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"Your daughter is in HIGH SPIRITS to-night," observed a single lady
of a certain age, who was sitting near Mrs. Monson; "I do not
remember to have ever seen her so GAY."
"Yes, dear girl, she IS happy,"--poor Julia was any thing but THAT,
just then--"but youth is the time for happiness, if it is ever to come in this
life."
"Is Miss Monson addicted to such VERY high spirits?" continued one,
who was resolute to torment, and vexed that the mother could not be
sufficiently alarmed to look around.
"Always--when in agreeable company. I think it a great happiness,
ma'am, to possess good spirits."
"No doubt--yet one needn't be always fifteen, as Lady Wortley
Montague said," muttered the other, giving up the point, and changing
her seat, in order that she might speak her mind more freely into the ear
of a congenial spirit.
{Lady Wortley Montague = Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-
1762), English essayist and letter-writer}
Half an hour later we were all in the carriages, again, on our way home;
all, but Betts Shoreham, I should say, for having seen the ladies
cloaked, he had taken his leave at Mrs. Leamington's door, as uncertain
as ever whether or not to impute envy to a being who, in all other
respects, seemed to him to be faultless. He had to retire to an uneasy
pillow, undetermined whether to pursue his original intention of making
the poor friendless French girl independent, by an offer of his hand, or
whether to decide that her amiable and gentle qualities were all seeming,
and that she was not what she appeared to be. Betts Shoreham owed
his distrust to national prejudice, and well was he paid for entertaining
so vile a companion. Had Mademoiselle Hennequin been an American
girl, he would not have thought a second time of the emotion she had
betrayed in regarding my beauties; but he had been taught to believe all
French women managing and hypocritical; a notion that the experience
of a young man in Paris would not be very likely to destroy.
{managing = manipulative}
"Well," cried John Monson, as the carriage drew from Mrs.
Leamington's door, "this is the last ball I shall go to in New York;"
which declaration he repeated twenty times that season, and as often
broke.
"What is the matter now, Jack?" demanded the father. "I found it very
pleasant--six or seven of us old fellows made a very agreeable evening
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of it."
"Yes, I dare say, sir; but you were not compelled to dance in a room
eighteen by twenty-four, with a hundred people treading on your toes,
or brushing their heads in your face."
"Jack can find no room for dancing since the great ball of the Salle de
l'Opera, at Paris," observed the mother smiling. "I hope YOU enjoyed
yourself better, Julia?"
{Salle de l'Opera = Paris Opera House--the building referred to by
Cooper served as Opera House from 1821-1873 and was replaced by
the present building in 1874}
My mistress started; then she answered with a sort of hysterical glee--
"Oh! I have found the evening delightful, ma'am. I could have remained
two hours longer."
"And you, Mademoiselle Hennequin; I hope you, too, were agreeably
entertained?"
The governess answered meekly, and with a slight tremor in her voice.
"Certainly, madame," she said, "I have enjoyed myself; though dancing
always seems an amusement I have no right to share in."
There was some little embarrassment, and I could perceive an impulse
in Julia to press nearer to her rival, as if impelled by a generous wish to
manifest her sympathy. But Tom's protest soon silenced every thing
else, and we alighted, and soon went to rest.
The next morning Julia sent for me down to be exhibited to one or two
friends, my fame having spread in consequence of my late appearance. I
was praised, kissed, called a pretty dear, and extolled like a spoiled
child, though Miss W. did not fail to carry the intelligence, far and near,
that Miss Monson's much-talked-of pocket-handkerchief was nothing
after all but the THING Miss Halfacre had brought out the night of the
day her father had stopped payment. Some even began to nick-name
me the insolvent pocket-handkerchief.
I thought Julia sad, after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a
sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was
aroused from a brown study--reflective mood, perhaps, would be a
more select phrase--by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston.
There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about
this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck
me. I looked for great events, nor was I altogether disappointed. In one
minute he was seated at Julia's side, on the same sofa, and within two
feet of her; in two more he had brought in play his usual tricks of
flattery. My mistress listened languidly, and yet not altogether without
interest. She was piqued at Betts Shoreham's indifference, had known
her present admirer several months, if dancing in the same set can be
called KNOWING, and had never been made love to before, at least
in a manner so direct and unequivocal. The young man had tact enough
to discover that he had an advantage, and fearful that some one might
come in and interrupt the tete a tete, he magnanimously resolved to
throw all on a single cast, and come to the point at once.
"I think, Miss Monson," he continued, after a very beautiful specimen of
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rigmarole in the way of love-making, a rigmarole that might have very
fairly figured in an editor's law and logic, after he had been beaten in a
libel suit, ''I think, Miss Monson, you cannot have overlooked the
VERY particular attentions I have endeavored to pay you, ever since I
have been so fortunate as to have made your acquaintance?"
"I!--Upon my word, Mr. Thurston, I am not at all conscious of having
been the object of any such attentions!"
"No?--That is ever the way with the innocent and single-minded! This is
what we sincere and diffident men have to contend with in affairs of the
heart. Our bosoms may be torn with ten thousand distracting cares, and
yet the modesty of a truly virtuous female heart shall be so absorbed in
its own placid serenity as to be indifferent to the pangs it is
unconsciously inflicting!"
"Mr. Thurston, your language is strong--and--a little--a little
unintelligible."
"I dare say--ma'am--I never expect to be intelligible again. When the
'heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that
passion which is at once the torment and delight of life'--when 'his lip,
the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage
of a mang--' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties
are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and
mysterious, as a matter of course."
Tom Thurston came very near wrecking himself on the quicksands of
the romantic school. He had begun to quote from a speech delivered by
Gouverneur Morris, on the right of deposit at New Orleans, and which
he had spoken at college, and was near getting into a part of the subject [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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