But they say now that she’s going to marry an Englishman.”
It was not long before I had an opportunity of renewing my friendship
with Miss Gledd,--for our acquaintance had latterly amounted to a
friendship,--and of seeing the Englishman with her. As it happened, he
also was a friend of my own,--an old friend, and the last man in the
world whom I should have picked out as a husband for Ophelia. He was a
literary man of some mark, fifteen years her senior, very sedate in his
habits, not much given to love-making, and possessed of a small fortune
sufficient for his own wants, but not sufficient to enable him to marry
with what he would consider comfort. Such was Mr. Pryor, and I was given
to understand that Mr. Pryor was a suppliant at the feet of Ophelia. He
was a suppliant, too, with so much hope, that Hannibal Hoskins and the
other suitors were up in arms against him. I saw them together at some
evening assembly, and on the next morning I chanced to be in Miss
Gledd’s drawing-room. On my entrance there were others there, but the
first moment that we were alone, she turned round sharp upon me with a
question,--
“You know your countryman, Mr. Pryor; what sort of a man is he?”
“But you know him also,” I answered. “If the rumours in Boston are true,
he is already a favourite in Chesnut Street.”
“Well, then, for once in a way the rumours in Boston are true, for he is
a favourite. But that is no reason you shouldn’t tell me what sort of a
man he is. You’ve known him these ten years.”
“Pretty nearly twenty,” I said. I had known him ten or twelve.
“Ah,” said she, “you want to make him out to be older than he is. I knew
his age to-day.”
“And does he know yours?”
“He may if he wishes it. Everybody in Boston knows it,--including
yourself. Now tell me; what sort of man is Mr. Pryor?”
“He is a man highly esteemed in his own country.”
“So much I knew before; and he is highly esteemed here also. But I
hardly understand what high estimation means in your country.”
“It is much the same thing in all countries, as I take it,” said I.
“There you are absolutely wrong. Here in the States, if a man be highly
esteemed it amounts almost to everything; such estimation will carry him
everywhere,--and will carry his wife everywhere too, so as to give her a
chance of making standing ground for herself.”
“But Mr. Pryor has not got a wife.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course he hasn’t got a wife, and of course you know
what I mean.”
But I did not know what she meant. I knew that she was meditating
whether or no it would be good for her to become Mrs. Pryor, and that
she was endeavouring to get from me some information which might assist
her in coming to a decision on that matter; but I did not understand the
exact gist and point of her enquiry.
“You have so many prejudices of which we know nothing,” she continued.
“Now don’t put your back up and fight for that blessed old country of
yours, as though I were attacking it.”
“It is a blessed old country,” said I, patriotically.
“Quite so; very blessed, and very old,--and very nice too, I’m sure. But
you must admit that you have prejudices. You are very much the better,
perhaps, for having them. I often wish that we had a few.” Then she
stopped her tongue, and asked no further question about Mr. Pryor; but
it seemed to me that she wanted me to go on with the conversation.
“I hate discussing the relative merits of the two countries,” said I;
“and I especially hate to discuss them with you. You always begin as
though you meant to be fair, and end by an amount of unfairness,
that--that----”
“Which would be insolent if I were not a woman, and which is pert as I
am one. That is what you mean.”
“Something like it.”
“And yet I love your country so dearly, that I would sooner live there
than in any other land in the world, if only I thought that I could be
accepted. You English people,” she continued, “are certainly wanting in
intelligence, or you would read in the anxiety of all we say about
England how much we all think of you. What will England say of us? what
will England think of us? what will England do in this or that matter as
it concerns us? that is our first thought as to every matter that is of
importance to us. We abuse you, and admire you. You abuse us, and
despise us. That is the difference. So you won’t tell me anything about
Mr. Pryor? Well, I sha’n’t ask you again. I never again ask a favour
that has been refused.” Then she turned away to some old gentleman that
was talking to her mother, and the conversation was at an end.
