 | CHAPTER IX. Clarence, or, A tale of our own times |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
“S'il étoit reconnu qui'l faut cousidérer la pensée comme une
maladie contre laquelle un régime reguliér est nécessaire, on ne
saurait rien imaginer de mieux qu'un genre de distraction à la
fois s'ètourdissant et insipide.”
Mad de Stael.
Ten days subsequent to Seton's death passed
away without any incident in the affairs of our dramatis
personæ worthy of being recorded. Miss Clarence
availed herself of a cold, (an auxiliary always at hand
in a New York winter,) as a pretext for remaining in
her own apartment. She did not repine at Seton's
death, but wisely regarded it as a happy release.
She had, however, been too long and too affectionately
attached to him not to be deeply affected by
the knowledge of his sufferings, and not to yield her
mind to the serious emotions, and thoughts that
death calls forth.
Nothing could be more opportune than this
retirement to Emilie, who under the pretext of devotion
to her friend, sheltered herself from the observation
of the world, and the ardent attentions
of Pedrillo.
Mrs. Layton, conscious that she had fallen in Gertrude's
esteem, and ambitious to regain the admiration
that had been so flattering to her, exerted with
fresh resolution all her powers of fascination. She
endured a week's seclusion without apparent ennui.
She adapted herself with nice tact to the current
of Gertrude's feelings—was serious, sympathetic,
had waked from her dream, and imagination could
not repeat its illusions. The qualities that had captivated
her had vanished in smoke, like the body of
the Arabian magician, and Gertrude's incredulity in
the reality of that which had once deceived her, was
not, like the fisherman's, affected. When an eloquent
or enthusiastic strain flowed from Mrs. Layton's lips,
`why,' thought our practical heroine, `is not that
fervid feeling directed to Emilie?'—`why is it not
employed to avert her impending fate?' When
Mrs. Layton complained of her destiny, and lamented
that she had no adequate object to employ her
faculties and fill the void in her heart, Gertrude
thought of her neglected children. `If her conjugal
happiness is blasted,' she said, `can a mother
want objects to elicit her noblest faculties, and her
tenderest affections?' As an intimate intercourse
brought their minds into close comparison, Gertrude
perceived they were not, on any subject,
attuned to the same key. They were both well
versed in the elegant literature of the day, but their
tastes were always in opposition. In poetry, Mrs.
Layton preferred that which addressed the passions;
Gertrude, that which touched the affections. Mrs.
Layton was an idolator of Byron. Her imagination
was stimulated by the tragic history of his
heroes, whose feelings are all passions, and whose
deeds are almost all crimes. She delighted in his
descriptions of the outward world—the visible paradise
of poetry, which the evil spirit of his mighty
genius has sometimes overshadowed with its own
image. Gertrude loved all the poets—the glorious
the penetrating tenderness of Burns, and the perfect
yet poetic fidelity of our own Bryant, the mirror of nature,
that like a serene lake, gives back the image of
the delicate floweret and the lofty tree, as clearly defined,
as soft and beautiful as their originals in the ethereal
atmosphere. Mrs. Layton revelled in the Sybilline
revelations of Mad de Stael. Gertrude's soul
was thrilled by them, but she preferred Miss Edgeworth—preferred
the beneficent genius who has
made the actual social world better and happier, to
her who by a motion of her wand could create an
imaginative world, and disclose a possible, but unattainable
beauty. Among heroines, Corinne was
Mrs. Layton's favorite. Gertrude preferred Rebecca—she
who conquered, to her who was the
victim of love. Even Jeanie Deans, (pardon her
humble taste, gentle reader,) that personification of
truth—that unvarnished picture of moral beauty,
moved her heart more than the gifted Corinne. It
would be an endless task to enumerate the diversity
of their tastes in nature, in music, in all the arts.
Mrs. Layton's sensibility was the fruit of a highly
cultivated imagination; Gertrude's, the instinct of
a generous heart. Mrs. Layton required high
stimulants, and artificial excitements—the miraculous
touch of the prophet to bring it forth. Gertrude's
was moved by natural impulses, and flowed from an
ever-living fountain. Thus opposed in the very
texture of their characters, it was impossible for
either party to derive much enjoyment from a continued
exclusive intercourse, and Mrs. Layton was
impatient to plunge again into society, where her
qualities.
