University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

Hamlet.

Romeo and Juliet.

Of course, nothing interfered with the party at Colonnade
Manor. Thanks to Mrs. Taylor, the coachman and the little
girl of twelve—quite a womanly, precocious, little thing,
by-the-way—all went off very well. Some curious person,
uninitiated in similar domestic mysteries, may wish to know
how things were managed at such a trying crisis. Well, in
the first place, Mrs. Taylor congratulated herself that her
guests had been asked to `spend the evening,' and not invited
`to tea.' This was a piece of good luck, which diminished
her cares, and prevented the deep mortification she
must have felt had the tea and coffee been cold. The coachman,
of course, officiated as footman; a duty to which he
was already somewhat accustomed. The little girl of twelve
began the evening as ladies'-maid, appearing in the dressing-room
in that capacity, helping the ladies to take off their
shawls and smooth the folds of their dresses, before they
made their entrance in the drawing-rooms. The company
soon collected—about fifty or sixty persons, altogether—and
in party dress; each having been invited quite sociably, by
Miss Adeline. They were not at all surprised to see each
other, however, for they had often already practised the same
agreeable deception, themselves. The company once assembled,
the little girl of twelve rolled up her sleeves, and took
her station in the pantry, where she replenished the cake-baskets,
the lemonade and sangaree-glasses handed about by

her father, the coachman. A supper-table was already
spread in the dining-room; it had been very prettily ornamented
with flowers by Adeline, and her Saratoga friends;
and a plentiful supply of fruits, ices, jellies, syllabubs, creams,
and other delicacies for a light supper, had been prepared, in
the course of the morning, by Mrs. Taylor and her coadjutors,
the coachman and the little girl of twelve. The talkative
old friend had been admitted behind the scenes so far, as
to learn that the mistress of the house would be obliged to
make all the good things herself; and she had shown that,
besides telling a long story, she could make very excellent
sponge-cake; for, unfortunately, it was discovered that it
would be necessary to increase the supply of that delicacy.
Adeline did her share; while her Saratoga friends were taking
a morning siesta, with a novel in their hands, she had made
the syllabub, and prepared the fruit. These arrangements
having been made, the little girl of twelve had received
orders to station herself near at hand, where she could be
sent of errands up and down stairs. The coachman was told
to take his place by the side-table, ready to be called upon,
if necessary. Mrs. Taylor herself—alas! that we should be
obliged to reveal the fact, expected to slip out of the drawing-room
at about half-past ten, and superintend the delicate operation
of removing the jellies from their moulds; this would
require ten minutes to do, and she hoped to make her exit
and ingress unnoticed; a matter easily managed, in summer,
when the doors and windows are all open, and couples arm-in-arm,
are loitering about, in and out in all directions. This
task performed, when she had returned to the public notice,
some ten minutes after having seen everything in its place,
the coachman was expected to appear at the drawing-room
door, with composed manner, to announce that supper was
ready—a fact she was prepared to hear with the expression
of sublime indifference, required by etiquette. From that
moment, everything would become easy; for, of course, the
gentlemen would, as usual, take care of the ladies first, and
then help themselves. The gallant way in which these
light, standing suppers are always managed, among us, is,
by-the-bye, a pleasant and sensible arrangement; nothing
better could be devised, under the circumstances. The plan
of operations thus sketched, we may as well say, at once,
that everything succeeded to admiration.

The evening was pronounced very pleasant; and, as several
of our friends were present, we shall follow them. There
was a great deal of talking and laughing; a reasonable
quantity of flirtation; and, once or twice, some romping in
the corner of the room where Miss Adeline happened to be
at the time. Among those who had excused themselves
from accepting the invitation, were Mr. and Mrs. Robert
Hazlehurst, who disliked the idea of going so far, and Mr.
and Mrs. Graham, the lady being detained at home by a
headach, the gentleman by a particular dislike to Mr. Taylor,
who, he thought, had behaved in an ungentlemanly manner
about a mortgage, in which they both happened to be interested.
Mr. Graham was a man of a violent temper, and
unsocial habits, generally taking little pains to conceal his
feelings; and accordingly, his manner to Mr. Taylor was
anything but flattering, though their acquaintance, at best,
was but trifling. Mrs. Graham also disliked the whole
family; and yet the intimacy between Jane and Adeline was
allowed to continue, as a sort of matter of course, between
school companions.

