University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
SENTIMENT v. SENSIBILITY.

THE poet has feelingly sung the condition of

and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description
on the Follingsbee mansion.

Charlie Ferrola, however, was summoned away at
early daylight, just as the last of the revellers were dispersing,
by a hurried messenger from his wife; and, a
few moments after he entered his house, he was standing
beside his dying baby, — the little fellow whom we
have seen brought down on Mrs. Ferrola's arm, to greet
the call of Mrs. Follingsbee.

It is an awful thing for people of the flimsy, vain,
pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking character of Charlie
Ferrola, to be taken at times, as such people will be, in
the grip of an inexorable power, and held face to face
with the sternest, the most awful, the most frightful
realities of life. Charlie Ferrola was one of those whose
softness and pitifulness, like that of sentimentalists generally,
was only one form of intense selfishness. The

sight of suffering pained him; and his first impulse was
to get out of the way of it. Suffering that he did not
see was nothing to him; and, if his wife or children
were in any trouble, he would have liked very well to
have known nothing about it.

But here he was, by the bedside of this little creature,
dying in the agonies of slow suffocation, rolling
up its dark, imploring eyes, and lifting its poor little
helpless hands; and Charlie Ferrola broke out into
the most violent and extravagant demonstrations of
grief.

The pale, firm little woman, who had watched all
night, and in whose tranquil face a light as if from
heaven was beaming, had to assume the care of him, in
addition to that of her dying child. He was another
helpless burden on her hands.

There came a day when the house was filled with
white flowers, and people came and went, and holy
words were spoken; and the fairest flower of all was
carried out, to return to the house no more.

“That woman is a most unnatural and peculiar
woman!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, who had been most
active and patronizing in sending flowers, and attending
to the scenic arrangements of the funeral. “It is
just what I always said: she is a perfect statue; she 's
no kind of feeling. There was Charlie, poor fellow! so
sick that he had to go to bed, perfectly overcome, and
have somebody to sit up with him; and there was that
woman never shed a tear, — went round attending to
every thing, just like a piece of clock-work. Well, I

suppose people are happier for being made so; people
that have no sensibility are better fitted to get through
the world. But, gracious me! I can't understand such
people. There she stood at the grave, looking so calm,
when Charlie was sobbing so that he could hardly
hold himself up. Well, it really wasn't respectable. I
think, at least, I would keep my veil down, and keep
my handkerchief up. Poor Charlie! he came to me at
last; and I gave way. I was completely broken down,
I must confess. Poor fellow! he told me there was no
conceiving his misery. That baby was the very idol of
his soul; all his hopes of life were centred in it. He
really felt tempted to rebel at Providence. He said
that he really could not talk with his wife on the subject.
He could not enter into her submission at all;
it seemed to him like a want of feeling. He said of
course it wasn't her fault that she was made one way
and he another.”

In fact, Mr. Charlie Ferrola took to the pink satin
boudoir with a more languishing persistency than ever,
requiring to be stayed with flagons, and comforted with
apples, and receiving sentimental calls of condolence
from fair admirers, made aware of the intense poignancy
of his grief. A lovely poem, called “My Withered
Blossom,” which appeared in a fashionable magazine
shortly after, was the out-come of this experience, and
increased the fashionable sympathy to the highest
degree.

Honest Mrs. Van Astrachan, however, though not
acquainted with Mrs. Ferrola, went to the funeral with

Rose; and the next day her carriage was seen at Mrs.
Ferrola's door.

“You poor little darling!” she said, as she came up
and took Mrs. Ferrola in her arms. “You must let me
come, and not mind me; for I know all about it. I lost
the dearest little baby once; and I have never forgotten
it. There! there, darling!” she said, as the little woman
broke into sobs in her arms. “Yes, yes; do cry!
it will do your little heart good.”

There are people who, wherever they move, freeze the
hearts of those they touch, and chill all demonstration
of feeling; and there are warm natures, that unlock
every fountain, and bid every feeling gush forth. The
reader has seen these two types in this story.

“Wife,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, coming to Mrs.
V. confidentially a day or two after, “I wonder if
you remember any of your French. What is a
liaison?”

“Really, dear,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan, whose reading
of late years had been mostly confined to such
memoirs as that of Mrs. Isabella Graham, Doddridge's
“Rise and Progress,” and Baxter's “Saint's Rest,” “it 's
a great while since I read any French. What do you
want to know for?”

“Well, there 's Ben Stuyvesant was saying this morning,
in Wall Street, that there 's a great deal of talk about
that Mrs. Follingsbee and that young fellow whose
baby's funeral you went to. Ben says there 's a liaison
between her and him. I didn't ask him what 't was;

but it 's something or other with a French name that
makes talk, and I don't think it 's respectable! I 'm
sorry that you and Rose went to her party; but then
that can't be helped now. I 'm afraid this Mrs. Follingsbee
is no sort of a woman, after all.”

“But, pa, I 've been to call on Mrs. Ferrola, poor
little afflicted thing!” said Mrs. Van Astrachan. “I
couldn't help it! You know how we felt when little
Willie died.”

“Oh, certainly, Polly! call on the poor woman by all
means, and do all you can to comfort her; but, from all
I can find out, that handsome jackanapes of a husband
of hers is just the poorest trash going. They say this
Follingsbee woman half supports him. The time was
in New York when such doings wouldn't be allowed;
and I don't think calling things by French names makes
them a bit better. So you just be careful, and steer as
clear of her as you can.”

“I will, pa, just as clear as I can; but you know
Rose is a friend of Mrs. John Seymour; and Mrs. Seymour
is visiting at Mrs. Follingsbee's.”

“Her husband oughtn't to let her stay there another
day,” said Mr. Van Astrachan. “It 's as much as any
woman's reputation is worth to be staying with her.
To think of that fellow being dancing and capering at
that Jezebel's house the night his baby was dying!”

“Oh, but, pa, he didn't know it.”

“Know it? he ought to have known it! What business
has a man to get a woman with a lot of babies
round her, and then go capering off? 'Twasn't the way

I did, Polly, you know, when our babies were young.
I was always on the spot there, ready to take the
baby, and walk up and down with it nights, so that
you might get your sleep; and I always had it my
side of the bed half the night. I 'd like to have seen
myself out at a ball, and you sitting up with a sick
baby! I tell you, that if I caught any of my boys
up to such tricks, I 'd cut them out of my will, and
settle the money on their wives; — that 's what I
would!”

“Well, pa, I shall try and do all in my power for poor
Mrs. Ferrola,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan; “and you
may be quite sure I won't take another step towards
Mrs. Follingsbee's acquaintance.”

“It 's a pity,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, “that somebody
couldn't put it into Mr. John Seymour's head to
send for his wife home.

“I don't see, for my part, what respectable women
want to be gallivanting and high-flying on their own
separate account for, away from their husbands! Goods
that are sold shouldn't go back to the shop-windows,”
said the good gentleman, all whose views of life were
of the most old-fashioned, domestic kind.

“Well, dear, we don't want to talk to Rose about
any of this scandal,” said his wife.

“No, no; it would be a pity to put any thing bad
into a nice girl's head,” said Mr. Van Astrachan. “You
might caution her in a general way, you know; tell her,
for instance, that I 've heard of things that make me feel
you ought to draw off. Why can't some bird of the

air tell that little Seymour woman's husband to get her
home?”

The little Seymour woman's husband, though not
warned by any particular bird of the air, was not backward
in taking steps for the recall of his wife, as shall
hereafter appear.