“My dear Gertrude,” said she, one particularly
bright morning, “I cannot consent to your and
Emilie's immuring yourselves any longer. Our
door-bell will be rung by a dear five hundred
friends, at least, to-day; and it is really a farce,
when you are so well, and looking so remarkably
well, too, to send them away with a mere bulletin of
your health—so, unless you choose to permit the
real cause of your sentimental seclusion to peep out,
I beg you will grace my parlor.”
“We are your subjects, and owe you passive
obedience,” replied Gertrude, who as soon as she
perceived her liability to excite curiosity, determin-to
avoid it.
“You are a dear, reasonable creature, Gertrude,
and I wish I had made my request sooner, for really
I have been tormented to death with Pedrillo's impatience,
(poor fellow! it's no wonder, it will not
do for Em' to dilly dally much longer,)—and Layton,
too, has been in the worst possible humor—by
the way he left a note for you this morning—some
one of your honorable suitors has probably chosen
him for mediator”—she rung the bell, and ordered
the servant to bring Miss Clarence a note from Mr.
Layton's dressing-room table. It was brought,
and contained no soft intercession, but a nonchalant
sort of a request that Miss Clarence would favor
him with the loan of five hundred dollars for a few
days. Gertrude hesitated for a moment. She habitually
regarded her fortune, like the other gifts of
Providence, as a sacred trust, to be applied to the
a sum without being somewhat disturbed by
the belief that it was to be applied to an idle or
profligate purpose.
Mrs. Layton who, though she had not chosen to
appear so, was really aware of the contents of the
note, watched the expression of Gertrude's countenance,
and put her own interpretation on it. `Oh,'
thought she, `how unlike poor me! If I had her
wealth, I should not give a second thought to so
pitiful a sum! but money does so harden the heart!'
Gertrude hesitated but a moment. `I cannot refuse,'
thought she, `while a guest in his house,' and
thus quieting her conscience, she signed a check
for the amount, and enclosed it in a note to Layton.
“Ah—is that it?” said Mrs. Layton, looking at
her with a smile, and speaking in a tone of surprise.
“Poor Layton! alas! alas! Gertrude, we do live
in a `bank-note world,' and happy are they who
have enough of this mundane trash—But come,
my dearest, finish your toilet—thank Heaven, you
as well as myself, look the better for its tender
mercies—but Emilie—it is too provoking—she has
just tucked her wavy locks behind her ears, and she
looks like the beau-ideal of painting, or like
Float in light visions round the poet's head.”
“Oh, mother!” said Emilie. It was but a word
—but Gertrude thought a word spoken in such a
tone of feeling and remonstrance, should have
pierced the mother's heart. Emilie was standing
her. “This fair round cheek was made for smiles,
not tears, and,” she added, glancing her eye at
Mrs. Layton, and speaking with an energy not at
all agreeable to that lady, “God forbid she should
be doomed to them!”
“Amen!” responded Mrs. Layton. And now,
young ladies, our orisons being ended, let us doscend
to mortal affairs”—and smoothing her brow,
she led the way down stairs. As they reached the
lower entry, the door-bell rang, and Mrs. Layton,
glancing her eye through the side-window,exclaimed,
“there's Patty Sprague!—I wish she were a thousand
miles off.” The ladies passed into the parlor,
and the servant to the door, followed by one of the
children who happened to be loitering there. The
door was opened, and Miss Patty appeared—`Ah!'
said she to the little boy who was springing on the
door-step, and pulled back by the servant, `Ah Julian,
is mama at home, dear?
“Yes, Miss Patty,” he replied, and like a bird,
vexed that the door of his cage was reclosed upon
him, he pecked at the first object within his reach.
“Yes, Miss Patty, but she said she wished you were
a thousand miles off.”
“Never tell tales out of school, dearie,” rejoined
Miss Patty, patting the boy's cheek, and she
proceeded to the parlor, without being in the slightest
degree checked or irritated. Miss Patty belonged
to the single sisterhood; a community,
which in the march of civilization, is losing its distinctive
characteristics, but is still strikingly marked
in the `lone conspicuity' of some of its members.
relief, that her image would have befitted the banner
of the order. She was a belle before the revolution;
had played `cruel Barbara Allen' to one or two patriots,
who unlike poor `Jemmy Grove,' survived and
lived to fight vigorously for their country. She
had flirted with British officers, and been actually
engaged (she said so!) to a refugee tory, who could
not (he did not!) return to keep his vows. Miss
Patty, however, bore the sad chances and changes
of this mortal life, most kindly. Her vanity, if it
had no aliment in the present, and could hope for
none in the future, was pampered by memory. She
had a good-natured, gossiping, selfish sympathy
with the world, but no love, hatred, or malice for any
individual of that world. She hoarded her patrimony,
and lived by spending the day in turn with a
large circle of affluent friends; some bound to her
by the tie of distant kindred, and others by old acquaintance.
