OLDPORT AVENUE is a place where a great many carriages may be seen
driving so slowly that they might almost be photographed without
halting, and where their occupants already wear the dismal expression
which befits that process. In these fine vehicles, following each other
in an endless file, one sees such faces as used to be exhibited in
ball-rooms during the performance of quadrilles, before round dances
came in,--faces marked by the renunciation of all human joy. Sometimes
a faint suspicion suggests itself on the Avenue, that these torpid
countenances might be roused to life, in case some horse should run
away. But that one chance never occurs; the riders may not yet be toned
down into perfect breeding, but the horses are. I do not know what could
ever break the gloom of this joyless procession, were it not that youth
and beauty are always in fashion, and one sometimes meets an exceptional
barouche full of boys and girls, who could absolutely be no happier if
they were a thousand miles away from the best society. And such a joyous
company were our four youths and maidens when they went to drive that
day, Emilia being left at home to rest after the fatigues of the voyage.
“What beautiful horses!” was Hope’s first exclamation. “What grave
people!” was her second.
“What though in solemn silence all
Roll round--”
quoted Philip.
“Hope is thinking,” said Harry, “whether ‘in reason’s ear they all
rejoice.’”
“How COULD you know that?” said she, opening her eyes.
“One thing always strikes me,” said Kate. “The sentence of stupefaction
does not seem to be enforced till after five-and-twenty. That young lady
we just met looked quite lively and juvenile last year, I remember, and
now she has graduated into a dowager.”
“Like little Helen’s kitten,” said Philip. “She justly remarks that,
since I saw it last, it is all spoiled into a great big cat.”
“Those must be snobs,” said Harry, as a carriage with unusually gorgeous
liveries rolled by.
“I suppose so,” said Malbone, indifferently. “In Oldport we call all
new-comers snobs, you know, till they have invited us to their grand
ball. Then we go to it, and afterwards speak well of them, and only
abuse their wine.”
“How do you know them for new-comers?” asked Hope, looking after the
carriage.
“By their improperly intelligent expression,” returned Phil. “They look
around them as you do, my child, with the air of wide-awake curiosity
which marks the American traveller. That is out of place here. The
Avenue abhors everything but a vacuum.”
“I never can find out,” continued Hope, “how people recognize each other
here. They do not look at each other, unless they know each other: and
how are they to know if they know, unless they look first?”
“It seems an embarrassment,” said Malbone. “But it is supposed that
fashion perforates the eyelids and looks through. If you attempt it in
any other way, you are lost. Newly arrived people look about them, and,
the more new wealth they have, the more they gaze. The men are uneasy
behind their recently educated mustaches, and the women hold their
parasols with trembling hands. It takes two years to learn to drive
on the Avenue. Come again next summer, and you will see in those same
carriages faces of remote superciliousness, that suggest generations of
gout and ancestors.”
“What a pity one feels,” said Harry, “for these people who still suffer
from lingering modesty, and need a master to teach them to be insolent!”
“They learn it soon enough,” said Kate. “Philip is right. Fashion lies
in the eye. People fix their own position by the way they don’t look at
you.”
“There is a certain indifference of manner,” philosophized Malbone,
“before which ingenuous youth is crushed. I may know that a man can
hardly read or write, and that his father was a ragpicker till one day
he picked up bank-notes for a million. No matter. If he does not take
the trouble to look at me, I must look reverentially at him.”
“Here is somebody who will look at Hope,” cried Kate, suddenly.
A carriage passed, bearing a young lady with fair hair, and a keen,
bright look, talking eagerly to a small and quiet youth beside her.
Her face brightened still more as she caught the eye of Hope, whose
face lighted up in return, and who then sank back with a sort of sigh
of relief, as if she had at last seen somebody she cared for. The lady
waved an un-gloved hand, and drove by.
“Who is that?” asked Philip, eagerly. He was used to knowing every one.
“Hope’s pet,” said Kate, “and she who pets Hope, Lady Antwerp.”
“Is it possible?” said Malbone. “That young creature? I fancied her
ladyship in spectacles, with little side curls. Men speak of her with
such dismay.”
“Of course,” said Kate, “she asks them sensible questions.”
“That is bad,” admitted Philip. “Nothing exasperates fashionable
Americans like a really intelligent foreigner. They feel as Sydney Smith
says the English clergy felt about Elizabeth Fry; she disturbs their
repose, and gives rise to distressing comparisons,--they long to burn
her alive. It is not their notion of a countess.”
“I am sure it was not mine,” said Hope; “I can hardly remember that she
is one; I only know that I like her, she is so simple and intelligent.
She might be a girl from a Normal School.”
“It is because you are just that,” said Kate, “that she likes you.
She came here supposing that we had all been at such schools. Then
she complained of us,--us girls in what we call good society, I
mean,--because, as she more than hinted, we did not seem to know
anything.”
