Book: Elinor Wyllys

S >> Susan Fenimore Cooper >> Elinor Wyllys




Adeline, finding that on this occasion she could not succeed in
setting all her friends in motion, which she generally
endeavoured to do, returned to the ranks; leaving Elinor to do as
she chose. Hazlehurst took a seat by her, and made some inquiries
about several of their old acquaintances in the room.

"Don't you think those two young ladies both very pretty, Mr.
Hazlehurst," said Dr. Van Horne, approaching the spot where Harry
was standing near Elinor, after having given up his chair to one
of the Saratoga belles, when the march was finished.

"Which do you mean, sir?" asked Harry.

"Miss Taylor and Miss Graham, who are standing together near the
piano."

"Yes," replied Hazlehurst, "Miss Taylor is even prettier than I
had supposed she would be."

"She will not compare, however, with Miss Jane. To my mind, Miss
Graham answers the idea of perfect beauty. In all your travels,
did you meet with a face that you thought more beautiful?"

"I believe not," said Harry, laconically, and slowly colouring at
the same time.

"Is it Jane you were speaking of, Doctor?" inquired Elinor,
turning towards him. "Don't you think she has come back twice as
beautiful as she was last year? It is really a pleasure to look
at a face like hers."

"I am afraid, it will prove rather a dangerous pleasure, Miss
Elinor, to some of the beaux, this winter."

"No doubt she will be very much admired; but she takes it all
very quietly. I don't believe your great beauties as much
disposed to vanity as other people."

"Perhaps not;" replied the doctor, drawing near her. "A great
deal depends on education. But what do the travellers tell you
about the sights they have seen, Miss Elinor?"

"Oh, we have only gone as far as the first chapter of their
travels," she replied. "They have not half said their say yet."

"Well, I should like to have a talk with you on the subject, Mr.
Hazlehurst. I was in hopes of meeting your brother here,
to-night, but he has not come, I find; I shall have to bore you
with my questions, unless you want to dance this jig, or whatever
it is, they are beginning."

"Not at all, my dear sir; I shall be glad to answer any questions
of yours."

"Thank you. Suppose we improve the opportunity, Miss Elinor, and
give him a sharp cross-examination; do you think he would bear
it?"

"I hope so," said Elinor, smiling quietly, as if she felt very
easy on the subject.

"Don't trust him too far. I dare say you have not been half
severe enough upon him," said Dr. Van Horne, who had a very high
opinion of Harry. "But to speak seriously, Mr. Hazlehurst, I
don't at all like a notion my son Ben has of going to Europe."

"What is your objection?"

"I doubt if it is at all an advantage to send most young men to
Europe. I've seen so many come back conceited, and dissatisfied,
and good-for-nothing, that I can't make up my mind to spoil Ben
by the same process. He tries very hard to persuade me, that
now-a-days, no doctor is fit to be trusted who has not finished
off in Paris; but we managed without it thirty years ago."

"You must know much more than I do on that subject, doctor," said
Hazlehurst, taking a seat on the other side of Elinor.

"Of course, I know more about the hospitals. But as I have never
been abroad myself, I don't know what effect a sight of the Old
World has on one. It seems to me it ruins a great many young
fellows."

"And it improves a great many," said Hazlehurst.

"I am by no means so sure of that. It improves some, I grant you;
but I think the chances are that it is an injury. We have
happened to see a great deal, lately, of two young chaps, nephews
of mine, who came home last spring. Three years ago they went
abroad, sober, sensible, well-behaved lads enough, and now they
have both come back, worse than good-for-nothing. There was
Rockwell, he used to be a plain, straight-forward, smooth-faced
fellow; and now he has come home bristling with whiskers, and
beard, and moustaches, and a cut across the forehead, that he got
in a duel in Berlin. Worse than all, his brain is so befogged,
and mystified, that he can't see anything straight to save his
life; and yet, forsooth, my gentleman is going to set the nation
to rights with some new system of his own."

"I know nothing of the German Universities, doctor, from my own
observation; but I should think it might be a dangerous thing to
send a young man there unless he was well supplied with sound
common sense of his own."

"Well, there is Bill Hartley, again, who staid all the time in
Paris. He has come back a regular grumbler. If you would believe
him, there is not a single thing worth having, from one end of
the Union to the other. He is disgusted with everything, and only
last night said that our climate wants fog! Now, I think it is
much better to go plodding on at home, than to travel for the
sake of bringing back such enlarged views as make yourself and
your friends uncomfortable for the rest of your days."