If any of her circle fell into adversity,
Miss Patty forgot them; and why should such a fly
as Miss Patty descend the wheel, when she might as
well buzz about those who were on the top? She
was generally tolerated, and sometimes welcomed—
for she was a walking and talking chronicle—possessed
of the last information on the floating topics
of the day, and in her humble way, and to our
prosing world, she filled the place of a wandering
minstrel, or itinerant conteur.
“Glad to see you down stairs, young ladies,” she
said, as she entered the parlor. “Every body is
mourning about your sickness, Miss Clarence—parties
put off, and hearts breaking. I have come to
to Mrs. Layton.
“How unfortunate! Miss Patty—we are engaged
out to dine.”
“That suits me better yet—I'll sit awhile, and
run over and dine with the Porters, and spend to-morrow
with you, dear.” It was a part of Miss
Patty's tactics, to have an engagement one day
ahead. She was no philosopher in the abstract; but
what is life but a series of philosophical truths? and
Miss Patty perceived that her friend consented without
much visible reluctance, to an evil twenty-four
hours distant; and when it came, it was in the class
of inevitables, and of course, submitted to with
grace. As soon as Miss Patty had received Mrs.
Layton's bow of acquiescence in her arrangement,
she turned to the young ladies.
“Dear! how pale and thin Emilie is looking—
but it's so with all engaged ladies—I looked just so,
before the revolution.” Gertrude smiled—she could
not help it—at the revolution that must have occurred,
since Miss Patty could have resembled the
figure of her friend; as pale, certainly, and as beautiful
as the most exquisite statue. “You smile, Miss
Clarence—you don't remember—oh, no, you can't
remember—but, perhaps you never heard about my
engagement to Mr. Pinkie?”
“Bless you, Mlss Patty!” said Mrs. Layton,
eager to avert the history, “indeed she has—who
has not heard it?”
“True—true—it was pretty well known. Well,
Emmy dear, I hope you will have better luck than
I had. I believe you are one of the lucky kind;
to a real nabob, before she is seventeen;
that's what I call a run of luck!”
“But the game is not finished, and the tables
may turn,” said Gertrude, with an emphasis that
sounded like a celestial prophecy to Emilie; like
treason to her mother, and very like envy to Miss
Patty.
“That is not hardly fair, Miss Gertrude,” she
said, “you have brought Emilie's color into her
cheeks, with the bare thoughts of it. Never mind,
dear, there's no war breaking out now, as in my
day, and—but here's the very person in question.”
Pedrillo entered; and while he, on the score of
not having seen Emilie for a week, was raising her
reluctant hand to his lips, Miss Patty continued to
Gertrude, her handkerchief before her face, and in
a depressed tone—“the handsomest man I have
seen since the evacuation! nothing boyish, no American
slouch—you never saw the British officers,
Miss Clarence?”
“I never had that happiness, Miss Patty.”
“Then you never saw what I call men. Mr. Pedrillo
has that same air, so erect, and finished, and
Je ne sais quoi, as the French say. Poor Mr. Pinkie
had it too—but then he was born before the revolution.
You know the Americans are very much degenerated.”
“No, I was not aware of it,” replied Gertrude,
with seeming simplicity.
“My dear!—they certainly are. The English
travellers and English reviews all say so—they tell
me—I don't read such light things—but it is my
as Gerald Roscoe said to me once, `Miss Patty,'
said he, `you have seen a great deal of life'—you
need not smile, Miss Clarence, he did not mean
any allusion to my age—he is too much of a gentleman
for that. By the way, I met him this morning,
and told him I always laid you out for him.
`Oh, bury the thought, Miss Patty,' said he, `I
cannot enter the lists against so many—my superiors
and elders'—saucy fellow! I suppose he alluded
to Mr. Morley—but, la! what a certain sign it
is if you mention a person, he is sure to appear—
Good morning, Mr. Morley—I declare, I don't see
that you grow old at all.”
Mr. Morley, who had entered, bowed rather
coolly to the compliment, and then said to Mrs.