I must confess, that as I walked away from Chesnut Street into Beacon
Street, and across the common, my anxiety was more keen with regard to
Mr. Pryor than as concerned Miss Gledd. He was an Englishman and an old
friend, and being also a man not much younger than myself, he was one
regarding whom I might, perhaps, form some correct judgment as to what
would and what would not suit him. Would he do well in taking Ophelia
Gledd home to England with him as his wife? Would she be accepted there,
as she herself had phrased it,--accepted in such fashion as to make him
contented? She was intelligent,--so intelligent that few women whom she
would meet in her proposed new country could beat her there; she was
pleasant, good-humoured, true, as I believed; but would she be accepted
in London? There was a freedom and easiness about her, a readiness to
say anything that came into her mind, an absence of all reticence, which
would go very hard with her in London. But I never had heard her say
anything that she should not have said. Perhaps, after all, we have got
our prejudices in England. When next I met Pryor, I spoke to him about
Miss Gledd.
“The long and the short of it is,” I said, “that people say that you are
going to marry her.”
“What sort of people?”
“They were backing you against Hannibal Hoskins the other night at the
club, and it seemed clear that you were the favourite.”
“The vulgarity of these people surpasses anything that I ever dreamed
of,” said Pryor. “That is, of some of them. It’s all very well for you
to talk, but could such a bet as that be proposed in the open room of
any club in London?”
“The clubs in London are too big, but I dare say it might down in the
country. It would be just the thing for Little Pedlington.”
“But Boston is not Little Pedlington. Boston assumes to be the Athens of
the States. I shall go home by the first boat next month.” He had said
nothing to me about Miss Gledd, but it was clear that if he went home by
the first boat next month, he would go home without a wife; and as I
certainly thought that the suggested marriage was undesirable, I said
nothing to persuade him to remain at Boston.
It was again sleighing time, and some few days after my meeting with
Pryor I was out upon the Brighton Road in the thick of the crowd.
Presently I saw the hat and back of Hannibal Hoskins, and by his side
was Ophelia Gledd. Now, it must be understood that Hannibal Hoskins,
though he was in many respects most unlike an English gentleman, was
neither a fool nor a bad fellow. A fool he certainly was not. He had
read much. He could speak glibly, as is the case with all Americans. He
was scientific, classical, and poetical,--probably not to any great
depth. And he knew how to earn a large income with the full approbation
of his fellow-citizens. I had always hated him since the day on which he
had driven Miss Gledd home; but I had generally attributed my hatred to
the manner in which he wore his hat on one side. I confess I had often
felt amazed that Miss Gledd should have so far encouraged him. I think I
may at any rate declare that he would not have been accepted in
London,--not accepted for much! And yet Hannibal Hoskins was not a bad
fellow. His true devotion to Ophelia Gledd proved that.
“Miss Gledd,” said I, speaking to her from my sleigh, “do you remember
your calamity? There is the very ditch not a hundred yards ahead of
you.”
“And here is the very knight that took me home in your sleigh,” said
she, laughing.
Hoskins sat bolt upright and took off his hat. Why he took off his hat I
don’t know, unless that thereby he got an opportunity of putting it on
again a little more on one side.
“Mr. Hoskins would not have the goodness to upset you again, I suppose?”
said I.
“No, Sir,” said Hoskins; and he raised the reins and squared up his
elbows, meaning to lock like a knowing charioteer. “I guess we’ll go
back; eh, Miss Gledd?”
“I guess we will,” said she. “But, Mr. Green, don’t you remember that I
once told you if you’d take me out, I’d be sure to come home with you?
You never tried me, and I take it bad of you.” So encouraged I made an
engagement with her, and in two or three days’ time from that I had her
beside me in my sleigh on the same road.
By this time I had quite become a convert to the general opinion, and
was ready to confess in any presence, that Miss Gledd was a beauty. As I
started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I
could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that
nobody should ever catch us. There was a sense of companionship about
her in which no woman that I have ever known excelled her. She had a
way of adapting herself to the friend of the moment which was beyond
anything winning. Her voice was decidedly very pleasant; and as to that
nasal twang I am not sure that I was ever right about it. I wasn’t in
love with her myself, and didn’t want to fall in love with her. But I
felt that I should have liked to cross the Rocky Mountains with her,
over to the Pacific, and to have come home round by California, Peru,
and the Pampas. And for such a journey I should not at all have desired
to hamper the party with the society either of Hannibal Hoskins or of
Mr. Pryor! “I hope you feel that you’re having your revenge,” said she.
“But I don’t mean to upset you.”
“I almost wish you would, so as to make it even. And my poor friend Mr.