"But it is a man's own fault, my dear sir, if he brings back more
bad than good with him. The fact is, you will generally find the
good a man brings home, in proportion to the good he took
abroad."

"I'm not so sure of that. I used to think Rockwell was quite a
promising young man at one time. But that is not the question.
If, after all, though it does sharpen a man's wits, it only makes
him discontented for the rest of his life, I maintain that such a
state of improvement is not to be desired. If things are really
better and pleasanter in Europe, I don't want to know it. It
would make me dissatisfied, unless I was to be a renegade, and
give up the country I was born in; would you have a man do that?"

"Never!" said Harry. "I hold that it is a sort of desertion, to
give up the post where Providence has placed us, unless in
extreme cases; and I believe a man can live a more useful and
more honourable life there than elsewhere. But I think travelling
a very great advantage, nevertheless. The very power of
comparison, of which you complain, is a source of great
intellectual pleasure, and must be useful if properly employed,
since it helps us to reach the truth."

The doctor shook his head. "I want you just to tell me how much
of this grumbling and fault-finding is conceit, and how much is
the natural consequence of travelling? Is everything really
superior in Europe to what we have here?"

"Everything? No;" said Harry, laughing. But you would seem to
think a man dissatisfied, doctor, if he did not, on the contrary,
proclaim that everything is immeasurably better in this country
than in any other on the globe. Now, confess, is not that your
standard of patriotism?"

"Ah, you are shifting your ground, young gentleman. But we shall
bring you to the point presently. Now tell us honestly, were you
not disappointed with the looks of things when you came back?"

"If by disappointed, you mean that many things as I see them now,
strike me as very inferior to objects of the same description in
Europe, I do not scruple to say they do. When I landed, I said to
myself,

"'The streets are narrow and the buildings mean;
Did I, or fancy, have them broad and clean?'"

{George Crabbe (English poet, 1754-1832), "Posthumous Tales: Tale
VI--The Farewell and Return", Part II, lines 79-80}

"I feared so!" and the doctor looked much as a pious Mahometan
might be supposed to do, if he were to see a Frank seize the
Grand Turk by the beard. "I should have thought better of you,"
he added.

{"Frank" = a European Christian; "Grand Turk" = Ottoman Emperor}

"My dear sir," said Harry, laughing, "how could I help it! I must
defend myself from any desire to be disappointed, I assure you.
On the contrary, I wish very sincerely that everything in my
native country were as good as possible in its way; that the
architecture of the public buildings were of the noblest kind;
the private houses the most pleasant and convenient; the streets
the best paved, and best lighted in the world. But I don't
conceive that the way to bring this about is to maintain le
pistolet a la gorge, that perfection has already been attained in
all these particulars. To speak frankly, it strikes me as the
height of puerility to wish to deceive oneself upon such
subjects. On the contrary, I think it is the duty of every man,
so far as he has the opportunity, to aim at correct notions on
everything within his reach."

{"le pistolet a la gorge" = the pistol to the throat (French)}

"Well," remarked the doctor, "you only confirm me in my opinion.
I shall be more unwilling than ever to let Ben go; since even
you, Harry Hazlehurst, who are a good deal better than most young
men, confess the harm travelling has done you."

"But, my dear sir, I confess no such thing. I'm conscious that
travelling has been a great benefit to me in many ways. I shall
be a happier and better man for what I have seen, all my life, I
trust, since many of my opinions are built on a better foundation
than they were before."

"If I were you, I would not let him say so, Miss Elinor. His
friends won't like to hear it; and I, for one, am very sorry that
you are not as good an American as I took you for."

"It is quite a new idea to me, doctor," said Hazlehurst, "that
mental blindness and vanity are necessary parts of the American
character. We, who claim to be so enlightened! I should be sorry
to be convinced that your view is correct. I have always believed
that true patriotism consisted in serving one's country, not in
serving oneself by flattering one's countrymen. I must give my
testimony on these subjects, when called for, as well as on any
other, honestly, and to the best of my ability."

"Do you know, doctor," said Elinor, "poor Harry has had to fight
several battles on this subject already. Mrs. Bernard attacked
him the other evening, because he said the mountains in
Switzerland were higher than the White Mountains. Now we have
only to look in a geography to see that they are so."

"But one don't like to hear such things, Miss Elinor."

