University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Beautiful Spring! We do love to watch thy
coming. Only the other day we were dilating
upon the cold; now, away with the appendages of
the frowning old Winter! Our habits are gradually
undergoing a change. The fire sinks in the
grate, and burns dimly and unnoticed; the heavy
cloak hangs unregarded in the hall; people come
in from the open air with noses of a natural colour;
the earth is brightening everywhere; and our very
soul melts on discovering a dash of tender new
grass on the sunny side of some old wall. A
hundred—a thousand sunny reminiscences rise up
warmly in our tired, chilled heart; we enjoy all a
schoolboy's simple delight at thy first footstep.
Dear Spring! thou art a companion endeared to
us by innumerable tender and unworldly recollections.

The season now, over the country, began to
exhibit itself in a thousand agreeable forms. A

shade of lovely verdure enlivened the fields; the
buds were breaking beautifully out from the juicy
branches: in the gardens, the simple snowdrop,
the crocus, sprinkling the brown earth with many
colours, the yellow daffodil, the fragrant mezereon,
with its flower before the leaf, already appeared—
graceful harbingers of the most welcome of seasons;
and soon to be followed by the modest violet,
the lowly heartsease, the golden Adonis, the crimson
piony, hyacinths, tulips, and all the beautiful
and variegated children of nature.

In the barnyard now the cattle rested themselves
with ardent gratification. The contented
hen dug a hole in the gravel, and laid, in enviable
and luxurious idleness, in the general sunshine;
and the cock swaggered and strutted about in his
fine regimentals with superadded dignity, his great
soul shining through every look and action, lifting
his feet as if the very earth were not good enough
for him to tread on, and ever and anon slapping his
martial sides triumphantly with his wings, and
challenging all the world with high-sounding exclamations.
Ah, happy fellow! he is your only
philosopher. He enjoys life truly. He has no
books to balance; no notes to pay; no duns to
meet; no bills in chancery to draw; no romances
to write; no proofs to read: nothing but to rove
about all day, whithersoever he pleaseth; free from
trouble, debts, labour, fear, dyspepsy, laws, bonds,
house-rent, and all the fiends engendered to haunt
the citizen of a civilized community. Happy fellow!
even now we hear thy voice—the outbreakings
of a great, independent, happy heart. Peace
be with thee! gay sultan, amid thy seraglio of
dames. Elegant courtier! Proud herald of the
morn!

In the city, the evidences of the season were

numerous, although of a different description.
The shopkeepers flung open their doors, and displayed
their goods in the air. The windows of
the wealthy were also unclosed, and the breathing
and blossoming plants placed in the sun. Dirty-faced
chubby children, ragged, barefoot, and hatless,
came forth in troops by the cellar doors, and
in all the sunshiny places: and the poor generally
wore cheerful countenances; for they were already
enjoying existence more with less expense. But
of all the places where these revolutionary proceedings
in the weather were perceptible, the west
side of Broadway, perhaps, exhibited the most
changes in the dresses of the promenaders, masculine
and feminine, black and white. It seemed that
no experience could enlighten certain classes upon
the fickleness of Spring; and every accidental
gleam of warm weather was sure to elicit divers
pieces of apparel, more peculiarly appropriate to
the heat of summer. The cumbersome cloak was
left behind. Then the thin shoe appeared in place
of the boot. In a little while a parasol went gayly
along through the sunshine; and, by-and-by, straw
hats and white pantaloons prematurely displayed
themselves upon odd-looking persons. We are
apt to regard with some curiosity, if not suspicion,
your fellow who puts on thin pantaloons so early
in the season, hoping thereby to force on the summer.
He is like the first swallow. His reasoning
powers cannot be much cultivated; or else he is
only striving after notoriety; or, perhaps, he may
have a better reason, viz., his thin pantaloons may
be thicker than his thick ones! Whatever may be
the origin of so extraordinary a proceeding, we
humbly warn our readers against being led too
easily away by the alluring promises, and tender
but deceitful solicitations, of Spring. Let not the
expanding buds, the new grass, the peeping flowerets;
the broad, still, universal sunshine; the fresh,
fragrant, and bland zephyr, delude you into any of
these fashionable eccentricities in apparel. Believe
not the appearance of the earth; trust not the seducing
smiles of heaven. The whole season resembles
a lively coquette, full of smiles, airs, and
affections; and much more ready to make promises
than to keep them. We have now in our memory
an unhappy wretch, whom we once met in the
course of an afternoon peregrination. He was
hastening homeward, shivering in a pair of white
trousers, pumps, and thin silk stockings; his nose
turned blue; and his coat buttoned, desperately,
every button, to the very throat. Do not, we entreat,
be too rash in taking down stoves, and abandoning
thick stockings. Remember the words of
the friar in Romeo and Juliet—“Wisely and slow;
they stumble that run fast.”