Hoskins would feel himself so satisfied. He says you Englishmen are
conceited about your driving.”
“No doubt, he thinks we are conceited about everything.”
“So you are, and so you should be. Poor Hannibal! He is wild with
despair because----”
“Because what?”
“Oh, never mind. He is an excellent fellow, but I know you hate him.”
“Indeed, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do; and so does Mr. Pryor. But he is so good! You can’t either
understand or appreciate the kind of goodness which our young men have.
Because he pulls his hat about, and can’t wear his gloves without
looking stiff, you won’t remember that out of his hard earnings he gives
his mother and sisters everything that they want.”
“I didn’t know anything of his mother and sisters.”
“No, of course you didn’t. But you know a great deal about his hat and
gloves. You are too hard, and polished, and well-mannered in England to
know anything about anybody’s mother or sisters, or indeed to know
anything about anybody’s anything. It is nothing to you whether a man be
moral, or affectionate, or industrious, or good-tempered. As long as he
can wear his hat properly, and speak as though nothing on the earth, or
over the earth, or under the earth, could ever move him, that is
sufficient.”
“And yet I thought you were so fond of England?”
“So I am. I too like,--nay, love that ease of manner which you all
possess and which I cannot reach.”
Then there was silence between us for perhaps half a mile, and yet I was
driving slow, as I did not wish to bring our journey to an end. I had
fully made up my mind that it would be in every way better for my friend
Pryor that he should give up all thoughts of this Western Aspasia, and
yet I was anxious to talk to her about him as though such a marriage
were still on the cards. It had seemed that lately she had thrown
herself much into an intimacy with myself, and that she was anxious to
speak openly to me if I would only allow it. But she had already
declared, on a former occasion, that she would ask me no further
question about Mr. Pryor. At last I plucked up courage, and put to her a
direct proposition about the future tenor of her life. “After all that
you have said about Mr. Hoskins, I suppose I may expect to hear that you
have at last accepted him?” I could not have asked such a question of
any English girl that I ever knew,--not even of my own sister in these
plain terms. And yet she took it not only without anger, but even
without surprise. And she answered it, as though I had asked her the
most ordinary question in the world.
“I wish I had,” she said. “That is, I think I wish I had. It is
certainly what I ought to do.”
“Then why do you not do it?”
“Ah! why do I not? Why do we not all do just what we ought to do? But
why am I to be cross-questioned by you? You would not answer me a
question when I asked you the other day.”
“You tell me that you wish you had accepted Mr. Hoskins. Why do you not
do so?” said I, continuing my cross-examination.
“Because I have a vain ambition,--a foolish ambition,--a silly,
moth-like ambition,--by which, if I indulge it, I shall only burn my
wings. Because I am such an utter ass that I would fain make myself an
Englishwoman.”
“I don’t see that you need burn your wings!”
“Yes; should I go there I shall find myself to be nobody, whereas here I
am in good repute. Here I could make my husband a man of mark by dint of
my own power. There I doubt whether even his esteem would so shield and
cover me as to make me endurable. Do you think that I do not know the
difference; that I am not aware of what makes social excellence there?
And yet, though I know it all, and covet it, I despise it. Social
distinction with us is given on sounder terms than it is with you, and
is more frequently the deserved reward of merit. Tell me; if I go to
London they will ask who was my grandfather?”
“Indeed, no; they will not ask even of your father unless you speak of
him.”
“No; their manners are too good. But they will speak of their fathers,
and how shall I talk with them? Not but what my grandfather was a good
man; and you are not to suppose that I am ashamed of him because he
stood in a store and sold leather with his own hands. Or rather, I am
ashamed of it. I should tell my husband’s old friends and my new
acquaintances that it was so because I am not a coward; and yet, as I
told them, I should be ashamed. His brother is what you call a baronet.”
“Just so!”
“And what would the baronet’s wife say to me with all my sharp Boston
notions? Can’t you see her looking at me over the length of the
drawing-room? And can’t you fancy how pert I should be, and what
snappish words I should say to the she baronet? Upon the whole, don’t
you think I should do better with Mr. Hoskins?”
