An Oldport Romance
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> An Oldport Romance
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Kate's love for her lover was one of those healthy and assured
ties that often outlast the ardors of more passionate natures.
For other temperaments it might have been inadequate; but
theirs matched perfectly, and it was all sufficient for them.
If there was within Kate's range a more heroic and ardent
emotion than that inspired by Harry, it was put forth toward
Hope. This was her idolatry; she always said that it was
fortunate Hope was Hal's sister, or she should have felt it her
duty to give them to each other, and not die till the wedding
was accomplished. Harry shared this adoration to quite a
reasonable extent, for a brother; but his admiration for Philip
Malbone was one that Kate did not quite share. Harry's quieter
mood had been dazzled from childhood by Philip, who had always
been a privileged guest in the household. Kate's clear,
penetrating, buoyant nature had divined Phil's weaknesses, and
had sometimes laughed at them, even from her childhood; though
she did not dislike him, for she did not dislike anybody. But
Harry was magnetized by him very much as women were; believed
him true, because he was tender, and called him only fastidious
where Kate called him lazy.
Kate was spending that summer with her aunt Jane, whose
especial pet and pride she was. Hope was spending there the
summer vacation of a Normal School in which she had just become
a teacher. Her father had shared in the family ups and downs,
but had finally stayed down, while the rest had remained up.
Fortunately, his elder children were indifferent to this, and
indeed rather preferred it; it was a tradition that Hope had
expressed the wish, when a child, that her father might lose
his property, so that she could become a teacher. As for Harry,
he infinitely preferred the drudgery of a law office to that of
a gentleman of leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned
out, when she was left a widow, that she had secured for
herself and Emilia whatever property remained, so that she
suffered only the delightful need of living in Europe for
economy.
The elder brother and sister had alike that fine physical vigor
which New England is now developing, just in time to save it
from decay. Hope was of Saxon type, though a shade less blonde
than her brother; she was a little taller, and of more
commanding presence, with a peculiarly noble carriage of the
shoulders. Her brow was sometimes criticised as being a little
too full for a woman; but her nose was straight, her mouth and
teeth beautiful, and her profile almost perfect. Her complexion
had lost by out-door life something of its delicacy, but had
gained a freshness and firmness that no sunlight could impair.
She had that wealth of hair which young girls find the most
enviable point of beauty in each other. Hers reached below her
knees, when loosened, or else lay coiled, in munificent braids
of gold, full of sparkling lights and contrasted shadows, upon
her queenly head.
Her eyes were much darker than her hair, and had a way of
opening naively and suddenly, with a perfectly infantine
expression, as if she at that moment saw the sunlight for the
first time. Her long lashes were somewhat like Emilia's, and
she had the same deeply curved eyebrows; in no other point was
there a shade of resemblance between the half-sisters. As
compared with Kate, Hope showed a more abundant physical life;
there was more blood in her; she had ampler outlines, and
health more absolutely unvaried, for she had yet to know the
experience of a day's illness. Kate seemed born to tread upon a
Brussels carpet, and Hope on the softer luxury of the forest
floor. Out of doors her vigor became a sort of ecstasy, and
she walked the earth with a jubilee of the senses, such as
Browning attributes to his Saul.
This inexhaustible freshness of physical organization seemed to
open the windows of her soul, and make for her a new heaven and
earth every day. It gave also a peculiar and almost
embarrassing directness to her mental processes, and suggested
in them a sort of final and absolute value, as if truth had for
the first time found a perfectly translucent medium. It was
not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was
eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in
it a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet
her hearty sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home
in daily life, and in a democratic society. To Kate, for
instance, she was a necessity of existence, like light or air.
Kate's nature was limited; part of her graceful equipoise was
narrowness. Hope was capable of far more self-abandonment to a
controlling emotion, and, if she ever erred, would err more
widely, for it would be because the whole power of her
conscience was misdirected. "Once let her take wrong for
right," said Aunt Jane, "and stop her if you can; these born
saints give a great deal more trouble than children of this
world, like my Kate." Yet in daily life Hope yielded to her
cousin nine times out of ten; but the tenth time was the key to
the situation. Hope loved Kate devotedly; but Kate believed in
her as the hunted fugitive believes in the north star.
