Majorie Daw(马祖绿·多)

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Majorie Daw

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Majorie Daw

CHAPTER I.

DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES.

NEAR RYE, N.H.

August 8, 1872.

My Dear Sir: I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without

reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and

will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this kind is

always a tedious affair. Fortunately the bone was very skilfully set by the

surgeon who chanced to be in the drugstore where Flemming was brought

after his fall, and I apprehend no permanent inconvenience from the

accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well physically; but I must confess

that the irritable and morbid state of mind into which he has fallen causes

me a great deal of uneasiness. He is the last man in the world who ought to

break his leg. You know how impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a

soul of restlessness and energy, never content unless he is rushing at some

object, like a sportive bull at a red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no

longer amiable. His temper has become something frightful. Miss Fanny

Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the

summer, to nurse him; but he packed her off the next morning in tears. He

has a complete set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled up near

his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever that exemplary serving-man

appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently brought Flemming a

small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of lemonpeel on the

curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. Well, he no sooner set is

eyes upon those lemons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot adequately

describe. This is only one of moods, and the least distressing. At other

times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered limb, silent, sullen,

despairing. When this fit is on him--and it sometimes lasts all day--nothing

can distract his melancholy. He refuses to eat, does not even read the

newspapers; books, except as projectiles for Watkins, have no charms for

him. His state is truly pitiable.

Majorie Daw

Now, if he were a poor man, with a family depending on his daily

labor, this irritability and despondency would be natural enough. But in a

young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of money and seemingly not a

care in the world, the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give way to his

vagaries in this manner, he will end by bringing on an inflammation of the

fibula. It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits' end to know what to

prescribe for him. I have anaesthetics and lotions, to make people sleep

and to soothe pain; but I've no medicine that will make a man have a little

common-sense. That is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond yours.

You are Flemming's intimate friend, his fidus Achates. Write to him, write

to him frequently, distract his mind, cheer him up, and prevent him from

becoming a confirmed case of melancholia. Perhaps he has some

important plans disarranged by his present confinement. If he has you will

know, and will know how to advise him judiciously. I trust your father

finds the change beneficial? I am, my dear sir, with great respect, etc.

Majorie Daw

CHAPTER II.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING, WEST 38TH

STREET, NEW YORK.

August 9, 1872.

My Dear Jack: I had a line from Dillon this morning, and was rejoiced

to learn that your hurt is not so bad as reported. Like a certain personage,

you are not so black and blue as you are painted. Dillon will put you on

your pins again in two to three weeks, if you will only have patience and

follow his counsels. Did you get my note of last Wednesday? I was greatly

troubled when I heard of the accident.

I can imagine how tranquil and saintly you are with your leg in a

trough! It is deuced awkward, to be sure, just as we had promised

ourselves a glorious month together at the sea-side; but we must make the

best of it. It is unfortunate, too, that my father's health renders it

impossible for me to leave him. I think he has much improved; the sea air

is his native element; but he still needs my arm to lean upon in his walks,

and requires some one more careful that a servant to look after him. I

cannot come to you, dear Jack, but I have hours of unemployed time on

hand, and I will write you a whole post-office full of letters, if that will

divert you. Heaven knows, I haven't anything to write about. It isn't as if

we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you some

character studies, and fill your imagination with groups of sea-goddesses,

with their (or somebody else's) raven and blonde manes hanging down

their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in

evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing suit. But we are far from all

that here. We have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles from

the hotels, and lead the quietest of lives.

I wish I were a novelist. This old house, with its sanded floors and

high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster of

pines that turn themselves into aeolian harps every time the wind blows,

would be the place in which to write a summer romance. It should be a

Majorie Daw

story with the odors of the forest and the breath of the sea in it. It should

be a novel like one of that Russian fellow's--what's his name?--

Tourguenieff, Turguenef, Turgenif, Toorguniff, Turgenjew--nobody knows

how to spell him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alexandra Paulovna

could stir the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder

if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle,

would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable condition. If I

thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House and catch one for you;

or, better still, I would find you one over the way.

Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly

opposite our cottage. It is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in the

colonial period, with rambling extensions, and gambrel roof, and a wide

piazza on three sides--a self- possessed, high-bred piece of architecture,

with its nose in the air. It stands back from the road, and has an obsequious

retinue of fringed elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes in the

morning, and oftener in the afternoon, when the sun has withdrawn from

that part of the mansions, a young woman appears on the piazza with some

mysterious Penelope web of embroidery in her hand, or a book. There is a

hammock over there--of pineapple fibre, it looks from here. A hammock is

very becoming when one is eighteen, and has golden hair, and dark eyes,

and an emerald-colored illusion dress looped up after the fashion of a

Dresden china shepherdess, and is chaussee like a belle of the time of

Louis Quatorze. All this splendor goes into that hammock, and sways

there like a pond-lily in the golden afternoon. The window of my bedroom

looks down on that piazza--and so do I.

But enough of the nonsense, which ill becomes a sedate young

attorney taking his vacation with an invalid father. Drop me a line, dear

Jack, and tell me how you really are. State your case. Write me a long,

quite letter. If you are violent or abusive, I'll take the law to you.

Majorie Daw

CHAPTER III.

JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.

August 11, 1872.

Your letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy what a fix I am in--I, who

never had a day's sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs three tons.

It is embalmed in spices and smothered in layers of fine linen, like a

mummy. I can't move. I haven't moved for five thousand years. I'm of the

time of Pharaoh.

I lie from morning till night on a lounge, staring into the hot street.

Everybody is out of town enjoying himself. The brown-stone- front houses

across the street resemble a row of particularly ugly coffins set up on end.

A green mould is settling on the names of the deceased, carved on the

silver door-plates. Sardonic spiders have sewed up the key-holes. All is

silence and dust and desolation. --I interrupt this a moment, to take a shy

at Watkins with the second volume of Cesar Birotteau. Missed him! I think

I could bring him down with a copy of Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire

Universel, if I had it. These small Balzac books somehow do not quite fit

my hand; but I shall fetch him yet. I've an idea that Watkins is tapping the

old gentleman's Chateau Yquem. Duplicate key of the wine-cellar.

Hibernian swarries in the front basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in

his cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber, with that colorless,

hypocritical face of his drawn out long like an accordion; but I know he

grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I have broken my leg. Was not

my evil star in the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend that dinner

at Delmonico's? I didn't come up altogether for that. It was partly to buy

Frank Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now I shall not be able to sit

in the saddle these two months. I'll send the mare down to you at The

Pines--is that the name of the place?

Old Dillon fancies that I have something on my mind. He drives me

wild with lemons. Lemons for a mind diseased! Nonsense. I am only as

restless as the devil under this confinement--a thing I'm not used to. Take a

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MajorieDaw1MajorieDawbyThomasBaileyAldrichMajorieDaw2CHAPTERI.DR.DILLONTOEDWARDDELANEY,ESQ.,ATTHEPINES.NEARRYE,N.H.August8,1872.MyDearSir:Iamhappytoassureyouthatyouranxietyiswithoutreason.Flemmingwillbeconfinedtothesofaforthreeorfourweeks,andwillhavetobecarefulatfirsthowheuseshisleg.Afractureofthisk...

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