University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

— Merry
Wives of Windsor.

The engagement of Miss Leslie and Morton was to be
kept secret till the latter's return. None knew it but Leslie
and Vinal. Vinal, within a few weeks, sailed for Europe,
meaning, however, to be absent only three or four
months. Other motives apart, he felt, and Leslie saw, that
his health, always shivering in the wind, demanded the
change.

Meanwhile, Morton made the best of a six weeks' reprieve;
and hampered as he was by the injunction of secrecy, and
the precautions which it demanded, he crowded the short
interval with half a lifetime of mixed pleasure and pain,
expectation and anxiety.

It was past but too quickly; in three days more he must
set sail. Walking the street in a rueful mood, he met his
classmate, Chester, who, having made the tour of Europe, had
lost his obsolete ways, and grown backward into a man of
the present world.

“Good morning, Morton. Making calls? — I see it by
your face.”

“Yes; it's a thing that must be done sometimes.”

“Pour prendre congé, I suppose. I hear you are off very
soon.”

“The day after to-morrow.”

“You couldn't do a wiser thing. When a man finds himself
in a scrape, he had better get out of it as soon as possible;
therefore, if he finds himself born in America, he had
better forswear his country.”

“Patriotic sentiments those.”

“I can't answer for the patriotism; but they are the sentiments
of a true son of the Pilgrim Fathers, who renounced
their country because they couldn't stand it, and came over
here. I mean to follow their example, and go back again.
They fled — so the story goes — from persecution. I mean
to fly from persecution too, — the persecution of a social
atmosphere that I find hostile to my constitution, and a
climate not fit for a reasonable being to live in.”

“I don't know why you should be so fierce against the
climate. By your look, you seem to thrive in it.”

“The bodily man thrives passably well. It's the immortal
part that suffers. Fierce! why, the climate makes me fierce.
Who can be a philosopher in such a climate? — or a poet?
— or an artist? — any thing but a steam engine? It is a
perpetual spur, an unremitting goad. Nobody is happy in
it except the men who ride on locomotives and conduct
express trains, — always on the move. O, so you go in here,
do you?”

“Yes, to see Mrs. Primrose. Will you come too?”

“No, thank you,” replied Chester, walking away, with a
comical look.

Morton rang the door bell, and found Mrs. Primrose at
home.

There was a book on the table. He took it up. It was a
novel, lately published.

Morton praised it.

Mrs. Primrose dissented, with great emphasis.

“You are severe upon the book.”

“Not more so than it deserves,” replied Mrs. Primrose;
“it is too coarse to be permitted for a moment.”

“And yet the moral tone seems good enough.”

“I do not blame the morality so much as the bad taste.
It is full of slang dialogue, and was certainly written by a
very unrefined person.”

“It makes its characters speak as such people speak in
real life.”

“It is not merely that,” said Mrs. Primrose, slightly pursing
her mouth; “it contains, besides, expressions absolutely
reprehensible.”

“One does not admire its good taste; but a little blunt
Saxon never did much harm.”

“No daughter of mine shall read it,” said Mrs. Primrose,
with gravity.

“I imagine that if literature is to reflect human life truly,
it can hardly be limited to the language of the drawing
room.”

“Then it should be banished from the drawing room,”
said Mrs. Primrose, with severity.

Here several visitors appeared, and Morton presently took
leave.

He was but a few rods from the door, when a quick step
came behind him.

“Hallo, colonel, where are you going at such a rate?”

Morton turned, and saw his classmate, Rosny.

“Why, Dick, I'm glad to see you.”

“They tell me you're bound for Europe.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it's a good move. If a man has money, he had
better enjoy it.”

“I shall be driving out of town in an hour. Come and
dine with me.”

“Sorry, colonel, but it can't be done. I'm out on the
stump in the cause of democracy. Shall be off westward in
two hours, and shake the dust from my shoes against this
nest of whiggery and old fogyism.”

“Democracy is under the weather just now, Dick.”

“Just now, I grant you. What with log cabins and hard
cider, and coons, the enlightened people are pretty well gammoned.
But there's a good time coming. Before you know
it, democracy will be upon you again like a load of bricks.
Why, what can you expect of a party that will take a coon
for its emblem? I saw one chained up this morning in the
yard of Taft's tavern, a dirty, mean-looking beast, about half
way between a jackal and an owl. He looked uncommonly
well in health, and could puff out his fur as round as a muff.
But, when you looked close, there was nothing of him but
skin and bone; exactly like the whig party. He put up his

nose, and smiled at me. I suppose — damn his impudence —
he took me for a whig. That coon is going into a decline.
It won't be long before he is taken by the tail and tossed over
Charles River bridge; and there he'll lie on the mud at low
tide, for a genuine emblem of the defunct whig party, and a
solemn warning to all coon worshippers.”