Layton, though his eye turned most significantly to
Gertrude, that he had just received a letter from
Washington, announcing Mr. Randolph Marion's
appointment.
Gertrude dared not look at Emilie, but she expressed
her own pleasure in the most animated terms.
Morley was delighted. “My dear Miss Clarence,”
he said in a low tone, “I am too happy to have
obliged you.”
“You have obliged me, materially, Mr. Morley,
and I am delighted to believe that you will be rewarded
for any exertions in my friend's behalf, by the consciousness
of having given the public an officer of
talent and integrity.” This was not precisely the
reward—the quid pro quo, to which Mr. Morley
looked; and this he was intimating to Miss Clarence,
in oracular phrases, which she fortunately might or
of fashionable ladies attended by Major Daisy,
Flint, and half a dozen other gentlemen, entered.
Never did the arrival of a corps de reserve prove a
more timely relief, than this to poor Emilie; who,
in a state of nervous agitation, was giving all her
thoughts to Marion's rising fortune; and trying to
avert her treacherous cheek from Pedrillo, and
close her ear against the ardent language that he
was addressing to her, whlie he appeared to be carelessly
playing with a fire-screen.
The usual formula of morning chit-chat was run
over; that mystery of mysteries eagerly inquired
into, “how did you take such a sad cold?”—all
the changes rung upon the weather—`it had been
very damp'—`it was very fine'—`nothing more capricious
than the weather'—`Mrs. L. had a delightful
party'—`Mrs. K.'s was very dull'—`none of the
L.'s there, on account of the old gentleman's death,
charming old man he was, pity he had not lived a
few days longer.'
A knot of ladies, bold aspirants to the reputation
of fine women, were announcing their opinion of a
new poem, and the last novel. “Is the Corsair a
favorite of yours?” “Oh!” replied the sapient
young lady, to whom the inquiry was addressed,
“Oh, I doat on it—was there ever such a sweet
creature as Conrad?”
“No,” said another lady, in answer to an innocent
query, “I never read American novels, there's
no high life in them.”
The scene was constantly shifting, or rather the
actors made their exits, and new ones appeared.
Clarence, you feel the draught, shut the door John,”
said our attentive friend Flint. John bowed respectfully,
but did not move, and the reason of his deferred
obedience was presently explained by voices,
from the entry, breaking from a whisper into a gentle
altercation. “Indeed, Mr. Roscoe, you must
come in—it cannot be impossible.”
“I would trample on impossibilities at your bidding,
Miss Mayo, but—”
The rest of the sentence was intercepted by an
exclamation from Flint—“I declare, there's my
friend Roscoe; I promised, ten days ago, Miss Clarence,
to introduce him to you,” and before Gertrude
could interpose a word, he darted off to force
his patronage on Roscoe. A more potent voice was
now raised, “Come in, Mr. Gerald Roscoe,” said
Mrs. Layton, “as lady of the manor, and entitled
to all waifs and strays, I command you to come in,”
and Roscoe, preceded by two ladies, who, if they
had been a trio, might have been mistaken for the
graces in Parisian costume, entered the parlor.
Mrs. Layton rose to receive them with something
very different in her manner, from the mechanical politeness
she addressed to ordinary guests. “For
shame, Mr. Roscoe!” she said, “you, unfettered, unbound,
and not half so old as the vagrant Greek, to
resist the presence, as well as the voice of the syrens;
and such syrens,” she added, casting an admiring
look at the elegant young ladies before her.
“I did not resist the voice of the syren,” replied
Roscoe, in a tone so depressed, as to be audible
only to Mrs. Layton's, and one other ear—strange
Mrs. Layton; her satellites, Morley and Daisy,
stood before her. Morley was pouring out diplomatic
compliments, fraught with meaning, but they
were all lost on her. She was conscious of but one
presence. From the first moment Roscoe's voice
had reached her, she felt a stifling sensation—her
heart beat almost audibly, and her first impulse was
to run out of the room, but propriety, dignity, forbade.
`If I betray any emotion,' she thought, `I
shall hate myself—I shall be for ever degraded in his
eyes—I cannot support an introduction to him in
broad day-light, before all these persons—blockaded
too by `Morley, Daisy, & Co.'—how contemptible
he will think my mystery!—why did not I
tell him when we last met?—can this horrid suffocating
feeling be faintness?—how ridiculous!—how
disgraceful!”
