Miss Austin

“ Austin nodded his head in agreement. “That’s it! Besides, she’s a girl, and girls are cranky things; a fellow never knows quite how to take ’em.”
“Not a fellow’s own sister?” queried Max, with interest.
“Bless you, no,” replied Austin, shaking his head [Pg 157] this time, and speaking with conviction. “Why, I could make out any other chap’s sister better than I can make out Frances. But of course,” he added, sitting very erect, “Frances isn’t a common girl. She’s not so understandable as the rest of the lot, even.” ”

“ You are still a pioneer in spite of the ten generations, mater. Austin's wife is NOT a lady, Austin is absolutely different from what he was, the people out there are actually COMMON, and yet, just because they like to have you, and think you are intelligent and instructive, you want to go. ”

“ Austin obeyed, a comical look of grievance on his face. 'I declare you order me about just as you did when I came here first, a miserable little muff of [Pg 17] fourteen. You'll never get another like me, Mrs. Thornimett. As if I had not enough outdoor work every day in the week! And I don't know where on earth to go to. It's like turning a fellow out of house and home!'
'You are going out for me, Austin. The master left a message for the Lowland farm, and you shall take it over, and stay the day with them. They will make as much of you as they would of a king. ”

“ Austin is terrible. He pouts around and won’t say a word, and has lost all his love for me. Home will never be as it once was, for I will not give in and mind him in every little thing as if I were only a child,” Nell had confided bitterly.
“Don’t Nell, don’t talk that way. Austin is not pouting, as you think, but he is trying to help you see your mistake. He means right. You know that he does, Nell. Think of all the past, and how he has stood by you.”
“Yes, I know, Bessie, that he has done nobly by us. But he does not understand us girls, and thinks we ought to obey him like children. ”

“ Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved the right to inquire into his character. Neither of them mentioned his income or prospects, and Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters, 'Are these people the same as other people?' Thus permitted, he addressed himself to Annie, and was nearly rejected for his pains. Miss Austin seems to have resented his courtship of her parents first; but the mother's favour, and his own spirited behaviour, saved him, and won her consent. ”

“ Poor Austin! A boy’s love feeds on the romance of hopelessness, flourishes apace in the shadow of despair; it delights in patient waiting, in faithful fidelity, in lapses of years; but a man’s is peremptory, immediate, uncompromising. ”

“ Well, Austin, and what are you reading now?"
"Aunt Charlotte's face," laughed Austin, sauntering up. "She looks as though you had been giving her absolution, Mr Sheepshanks—so beaming and refreshed. Why, what's it all about?"
"I expect you want more absolution than your aunt," said the vicar, humorously. "A sad useless fellow you are, I'm afraid. You and I must have a little serious talk together some day, Austin. I really want you to do something—for your own sake, you know. Now, how would you like to take a class in the Sunday-school, for instance? ”

“ And they used to sit there, he and his uncle, in this same pavilion, smoking, close hedged in from womankind. And when the old man had fallen asleep, Austin would creep out into the park, and walk there with his lovely cousin May. And on one summer day, for all the world like this, he won her heart, this gay young Harvard senior, all among the rushes by the lily-pool. And Austin had gone back into the pavilion, quaking, to tell his uncle, and found the latter very dignified and dead, a bottle of the famous Eclipse Lafite close by his elbow. ”

“ And she threw her arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers, oblivious alike of Andre on the front seat and all the passing crowds on Fifth Avenue.
"Don't," Austin said after a moment. "We mustn't kiss each other like that when some one might see us—I forgot, for a minute, that there was any one else in the world! Besides, I'm afraid, if we do, I'll let myself go more than I mean to—it's all been stifled inside me so long—and be almost rough, and startle or hurt you. I couldn't bear to have that happen to you—again. I want you always to feel safe and shielded with me." ”

“ Mrs. Austin was a pale, wan-faced woman, with great eyes and a quantity of black hair, hardly tinged with gray, coiled at the back of a well-shaped head. A strange-looking woman, wild yet touchingly sad. She spoke very little, and then in a hurried, nervous way, while her hand shook the cup which she handed me until it rattled. She had a glancing, fearful look, and seemed ill at ease. Nervous, I suppose, as that is the solution of all puzzling matters in regard to women.
"I haven't seen your little girl yet," I remarked, at breakfast-time. ”

“ Old Saltonstall Adams said, “I don’t believe this child is guilty of anything really wrong. If she caught the fancy of Doctor Waring, it may seem pretty awful to us old fogies, but a pretty girl like Miss Austin can’t help charming the menfolks. I don’t want to discuss that, but I do say that it’s no crime to go to see a man in the evening, and too, she may have had some errand we know nothing about. Did Doctor Waring give you that money of his own free will, Miss Austin?” ”

“ Who is Austin?" she asked.
"What an idiot I am!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "I am talking as if you knew everybody I know, and everything I know! You see, it seems as if I had known you for years, and that we had been one since we were boy and girl!"
She laid her hand timidly on his head, and lovingly smoothed the black, clustered hair.
"Austin is Austin Ambrose," he went on; "the best fellow in the world. He is the greatest friend I have, Madge, and I want you to like him awfully."
"I like him already if he is a friend of yours—Blair," she said. ”

“ Now that she had settled in Woodend, it was in harmony with her wishes and instincts that Frances should be to the girls such a leader as Mrs. Morland had become to their elders, and that Austin’s careless good-humour should assure his popularity. If her children had been dull and commonplace, she would have felt herself an injured person. ”