To these maidens, thus united, came Emilia home from Europe.
The father of Harry and Hope had been lured into a second
marriage with Emilia's mother, a charming and unscrupulous
woman, born with an American body and a French soul. She
having once won him to Paris, held him there life-long, and
kept her step-children at a safe distance. She arranged that,
even after her own death, her daughter should still remain
abroad for education; nor was Emilia ordered back until she
brought down some scandal by a romantic attempt to elope from
boarding-school with a Swiss servant. It was by weaning her
heart from this man that Philip Malbone had earned the thanks
of the whole household during his hasty flight through Europe.
He possessed some skill in withdrawing the female heart from an
undesirable attachment, though it was apt to be done by
substituting another. It was fortunate that, in this case, no
fears could be entertained. Since his engagement Philip had not
permitted himself so much as a flirtation; he and Hope were to
be married soon; he loved and admired her heartily, and had an
indifference to her want of fortune that was quite amazing,
when we consider that he had a fortune of his own.
III.
A DRIVE ON THE AVENUE.
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?"
IV.
AUNT JANE DEFINES HER POSITION.
THE next morning had that luminous morning haze, not quite
dense enough to be called a fog, which is often so lovely in
Oldport. It was perfectly still; the tide swelled and swelled
till it touched the edge of the green lawn behind the house,
and seemed ready to submerge the slender pier; the water looked
at first like glass, till closer gaze revealed long sinuous
undulations, as if from unseen water-snakes beneath. A few rags
of storm-cloud lay over the half-seen hills beyond the bay, and
behind them came little mutterings of thunder, now here, now
there, as if some wild creature were roaming up and down,
dissatisfied, in the shelter of the clouds. The pale haze
extended into the foreground, and half veiled the schooners
that lay at anchor with their sails up. It was sultry, and
there was something in the atmosphere that at once threatened
and soothed. Sometimes a few drops dimpled the water and then
ceased; the muttering creature in the sky moved northward and
grew still. It was a day when every one would be tempted to go
out rowing, but when only lovers would go. Philip and Hope
went.
Kate and Harry, meanwhile, awaited their opportunity to go in
and visit Aunt Jane. This was a thing that never could be done
till near noon, because that dear lady was very deliberate in
her morning habits, and always averred that she had never seen
the sun rise except in a panorama. She hated to be hurried in
dressing, too; for she was accustomed to say that she must have
leisure to understand herself, and this was clearly an affair
of time.
But she was never more charming than when, after dressing and
breakfasting in seclusion, and then vigilantly watching her
handmaiden through the necessary dustings and arrangements, she
sat at last, with her affairs in order, to await events. Every
day she expected something entirely new to happen, and was
never disappointed. For she herself always happened, if
nothing else did; she could no more repeat herself than the
sunrise can; and the liveliest visitor always carried away
something fresher and more remarkable than he brought.
Her book that morning had displeased her, and she was boiling
with indignation against its author.
"I am reading a book so dry," she said, "it makes me cough. No
wonder there was a drought last summer. It was printed then.
Worcester's Geography seems in my memory as fascinating as
Shakespeare, when I look back upon it from this book. How can a
man write such a thing and live?"
"Perhaps he lived by writing it," said Kate.
"Perhaps it was the best he could do," added the more literal
Harry.
"It certainly was not the best he could do, for he might have
died,--died instead of dried. O, I should like to prick that
man with something sharp, and see if sawdust did not run out of
him! Kate, ask the bookseller to let me know if he ever really
dies, and then life may seem fresh again."
"What is it?" asked Kate.
"Somebody's memoirs," said Aunt Jane. "Was there no man left
worth writing about, that they should make a biography about
this one? It is like a life of Napoleon with all the battles
left out. They are conceited enough to put his age in the upper
corner of each page too, as if anybody cared how old he was."
"Such pretty covers!" said Kate. "It is too bad."
