Yes,—maidens, fair or brown,
Lofty or lowly.
Light as the thistle down,
As cypress holy—
When poets whisper near,
Go join the dancers;
And turn a stony ear
To all romancers.
—JAMES SMITH.
Why should I toil in such a fruitless cause,
To serve a flirt, who only heeds the laws
That folly and caprice suggest?
—BERNAL.
Four years had flown by. All Washington had assembled at the grand gala
ball, which celebrated the re-election of Gen. Jackson to the
Presidential chair. From every part of the Union, wealth, beauty and
talent seemed to meet in this common centre of attraction; and the
family of Mr. Laverty, the rich Philadelphia merchant, formed one of the
most important integers of the great unit, Fashion.
Amy was lovelier far, than when we saw her last. Every petal of the bud
had unfolded—she was radiant as the very impersonation of beauty’s
self—her mien was queen-like—her arched brow and forehead had been
sung as the ebon bow of Cupid reposing on a tablet of alabaster. Amid
the gay revel, every eye was turned upon her. Ladies pronounced her
stiff and formal, while the gentlemen protested that “Venus, when she
rose, fresh from the soft creation of the wave, was not more beautiful!”
Amy must have possessed charms of no common order, or this unanimity of
the female censure would have been destroyed. Panegyric, on the part of
gentlemen, is not so certain a criterion, for we have known Sheridan
Knowles drawn upon for a comparison, as above, when Shakspeare’s
“starved executors, the greedy crows,” would have been more apposite,
and have heard Moore quoted—
Why doth azure deck the sky
But to be like thine eye of blue,
and applied to the veriest green gooseberry optics ever saw! Such
comparisons, if not “odorous,” as Mrs. Malaprop would have them, are
nevertheless generally picked from the most forced hot-beds in the
garden of compliment, and loom large, like the sunflower, with a special
care always to face about to the rising beams of the sun of riches or
fashion.
“I believe, Miss Laverty, I have engaged the pleasure of your hand for
the next set?” said the gay, noble and fine-looking Frank Pennant,
coming up to the belle of the ball-room.
“Certainly, sir, with all my heart,” was the reply, as she rose.
“Fortunate dog that I am—then I have both your hand and your heart,”
laughed Frank.
A slight sigh escaped Amy. Why? Was she in love? Was the place where her
heart ought to have been, touched? “Nous verrons,” as the politicians
quote from the venerable father of the trans-Mason and Dixon line press.
“Others might sigh, my dear Miss Laverty,” continued Frank, as he was
leading Amy to their place in a cotillion, “for such a confession as you
made just now! He will indeed be a happy man, who asks your hand for the
grand promenade of life, and receives it with all your heart!”
“Do _you_ think so, Mr. Pennant?” archly asked Amy, with a glance from
her eye, which might have made Diogenes turn his tub bottom upward, to
hide himself under—“why, when you ask it, it would be almost heresy to
refuse.”
“Upon my word, Miss Laverty!—are you sharp-shooting, or do you mean to
canonize me? Heresy to refuse me! Why, my catalogue of rejections rivals
in length that of an old operatic friend, Don Juan’s conquests! Through
all the grades in the navy, up to my present rank, I have been tossed to
and fro by bright eyes and obdurate hearts, like a nautical shuttlecock,
by the battledores of the fair sex! One has disliked my long
voyages—the other my short pay; one has had a soul above a middy, and
passed me with a cut direct, just as I was entered ‘passed’ by the
commissioners—another left me, it being a losing game to love a simple
lieutenant; while another—ah! she would have eloped with me to the
world’s end, at the risk of the rope’s end, if I had but been a poor
cabin boy, with a touch of the romantic in my disposition; whereas,
unfortunately, that very day the President had promoted me, by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate! So you see fate, professional
promotion, the President and Congress, have all been against me, and I
have been declined as often as any common noun in the entire language!”
“But now, Mr. Pennant,” interrupted Amy, “as you have attached yourself
to me—”
“Attached myself! My dear Miss Laverty, how could I help it? Are we
not,—we poor devils, all and singular, the captives that swell your
triumph? Look, now, at Walton, how he eyes me, half cannibalish, half
wolfish, because I have unconsciously retained your hand after the last
balancez! Excuse me!”
“Come, Mr. Pert, don’t interrupt me. I was about to say—as you have
attached yourself to our party for the last three weeks, and have been
trying to make yourself exceedingly agreeable in my eyes, I shall demand
that you report to me in future, and I will prevent you from being
entangled in any of the labyrinths of our sex’s wiles or whims!”
“Will you, indeed! What a sweet Ariadne!”
“I can give you the clue to escape the monsters!”
“And entangle me yourself, at last,—to weave a web and detain me for
your own amusement, I trust!”
“Nay, Frank!—pray excuse me, Mr. Pennant; I did not mean—do you really
wish that I may entangle you in any web I may have the skill to weave?”
“Well, my dear Miss Laverty,” replied Pennant, “three weeks have glided
away very delightfully in your meshes, and I am free to confess the
silken bondage pleases me. I love a flirtation, where no heart can be
broken! I like to tilt against breasts of adamant, and shiver the spears
of repartee against the solid barrier!”
“And judge you, I have a heart of adamant, Mr. Pennant?”
“I have been told so, Miss Laverty.”
“And pray, by whom?”
“My old friend and class-fellow, Harry Stanton.”
“Henry Stanton!”
“Yes, you remember him? the son of one of our Lancaster county farmers,
who has made such a sensation the past winter, as a member of your
Pennsylvania Legislature, at Harrisburg.”
“Oh, yes! Cabbages and cream cheeses, I remember!”
“Madam!”
“He made love to me four years ago, and I was compelled to reject him.”
“I know it, Miss Laverty. He told me you were without a heart, and
therefore I have been under no restraint in our little innocent
flirtations, as no life-chord can be cracked.”
“Henry Stanton is a friend of yours, then?”
“Yes, Miss—almost a brother. I shall marry his sister Kate, next May.”
“You, Mr. Pennant!”
“Yes—she came, saw and conquered, the past fall, as I returned from my
last cruise. A sweet girl she is, Miss Laverty.”
“Mr. Pennant, will you step and find my father, and ask him to order the
carriage? I have danced enough, to-night, and will retire.”
Frank withdrew, and Amy sighed again! That night tears wet her pillow.
Tears around the couch of youth, and wealth and beauty! Ah! gold may
purchase the gorgeous bouquet, to adorn the opera box, even in
mid-winter; but all the wealth of India cannot buy one single shoot of
heart’s ease! It is a fairy plant, and blossoms loveliest in the humble
shades of life!
And Amy slept at last; but she slept uneasily, amid confused dreams that
Kate and Henry Stanton were attempting to poison her! About the same
time, Queen Mab was with Frank Pennant, too, and he laughed happily in
his sleep, as he dreamed that Kate was pelting him, in mimic play, with
rose-buds and myrtle leaves, while his dear friend Harry looked on
smilingly. If dreams are an index to our waking thoughts, it needs no
somnosophist to interpret what was passing in the dark chambers of their
thoughts!