Miss Wyllys accompanied her niece to the party — she
generally made it a point to go with Elinor; for, she had
old-fashioned notions on the subject, and thought that the
presence of their elders was an advantage and a protection that
well-educated young girls have a right to expect from their
friends. She seldom spoke on the matter, however, but
contented herself with giving, what she thought, a good
example. Both Miss Agnes and Elinor were rather surprised
to find that Jane's partiality for her giddy friend Adeline,
had not been in the least diminished, by her visit to

Europe. Miss Wyllys disapproved of the intimacy; but, as
Jane's mother had no objections, she herself could say nothing.
The two young ladies were a great deal together, in
the course of the evening, as became bosom-friends after a
long separation. Mrs. Taylor's old friend, the talkative lady,
was introduced to several of the elder portion of the company,
and was thus happily provided with listeners. Miss Adeline's
fashionable acquaintances from Saratoga, were also
supplied, each with a couple of attendant beaux, upon whom
to try the effect of their charms. Everything thus happily
arranged, Miss Adeline proposed a `march,' which was
managed as usual. Young Van Horne, who had some
musical capabilities, was placed at the piano, and played
Washington's March, when the young people paired off in
a line, and began to walk, moving in time up and down the
two drawing-rooms, through the folding-doors—each gentleman,
of course, offering his arm to a lady; chaque chacun,
avec sa chacune. Adeline was not quite satisfied with her
cavalier, Charlie Hubbard; she did not care much about
him, at any time; and, on the present occasion, he seemed
less interested in listening to her own conversation, than in
watching the movements of some one else; who it was, she
could not say. She reproached him with this inattention.

“I declare, I don't believe you hear half I say. I never
saw anybody like you.”

Charlie blushed a little, rallied, and devoted himself more
exclusively to the duty of being entertained. After the
second or third turn in the march, Adeline discovered Hazlehurst,
who, instead of being in motion with the rest, was
leaning in a door-way. As she passed him, she snapped
her embroidered handkerchief in that direction, and summoned
him to join the `promenade.' Harry excused himself
by saying, he was afraid he could not find any one to
walk with him.

“How can you talk so! There is Miss Wyllys, I declare;
I had not seen her before.”—And Adeline crossed the room

to a window where Elinor was sitting quietly as a looker-on,
having just escaped from a long conversation with the talkative
old friend.

“Now, Miss Wyllys, I am sure you must wish to promenade!”

“Would you like to walk?” quietly asked Hazlehurst,
who had followed Miss Taylor.

“No, indeed,” said Elinor, smiling and shaking her head
good-naturedly. “I have had one long walk, already, this
afternoon, and much prefer sitting still, just now.”

“You should follow Jane's example; you see, she is promenading,
and, I dare say, she took the walk with you,
too,” said Adeline.

“Did you ever know Jane take a long walk, when she
could help it?” asked Elinor, smiling. “I had really rather
sit still, Miss Taylor.”

Adeline, finding that on this occasion she could not succeed
in setting all her friends in motion, which she generally endeavoured
to do, returned to the ranks; leaving Elinor to do
as she chose. Hazlehurst took a seat by her, and made
some inquiries about several of their old acquaintances in the
room.

“Don't you think those two young ladies both very pretty,
Mr. Hazlehurst,” said Dr. Van Horne, approaching the spot
where Harry was standing near Elinor, after having given
up his chair to one of the Saratoga belles, when the march
was finished.

“Which do you mean, sir?” asked Harry.

“Miss Taylor and Miss Graham, who are standing together
near the piano.”

“Yes,” replied Hazlehurst, “Miss Taylor is even prettier
than I had supposed she would be.”

“She will not compare, however, with Miss Jane. To
my mind, Miss Graham answers the idea of perfect beauty.
In all your travels, did you meet with a face that you thought
more beautiful?”

“I believe not,” said Harry, laconically, and slowly colouring
at the same time.

“Is it Jane you were speaking of, Doctor?” inquired Elinor,
turning towards him. “Don't you think she has come
back twice as beautiful as she was last year? It is really
a pleasure to look at a face like hers.”

“I am afraid, it will prove rather a dangerous pleasure,
Miss Elinor, to some of the beaux, this winter.”

“No doubt she will be very much admired; but she takes
it all very quietly. I don't believe your great beauties as
much disposed to vanity as other people.”

“Perhaps not;” replied the doctor, drawing near her.
“A great deal depends on education. But what do the
travellers tell you about the sights they have seen, Miss
Elinor?”