Yes, the spring was here; and the gay world of
fashion was as busy as the blossoms on the trees,
or the birds in the groves. Flora Temple continued
to bloom with the modest sweetness of a
wild rose. Her striking beauty, which each day
seemed to unfold some lovelier charm; her accomplished
education; her clear, bright mind, and
gentle nature—to say nothing of her immense fortune,
and yet more immense expectations—rendered
her an object of universal attraction, and
enchained the particular attentions of a host of
gentlemen, who, from various considerations, wrote
themselves her admirers. The world, always peculiarly
shrewd upon these matters, exhausted its
curiosity and its conjectures upon the subject of her
union; and gave her away, unceremoniously, to
many a claimant, who, however charmed with the
honour, knew too well at heart that it could be enjoyed

but in imagination. Poor Morton, after his
first storm of disappointment and wounded vanity,
had swallowed his regrets with a resignation which
springs sometimes from philosophy, and sometimes
from folly; and, if rumour spoke truth (which, by-the-way,
that slandered divinity often does), he had
no reason to be ashamed of the names associated
with his own on the long list of rejected suiters.
Lieutenant Halford of the navy, after beating about
for some time against baffling breezes, bore down
gallantly towards the prize, but suddenly veered
upon a new tack, and shortly after struck his
colours beneath a heavy fire from the eyes—oh
woman! woman!—of Miss Maria Morton. Captain
Forbes of the army besieged the fortress; but
upon a short parley from the walls, he turned at
once to the right-about, and obliqued off to the left,
double-quick step, upon some more feasible expedition.
An eloquent young lawyer, who had been
a good deal in the papers, and was supposed to
possess a weighty influence in the first ward, rose
to advance a motion, which the public, like a court
of inferior jurisdiction, immediately decided in his
favour: but love and law have both their uncertainties;
for, upon an appeal to the highest tribunal,
the opinion was reversed. A club of literati—a
street of young merchants—a board of brokers—
and a whole medical college, were reported to have
suffered a veto in regular succession; while penniless
poets, promising editors, law-students, and
young men of talent, were declined ad infinitum
with sweet condescension, gracious regret, and a
world of kind wishes for their future welfare, and
that their subsequent paths might be “strewn with
flowers!” It was asserted by Howard, that Miss
Temple was obliged to keep a confidential clerk;
and that the dismissals were issued in the form of
printed blanks, filled up, according to circumstances,
with name and date, without any further trouble
or knowledge of the young lady herself than a
careless weekly perusal of the list of suiters' names,
alphabetically arranged. But Morton declared this
to be a bouncer; as his own had been carefully
written in her own hand, on rose paper, sealed with
a cameo cupid, and composed, evidently, at the express
command of her mother, who was mad after
that d—d French count.

“Why don't she marry?” said the world. “Time
flies; and she must be eighteen at least.”

“Why don't she marry?” said Mrs. Hamilton
one morning to her husband.

“Because she is not a fool, my dear,” growled
the happy husband. “She is young, rich, free,
and admired. Why should she marry? Like others
I could mention, she better becomes the station
of a belle than of a wife. Women nowadays are
only made to look at.”

“And men to fret and scold,” said Mrs. Hamilton,
with a scowl.

“Come, come, my love,” rejoined the husband,
“no pouting. What's done, you know, my angel,
can't be undone.”

