Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Part 14

"Well, to my notion, n.o.bility and teaching little girls French and Italian, and their gammes, have very little in common. I had thought Mr. Sh.o.r.eham an admirer of Miss Monson's."

{gammes = musical scales}

Now, unfortunately, my mistress overheard this remark. Her feelings were just in that agitated state to take the alarm, and she determined to flirt with a young man of the name of Thurston, with a view to awaken Betts's jealousy, if he had any, and to give vent to her own spleen. This Tom Thurston was one of those tall, good-looking young fellows who come from, n.o.body knows where, get into society, n.o.body knows how, and live on, n.o.body knows what. It was pretty generally understood that he was on the look-out for a rich wife, and encouragement from Julia Monson was not likely to be disregarded by such a person. To own the truth, my mistress carried matters much too far--so far, indeed, as to attract attention from every body but those most concerned; viz. her own mother and Betts Sh.o.r.eham. Although elderly ladies play cards very little, just now, in American society, or, indeed, in any other, they have their inducements for rendering the well-known office of matron at a ball, a mere sinecure. Mrs. Monson, too, was an indulgent mother, and seldom saw any thing very wrong in her own children. Julia, in the main, had sufficient retenue, and a suspicion of her want of discretion on this point, was one of the last things that would cross the fond parent's mind at Mrs. Leamington's ball. Others, however, were less confiding.

{retenue = discretion}

"Your daughter is in HIGH SPIRITS to-night," observed a single lady of a certain age, who was sitting near Mrs. Monson; "I do not remember to have ever seen her so GAY."

"Yes, dear girl, she IS happy,"--poor Julia was any thing but THAT, just then--"but youth is the time for happiness, if it is ever to come in this life."

"Is Miss Monson addicted to such VERY high spirits?" continued one, who was resolute to torment, and vexed that the mother could not be sufficiently alarmed to look around.

"Always--when in agreeable company. I think it a great happiness, ma'am, to possess good spirits."

"No doubt--yet one needn't be always fifteen, as Lady Wortley Montague said," muttered the other, giving up the point, and changing her seat, in order that she might speak her mind more freely into the ear of a congenial spirit.

{Lady Wortley Montague = Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762), English essayist and letter-writer}

Half an hour later we were all in the carriages, again, on our way home; all, but Betts Sh.o.r.eham, I should say, for having seen the ladies cloaked, he had taken his leave at Mrs. Leamington's door, as uncertain as ever whether or not to impute envy to a being who, in all other respects, seemed to him to be faultless. He had to retire to an uneasy pillow, undetermined whether to pursue his original intention of making the poor friendless French girl independent, by an offer of his hand, or whether to decide that her amiable and gentle qualities were all seeming, and that she was not what she appeared to be. Betts Sh.o.r.eham owed his distrust to national prejudice, and well was he paid for entertaining so vile a companion. Had Mademoiselle Hennequin been an American girl, he would not have thought a second time of the emotion she had betrayed in regarding my beauties; but he had been taught to believe all French women managing and hypocritical; a notion that the experience of a young man in Paris would not be very likely to destroy.

{managing = manipulative}

"Well," cried John Monson, as the carriage drew from Mrs. Leamington's door, "this is the last ball I shall go to in New York;" which declaration he repeated twenty times that season, and as often broke.

"What is the matter now, Jack?" demanded the father. "I found it very pleasant--six or seven of us old fellows made a very agreeable evening of it."

"Yes, I dare say, sir; but you were not compelled to dance in a room eighteen by twenty-four, with a hundred people treading on your toes, or brushing their heads in your face."

"Jack can find no room for dancing since the great ball of the Salle de l'Opera, at Paris," observed the mother smiling. "I hope YOU enjoyed yourself better, Julia?"

{Salle de l'Opera = Paris Opera House--the building referred to by Cooper served as Opera House from 1821-1873 and was replaced by the present building in 1874}

My mistress started; then she answered with a sort of hysterical glee--

"Oh! I have found the evening delightful, ma'am. I could have remained two hours longer."