“Oh, we have only gone as far as the first chapter of their
travels,” she replied. “They have not half said their say
yet.”

“Well, I should like to have a talk with you on the subject,
Mr. Hazlehurst. I was in hopes of meeting your
brother here, to-night, but he has not come, I find; I shall
have to bore you with my questions, unless you want to dance
this jig, or whatever it is, they are beginning.”

“Not at all, my dear sir; I shall be glad to answer any
questions of yours.”

“Thank you. Suppose we improve the opportunity, Miss
Elinor, and give him a sharp cross-examination; do you
think he would bear it?”

“I hope so,” said Elinor, smiling quietly, as if she felt
very easy on the subject.

“Don't trust him too far. I dare say you have not been
half severe enough upon him,” said Dr. Van Horne, who
had a very high opinion of Harry. “But to speak seriously,
Mr. Hazlehurst, I don't at all like a notion my son Ben has
of going to Europe.”

“What is your objection?”

“I doubt if it is at all an advantage to send most young
men to Europe. I've seen so many come back conceited,
and dissatisfied, and good-for-nothing, that I can't make up
my mind to spoil Ben by the same process. He tries very
hard to persuade me, that now-a-days, no doctor is fit to be
trusted who has not finished off in Paris; but we managed
without it thirty years ago.”

“You must know much more than I do on that subject,
doctor,” said Hazlehurst, taking a seat on the other side of
Elinor.

“Of course, I know more about the hospitals. But as I
have never been abroad myself, I don't know what effect a
sight of the Old World has on one. It seems to me it ruins
a great many young fellows.”

“And it improves a great many,” said Hazlehurst.

“I am by no means so sure of that. It improves some, I
grant you; but I think the chances are that it is an injury.
We have happened to see a great deal, lately, of two young
chaps, nephews of mine, who came home last spring. Three
years ago they went abroad, sober, sensible, well-behaved
lads enough, and now they have both come back, worse
than good-for-nothing. There was Rockwell, he used to be
a plain, straight-forward, smooth-faced fellow; and now he
has come home bristling with whiskers, and beard, and
moustaches, and a cut across the forehead, that he got in a
duel in Berlin. Worse than all, his brain is so befogged,
and mystified, that he can't see anything straight to save his
life; and yet, forsooth, my gentleman is going to set the
nation to rights with some new system of his own.”

“I know nothing of the German Universities, doctor,
from my own observation; but I should think it might be
a dangerous thing to send a young man there unless he
was well supplied with sound common sense of his own.”

“Well, there is Bill Hartley, again, who staid all the time
in Paris. He has come back a regular grumbler. If you
would believe him, there is not a single thing worth having,

from one end of the Union to the other. He is disgusted
with everything, and only last night said that our climate
wants fog! Now, I think it is much better to go plodding
on at home, than to travel for the sake of bringing back
such enlarged views as make yourself and your friends uncomfortable
for the rest of your days.”

“But it is a man's own fault, my dear sir, if he brings
back more bad than good with him. The fact is, you will
generally find the good a man brings home, in proportion to
the good he took abroad.”

“I'm not so sure of that. I used to think Rockwell was
quite a promising young man at one time. But that is not
the question. If, after all, though it does sharpen a man's
wits, it only makes him discontented for the rest of his life,
I maintain that such a state of improvement is not to be desired.
If things are really better and pleasanter in Europe,
I don't want to know it. It would make me dissatisfied,
unless I was to be a renegade, and give up the country I
was born in; would you have a man do that?”

“Never!” said Harry. “I hold that it is a sort of desertion,
to give up the post where Providence has placed us,
unless in extreme cases; and I believe a man can live a
more useful and more honourable life there than elsewhere.
But I think travelling a very great advantage, nevertheless.
The very power of comparison, of which you complain, is
a source of great intellectual pleasure, and must be useful if
properly employed, since it helps us to reach the truth.”

The doctor shook his head. “I want you just to tell me
how much of this grumbling and fault-finding is conceit, and
how much is the natural consequence of travelling? Is
everything really superior in Europe to what we have here?”

“Everything? No;” said Harry, laughing. “But you
would seem to think a man dissatisfied, doctor, if he did not,
on the contrary, proclaim that everything is immeasurably
better in this country than in any other on the globe. Now,
confess, is not that your standard of patriotism?”

“Ah, you are shifting your ground, young gentleman.
But we shall bring you to the point presently. Now tell
us honestly, were you not disappointed with the looks of
things when you came back?”