“Some of the mothers were angry,” said Hope. “But Aunt Jane told her
that it was perfectly true, and that her ladyship had not yet seen the
best-educated girls in America, who were generally the daughters of old
ministers and well-to-do shopkeepers in small New England towns, Aunt
Jane said.”
“Yes,” said Kate, “she said that the best of those girls went to High
Schools and Normal Schools, and learned things thoroughly, you know;
but that we were only taught at boarding-schools and by governesses, and
came out at eighteen, and what could we know? Then came Hope, who had
been at those schools, and was the child of refined people too, and Lady
Antwerp was perfectly satisfied.”
“Especially,” said Hope, “when Aunt Jane told her that, after all,
schools did not do very much good, for if people were born stupid they
only became more tiresome by schooling. She said that she had forgotten
all she learned at school except the boundaries of ancient Cappadocia.”
Aunt Jane’s fearless sayings always passed current among her nieces; and
they drove on, Hope not being lowered in Philip’s estimation, nor raised
in her own, by being the pet of a passing countess.
Who would not be charmed (he thought to himself) by this noble girl,
who walks the earth fresh and strong as a Greek goddess, pure as Diana,
stately as Juno? She belongs to the unspoiled womanhood of another age,
and is wasted among these dolls and butterflies.
He looked at her. She sat erect and graceful, unable to droop into the
debility of fashionable reclining,--her breezy hair lifted a little by
the soft wind, her face flushed, her full brown eyes looking eagerly
about, her mouth smiling happily. To be with those she loved best, and
to be driving over the beautiful earth! She was so happy that no mob of
fashionables could have lessened her enjoyment, or made her for a moment
conscious that anybody looked at her. The brilliant equipages which
they met each moment were not wholly uninteresting even to her, for her
affections went forth to some of the riders and to all the horses. She
was as well contented at that moment, on the glittering Avenue, as if
they had all been riding home through country lanes, and in constant
peril of being jolted out among the whortleberry-bushes.
Her face brightened yet more as they met a carriage containing a
graceful lady dressed with that exquisiteness of taste that charms both
man and woman, even if no man can analyze and no woman rival its effect.
She had a perfectly high-bred look, and an eye that in an instant would
calculate one’s ancestors as far back as Nebuchadnezzar, and bow to them
all together. She smiled good-naturedly on Hope, and kissed her hand to
Kate.
“So, Hope,” said Philip, “you are bent on teaching music to Mrs.
Meredith’s children.”
“Indeed I am!” said Hope, eagerly. “O Philip, I shall enjoy it so! I do
not care so very much about her, but she has dear little girls. And you
know I am a born drudge. I have not been working hard enough to enjoy
an entire vacation, but I shall be so very happy here if I can have some
real work for an hour or two every other day.”
“Hope,” said Philip, gravely, “look steadily at these people whom we are
meeting, and reflect. Should you like to have them say, ‘There goes Mrs.
Meredith’s music teacher’?”
“Why not?” said Hope, with surprise. “The children are young, and it is
not very presumptuous. I ought to know enough for that.”
Malbone looked at Kate, who smiled with delight, and put her hand on
that of Hope. Indeed, she kept it there so long that one or two passing
ladies stopped their salutations in mid career, and actually looked
after them in amazement at their attitude, as who should say, “What a
very mixed society!”
So they drove on,--meeting four-in-hands, and tandems, and donkey-carts,
and a goat-cart, and basket-wagons driven by pretty girls, with
uncomfortable youths in or out of livery behind. They met, had they but
known it, many who were aiming at notoriety, and some who had it; many
who looked contented with their lot, and some who actually were so. They
met some who put on courtesy and grace with their kid gloves, and laid
away those virtues in their glove-boxes afterwards; while to others
the mere consciousness of kid gloves brought uneasiness, redness of the
face, and a general impression of being all made of hands. They met the
four white horses of an ex-harness-maker, and the superb harnesses of an
ex-horse-dealer. Behind these came the gayest and most plebeian equipage
of all, a party of journeymen carpenters returning from their work in a
four-horse wagon. Their only fit compeers were an Italian opera-troupe,
who were chatting and gesticulating on the piazza of the great hotel,
and planning, amid jest and laughter, their future campaigns. Their work
seemed like play, while the play around them seemed like work. Indeed,
most people on the Avenue seemed to be happy in inverse ratio to their
income list.
As our youths and maidens passed the hotel, a group of French naval
officers strolled forth, some of whom had a good deal of inexplicable
gold lace dangling in festoons from their shoulders,--“topsail halyards”
the American midshipmen called them. Philip looked hard at one of these
gentlemen.
“I have seen that young fellow before,” said he, “or his twin brother.
But who can swear to the personal identity of a Frenchman?”