University of Virginia Library

3. III.
A DRIVE ON THE AVENUE.

OLDPORT AVENUE is a place where a
great many carriages may be seen driving
so slowly that they might almost be photographed
without halting, and where their occupants
already wear the dismal expression which
befits that process. In these fine vehicles, following
each other in an endless file, one sees
such faces as used to be exhibited in ball-rooms
during the performance of quadrilles, before
round dances came in, — faces marked by the
renunciation of all human joy. Sometimes a
faint suspicion suggests itself on the Avenue,
that these torpid countenances might be roused
to life, in case some horse should run away.
But that one chance never occurs; the riders
may not yet be toned down into perfect breeding,
but the horses are. I do not know what
could ever break the gloom of this joyless procession,
were it not that youth and beauty
are always in fashion, and one sometimes
meets an exceptional barouche full of boys

and girls, who could absolutely be no happier
if they were a thousand miles away from the
best society. And such a joyous company
were our four youths and maidens when they
went to drive that day, Emilia being left at
home to rest after the fatigues of the voyage.

“What beautiful horses!” was Hope's first
exclamation. “What grave people!” was her
second.

quoted Philip.

“Hope is thinking,” said Harry, “whether
`in reason's ear they all rejoice.' ”

“How could you know that?” said she,
opening her eyes.

“One thing always strikes me,” said Kate.
“The sentence of stupefaction does not seem
to be enforced till after five-and-twenty. That
young lady we just met looked quite lively
and juvenile last year, I remember, and now
she has graduated into a dowager.”

“Like little Helen's kitten,” said Philip.
“She justly remarks that, since I saw it last,
it is all spoiled into a great big cat.”

“Those must be snobs,” said Harry, as a
carriage with unusually gorgeous liveries rolled
by.

“I suppose so,” said Malbone, indifferently.
“In Oldport we call all new-comers snobs,
you know, till they have invited us to their
grand ball. Then we go to it, and afterwards
speak well of them, and only abuse their
wine.”

“How do you know them for new-comers?”
asked Hope, looking after the carriage.

“By their improperly intelligent expression,”
returned Phil. “They look around
them as you do, my child, with the air of
wide-awake curiosity which marks the American
traveller. That is out of place here. The
Avenue abhors everything but a vacuum.”

“I never can find out,” continued Hope,
“how people recognize each other here. They
do not look at each other, unless they know
each other: and how are they to know if they
know, unless they look first?”

“It seems an embarrassment,” said Malbone.
“But it is supposed that fashion perforates the
eyelids and looks through. If you attempt it
in any other way, you are lost. Newly arrived
people look about them, and, the more new
wealth they have, the more they gaze. The
men are uneasy behind their recently educated
mustaches, and the women hold their parasols

with trembling hands. It takes two years to
learn to drive on the Avenue. Come again
next summer, and you will see in those
same carriages faces of remote superciliousness,
that suggest generations of gout and
ancestors.”

“What a pity one feels,” said Harry, “for
these people who still suffer from lingering
modesty, and need a master to teach them to
be insolent!”

“They learn it soon enough,” said Kate.
“Philip is right. Fashion lies in the eye.
People fix their own position by the way they
don't look at you.”

“There is a certain indifference of manner,”
philosophized Malbone, “before which ingenuous
youth is crushed. I may know that a
man can hardly read or write, and that his
father was a ragpicker till one day he picked
up bank-notes for a million. No matter. If
he does not take the trouble to look at me,
I must look reverentially at him.”

“Here is somebody who will look at Hope,”
cried Kate, suddenly.

A carriage passed, bearing a young lady
with fair hair, and a keen, bright look, talking
eagerly to a small and quiet youth beside her.

Her face brightened still more as she caught
the eye of Hope, whose face lighted up in return,
and who then sank back with a sort of
sigh of relief, as if she had at last seen somebody
she cared for. The lady waved an ungloved
hand, and drove by.

“Who is that?” asked Philip, eagerly. He
was used to knowing every one.

“Hope's pet,” said Kate, “and she who pets
Hope, Lady Antwerp.”

“Is it possible?” said Malbone. “That
young creature? I fancied her ladyship in
spectacles, with little side curls. Men speak
of her with such dismay.”

“Of course,” said Kate, “she asks them
sensible questions.”

“That is bad,” admitted Philip. “Nothing
exasperates fashionable Americans like a really
intelligent foreigner. They feel as Sydney
Smith says the English clergy felt about Elizabeth
Fry; she disturbs their repose, and gives
rise to distressing comparisons, — they long
to burn her alive. It is not their notion of a
countess.”

“I am sure it was not mine,” said Hope; “I
can hardly remember that she is one; I only
know that I like her, she is so simple and intelligent.

She might be a girl from a Normal
School.

“It is because you are just that,” said Kate,
“that she likes you. She came here supposing
that we had all been at such schools.
Then she complained of us, — us girls in what
we call good society, I mean, — because, as she
more than hinted, we did not seem to know
anything.”