Again I sat silent for some time. She had now asked me a question to
which I was bound to give her a true answer,--an answer that should be
true as to herself without reference to Pryor. She was sitting back in
the sleigh, tamed as it were by her own thoughts, and she had looked at
me as though she had really wanted counsel. “If I am to answer you in
truth----” I said.
“You are to answer me in truth.”
“Then,” said I, “I can only bid you take him of the two whom you love;
that is, if it be the case that you love either.”
“Love!” she said.
“And if it be the case,” I continued, “that you love neither, then leave
them both as they are.”
“I am not then to think of the man’s happiness?”
“Certainly not by marrying him without affection.”
“Ah I but I may regret him,--with affection.”
“And for which of them do you feel affection?” I asked. And as I asked,
we were already within the streets of Boston.
She again remained silent, almost till I had placed her at her own door;
then she looked at me with eyes full, not only of meaning, but of love
also;--with that in her eyes for which I had not hitherto given her
credit.
“You know the two men,” she said, “and do you ask me that?” When these
words were spoken, she jumped from the sleigh, and hurried up the steps
to her father’s door. In very truth, the hat and gloves of Hannibal
Hoskins had influenced her as they had influenced me, and they had done
so although she knew how devoted he was as a son and a brother.
For a full month after that I had no further conversation with Miss
Gledd or with Mr. Pryor on the subject. At this time I was living in
habits of daily intimacy with Pryor, but as he did not speak to me about
Ophelia, I did not often mention her name to him. I was aware that he
was often with her,--or at any rate often in her company. But I did not
believe that he had any daily habit of going to the house, as he would
have done had he been her accepted suitor. And indeed I believed him to
be a man who would be very persevering in offering his love; but who, if
persistently refused, would not probably tender it again. He still
talked of returning to England, though he had fixed no day. I myself
purposed doing so early in May, and used such influence as I had in
endeavouring to keep him at Boston till that time. Miss Gledd, also, I
constantly saw. Indeed, one could not live in the society of Boston
without seeing her almost daily, and I was aware that Mr. Hoskins was
frequently with her. But, as regarded her, this betokened nothing, as I
have before endeavoured to explain. She never deserted a friend, and had
no idea of being reserved in her manners with a man because it was
reported that such man was her lover. She would be very gracious to
Hannibal in Mr. Pryor’s presence; and yet it was evident, at any rate
to me, that in doing so, she had no thought of grieving her English
admirer.
I was one day seated in my room at the hotel when a servant brought me
up a card. “Misther Hoskins; he’s a waiting below, and wants to see yer
honour very partickler,” said the raw Irishman. Mr. Hoskins had never
done me the honour of calling on me before, nor had I ever become
intimate with him even at the club; but, nevertheless, as he had come to
me, of course I was willing to see him, and so he was shown up into my
room. When he entered, his hat was, I suppose, in his hand; but it
looked as though it had been on one side of his head the moment before,
and as though it would be on one side again the moment he left me.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Green,” said he. “Perhaps I ought not to intrude
upon you here.”
“No intrusion at all. Won’t you take a chair, and put your hat down?” He
did take a chair, but he wouldn’t put his hat down. I confess that I had
been actuated by a foolish desire to see it placed for a few minutes in
a properly perpendicular position.
“I’ve just come,--I’ll tell you why I’ve come. There are some things,
Mr. Green, in which a man doesn’t like to be interfered with.” I could
not but agree with this, but in doing so I expressed a hope that Mr.
Hoskins had not been interfered with to any very disagreeable extent.
“Well!” I scorn to say that the Boston dandy said “wa’all,” but if this
story were written by any Englishman less conscientious than myself,
that latter form of letters is the one which he would adopt in his
endeavour to convey the sound as uttered by Mr. Hoskins. “Well, I don’t
quite know about that. Now, Mr. Green, I’m not a quarrelsome man. I
don’t go about with six-shooters in my pocket, and I don’t want to
fight, nohow, if I can help it.”
In answer to this I was obliged to tell him that I sincerely hoped that
he would not have to fight; but that if fighting became necessary to
him, I trusted that his fighting propensities would not be directed
against any friend of mine.
“We don’t do much in that way on our side of the water,” said I.
“I am well aware of that,” said he. “I don’t want any one to teach me
what are usages of genteel life in England. I was there the whole fall,
two years ago.”
“As regards myself,” said I, “I don’t think much good was ever done by
duelling.”