“Bless me!” exclaimed Flint, who had returned
to Miss Clarence' side, “how excessively pale you
look!” Gertrude's alarm was augmented by this
exclamation. She made no reply, but kept her eyes
rivetted to the floor. “She's certainly faint,” interrupted
Flint, “Ladies, allow me to raise this window.”
He made a bustling effort to effect this purpose.
“What is the matter?” asked half a dozen voices.
“Miss Clarence is faint,” was the reply.
“Indeed I am not,” said Gertrude, summoning
all her energy to shelter and suppress a momentary
weakness, and stimulated by the danger of exposing
to Roscoe, an emotion as flattering to him, as humbling
to herself; “indeed I am not in the least faint,
You are very good, Mr. Flint, but you made a
strange mistake.”
“Begging your pardon, Miss Clarence,” replied
Mr. Flint, with well founded pertinacity, “I don't
think I mistook at all. Persons are not always conscious
when they are going to faint—you were certainly
deathly pale, and I'm pretty sure you breathed
short—at any rate, your color came with the first
breath of fresh air.”
`What odious details,' thought Gertrude, shrinking
from the exposure of these particulars; and with
a feeling of a doubtful shade, between spirit and
temper, she replied, “you must really, Mr. Flint, allow
me to judge of my own sensations.” She was
nerved by the courageous sound of her own voice,
and she ventured to cast one rapid glance around
the room in quest of Roscoe. He had disappeared.
`Had he seen her?' She did not know, and dared
not ask.
“Your alarm, Mr. Flint, was mal-apropos,” said
Miss Mayo, the eldest of the sisters who had entered
with Roscoe. “I was, just at the moment of your
frightful exclamations, going to present a friend to
Miss Clarence—he disappeared while we were all
looking at you, Miss Clarence—Mr. Roscoe, the
cleverest young man in New York.” Miss Mayo
spoke unadvisedly. She did not dream that she
could encroach on the self-estimation of any one present;
but John Smith and Major Daisy, echoing
her last words, `the cleverest!' in a tone of unfeigned
surprise, taught her the indefinite extent of the
boundary-lines of vanity.
“Yes,” said Miss Patty Sprague, “Miss Mayo
is right. I heard the chancellor say, myself, that
Gerald Roscoe would be at the head of his profession,
in a few years; and I am right glad of it—it
is pleasant to see good luck happen to such a genteel
family as the Roscoes—I have spent many a
pleasant day in his father's house.”
“Do you ever spend the day, Miss Patty,” asked
Mrs. Layton, “with Mrs. Roscoe?”
“No,” replied Miss Patty, with a deep sigh,
“since she gave up her house, I have somehow lost
sight of her.”
“Miss Patty's vision, I should imagine, was too
imperfect for the dim light of obscured fortunes,”
said Gertrude in an under voice to Miss Mayo.
“Yes, but just observe with what an eagle-eye
she can look at an ascending luminary.—Do you
know, Miss Patty, that Mrs. Spencer is going to
bring out her pretty daughter, and has sent out
invitations for an immense party?”
“La! yes, dear, I heard so—a charming, intelligent
woman, Mrs. Spencer. I have not been there
since Mr. Spencer's failure—I am truly glad they
have got up in the world again—I wish, dear, some
day when it's convenient, you would give me a cast
in your carriage—I should so like to spend a day
with them.”
“I will certainly remember you, Miss Patty,”
replied Miss Mayo, with an unequivocal smile.
“By the way, Mrs. Layton, you have invitations of
course to the Spencers; do you go?”
“Really, I threw the notes aside, and have not
there, I fancy.—no especial attraction?”
“No; it will be like other parties: tea-parties
are, as Madame de Staêl has said, “une habile invention
de la médiocrité pour annuller les facultés de
l'esprit.” But as you sometimes submit to the levelling
invention, I wish particularly that you would
go to Mrs. Spencer's.
“And why?”
“Because, she has a very accomplished daughter,
she wishes to bring out.”
“Heavens! my dear Miss Mayo, so have fifty
other mothers, to whom we should not think of doing
such a neighborly office, as helping out their daughters;
but Daisy shall decide—he is my oracle. How
is it Major Daisy, are those Spencers genteel?”
For once, Major Daisy was at fault. “Really,
Mrs. Layton, I cannot say—I am at a loss; but if
you, and the ladies will go, I, and some of my friends,
will form a phalanx around you; and we can be
quite by osurelves, you know.”
