Evenings at Donaldson Manor; Or, The Christmas GuestMcIntosh, Maria J. (Maria Jane)
General
Evenings at Donaldson Manor; Or, The Christmas Guest
McIntosh, Maria J. (Maria Jane)
Christmas stories; Fiction
all--and as such, it attracted from Mary a deeper and more reverent
admiration, than she had felt for him when adorned with all the
trappings of wealth and luxurious refinement. The very depth of this
sentiment destroyed the ease of her manner towards him, and as Philip
Oswald took the hand formerly so freely offered him, and heard from her
lips the respectful Mr. Oswald, instead of the frank, sisterly Philip,
he said to himself--"She looks down upon the backwoodsman, and would
have him know his place." So much for man's boasted penetration!
Notwithstanding the barrier of reserve thus erected between them, Philip
Oswald could not but admire the rare loveliness into which Mary
Grayson's girlish prettiness had expanded, and again, and yet again,
while she was speaking to his mother, and could not therefore perceive
him, he turned to gaze on her, fascinated not by the finely turned form
or beautiful features, but by the countenance beaming with gentle and
refined intelligence. Here was none of the brilliancy which had dazzled
his senses in Caroline Danby, but an expression of mind and heart far
more captivating to him who had entered into the inner mysteries of
life.
A fortnight was the limit of Philip Oswald's stay in the city. He had
come not for his mother, but for the house in which she was to live, and
he carried it back with him. We do not mean that his house, with all its
conveniences of kitchen and pantry, its elegances of parlor and
drawing-room, and its decorations of pillar and cornice fitly joined
together, travelled off with him to the far West. We do not despair of
seeing such a feat performed some day, but we believe it has not yet
been done, and Philip Oswald, at least, did not attempt it; he took with
him, however, all those useful and ornamental contrivances in their
several parts, accompanied by workmen skilled in putting the whole
together. Again in his western home, for another year, his head and his
hands were fully occupied with building and planting. For the first two
years of his forest life, he had thought only of the substantial produce
of the field--the rye, the barley, the Indian corn, which were to be
exchanged for the "omnipotent dollar"--but woman was coming, and beauty
and grace must be the herald of her steps. For his mother, he planted
fruits and flowers, opened views of the lake, made a gravelled walk to
its shore bordered with flowering shrubs, and wreathed the woodbine, the
honeysuckle, and the multiflora rose around the columns of his piazza.
For his mother this was done, and yet, when the labors of the day were
over, and he looked forth upon them in the cool, still evening hour, it
was not his mother's face, but one younger and fairer which peered out
upon him from the vine-leaves, or with tender smiles wooed him to the
lake. Young, fair, and tender as it was, its wooings generally sent him
in an opposite direction, with a sneer at his own folly, to stifle his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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