"Mrs. Bernard asked him if he had seen anything finer than the
White Mountains; what could he say! It seems to me just as
possible for a man to love his country, and see faults in it, as
it does for him to love his wife and children, without believing
them to be the most perfect specimens of the human family, in
body and mind, that ever existed. You will allow that a man may
be a very good and kind husband and father, without maintaining
everywhere that his wife and daughters surpass all their sex, in
every possible particular?"

"You will not, surely, deny, doctor," said Hazlehurst, "that it
is reasonable to suppose that Europe possesses some advantages of
an advanced state of civilization, that we have not yet attained
to? We have done much for a young people, but we have the means
of doing much more; and it will be our own fault if we don't
improve."

"We shall improve, I dare say."

"Do you expect us to go beyond perfection, then?"

"I can't see the use of talking about disagreeable subjects."

"But even the most disagreeable truths have their uses."

"That may be; and yet I believe you would have been happier if
you had staid at home. While he was away from you, Miss Elinor, I
am afraid he learned some of those disagreeable truths which it
would have been better for him not to have discovered."

Harry stooped to pick up a glove, and remained silent for a
moment.

Shortly after, supper was announced; and, although the coachman
was not quite as much at home in the pantry as in the stable, yet
everything was very successfully managed.

"It is really mortifying to hear a man like Dr. Van Horne, fancy
it patriotic to foster conceited ignorance and childish vanity,
on all national subjects," exclaimed Harry, as he took his seat
in the carriage, after handing the ladies in. "And that is not
the worst of it; for, of course, if respectable, independent men
talk in that tone, there will be no end to the fulsome,
nauseating, vulgar flatteries that will be poured upon us by
those whose interest it is to flatter!"

"I heard part of your conversation, and, I must confess, the
doctor did not show his usual good sense," observed Miss Agnes.

"You are really quite indignant against the doctor," said Elinor.

"Not only against him, but against all who are willing, like him,
to encourage such a miserable perversion of truth. Believe them,
and you make patriotism anything, and everything, but a virtue."



CHAPTER XIII.

"Why, how now, count? Wherefore are you so sad?"
SHAKSPEARE. {sic--this is the Cooper family's usual spelling of
the name}

{William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing", II.i.289}

"WELL, Jenny, you are going to leave us to-day, it seems," said
Mr. Wyllys, the next morning, at breakfast. "I am sorry for it;
but, I suppose your mother has a better right to you than we
have."

"I promised mamma I would not stay after to-day, sir. Aunt Agnes
is to carry me over to Longbridge, before dinner."

"You must come back again, as often as you can, child. It always
seems to me, that Harry and you belong here, as much as you do
anywhere else. How long do you suppose your mother will stay at
Longbridge?"

"We are going to New York next week. Father wishes to be in
Charleston early in October."

"I can't bear to think of your going so soon. If you are once in
Carolina, I suppose, we shan't see you again until next June;
but, mind, you are to pass all next summer with us," said Elinor.

"That is to say, Nelly, if she has no more important engagement,"
added Mr. Wyllys, smiling.

"Even a very important engagement need not interfere," said Miss
Agnes. "We shall be very happy, Jane, to see any Charleston
friend you may see fit to bring with you."

"I don't think there is the least danger that any Charleston
friend will come with me;" said Jane, blushing a little.

"Have you selected a friend from some other place, Jenny?" asked
her uncle.

"Oh, no, sir!" was the answer; but her colour continued to rise,
and she appeared a little uneasy. As for Harry, he had taken no
part in the conversation, but seemed very busy with his knife and
fork.

"Pray remember, Jane," said Elinor, "I am to have timely notice
of a wedding, in my capacity of bridesmaid."

"Who knows, Nelly, but you may call upon Jane first. You have
fixed upon your friend, I take it; eh, Harry?"

"I hope so;" Hazlehurst replied, in a low voice, and he drank off
a cup of hot coffee with such rapidity, that Miss Wyllys looked
at him with astonishment.

Elinor made no answer, for she was already at the other end of
the room, talking gaily to her birds.

As Harry rose from table and walked into the next room, he tried
to feel very glad that Jane was to leave them that day; he sat
down, and took up a paper; but, instead of reading it, silently
followed a train of thought by no means agreeable.

In the course of the morning, according to the arrangement which
had been made, Harry drove the ladies to Longbridge. He thought
he had never passed a more unpleasant morning in his life. He
felt relieved when Elinor, instead of taking a seat with him,
chose one inside, with her aunt and Jane; though his heart smote
him whenever her sweet, cheerful voice fell upon his ear. He
tried to believe, however, that it was in spite of himself he had
been captivated by June's beauty. Was he not, at that very
moment, carrying her, at full speed, towards her father's, and
doing his best to hope that they should meet but once or twice
again, for months to come? Under such circumstances, was not a
man in love to be pitied? For some weeks, Hazlehurst had not been
able to conceal from himself, that if he occupied the position of
the lover of Elinor, he felt like the lover of Jane.