"Yes," said Aunt Jane. "I mean to send them back and have new
leaves put in. These are so wretched, there is not a teakettle
in the land so insignificant that it would boil over them.
Don't let us talk any more about it. Have Philip and Hope gone
out upon the water?"
"Yes, dear," said Kate. "Did Ruth tell you?"
"When did that aimless infant ever tell anything?"
"Then how did you know it?"
"If I waited for knowledge till that sweet-tempered parrot
chose to tell me," Aunt Jane went on, "I should be even more
foolish than I am."
"Then how did you know?"
"Of course I heard the boat hauled down, and of course I knew
that none but lovers would go out just before a thunder-storm.
Then you and Harry came in, and I knew it was the others."
"Aunt Jane," said Kate, "you divine everything: what a brain
you have!"
"Brain! it is nothing but a collection of shreds, like a little
girl's work-basket,--a scrap of blue silk and a bit of white
muslin."
"Now she is fishing for compliments," said Kate, "and she shall
have one. She was very sweet and good to Philip last night."
"I know it," said Aunt Jane, with a groan. "I waked in the
night and thought about it. I was awake a great deal last
night. I have heard cocks crowing all my life, but I never
knew what that creature could accomplish before. So I lay and
thought how good and forgiving I was; it was quite
distressing."
"Remorse?" said Kate.
"Yes, indeed. I hate to be a saint all the time. There ought
to be vacations. Instead of suffering from a bad conscience, I
suffer from a good one."
"It was no merit of yours, aunt," put in Harry. "Who was ever
more agreeable and lovable than Malbone last night?"
"Lovable!" burst out Aunt Jane, who never could be managed or
manipulated by anybody but Kate, and who often rebelled against
Harry's blunt assertions. "Of course he is lovable, and that
is why I dislike him. His father was so before him. That is
the worst of it. I never in my life saw any harm done by a
villain; I wish I could. All the mischief in this world is done
by lovable people. Thank Heaven, nobody ever dared to call me
lovable!"
"I should like to see any one dare call you anything else,--you
dear, old, soft-hearted darling!" interposed Kate.
"But, aunt," persisted Harry, "if you only knew what the mass
of young men are--"
"Don't I?" interrupted the impetuous lady. "What is there that
is not known to any woman who has common sense, and eyes enough
to look out of a window?"
"If you only knew," Harry went on, "how superior Phil Malbone
is, in his whole tone, to any fellow of my acquaintance."
"Lord help the rest!" she answered. "Philip has a sort of
refinement instead of principles, and a heart instead of a
conscience,--just heart enough to keep himself happy and
everybody else miserable."
"Do you mean to say," asked the obstinate Hal, "that there is
no difference between refinement and coarseness?"
"Yes, there is," she said.
"Well, which is best?"
"Coarseness is safer by a great deal," said Aunt Jane, "in the
hands of a man like Philip. What harm can that swearing
coachman do, I should like to know, in the street yonder? To be
sure it is very unpleasant, and I wonder they let people swear
so, except, perhaps, in waste places outside the town; but that
is his way of expressing himself, and he only frightens people,
after all."
"Which Philip does not," said Hal.
"Exactly. That is the danger. He frightens nobody, not even
himself, when he ought to wear a label round his neck marked
'Dangerous,' such as they have at other places where it is
slippery and brittle. When he is here, I keep saying to myself,
'Too smooth, too smooth!'"
"Aunt Jane," said Harry, gravely, "I know Malbone very well,
and I never knew any man whom it was more unjust to call a
hypocrite."
"Did I say he was a hypocrite?" she cried. "He is worse than
that; at least, more really dangerous. It is these high-strung
sentimentalists who do all the mischief; who play on their own
lovely emotions, forsooth, till they wear out those fine
fiddlestrings, and then have nothing left but the flesh and the
D. Don't tell me!"
"Do stop, auntie," interposed Kate, quite alarmed, "you are
really worse than a coachman. You are growing very profane
indeed."
"I have a much harder time than any coachman, Kate," retorted
the injured lady. "Nobody tries to stop him, and you are
always hushing me up."
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