"Certainly not," he replied, with perfect unconsciousness. "Whatever my
name might be, I would endeavor to make it a respectable one while I
bore it."
Laura sat the other side of me, and softly touched me. So I only
asked, if that great star up there was Lyra; but all the time Anodyne,
Ambergris, Abner, Albion, Alpheus, and all the names that begin with A,
rolled through my memory monotonously and continually.
After we went up-stairs that night, and while I was trying in vain to do
up my hair so as to make a natural wave in front, (sometimes everything
goes wrong,) Laura said,--
"Delphine!"
My mother mixed romance with good practical sense, and very properly
said that girls with good names and tolerable faces might get on in the
world, but it took fortune to make your Sallies and Mollies go down. She
had good taste, too, and didn't name either of us Louisa Prudence, like
an unfortunate I once saw; and we were left, with our nice cottage
covered with its vine of bitter-sweet and climbing rose, fifteen hundred
dollars each, and our names, Delphine and Laura. Not a bad heritage,
with economy, good looks, and hearts to take life cheerily. Still it
is plain enough that a fifty-dollar note for the bride was not to be
despised nor overlooked. In fact, with the exception of Polly's present
of a brown earthen bowl and a pudding-stick, it was the first approach
to a wedding-gift that I had yet received. And this note was trouble the
second. But of that, by-and-by.
"Delphine!" said Laura, softly.
Some people's voices excoriate you, Laura's was soft and soothing.
"Well!"
"Don't say any more to--to Mr. Sampson about names."
"Oh, dear! hateful!"
"Delphine, be thankful it's no worse!"
"How could it be worse,--unless it were Hog-and-Hominy? I never knew
anything so utterly ridiculous! America! Columbia! Yankee-Doodle! I'd
rather it had been Abraham!"
All this I almost shouted in a passion of vexation, and Laura hastily
closed the window.
"Let me loosen your braids for you, Del," said she, quietly, taking up
my hair in her gentle way, which always had a good effect on my prancing
nerves; "let me bathe your forehead with this, dear;--now, let me tell
you something you will like."
"Oh, my heart! Laura, I wish you could! for I declare to you, that, if
it wasn't for--if it didn't----Oh, dear, dear! how I do hate that name!"
"It is not so very good a name,--that must be owned, Del. All is, you
will have to call him 'Mr. Sampson,' or 'My dear,' or 'You'; or, stay,
you might abbreviate it into Ame, Ami. Ami and Delphine!--it sounds like
a French story for youth. If I were you, I wouldn't meddle with it or
think any more about it."
"Such a name! so ridiculous!" I muttered.
"You have considered it so much and so closely, Del, that it is most
disproportionately prominent in your mind. You can put out Bunker-Hill
Monument with your little finger, if you hold it close enough to your
eye. Don't you remember what Mr. Sampson said to-night about somebody
whose mind had no perspective in it? that his shoe-ribbon was as
prominent and important as his soul? Don't go and be a goosey, Del, and
have no perspective, will you?" And Laura leaned over and kissed my
forehead, all corrugated with my pet grief.
"Well, Laura, what can be worse? I declare--almost I think, Laura, I
would rather he should have some great defect."
"Moral or physical? Gambling? one leg? one eye? lying? six fingers? How
do you mean, Del?"
"Oh, patience! no, indeed!--six fingers! I only meant"----
And here, of course, I stopped.
"Which virtue could you spare in Mr. Sampson?" said Laura, coolly,
fastening my hair neatly in its net, and sitting down in _her_
rocking-chair.
When it came to that, of course there were none to be spared. We
undressed, silently,--Laura rolling all her ribbons carefully, and
I throwing mine about; Laura, consistent, conservative, allopathic,
High-Church,--I, homoeopathic, hydropathic, careless, and given to
Parkerism. It did not matter, as to harmony. Two bracelets, but no
need to be alike. We clasped arms and hearts all the same. By-and-by I
remembered,--
"Oh! what's your good news, Laura?"
"Ariana Cooper and Geraldine Parker are both married,--both on the same
day, at Grace Church, New York."
"Is it possible? Who told you? How do you know?"
"I read it in the 'Evening Post,' just before I came up-stairs. Now
guess,--guess a month, Del, and you won't guess whom they have married."
"No use to guess. They've found somebody in New York at their aunt's,
I suppose. Both so pretty and rich, they were likely to find good
_partis_."
"Merchants both, I think. Now do guess!"