As he drove on, in moody silence, the party in the carriage at
length remarked, that he had not joined in their conversation at
all.

"Harry does not talk so much as he used to;" observed Miss
Wyllys; "don't you think he has grown silent, Jane?"

"Perhaps he has," she replied; "but it never struck me, before."

"Do you hear, Harry?" said Elinor; "Aunt Agnes thinks the air of
Paris has made you silent. It ought surely to have had a very
different effect."

"This detestable road requires all a man's attention to keep out
of the ruts;" he replied. "I wish we had gone the other way."

"If Aunt Agnes has no objection, we can come back by the river
road," said Elinor. "But your coachmanship is so good, you have
carried us along very smoothly; if the road is bad, we have not
felt it."

Harry muttered something about holes and ruts, which was not
heard very distinctly.

"Out of humour, too; very unusual!" thought Miss Agnes. There was
a something unnatural in his manner, which began to give her a
little uneasiness; for she saw no good way of accounting for it.

The ladies were driven to the door of the Bellevue Hotel, where
the Grahams had rooms. They found several visiters with Mrs.
Graham, among whom, the most conspicuous, and the least
agreeable, were Mrs. Hilson and her sister, both redolent of
Broadway, elegant and fashionable in the extreme; looking, it is
true, very pretty, but talking, as usual, very absurdly.

Mrs. Graham had scarcely kissed her daughter, before Mrs. Hilson
gave Elinor an important piece of information.

"I am so delighted, Miss Wyllys, to hear this good news--"

"My cousins' return, do you mean? Did you not know they had
arrived?"

"Oh, yes; we heard that, of course, last week; but I allude to
this morning's good news, which I have just heard from this
fascinating little creature;" added the lady, catching one of
Mrs. Graham's younger children, as it slipped past her.

Elinor looked surprised, when Mrs. Hilson condescended to
explain.

"Mrs. Graham is to pass the winter in New York, I hear."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Elinor, turning with joyful eagerness towards
Mrs. Graham. "Are you really going to stay so near us?"

Mrs. Graham was thus obliged to inform her friends of the change
in her plans; she would, of course, have preferred waiting until
alone with Miss Agnes and Elinor, to do so; but, Mrs. Hilson's
officiousness obliged her to say something immediately. One, of
her children, a little boy, had been suffering with some disease
of the spine, during the last year, and a consultation of
physicians, held the day before, in New York, had decided that a
sea-voyage, or a long journey, was more than the poor little
fellow could bear, in the present state of his health, as he had
been much worse, during the last three months, since the Grahams
had been at Longbridge. It was therefore settled that Mrs.
Graham, Jane, and the younger children, were to remain in New
York, while the boy was under the care of Dr. S-----, in whom his
parents had great confidence. Mr. Graham and his oldest boy were
to pass part of the winter on their plantation, and then return
to his family.

Miss Wyllys and Elinor, though regretting the cause, were, of
course, much pleased with this arrangement; Jane, too, appeared
perfectly satisfied.

"I should not be surprised, Miss Graham," continued Mrs. Hilson,
"if some of your New York admirers had bribed Dr. S-----; I'm
sure, we are very much obliged to him for having detained you. I
hope you will be somewhere near us, in the city. Emmeline is to
pass part of the winter with me; and, I dare say, you will be
very intimate. I wish, Mrs. Graham we could persuade you to come
to our boarding-house. Mrs. Stone is really a fascinating lady,
herself; and she always manages to have a charming clique at her
house.--Quite exclusive, I assure you."

"I hope to find more private lodgings--I have too many little
people for a boarding-house."

"Not at all. Mrs. Stone could give you an excellent nursery. She
has several lovely little darlings, herself. Her little Algernon
would make a very good beau for your youngest little Miss. What
do you say, my dear," catching the child again; "won't you set
your cap for Algernon?"

The little girl opened her large, dark eyes without answering.
Mrs. Hilson, and her sister now rose to take leave of Mrs.
Graham, repeating, however, before they went, the invitation they
had already given, to a ball for the next week. It was to be a
house-warming, and a grand affair. The ladies then flitted away
on tip-toe.