“Some of the mothers were angry,” said
Hope. “But Aunt Jane told her that it was
perfectly true, and that her ladyship had not
yet seen the best-educated girls in America,
who were generally the daughters of old ministers
and well-to-do shopkeepers in small New
England towns, Aunt Jane said.”

“Yes,” said Kate, “she said that the best
of those girls went to High Schools and
Normal Schools, and learned things thoroughly,
you know; but that we were only
taught at boarding-schools and by governesses,
and came out at eighteen, and what could we
know? Then came Hope, who had been at
those schools, and was the child of refined
people too, and Lady Antwerp was perfectly
satisfied.”

“Especially,” said Hope, “when Aunt Jane

told her that, after all, schools did not do very
much good, for if people were born stupid
they only became more tiresome by schooling.
She said that she had forgotten all she learned
at school except the boundaries of ancient
Cappadocia.”

Aunt Jane's fearless sayings always passed
current among her nieces; and they drove on,
Hope not being lowered in Philip's estimation,
nor raised in her own, by being the pet of a
passing countess.

Who would not be charmed (he thought to
himself) by this noble girl, who walks the earth
fresh and strong as a Greek goddess, pure as
Diana, stately as Juno? She belongs to the
unspoiled womanhood of another age, and is
wasted among these dolls and butterflies.

He looked at her. She sat erect and graceful,
unable to droop into the debility of fashionable
reclining, — her breezy hair lifted a
little by the soft wind, her face flushed, her
full brown eyes looking eagerly about, her
mouth smiling happily. To be with those she
loved best, and to be driving over the beautiful
earth! She was so happy that no mob of
fashionables could have lessened her enjoyment,
or made her for a moment conscious

that anybody looked at her. The brilliant
equipages which they met each moment were
not wholly uninteresting even to her, for her
affections went forth to some of the riders
and to all the horses. She was as well contented
at that moment, on the glittering Avenue,
as if they had all been riding home through
country lanes, and in constant peril of being
jolted out among the whortleberry-bushes.

Her face brightened yet more as they met
a carriage containing a graceful lady dressed
with that exquisiteness of taste that charms
both man and woman, even if no man can
analyze and no woman rival its effect. She
had a perfectly high-bred look, and an eye that
in an instant would calculate one's ancestors
as far back as Nebuchadnezzar, and bow to
them all together. She smiled good-naturedly
on Hope, and kissed her hand to Kate.

“So, Hope,” said Philip, “you are bent on
teaching music to Mrs. Meredith's children.”

“Indeed I am!” said Hope, eagerly. “O
Philip, I shall enjoy it so! I do not care so
very much about her, but she has dear little
girls. And you know I am a born drudge.
I have not been working hard enough to enjoy
an entire vacation, but I shall be so very

happy here if I can have some real work for
an hour or two every other day.”

“Hope,” said Philip, gravely, “look steadily
at these people whom we are meeting, and
reflect. Should you like to have them say,
`There goes Mrs. Meredith's music teacher'?”

“Why not?” said Hope, with surprise. “The
children are young, and it is not very presumptuous.
I ought to know enough for that.”

Malbone looked at Kate, who smiled with
delight, and put her hand on that of Hope.
Indeed, she kept it there so long that one or
two passing ladies stopped their salutations in
mid career, and actually looked after them in
amazement at their attitude, as who should
say, “What a very mixed society!”

So they drove on, — meeting four-in-hands,
and tandems, and donkey-carts, and a goat-cart,
and basket-wagons driven by pretty girls,
with uncomfortable youths in or out of livery
behind. They met, had they but known it,
many who were aiming at notoriety, and some
who had it; many who looked contented with
their lot, and some who actually were so.
They met some who put on courtesy and
grace with their kid gloves, and laid away
those virtues in their glove-boxes afterwards;

while to others the mere consciousness of kid
gloves brought uneasiness, redness of the face,
and a general impression of being all made of
hands. They met the four white horses of
an ex-harness-maker, and the superb harnesses
of an ex-horse-dealer. Behind these came the
gayest and most plebeian equipage of all, a
party of journeymen carpenters returning
from their work in a four-horse wagon. Their
only fit compeers were an Italian opera-troupe,
who were chatting and gesticulating on the
piazza of the great hotel, and planning, amid
jest and laughter, their future campaigns.
Their work seemed like play, while the play
around them seemed like work. Indeed, most
people on the Avenue seemed to be happy in
inverse ratio to their income list.

As our youths and maidens passed the hotel,
a group of French naval officers strolled forth,
some of whom had a good deal of inexplicable
gold lace dangling in festoons from their
shoulders, — “topsail halyards” the American
midshipmen called them. Philip looked hard
at one of these gentlemen.

“I have seen that young fellow before,”
said he, “or his twin brother. But who can
swear to the personal identity of a Frenchman?”