“Upon my word,” said Mr. John Smith, “I
think the ladies does make a mistake, if they go.
My father says, he thinks it's time for us to take a
stand: He don't think the Spencers visitable.”
Miss Patty peered over her spectacles at John
Smith; and laying her hand on Daisy's arm, she
whispered, “Is not that a son of Sam Smith, that
drove a hackney coach, when he first came to New
York?”
“Yes—it's natural he should be on the alert, you
know, Miss Patty, about taking a stand?”
Miss Patty did not take the pun; and while Daisy
her indignation was touched, where
alone it was vulnerable; “Visitable indeed! The
Spencers visitable? I wonder if Mr. Spencer's father
did not live in Hanover square, and ride in his
coach; (and many a time have I rode up to St.
Paul's in it. St. Paul's was then quite out of town;)
when this young fellow's mother, Judy Brown that
was, used to go out dress-making—the visitable people
to her, were those that paid her day's wages
punctually.”
“Well,” resumed John Smith, unsuspicious of
Miss Patty's vituperation; for he had walked to
the window, and was reconnoitering the street,
through his eye glass; “Well, if the ladies persists
in going, I shall attend them; though I have written
my note, and sealed it with the mushroom seal, and
`where were you yesterday?' I always use that seal
for such sort of people—It's very clever to have appropriated
seals; is not it, Miss Mayo?”
“Extremely, Mr. Smith,—the mushroom is the
élite of seals for you.”
Mr. Smith could not even guess what élite meant;
but vanity—blessed interpreter! told him it meant
something flattering; and he bowed most gratefully
to Miss Mayo.
Mr. Flint had been hitherto silent. Unversed in
the complicated machinery of gentility, he was too
honest, and too good natured, for affectation on the
subject; but, impatient for the result, he demanded
of Miss Clarence, `what she meant to do about going;
for,' he said, `if she went he would contrive
to get an invitation.'
“Oh!” replied Miss Clarence, who had caught
Spencer's party, “I shall certainly go, provided”—
“Provided Mrs. Layton goes,” said that lady;
anticipating Miss Clarence' conclusion, “assuredly,
my dear Gertrude, we shall all say `ditto to-Mr.
Burke'—shall we not gentlemen?” The gentlemen
smiled, and bowed their assent. “We are quite safe
in going—our distinguished selves out of the question,
it is quite enough to say of any party `the
Mayos were there,' their presence is fashion. I perceived
you were predetermined to sanction Mrs.
Spencer, were you not, Miss Mayo?”
“To accept her invitation, I was, Mrs. Layton;
and had made Gerald Roscoe promise to accompany
me.”
“What a triumph! Roscoe has avoided all parties,
this winter.”
“Yes, Mrs. Layton, and does not every man of
special cleverness, after a winter or two?—however,
I rallied him unmercifully, upon turning recluse, in
New York; and fancying, on the pavé of Broadway,
that he was walking in the groves of Academus:
whereupon, he very graciously said, I reminded him
that Plato had placed a statue of Love at the entrance
of those groves; and, he added, with his usual gallantry,
that he was now perfectly aware, no man could
enjoy their seclusion, in peace, till he had rendered
homage to the divinity. A pretty compliment to
the absolute power of the sex—was it not, Miss Clarence?
bless me! you blush as if it were personal;
that blush is prophetic! I shall tell my friend Gerald
Roscoe—no protestations; good morning—we shall
all meet at the Spencers.”
“What a pity!” exclaimed John Smith, as the
door closed after her, “that Miss Mayo should be
such a blue.”
“Do you remember, Mr. Smith,” asked Mrs.
Layton, “the reply of Pitt, to the King, when he
said General Wolf was mad?”
“No, madam, I can't say I do, in particular.”
“`Would to God he would bite some of your majesty's
ministers!' It would,” continued Mrs. Layton,
without regarding the smile of inanity, with
which Smith received the witticism, “it would be
an infinite relief to the insipidity of fashionable society,
if the persons who constitute it, were generally
infected with Miss Mayo's zeal for mental accomplishments;
but then, one does so shrink from the
danger of being called a blue, when one sees, as in
Miss Mayo's case, that even youth, beauty, and fashion,
cannot save one from the odious appellation.
“As the appellation only suits pretenders,” said
Miss Clarence, “and is for the most part only bestowed
by spiteful ignorance, I cannot imagine that
it should require much courage, even in a fashionable
young lady, to emulate Miss Mayo's example,
and devote her leisure hours to those pursuits that
enrich the mind, and extend a woman's civil existence
beyond the short reign of youth and beauty.”