“ She could not deny that what he said was true. "Can such things really be?" she uttered under her breath.
"Dear auntie, they are," said Austin. "I've been conscious of it for months, and lately I've had the proof. Indeed, I've had more than one. There are people all round us, only it isn't given to everybody to see them. And it isn't really very astonishing that it should be so, when one comes to think of it."
From that day forward Aunt Charlotte watched Austin with a sense of something akin to awe. ”

“ Frances could not do anything striking for the girls’ schoolrooms at present, since they were shut, and their presiding genius was away from home. But Austin’s sister, finding herself welcomed in a fashion which showed how unstinted had been Austin’s recommendations, was determined to do her best to justify his loyalty. She was soon the happy potentate of an acquiescent kingdom, and honestly anxious to make good use of her unexpected influence. Besides [Pg 26] being the leader in every frolic, she tried to interest herself in everybody’s hobbies and everybody’s fancies. ”

“ It was nice at Haversfield, Austin. I want to stay with Mamma and you, of course, else I should like to go back. Miss Cliveden—my house-mistress—was so jolly. She used to make one feel as if one wanted to be of some good, if one could.”
“You can be of lots of good here,” said Austin comfortably. “It’s no sense a fellow having a sister if she’s away at school. Max says if he had a sister he’d think himself lucky, for she would be able to teach him how to make a bed properly. That’s a thing he often needs to do for his worst cases, and he does not quite understand it.” ”

“ On such evenings, late, if Nina and Eileen had gone to a dance, or to the opera with Boots, Austin, ruddy with well-being and shamelessly slippered, stretched luxuriously in the fire warmth, lazily discussing what was nearest to him—his children and wife, and the material comfort which continued to attend him with the blessing of that heaven which seems so largely occupied in fulfilling the desires of the good for their own commercial prosperity. ”

“ Austin drew near his sister, and put his arm lovingly round her. "Prissy," he said, "don't you think if we were really doing well, the little things God has given us to do, we would be living to some purpose, and helping on his kingdom?"
Austin's grave, earnest words touched the girl's heart.
"I do believe you are helping it on," she said; "but as for me, everything seems wrong. Even in what I thought was to be my great work I have come to a standstill. I can go no further in either mathematics or astronomy without a teacher, and my father would not instruct me in either, I know." ”

“ After this week her employer was to leave the farm, and as no one else knew her, she was at a loss how she could get employment. Except the shepherd, most people shunned her—it was no wonder. She had first shunned them. Still she must think of something. Her boy must not starve, even if she were reduced to beg his bread.
There was something heroic about this woman, and her devoted love for her helpless child, that touched a cord in Austin’s heart. He was a thoroughly religious man, and his mind reverted habitually, whether in sorrow or in joy, to the source of all comfort and all hope. ”

“ To say the truth, we suspect one of Miss Austin's great merits in our eyes to be, the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the esprit de corps— can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. ”

“ Far within me there was something which inarticulately knew that whatever the world might think of me, in spite of what I had confessed to Pauline, I was a good woman; I had loved Helmeth Garrett with the kind of love by which the world is saved. Past all loss and forsaking, past loneliness and longing, there was something which had stirred in me which would never waken to a lighter occasion; and whether great love like that is the best thing that can happen to us or the most unusual, it had placed me forever beyond the reach of futility and cheapness. ”

“ All of her writings are in a finished style, remarkable alike for delicacy, purity and clearness of expression, and her work is distinctly American.
Personally Mrs. Austin is a charming woman, much beloved by those who know her best. She has three children, and her home is with a married daughter at Roxbury, Massachusetts; but she spends much of her time in Boston. ”

“ How like Austin's fine courage that was, his saying that he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse her, to carry her off? ”

“ I think, Austin, that you have expected both Amy and Nell to be like your self in steadiness and singleness of purpose, when you have not really had any youth. Possibly the very fact that you had to fight off every youthful inclination and be a mature man before your time, for the sake of your family, has placed you where you can not sympathize with their fickleness. Really, Austin, they are girls, just girls. ”

“ Austin never failed to applaud loudly every little picture that was made she thought that others, too, would see some beauty in them. She knew, of course, that the good landlady was only an uncultivated, ignorant woman, and therefore one who could not be a judge of art, yet Doris fondly imagined that, having had a son who aspired to be an artist, Mrs. Austin must know more of such things than ordinary women of her class. ”

“ I know, I know, lass, and for all thy high spirit thou wert ever maiden meek and mild to thine elders. But it was not to thee I spoke just then. Yet now I will have thee to advise with me, for, truth to tell, I am a little fogged and stunned with all these matters, and since my sweet maid left me I’ve grown old and doddering—no, never mind naysaying me, I know what I know. What I will have thee tell me, Betty, is this. Shall I—would Lora have me bid Josiah bring his wife home—and let her sit in—Oh, my God! ”

“ Austin, with some of his workmen who had remained—the greater portion of them were pursuing the vanquished—raised Abel White. His head was cut, his body bruised, but no serious damage appeared to have been done. 'Can you walk with assistance as far as Mr. Rice's shop?' asked Austin.
'I daresay I can, sir, in a minute: I'm a bit giddy now,' was White's reply, as he leaned his back against the wall, being supported on either side. 'Sir, what a mercy that you had that light with you!'
'Ay,' shortly replied Austin. 'Quale, there's the blood dripping upon your sleeve. ”

“ I really wish poor Austin had hit on something else; I'd much rather have no religion, and enjoy life while I'm in it, than choose one to worry me here and bedevil me hereafter. But some people, my dear, have a taste for being miserable, and provide, like poor Austin, for its gratification in the next world as well as here. Ha, ha, ha! how grave the little woman looks! Don't you think me very wicked? You know you do; and very likely you are right. Who makes your dresses, my dear? You are such a figure of fun!'
'Mrs. Rusk, I think, ordered this dress. I and Mary Quince planned it. ”