"And you, Mademoiselle Hennequin; I hope you, too, were agreeably entertained?"

The governess answered meekly, and with a slight tremor in her voice.

"Certainly, madame," she said, "I have enjoyed myself; though dancing always seems an amus.e.m.e.nt I have no right to share in."

There was some little embarra.s.sment, and I could perceive an impulse in Julia to press nearer to her rival, as if impelled by a generous wish to manifest her sympathy. But Tom's protest soon silenced every thing else, and we alighted, and soon went to rest.

The next morning Julia sent for me down to be exhibited to one or two friends, my fame having spread in consequence of my late appearance. I was praised, kissed, called a pretty dear, and extolled like a spoiled child, though Miss W. did not fail to carry the intelligence, far and near, that Miss Monson's much-talked-of pocket-handkerchief was nothing after all but the THING Miss Halfacre had brought out the night of the day her father had stopped payment. Some even began to nick-name me the insolvent pocket-handkerchief.

I thought Julia sad, after her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study--reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase--by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck me. I looked for great events, nor was I altogether disappointed. In one minute he was seated at Julia's side, on the same sofa, and within two feet of her; in two more he had brought in play his usual tricks of flattery. My mistress listened languidly, and yet not altogether without interest. She was piqued at Betts Sh.o.r.eham's indifference, had known her present admirer several months, if dancing in the same set can be called KNOWING, and had never been made love to before, at least in a manner so direct and unequivocal. The young man had tact enough to discover that he had an advantage, and fearful that some one might come in and interrupt the tete a tete, he magnanimously resolved to throw all on a single cast, and come to the point at once.

"I think, Miss Monson," he continued, after a very beautiful specimen of rigmarole in the way of love-making, a rigmarole that might have very fairly figured in an editor's law and logic, after he had been beaten in a libel suit, "I think, Miss Monson, you cannot have overlooked the VERY particular attentions I have endeavored to pay you, ever since I have been so fortunate as to have made your acquaintance?"

"I!--Upon my word, Mr. Thurston, I am not at all conscious of having been the object of any such attentions!"

"No?--That is ever the way with the innocent and single-minded! This is what we sincere and diffident men have to contend with in affairs of the heart. Our bosoms may be torn with ten thousand distracting cares, and yet the modesty of a truly virtuous female heart shall be so absorbed in its own placid serenity as to be indifferent to the pangs it is unconsciously inflicting!"

"Mr. Thurston, your language is strong--and--a little--a little unintelligible."

"I dare say--ma'am--I never expect to be intelligible again. When the 'heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that pa.s.sion which is at once the torment and delight of life'--when 'his lip, the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage of a mang--' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and mysterious, as a matter of course."

Tom Thurston came very near wrecking himself on the quicksands of the romantic school. He had begun to quote from a speech delivered by Gouverneur Morris, on the right of deposit at New Orleans, and which he had spoken at college, and was near getting into a part of the subject that might not have been so apposite, but retreated in time. By way of climax, the lover laid his hand on me, and raised me to his eyes in an abstracted manner, as if unconscious of what he was doing, and wanted to brush away a tear.

{Gouverneur Morris = American Federalist leader and diplomat (1752-1816)--a 1795 American treaty with Spain granted the United States the right of navigation on the Mississippi River and to deposit goods at New Orleans without paying customs duties}

"What a confounded rich old fellow the father must be," thought Tom, "to give her such pocket-handkerchiefs!"

I felt like a wren that escapes from the hawk when the rogue laid me down.

Alas! Poor Julia was the dupe of all this acting. Totally unpracticed herself, abandoned by the usages of the society in which she had been educated very much to the artifices of any fortune-hunter, and vexed with Betts Sh.o.r.eham, she was in the worst possible frame of mind to resist such eloquence and love. She had seen Tom at all the b.a.l.l.s in the best houses, found no fault with his exterior and manners, both of which were fashionable and showy, and now discovered that he had a most sympathetic heart, over which, unknown to herself, she had obtained a very unlimited control.

