"They sit conferring ------------------."
Taming the Shrew.
{William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew", V.ii.102}
THE usual evening circle had collected in Miss Wyllys"s parlour, with the addition of Mary Van Alstyne, who had just arrived from Poughkeepsie, and Mrs. St. Leger. Miss Emma Taylor had gone to a concert with her good-natured brother-in-law, and a couple of her admirers. Jane and her sister-in-law, Adeline, were sitting together in a corner, talking partly about their babies, partly about what these two young matrons called "old times;" that is to say, events which had transpired as far back as three or four years previously. To them, however, those were "old times;" for, since then, the hopes and fears, cares and pleasures, of the two friends were much changed.
Among the rest of the party the conversation became more general; for Elinor had just finished a song, and Mr. Wyllys had just beaten Mrs. Creighton at a game of chess.
"Mr. Hazlehurst, pray what have you done with my saya y manto?"
asked the pretty widow, taking a seat at the side of Elinor, on a sofa. "Here have you been, three, four, five days, and I have not even alluded to it, which, you must observe is a great act of forbearance in a lady, when there is a piece of finery in question."
{"saya y manto" = skirt and cloak (Spanish)}
"I am really ashamed of myself for not having reported it safe at Philadelphia, before. I would not send it to your house, when I heard you were here, for I wished to deliver it in person; and I did not bring it with me, because Mrs. Hazlehurst told me it was too warm for a fashionable lady to wear anything as heavy as black silk for the next three months."
"Well, of course I am very much obliged to you for the trouble you have had with it; but I shall defer thanking you formally, until I find out whether it is becoming or not."
"Do you expect to make a very captivating Spaniard?" asked Mr.
Stryker.
"I shall do my best, certainly; but I shall leave you to decide how far I succeed, Mr. Stryker. Are the Brazilian women pretty, Mr. Hazlehurst?--what do they look like?"
"Very like Portuguese," was the answer.
"More than the Americans look like the English?" inquired Elinor.
"Far more," said Harry; "but you know there is less difference between the climates of Brazil and Portugal, than between ours and that of England."
"For my part," observed Mr. Ellsworth, "I do not think we look in the least like the English--neither men nor women. We are getting very fast to have a decided physiognomy of our own. I think I could pick out an American from among a crowd of Europeans, almost as soon as I could a Turk."
"You always piqued yourself, Ellsworth, upon having a quick eye for national characteristics. We used to try him very often, when we were in Europe, Mrs. Creighton, and I must do him the justice to say he seldom failed."
"Oh, yes; I know all Frank"s opinions on the subject," replied Mrs. Creighton: "it is quite a hobby with him."
"What do you think are the physical characteristics of the Americans, as compared with our English kinsmen?" inquired Mr.
Wyllys.
"We are a darker, a thinner, and a paler people. The best specimens of the English have the advantage in manliness of form and carriage; the American is superior in activity, in the expression of intelligence and energy in the countenance. The English peculiarities in their worst shape are, coa.r.s.eness and heaviness of form; a brutal, dull countenance; the worst peculiarities among the Americans are, an apparent want of substance in the form, and a cold, cunning expression of features. I used often to wonder, when travelling in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, at the number of heavy forms and coa.r.s.e features, which strike one so often there, even among the women, and which are so very uncommon in America."
"Yes; that brutal coa.r.s.eness of features, which stood for the model of the old Satyrs, is scarcely to be met in this country, though by no means uncommon in many parts of Europe," observed Hazlehurst.
"I was very much struck the other evening, at the dance, with the appearance of the women," continued Mr. Ellsworth. "Not that they are so brilliant in their beauty--one sees beautiful women in every country; but they are so peculiarly feminine, and generally pretty, as a whole. By room-fulls, en ma.s.se, they appear to more advantage I think, than any other women; the general effect is very seldom broken by coa.r.s.eness of face, or unmanageable awkwardness of form."
"Yes, you are right," said Mr. Stryker. "There is a vast deal of prettiness, and very little repulsive ugliness among the women in this country. But it strikes me they are inclining a little too much to the idea, just now, that all the beauty in the world is collected in these United States, which, as we all know is rather a mistaken opinion."
"Certainly; that would be an extremely ridiculous notion."
"You think delicacy then, the peculiar characteristic of American beauty?" said Mr. Wyllys.
"Yes, sir; but I could point out others, too. Brown hair and hazel eyes are another common feature in American beauty. If you look over the pretty women of your acquaintance, you will find that the case I think."
"Like Mrs. Creighton"s," said Elinor, smiling.
"No; Josephine"s features are not sufficiently regular for a beauty," said her brother, good-naturedly.