“Let the whigs alone, Dick; and if you won't dine with
me, come in here and drink a glass of claret.”

“That I'll do.” And they went into the hotel accordingly.

As Rosny took up his glass, Morton observed a large old
seal ring on his finger.

“Do you call yourself a democrat, and yet always wear
that ring of yours?”

“Why, what's the matter with the ring?”

“Nothing, except that it is a badge of feudalism, aristocracy,
and every thing else abominable to your party.”

“Pshaw, man. Look here: do you see that crest, cut in
the stone? That crest followed King Francis to Pavia, and
when Henri Quatre charged at Ivry, it wasn't far behind him.
It is mine by right. It comes down to me, straight as a bee
line, through twenty generations. And do you think I'm
going to renounce my birthright? No, be gad!”

“I wouldn't. But what becomes of your democracy?”

“Democracy is tall enough to take care of itself. I wear
that ring; but it don't follow that I stand on my ancestry.
You needn't laugh: the case is just this. If the blood in
my veins makes me stand to my colors where another man
would flinch, or hold my head up where another would be
sprawling on his back; if it gives me a better pluck, grit,

go-ahead; why, that's what I stand on, — that's my patent of
nobility. What the deuse are you laughing at? — the personal
quality, — don't you see? — and not the ancestry.”

“If you stand on personal merit, you'll be sure to go under
before long. The democracy are growing as jealous of that
as of ancestry, or of wealth either.”

“Why, what do you know about politics? You never had
any thing to do with them. You are no more fit for a politician
than for a fiddler.”

“I'm glad you think so. If I must serve the country in
any public capacity, I pray Heaven it may be as a scavenger
sooner than as a politician. Who can touch pitch and be
clean? I'll pay back your compliment, Dick. You are a
great deal too downright to succeed in public life.”

“I'll find a way or make one. But I tell you, colonel,”
— and a shade of something like disappointment passed over
his face, — “if a man wants the people's votes, it's fifty to
one that he's got to sink himself lower than the gutter before
he gets them.”

“Yes, and when the people have turned out of office every
man of virtue, honor, manliness, independence, and ability,
then they will fling up their caps and brag that their day is
come, and their triumph finished over the damned aristocracy.”

“You are an unbeliever. You haven't half faith enough
in the people. Now I put it to your common sense. Isn't
there a thousand times more patriotism in the laboring classes
in this country — yes, and about as much intelligence — as in
the rabble of sham fashionables at Saratoga, or any other
muster of our moneyed snobs and flunkeys?”

“Exceptions excepted, yes.”

“War to the knife with the codfish aristocracy! They are
a kind of mongrel beast, expressly devised and concocted for
me to kick. I don't mean the gentlemen with money; nor
the good fellows with money. I know what a gentleman is;
yes, and a lady, too, though I do make stump speeches, and
shake hands all round with the sovereign people. That sort
are welcome to their money. No, sir, it's the moneyed snobs,
the gilded toadstools, that it's my mission to pitch into.”

“Excuse me a moment, Dick,” said Morton, suddenly leaping
from his seat, as a lady passed the window.

“A lady, eh! Then I'll be off.”

“No, no, stay where you are. I'll be back again in three
minutes.”

He ran out of the hotel, and walked at his best pace in
pursuit of Fanny Euston, who, on her part, was walking with
an earnest air, like one whose thoughts were engaged with
some engrossing subject. He reached her side, and made a
movement to accost her; but she seemed unconscious of his
presence.

“Miss Fanny Euston, will you pardon me for breaking in
upon your reveries?”

She turned and recognized him, but her smile of recognition
was a very mournful one.

“I have stopped you to take my leave, — a good deal more
in short hand than I meant it should have been. I shall sail
for Europe the day after to-morrow.”

“Yes? Is not that a little sudden?”

“More sudden than I wish it were. I am not at all in a

travelling humor. I have been too much pressed for time to
ride out, as I meant to do, to your father's house.”

“We are all in town now. My father came from New
Orleans yesterday, very ill.”

“I did not hear of it. I trust not dangerously ill.”

“He is dying. He cannot live a week.”

Morton well knew the strength and depth of her attachment
to her father. He pressed her hand in silent sympathy.

“It grieves me, Fanny,” he said, after a moment, “to part
from you under such a cloud.”

“Good by,” she replied, returning the friendly pressure.
“I wish you with all my heart a pleasant and prosperous
journey.”

Morton turned back, wondering at the sudden dignity of
manner which grief had given to the wild and lawless Fanny
Euston.