"You do not answer me, Miss Monson," continued Tom peeping out at one side of me, for I was still at his eyes--"you do not answer me, cruel, inexorable girl!"

"What WOULD you have me say, Mr. Thurston?"

"Say YES, dearest, loveliest, most perfect being of the whole human family."

"YES, then; if that will relieve your mind, it is a relief very easily bestowed."

Now, Tom Thurston was as skilled in a fortune-hunter's wiles as Napoleon was in military strategy. He saw he had obtained an immense advantage for the future, and he forbore to press the matter any further at the moment. The "yes" had been uttered more in pleasantry than with any other feeling, but, by holding it in reserve, presuming on it gradually, and using it in a crisis, it might be worth--"let me see," calculated Tom, as he went whistling down Broadway, "that 'yes'

may be made to yield at least a cool $100,000. There are John, this girl, and two little ones. Old Monson is worth every dollar of $700,000--none of your skyrockets, but a known, old fortune, in substantial houses and lands--let us suppose the old woman outlive him, and that she gets her full thirds; THAT will leave $466,660. Perhaps John may get a couple of hundred thousand, and even THEN each of the girls will have $88,888. If one of the little things should happen to die, and there's lots of scarlet fever about, why that would fetch it up at once to a round hundred thousand. I don't think the old woman would be likely to marry again at her time of life. One mustn't calculate too confidently on THAT, however, as I would have her myself for half of SUCH thirds."

{full thirds = Old Monson's widow would under American common law receive a life interest in one-third of his real property, called a dower right, which would revert to his children if she died without remarrying.}

CHAPTER XVI.

For a week nothing material transpired. All that time I lay in the drawer, gaining a knowledge of what pa.s.sed, in the best manner I could.

Betts Sh.o.r.eham was a constant visitor at the house, and Tom Thurston made his appearance with a degree of punctuality that began to attract notice, among the inmates of the house on the opposite side of the street. All this time, however, Tom treated Julia with the greatest respect, and even distance, turning more of his attention toward Mrs.

Monson. He acted in this manner, because he thought he had secured a sufficient lien on the young lady, by means of her "yes," and knew how important it was for one who could show none of the usual inducements for consent, to the parents, to obtain the good-will of the "old lady."

At the end of the week, Mrs. Monson opened her house to receive the world. As a matter of course, I was brought out on this occasion. Now, Betts Sh.o.r.eham and Mademoiselle Hennequin had made great progress toward an understanding in the course of this week, though the lady becoming more and more conscious of the interest she had created in the heart of the gentleman, her own conduct got to be cautious and reserved. At length, Betts actually carried matters so far as to write a letter, that was as much to the point as a man could very well come.

In a word, he offered his hand to the excellent young French woman, a.s.suring her, in very pa.s.sionate and suitable terms, that she had been mistress of his affections ever since the first month of their acquaintance. In this letter, he implored her not to be so cruel as to deny him an interview, and there were a few exceedingly pretty reproaches, touching her recent coy and reserved deportment.

Mademoiselle Hennequin was obliged to read this letter in Julia's room, and she took such a position to do it, as exposed every line to my impertinent gaze, as I lay on the bed, among the other finery that was got out for the evening. Mrs. Monson was present, and she had summoned the governess, in order to consult her on the subject of some of the ornaments of the supper table. Fortunately, both Julia and her mother were too much engaged to perceive the tears that rolled down the cheeks of the poor stranger, as she read the honest declaration of a fervid and manly love, nor did either detect the manner in which the letter was pressed to Mademoiselle Hennequin's heart, when she had done reading it the second time.

Just at this instant a servant came to announce Mr. Sh.o.r.eham's presence in the "breakfast-room." This was a retired and little frequented part of the house at that hour, Betts having been shown into it, in consequence of the preparations that were going on in the proper reception-rooms.

"Julia, my dear, you will have to go below--although it is at a most inconvenient moment."