk and his look together.

"Why did you never make trial for yourself, Winthrop?" he said. "You have a remarkably fine chance; and fine opening too, I should think. You are evidently very well received down yonder."

"I have a theory of my own too, on the subject," said Winthrop, -- "somewhat different from yours, but still enough to work by."

"What's that?"

"I have no mind to marry any woman who is unwilling to be obliged to me."

Rufus looked at his brother and at the fireplace awhile in gravity.

"You are proud," he said at length.

"I must have come to it by living so high in the world," said Winthrop.

"So high?" -- said Rufus.

"As near the sun as I can get. I thought it was very near, some time in August last."

Winthrop laid by his book; and the two young men stood several minutes, quite silent, on opposite sides of the hearth, with folded hands and meditative countenances; but the face of the one looked like the muddy waters of the Shatemuc tossed and tumbled under a fierce wind; the other's was calm and steady as Wut-a-qut-o's brow.

"So you won't have any woman that you don't _oblige_ to marry you!" Rufus burst out. "Ha, ha, ha! -- ho, ho, ho! --"

Winthrop's mouth gave the slightest good-humoured token of understanding him, -- it could not be called a smile. Rufus had his laugh out, and cooled down into deeper gravity than before.

"Well!" -- said he, -- "I'll go off to my fate, at the limitless wild of the West. It seems a rough sort of fate."

"Make your fate for yourself," said Winthrop.

"_You_ will," said his brother. "And it will be what you will, and that's a fair one. And you will oblige anybody you have a mind to. And marry an heiress."

"Don't look much like it -- things at present," said Winthrop.

"I don't see the way very clear."

"As for me, I don't know what ever I shall come to," Rufus added.

"Come to bed at present," said Winthrop. "That is one step."

"One step towards what?"

"Sleep in the first place; and after that, anything."

"What a strange creature you are, Governor! and how doubtlessly and dauntlessly you pursue your way," Rufus said sighing.

"Sighs never filled anybody's sails yet," said Winthrop. "They are the very airs of a calm."

"Calm!" said Rufus.

"A dead calm," said his brother laughing.

"I wish I had _your_ calm," said Rufus. And with that the evening ended.

CHAPTER XXI.

O what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do! not knowing what they do!

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

One morning, about these days, Mr. and Miss Haye were seated at the opposite ends of the breakfast-table. They had been there for some time, silently b.u.t.tering rolls and sipping coffee, in a leisurely way on Mr. Haye's part, and an ungratified one on the part of his daughter. He was considering, also in a leisurely sort of way, the columns of the morning paper; she considering him and the paper, and at intervals knocking with her knife against the edge of her plate, -- a meditative and discontented knife, and an impa.s.sive and unimpressed plate. So breakfast went on till Elizabeth's cup was nearly emptied.

"Father," said she, "it is very unsociable and stupid for you to read the paper, and me to eat my breakfast alone. You might read aloud, if you must read."

Mr. Haye brought his head round from the paper long enough to swallow half a cupful of coffee.

"Where's Rose?"

"In bed, for aught I know. There is no moving her till she has a mind."

"'Seems to me, it is quite as difficult to move you," said her father.

"Ay, but then I _have a mind_ -- which makes all the difference."

Mr. Haye went back to his paper and considered it till the rest of his cup of coffee was thoroughly cold. Elizabeth finished her breakfast, and sat, drawn back into herself, with arms folded, looking into the fireplace. Finding his coffee cold, Mr. Haye's attention came at length back upon his daughter.

"What do you want me to talk about?" he said.

"It don't signify, your talking about anything now," said Elizabeth. "Everything is cold -- mind and matter together. I don't know how you'll find the coffee, father."