“How shall we manage to kill time to-day, Jack?” asked Tom Shaw;
“race-course--billiards--club--pistol gallery?”
“Kill time! You--a bridegroom of six months! Well, you can’t say you
weren’t warned. You remember I told you you would soon weary of your new
toy. A six-months’ bridegroom!” and Tom laughed merrily.
“Long enough to make love to a statue, were it ever so faultless,”
replied Tom, with a yawn. “I’m bored to death, Jack, and I don’t care
who knows it. My mother-in-law, who, to do her justice, is clever
enough, strolls over the house like a walking tomb-stone. My wife is as
lifeless as if half the women in town were not dying for me. It’s cursed
monotonous; hang me if I’m not sick of it.”
“Does your wife never speak to you?” asked Jack.
“Never,” said Tom; “there she sits in her chair, playing with her
fingers, or else at the window, looking this way, and that, as if she
were expecting somebody; when she does so, it seems to worry the old
lady, who looks nervously at me, and tries to coax her away--the Lord
only knows why; and two or three times I have seen her coax away a faded
flower that Mary has a fancy for holding between her fingers. It’s all
Greek to me. Confound it, I feel as if I were in a nest of lunatics. It
makes me as nervous as the devil. Come, let’s be off. What has become of
Susy, the little ballet-girl? Did she take my marriage to heart?”
“Not she, the delicious little monkey; she tossed her pretty head, and
said with an arch smile: ‘Mark what I say: he’ll be back to me in six
months.’”
“Pretty prophet!” replied Tom.
The two young men locked arms and sauntered down the crowded street,
whiffing their cigars; now attracted by some brilliant shop-window, now
bandying jests with those miserable women, who, but for just such as
they, might have lifted their womanly brows to the starry sky--pure as
when first kissed by a mother’s loving lips. Pale seamstresses glided
by, unguarded, save by Him who noticeth the sparrow’s fall. Young men of
their own age, weary of the slowly accumulating gains of honest toil,
looked enviously upon their delicately kidded hands, fine apparel, and
care-for-naught air. Passing, at length, the long line of carriages in
front of the opera house, they disappeared under the lighted vestibule,
and took possession of one of the boxes.
Fair young girls were there, unveiling to the libidinous eye, at
Fashion’s bidding, charms of which they should have been chary to the
moon. Faded belles throwing out bait at which nobody even nibbled.
Married men groaned, looked at their watches, and leaning back in their
seats, computed the rise and fall of stocks; married women gazed
anxiously around to see if their laces, diamonds, or cashmeres were
eclipsed by their neighbors’. Every body was bored to death, stifled by
the heat, blinded, by the gas, and scientifically inappreciative of the
music, but every body willing to endure ten times as much, rather than
not be “in the fashion.” The moon, to be sure, silvered the pretty
fountain in the park, close by, and the cool, sweet evening breeze
played through the blossoming trees; but the “working people” were
stretched upon its benches; the poor man’s child laid his soft cheek to
the cool grass; the ragged little urchin, escaping from the stifled air
of the noisome lane, threw up his brimless hat in the gravel walk. The
parks were plebeian, opera boxes were beyond the reach of “the vulgar.”
But look! Now the audience show signs of animation. All is astir. See,
the ballet! A fleecy cloud sails in, enveloping “Susy.” Susy, the
favorite pro tem.--Susy, with her jetty locks, creamy skin, and dimpled
shoulders. Susy, with her pretty ankles and rounded waist. Susy, with
her jeweled arms and rose-banded hair. Susy, with her rounded bosom and
twinkling feet. Young men and old men level their glasses in breathless
admiration, as Susy languishingly twirls, and tip-toes, and pirouettes.
Young girls, who have long since ceased blushing at such exhibitions,
wish, for the nonce, that _they_ were Susy, as bouquets and diamond
rings are thrown upon the stage. Tom Shaw’s eyes sparkle, and relieving
his enthusiasm by some expressive expletives, he leaves Jack for a
behind-the-scene _tête-à-tête_ with the _danseuse_.