“That depends, Sir, on how things eventuate. But, Mr. Green,
satisfaction of that description is not what I desiderate on the
present occasion. I wish to know whether Mr. Pryor is, or is not,
engaged to marry Miss Ophelia Gledd.”
“If he is, Mr. Hoskins, I don’t know it.”
“But, Sir, you are his friend.”
This I admitted, but again assured Mr. Hoskins that I knew nothing of
any such engagement. He pleaded also that I was her friend as well as
his. This, too, I admitted, but again declared that from neither side
had I been made aware of the fact of any such engagement.
“Then, Mr. Green,” said he, “may I ask you for your own private
opinion?”
Upon the whole I was inclined to think that he might not, and so I told
him in what most courteous words I could find for the occasion. His bust
at first grew very long and stiff, and his hat became more and still
more sloped as he held it. I began to fear, that though he might not
have a six-shooter in his pocket, he had nevertheless some kind of
pistol in his thoughts. At last he started up on his feet and confronted
me, as I thought, with a look of great anger. But his words when they
came were no longer angry.
“Mr. Green,” said he, “if you knew all that I’ve done to get that
girl!”
My heart was instantly softened to him.
“For aught that I know,” said I, “you may have her this moment for
asking.”
“No,” said he, “no.” His voice was very melancholy, and as he spoke he
looked into his sloping hat. “No; I’ve just come from Chesnut Street,
and I think she’s rather more turned against me than ever.”
He was a tall man, good-looking after a fashion, dark, with thick black
shiny hair, and huge bold moustachios. I myself do not like his style of
appearance, but he certainly had a manly bearing. And in the society of
Boston generally he was regarded as a stout fellow, well able to hold
his own; as a man, by no means soft, or green, or feminine. And yet now,
in the presence of me, a stranger to him, he was almost crying about his
lady love. In England no man tells another that he has been rejected;
but then in England so few men tell to others anything of their real
feeling. As Ophelia had said to me, we are hard and polished, and nobody
knows anything about anybody’s anything. What could I say to him? I did
say something. I went so far as to assure him that I had heard Miss
Gledd speak of him in the highest language; and at last perhaps I
hinted,--though I don’t think I did quite hint it,--that if Pryor were
out of the way, Hoskins might find the lady more kind. He soon became
quite confidential, as though I were his bosom friend. He perceived, I
think, that I was not anxious that Pryor should carry off the prize, and
he wished me to teach Pryor that the prize was not such a prize as would
suit him.
“She’s the very girl for Boston,” he said, in his energy; “but, I put it
to you, Mr. Green, she hasn’t the gait of going that would suit London.”
Whether her gait of going would or would not suit our metropolis, I did
not undertake to say in the presence of Mr. Hoskins, but I did at last
say that I would speak to Pryor, so that the field might be left open
for others if he had no intention of running for the cup himself.
I could not but be taken, and indeed charmed, by the honest strength of
affection which Hannibal Hoskins felt for the object of his adoration.
He had come into my room determined to display himself as a man of will,
of courage, and of fashion. But he had broken down in all that, under
his extreme desire to obtain assistance in getting the one thing which
he wanted. When he parted with me he shook hands almost boisterously,
while he offered me most exuberant thanks. And yet I had not suggested
that I could do anything for him. I did think that Ophelia Gledd would
accept his offer as soon as Pryor was gone; but I had not told him that
I thought so.
About two days afterwards I had a very long and a very serious
conversation with Pryor, and at that time I do not think that he had
made up his mind as to what he intended to do. He was the very opposite
to Hoskins in all his ways and all his moods. There was not only no
swagger with him, but a propriety and quiescence of demeanour the very
opposite to swagger. In conversation his most violent opposition was
conveyed by a smile. He displayed no other energy than what might be
shown in the slight curl of his upper lip. If he reproved you he did it
by silence. There could be no greater contrast than that between him and
Hoskins, and there could be no doubt which man would recommend himself
most to our English world by his gait and demeanour. But I think there
may be a doubt as to which was the best man, and a doubt also as to
which would make the best husband. That my friend was not then engaged
to Miss Gledd I did learn,--but I learned nothing further,--except this,
that he would take his departure with me the first week in May, unless
anything special occurred to keep him in Boston.