"I shan"t get a compliment from Frank, Miss Wyllys," replied the widow, shaking her head. "I agree with him, though, about the brown-haired beauties; for, I once took the trouble to count over my acquaintances, and I found a great many that answered his description. I think it the predominating colour among us. I am certainly included in the brown tribe myself, and so are you, Miss Wyllys."
"As far as the colour of my hair goes," replied Elinor, with a smile which seemed to say, talk on, I have no feeling on the subject of my plain face. One or two persons present had actually paused, thinking the conversation was taking an unfortunate turn, as one of the ladies present was undeniably wanting in beauty. To encourage the natural pursuit of the subject, Elinor remarked that, "light hair and decidedly blue eyes, like Mrs. St. Leger"s, are not so very common, certainly; nor true black hair and eyes like your"s, Jane."
"You are almost as much given to compliments, Miss Wyllys, as I am," said Mrs. Creighton; "I have to say a saucy thing now and then, by way of variety."
"The saucy speeches are for your own satisfaction, no doubt, and the compliments for that of your friends, I suppose," replied Elinor, smiling a little archly; for she had very good reasons for mistrusting the sincerity of either mode of speech from the lips of the gay widow; whom, for that very reason, she liked much less than her brother.
"Do you really think me too severe?--wait till we are better acquainted!"
"I shall always think you very charming," replied Elinor, with her usual frank smile; for, in fact, she admired Mrs. Creighton quite as much as the rest of the world. And then observing that Mr. Ellsworth was listening to their conversation, she turned to him and asked, if the true golden hair, so much admired by the Italian poets, and so often sung by them, were still common in Italy?
"Judging from books and pictures, I should think it must have been much more common some centuries ago than at the present day; for, certainly, there is not one Italian woman in a hundred, who has not very decidedly black hair and eyes. I remember once in a translation from English into Italian, I used the expression "grey eyes," which diverted my master very much: he insisted upon it, there was no "such thing in nature;" and even after I had reminded him of Napoleon, he would not believe the Emperor"s eyes were not black. He was a thorough Italian, of course, and knew nothing of the northern languages, or he would have met with the expression before."
"Let me tell you, Ellsworth," said Harry, after a short pause in the conversation, "that it is very pleasant to pa.s.s an agreeable evening in this way, chatting with old friends. You have no idea how much I enjoy it after a three years" exile!"
"I can readily believe it."
"No, I don"t think you understand it at all. It is true you were roving about the world several years, but you were not alone, my dear sir. You had indeed the advantage of particularly agreeable companions with you: in Paris you had Mrs. Creighton, and in Egypt you had your humble servant. And then, in the next place, your mind was constantly occupied; you lived with the past while in Italy and Greece, and with the present in Paris. Now, at Rio, there is no past at all, and not much of a present."
"Is there no general society at Rio?" inquired Miss Wyllys.
"Oh, yes; society enough, in the usual meaning of the word. I was very fortunate in meeting with some very agreeable people, and have really a strong regard for Manezes {sic}--a good fellow he is, and I hope to see him here one of these days. But they were all new acquaintances. You cannot think how much I wanted to see a face I had known all my life; I was positively at one time on the verge of being home-sick."
"You found out that you were more tender-hearted than you had believed yourself," said Mr. Ellsworth.
"So it seems," replied Harry; a shade of embarra.s.sment crossing his face as he spoke.
"I should have thought some old acquaintance or other would have gone straggling towards Rio, in these travelling days," observed Mr. Ellsworth.
"No, I was particularly unfortunate: once when the American squadron lay at Rio for some weeks, and I had several friends on board the Macedonian, I happened at that very time to be absent on an excursion in the interior. For six months, or so it did very well; it takes one as long as that to enjoy the lovely scenery, to say nothing of the novelty; but after admiring the bay and the Corcovado under every possible aspect, I got at last to be heartily tired of Rio. I should have run away, if we had not been recalled this summer."
{"Macedonian" = a United States warship, commanded during the early 1840s by Commodore William Branford Shubrick (1790-1874), a life-long close friend of James Fenimore Cooper. Susan Fenimore Cooper wrote a biography of him in 1876; "Corcovado" = a famous mountain peak overlooking the bay of Rio de Janeiro}
"You should have fallen in love," said Mrs. Creighton.
"I don"t think I succeeded in that; perhaps I did not try very hard."
"But is not the state of society pleasant at Rio?" inquired Mr.
Wyllys.
"Not particularly, sir; it is too much like our own for that; something provincial lingering about it, although they have an emperor of their own. We cannot do without the other hemisphere yet, in spite of our self-important airs. We Yankees have coaxed Time out of a great deal, but he is not to be cheated for all that. People were not busy for thousands of years in the Old World, merely to qualify them for discovering America, whatever some of our patriots may say on the subject."