The door had scarcely closed behind them, before Mrs. George
Wyllys, who had been sitting as far from them as possible, began
to exclaim upon the absurdity of the whole Hubbard family.

"They are really intolerable, Agnes;" she said to her
sister-in-law. "They attack me upon all occasions. They brought
Mrs. Bibbs and Mrs. Tibbs to see me, and joined me in the street,
yesterday: they are almost enough to drive me away from
Longbridge. I can't imagine what makes them so attentive to
me--plain, sober body, as I am--what can they aim at?"

"They aim at universal fascination, I suppose;" said Elinor,
laughing.

"And must we really go to this house-warming?" asked Mrs. Wyllys.

"Elinor and I have already accepted the invitation;" said Miss
Agnes. "My father wished us to go, for he really has a great
respect for Mr. Hubbard."

"Well, I can't say that the gentlemen strike me as so much
superior to the ladies of the family. 'Uncle Josie' seems to
admire his daughter's nonsense; and 'Uncle Dozie' never opens his
lips."

"There is not a shade of fascination about them, however," said
Elinor.

"I grant you that," said Mrs. Wyllys, smiling. "I shall decline
the invitation, though, I think."

"That you can do very easily;" said Miss Agnes.

The ladies then followed Mrs. Graham to an adjoining room, to see
the little invalid, and talk over the new arrangement for the
winter.

It was fortunate for Harry, that they had left the drawing-room
before he entered it; for he no sooner appeared at the door, than
the same little chatter-box, who had betrayed the change in her
mother's plans to Mrs. Hilson, ran up to him to tell the great
news that they were not going back to Charleston, but were to
stay in New York all winter, 'mamma, and Jane, and all of them,
except papa and Edward.' The varying expression of surprise,
pleasure, and distress, that passed over Hazlehurst's face, as he
received the intelligence, would have astonished and perplexed
Miss Agnes, had she seen it. He had depended upon Jane's absence
to lighten the course which he felt it was his duty to pursue;
and now she was to be in New York! Of course, she would be half
her time with Elinor, as usual. And, if he had already found it
so difficult, since they had all been together, to conceal the
true state of his feelings, how should he succeed in persevering
in the same task for months?

He determined, at least, to leave Longbridge, for a time, and
remain in Philadelphia, until the Grahams were settled in New
York.

The same evening, as the family at Wyllys-Roof, and himself, were
sitting together, he announced his intention.

"Can I do anything for you, in Philadelphia, Elinor?" he asked;
"I shall have to go to town, to-morrow, and may be detained a
week or ten days."

"Are you really going to town?--I did not know you were thinking
of it. I wish I had known it this morning, for I am very much in
want of worsteds for the chair-pattern Jane brought me; but,
unfortunately, I left it at Aunt Wyllys's. Did you say you were
going to-morrow?"

"Yes, I must be off in the morning."

"Then I must give up my pattern, for the present."

"Is there nothing else I can do for you?"

"Nothing, thank you--unless you bring some new books; which, we
will leave to your taste, to choose."

"Is not this rather a sudden move, Harry?" said Mr. Wyllys, who
had just finished a game of chess with Miss Agnes. "I haven't
heard you mention it before?"

"I intended to put it off; sir; but, on thinking the matter over,
I find I had better go at once."

"I wish you would look about you a little, for lodgings for us;
it is time we secured them. I suppose, you will want us to go to
town early, this winter, Nelly, won't you? It will not do for
Master Harry to be wasting half his time here, after he has once
taken seriously to law; you know he will have two mistresses to
wait upon, this winter."

"It is to be hoped they will not interfere with each other," said
Miss Agnes, smiling.

"That is what they generally do, my dear. By-the-bye, Nelly, I
suppose Louisa will have Jane in Philadelphia, with her, part of
the winter."

"Yes, sir, after Christmas; it is already settled, much to my
joy."

"So much the better!" said her grandfather.

"So much the worse!" thought Hazlehurst.

"Your Paris party will be all together again, Harry?" continued
Mr. Wyllys.

"Yes, sir;" was Hazlehurst's laconic reply. 'I wish I could
forget it,' thought he. So much had he been annoyed, throughout
the day, that he soon after took up a candle, and, wishing the
family good-night, went to his own room.

"I am afraid Harry is not well," said Miss Wyllys, after he had
left them. "He seems out of spirits."

Elinor looked up from her work.

"Now you speak of it," replied Mr. Wyllys, "I think he does seem
rather out of sorts."

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