"How can I? Herbert Clark, maybe,--or Captain Ellington? No, of course
not. A merchant? Julius Winthrop. I know Ariana was a great admirer of
a military man. She used to say she would have loved Sidney for his
chivalry, and Raleigh for his graceful foppery; and Pembroke Dunkin she
admired for both. It isn't Pembroke?"
And here I sighed over and over, like a foolish virgin.
"Now, then, listen. Here it is in the paper," said Laura.
"'Married, at Grace Church, by the Rev. So-and-So, assisted, etc., etc.,
Ossian Smutt, Esq., of the firm of S. Hamilton & Company, to Ariana,
eldest daughter of the late George S. Cooper. At the same place, and
day, Hon. Unity Smith, M.C., to Geraldine Miranda, daughter of the late
Russell Parker of Pine Lodge. The happy quartette have left in the
Persia for a tour in Europe. We wish them joy.'"
"Ugh! Laura! goodness! well, that outdoes me," I screamed, with a sudden
sense of relief, that set me laughing as passionately as I had been
crying. For, though I have not before owned it, I had been crying
heartily.
The Balm of a Thousand Flowers descended on my lacerated heart. To say
the truth, I had dreaded more Ariana's little shrug, and Geraldine
Parker's upraised eyebrows, on reading my marriage, than a whole life of
_that_ name, on my own account merely. But now, thank Heaven, so much
trouble was out of my way. Mrs. Unity Smith, and Mrs. Orlando--no,
Ossian Smutt, could by no possibility laugh at me. Mrs. A. Sampson
wasn't bad on a card. It would not smut one, anyhow. I laughed grimly,
and composed myself to sleep.
The next morning had come the pleasant letter from my Albany aunt, with
the fifty-dollar note. Laura continued rocking, fifty strokes a minute,
and stitching at the rate of sixty. I held the note idly, rubbing up
my imagination for things new and old. Laura, being industrious, was
virtuously employing her thoughts. As idleness brings mischief, and
riches anxiety, I did not rock long without evil consequences. Eve
herself was not contented in Eden. She had to do all the cooking, for
one thing,--and angels always happening in to dinner! For my part, the
name of Adam would have been enough to spoil my pleasure. Here Laura
interrupted my thoughts, which were running headlong into everything
wicked.
"What do you say?"
"What do you?" I answered; for, like other bad people, I had the
greatest respect for good people's opinions.
"I think--a small--silver salver!"
"Do you think so, really?"
"Yes, Del. That will be good; silver, you know, is always good to have;
and it will be handsome and useful always."
"What! for us?"
"Yes,--pretty to hand a cup of tea on, or a glass of wine,--pretty to
set in the middle of a long table with a vase of flowers on it, when you
have the Court and High-Sheriff to dine,--as you will, of course, every
year,--or with your spoon-goblet. Oh, there are plenty of ways to make a
small silver salver useful. Mrs. Harris says she doesn't see how any one
can keep house without a silver salver."
The last sentence she said with a laugh, for she knew I thought so much
of what Mrs. Harris said.
"We've kept house all our lives without one, Laura."
"Yes,--but I often wish we had one, for all that. As Mrs. Harris says,
'It gives such an air!'"
What a dreadful utilitarian Laura was, I thought. Now, the whole world
and Boston were full of beautiful things,--full of things that had no
special usefulness, but were absolutely and of themselves beautiful. And
such a thing I wanted,--such a presence before me,--"a thing of beauty
and of joy forever,"--something that would not speak directly or
indirectly of labor, of something to be wrought out with toil, or
associated with common, every-day objects. When that life should come to
which I secretly looked forward,--when my soul should bound into a more
radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all
gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be
sweeter than other people's joys,--in that life, there would be moments
of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness. Then I should
want something on which my mind might linger, my eye rest,--as the bird
rests for an instant, to turn her plumage in the sun, and take another
and loftier flight. Not a word of all this, which common minds called
farrago, but which had its truth to me, did I utter to Laura. Of course,
none of these things bear transplanting or expressing.
"Laura, do you like that statue of Mercury in Mrs. Gore's library?"
"Very much. But I am sure I should be tired of seeing it every day,
standing on one toe. I should be tired, if he wasn't."
"Mrs. Gore says she never tires of it. I asked her. She says it is a
delight to her to lie on the sofa and trace the beautiful undulations
of his figure. How airy! It looks as if it would fly again without the
least effort,--as if it had just 'new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill'!
Don't you think it perfect, Laura?"
"Well--yes,--I suppose so. I am not so enthusiastic as you are about
it."
"Why don't you like it?"