“Mr. Hamilton, you are a—”

“A what, my dear?”

The lady was silent. The husband thrust his
hands into his pantaloons pockets, kicked his robe
de chambre from the middle of the floor into a
corner (this dialogue matrimonial is presumed to
have taken place in what the French call the chambre
à coucher), muttered an oath, shrugged his
shoulders, and made his exit whistling “The
Campbells are coming.”

“There he goes,” said Mrs. Hamilton to herself,
as the front door slammed heavily after her retreating
lord, and his choleric step died away on the
pavement—“there he goes, and it will be midnight,
now, ere I see him again. Who could have
believed it before we married! Then—

“Miss Temple, too,” murmured the neglected
wife, as she continued her revery, sighing the
while, and glancing her eyes upon the still lovely
image presented by a large mirror. “Happy
girl!” (she rang the bell) “she will win the count
yet” (another sigh). “Well—as Hamilton says—
what's done—”

The maid entered, and the complicated machinery
of a small family went on with its operations.

To say that Norman Leslie had not visited at
Mrs. Temple's, after the occurrences related in the
foregoing chapters, would not be to say the truth;
nor, indeed, that he never visited at Mr. Romain's.
On the contrary, he had occasionally beguiled an
evening with each family; and at both—a young
and refined man, with a leaning to poetry, without
a wife, and with an intuitive delicacy which
preserved him from the grosser pleasures of a large
city—he found much to attract and gratify him.
There were music, charming society, and the gayest
spirits; which, when the mood was on him, he
was fully competent to share, and even to enliven.
He had observed, during his infrequent visits to
Miss Romain, that her character had undergone a
change, which sometimes induced the opinion that
he had wronged her; and there was in his bosom
ever a generous yearning to excuse and to acquit.
The once lively girl had now become more staid
and grave, sometimes even unhappy. Norman
could not be ignorant that he had once excited the

love of a bosom which, however light and inconstant,
was full of womanly feelings. In the fervour
of boyhood, her brilliant charms and accomplishments
had certainly impressed him with a too
warm sense of her loveliness; but then his loftily
sentimental character might have started aside too
suddenly, and mistaken the really careless folly
and unguarded thoughtlessness of a giddy girl for
inherent affectation and heartlessness. He was no
fop; but we shall not undertake to say whether he
could entirely exclude from his mind a vague surmise,
which, however forcibly dismissed, returned
again and again, that this permanent sadness, the
pensive reserve of manner, might result from a
half-revived affection for him. Love her he could
not; but youths of his calibre can stretch their
hearts to a wonderful complacency in regarding
the favour of a sweet girl, even when that favour
finds affection already flown. Her manner towards
him had been soft and alluring, particularly so in
the company of other ladies, and most particularly
in that of Miss Temple, who was struck at the
undisguised partiality which she often exhibited for
him. Whether this was really reawakened passion,
or incorrigible coquetry, or a desire to reclaim
a half-freed captive, and display him before
the world a double conquest—or whether the keen
eye of a heartless flirt had detected in the mind of
her late lover deeper thoughts than he chose to
acknowledge of Flora Temple, whom she envied,
and whose envy she triumphed in the thought of
exciting—must yet be left to conjecture. She
continued by turns sad and gay, sentimental, fond,
and peevish, playing off the airs of a capricious,
spoiled, and impassioned woman; while Flora
moved calmly in her orbit, as the moon mounts
steadily up the heavens, veiled sometimes in a silver
cloud, from which even the shadow is beautiful;
or pouring her soft light from an azure sky,
whose utmost clearness is not freed from a touch
of melancholy. Norman Leslie and she appeared
farther separated in destiny than ever; yet he still
secretly nourished for her an absorbing and increasing
passion, which he sometimes half imagined,
for such dreams come soon, was not unrequited:
yet, while he more frequently and familiarly
visited the dwelling of Mr. Romain, he called on the Temples but rarely; and always during his
stay was uninteresting, cold, or embarrassed. He
generally met the count there, which by no means
diminished his disquietude, particularly as it seemed
to be understood that he was certainly and
speedily to marry Flora Temple.