“Ah, Miss Clarence,” said Mr. Morley, “the
blues will win the field, if you become their champion.”
“Lord!” said John Smith to Major Daisy, in a
sort of parenthetical whisper, “is Miss Clarence a
blue?—I never heard her talk about books.”
Major Daisy could not reply, for he was listening
to find out.
“If I were fit to be a champion, Mr. Morley,”
replied Miss Clarence, modestly, “I would lay the
phantom army of blues, that is conjured up to terrify
young ladies from their books, and repel very ignorant
and very young gentlemen from all cultivated
young women.”
“There!” whispered Mr. Smith, with infinite satisfaction,
“I knew she was not a blue!” Daisy was
silent, a little doubtful and fearful. Flint, who had
an innate and homebread reverence for whatever was
intellectual and cultivated, rubbed his hands in expressive
ecstasy. Mr. Morley thought, in the quiet
recesses of his soul, that it would be a great advantage
to have such an intelligent person as Miss Clarence
to conduct the education of his daughters; and
all took their leave, satisfied that Miss Clarence had
a right to be, and could afford to be—even a blue,
if she pleased.
All had now departed—even Pedrillo, who had
lingered through the whole morning, to enjoy the
despotic pleasure of manifesting his right to monopolize
Emilie. Her languid and abstracted manner
indicated, and made him feel to his heart's core, that
whatever external observance she might render, he
could never bind or touch her affections—their ethereal
essence was beyond his, or even her control.
“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed Mrs. Layton, as
the door closed on the last visiter, “we are released
at last. What is so tiresome, Gertrude, as morning
visits?”
“A common-place from your lips, Mrs. Layton!”
“Yes, it is common-place—every body detests
them; and yet what is one to do? We must not
undertake to be wiser than our generation. It is
Molière, is it not, who says there is no folly equal
to that of attempting to reform the world?
`De vouloir se méler de corriger le monde.”'
“Molière is perhaps right, Mrs. Layton; and it
may be presumptuous, as well as foolish, to crusade
against the follies of others; but it seems, to me at
least, an equal folly in ourselves, to conform to a
custom which you confess to be `tiresome,' and
which is certainly wrong.”
“Tiresome, I grant you, but how wrong?”
“Obviously because it consumes the best hours of
the day, and coerces, by the tyranny of custom, those
who have it in their power to select their own occupations.”
“Miséricorde, Gertrude! you are sometimes a
little new. Do you really imagine that these trumpery
women who constitute the majority of morning
visiters, could be induced to make any rational use
of time? Time, my dear child, is like those coins
that have no intrinsic worth, but are valued according
to the impress put upon them.”
Gertrude had too clear a head to be confounded
by a simile. “Then certainly,” she replied, “it
should not pass without any impression. But do not
think me so very new, Mrs. Layton: I would only
ask that you, and those who think like you, would
to those who really like it, and may therefore support
it without your glaring inconsistency.”
“This is all very sage and very virtuous, Gertrude;
but really, my dear friend, when you know
a little more of the world as it is, you will relinquish
the beau-ideal of a world as it should be. I have
quite too humble an opinion of myself, to aspire to
turn the current of society from its well-worn channels.
I might, as you suggest, institute a sort of
hermitage in the midst of the world; but what is an
individual separated from the mass—an insignificant
drop of water from the great ocean?”
Gertrude smiled at the ridiculous light in which
Mrs. Layton had placed her suggestion; and she
smiled, and sighed too, as she (assenting to it) mentally
repeated Moilere's couplet. “My dear Gertrude,
is that sigh heaved for your poor friend, or
for the wicked world at large? In either case it is
not wasted, for we have both enough of sins and
sorrows to sigh over. But you are in too melancholy
a vein to-day—you are not well. Apropos,
you were really faint this morning?”
“Slightly so for a moment.”
“And so you `moralized the spectacle'—Ah, well,
that is natural. To tell you the honest truth, you and
Emilie both look like nuns just from a cloister—your
imagination filled with death-heads. Let me send
for a carriage. It is but two o'clock—you can ride
for a couple of hours, before it is time to dress for
dinner.”
The young ladies assented, glad of an opportunity
of being together, without the fear of interruption.
| CHAPTER IX. Clarence, or, A tale of our own times | |