“If by disappointed, you mean that many things as I see
them now, strike me as very inferior to objects of the same
description in Europe, I do not scruple to say they do.
When I landed, I said to myself,

“I feared so!” and the doctor looked much as a pious
Mahometan might be supposed to do, if he were to see a
Frank seize the Grand Turk by the beard. “I should have
thought better of you,” he added.

“My dear sir,” said Harry, laughing, “how could I help
it! I must defend myself from any desire to be disappointed,
I assure you. On the contrary, I wish very sincerely that
everything in my native country were as good as possible in
its way; that the architecture of the public buildings were
of the noblest kind; the private houses the most pleasant
and convenient; the streets the best paved, and best lighted
in the world. But I don't conceive that the way to bring
this about is to maintain le pistolet à la gorge, that perfection
has already been attained in all these particulars. To speak
frankly, it strikes me as the height of puerihity to wish to
deceive oneself upon such subjects. On the contrary, I
think it is the duty of every man, so far as he has the opportunity,
to aim at correct notions on everything within his
reach.”

“Well,” remarked the doctor, “you only confirm me in
my opinion. I shall be more unwilling than ever to let Ben
go; since even you, Harry Hazlehurst, who are a good deal
better than most young men, confess the harm travelling has
done you.”

“But, my dear sir, I confess no such thing. I'm conscious
that travelling has been a great benefit to me in many ways.

I shall be a happier and better man for what I have seen, all
my life, I trust, since many of my opinions are built on a
better foundation than they were before.”

“If I were you, I would not let him say so, Miss Elinor.
His friends won't like to hear it; and I, for one, am very
sorry that you are not as good an American as I took you
for.”

“It is quite a new idea to me, doctor,” said Hazlehurst,
“that mental blindness and vanity are necessary parts of the
American character. We, who claim to be so enlightened!
I should be sorry to be convinced that your view is correct.
I have always believed that true patriotism consisted in
serving one's country, not in serving oneself by flattering
one's countrymen. I must give my testimony on these
subjects, when called for, as well as on any other, honestly,
and to the best of my ability.”

“Do you know, doctor,” said Elinor, “poor Harry has
had to fight several battles on this subject already. Mrs.
Bernard attacked him the other evening, because he said the
mountains in Switzerland were higher than the White
Mountains. Now we have only to look in a geography to
see that they are so.”

“But one don't like to hear such things, Miss Elinor.”

“Mrs. Bernard asked him if he had seen anything finer
than the White Mountains; what could he say? It seems
to me just as possible for a man to love his country, and see
faults in it, as it does for him to love his wife and children,
without believing them to be the most perfect specimens of
the human family, in body and mind, that ever existed. You
will allow that a man may be a very good and kind husband
and father, without maintaining everywhere that his wife
and daughters surpass all their sex, in every possible particular?”

“You will not, surely, deny, doctor,” said Hazlehurst,
“that it is reasonable to suppose that Europe possesses some
advantages of an advanced state of civilization, that we have

not yet attained to? We have done much for a young
people, but we have the means of doing much more; and it
will be our own fault if we don't improve.”

“We shall improve, I dare say.”

“Do you expect us to go beyond perfection, then?'

“I can't see the use of talking about disagreeable subjects.”

“But even the most disagreeable truths have their uses.”

“That may be; and yet I believe you would have been
happier if you had staid at home. While he was away
from you, Miss Elinor, I am afraid he learned some of those
disagreeable truths which it would have been better for him
not to have discovered.”

Harry stooped to pick up a glove, and remained silent for
a moment.

Shortly after, supper was announced; and, although the
coachman was not quite as much at home in the pantry as
in the stable, yet everything was very successfully managed.

“It is really mortifying to hear a man like Dr. Van Horne,
fancy it patriotic to foster conceited ignorance and childish
vanity, on all national subjects,” exclaimed Harry, as he
took his seat in the carriage, after handing the ladies in.
“And that is not the worst of it; for, of course, if respectable,
independent men talk in that tone, there will be no end to
the fulsome, nauseating, vulgar flatteries that will be poured
upon us by those whose interest it is to flatter!”

“I heard part of your conversation, and, I must confess,
the doctor did not show his usual good sense,” observed
Miss Agnes.

“You are really quite indignant against the doctor,” said
Elinor.

“Not only against him, but against all who are willing,
like him, to encourage such a miserable perversion of truth.
Believe them, and you make patriotism anything, and everything,
but a virtue.”