"Not in pea-green, certainly," returned Eve, laughing--"as you may see; but in simple white."
"You intend then to be "led a measure" at Mrs. Houston"s. It were more suitable than among the other faction."
"Is fashion, then, faction, in New-York?" inquired Sir George.
"Fractions would be a better word, perhaps. But we have parties in almost every thing, in America; in politics, religion, temperance, speculations, and taste; why not in fashion?"
"I fear we are not quite independent enough to form parties on such a subject," said Eve.
"Perfectly well said, Miss Effingham; one must think a little originally, let it be ever so falsely, in order to get up a fashion.
I fear we shall have to admit our insignificance on this point. You are a late arrival, Sir George Templemore?"
"As lately as the commencement of this month; I had the honour of being a fellow-pa.s.senger with Mr. Effingham and his family."
"In which voyage you suffered shipwreck, captivity, and famine, if half we hear be true."
"Report has a little magnified our risks; we encountered some serious dangers, but nothing amounting to the sufferings you have mentioned."
"Being a married woman, and having pa.s.sed the crisis in which deception is not practised, I expect to hear truth again," said Mrs.
Bloomfield, smiling. "I trust, however, you underwent enough to qualify you all for heroes and heroines, and shall content myself with knowing that you are here, safe and happy--if," she added, looking inquiringly at Eve, "one who has been educated abroad _can_ be happy at home."
"One educated abroad _may_ be happy at home, though possibly not in the modes most practised by the world," said Eve firmly.
"Without an opera, without a court, almost without society!"
"An opera would be desirable, I confess; of courts I know nothing, unmarried females being cyphers in Europe; and I hope better things than to think I shall be without society."
"Unmarried females are considered cyphers too, here, provided there be enough of them with a good respectable digit at their head. I a.s.sure you no one quarrels with the cyphers under such circ.u.mstances.
I think, Sir George Templemore, a town like this must be something of a paradox to you."
"Might I venture to inquire the reason for this opinion!"
"Merely because it is neither one thing nor another. Not a capital, nor yet merely a provincial place; with something more than commerce in its bosom, and yet with that something hidden under a bushel. A good deal more than Liverpool, and a good deal less than London.
Better even than Edinburgh, in many respects, and worse than Wapping, in others."
"You have been abroad, Mrs. Bloomfield?"
"Not a foot out of my own country; scarcely a foot out of my own state. I have been at Lake George, the Falls, and the Mountain House; and, as one does not travel in a balloon, I saw some of the intermediate places. As for all else, I am obliged to go by report."
"It is a pity Mrs. Bloomfield was not with us, this evening, at Mrs.
Jarvis"s," said Eve, laughing. "She might then have increased her knowledge, by listening to a few cantos from the epic of Mr. Dodge."
"I have glanced at some of that author"s wisdom," returned Mrs.
Bloomfield, "but I soon found it was learning backwards. There is a never-failing rule, by which it is easy to arrive at a traveller"s worth, in a negative sense, at least."
"That is a rule which may be worth knowing," said the baronet, "as it would save much useless wear of the eyes."
"When one betrays a profound ignorance of his own country, it is a fair presumption that he cannot be very acute in his observation of strangers. Mr. Dodge is one of these writers, and a single letter fully satisfied my curiosity. I fear, Miss Effingham, very inferior wares, in the way of manners, have been lately imported, in large quant.i.ties, into this country, as having the Tower mark on them."
Eve laughed, but declared that Sir George Templemore was better qualified than herself to answer such a question.
"We are said to be a people of facts, rather than a people of theories," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, without attending to the reference of the young lady, "and any coin that offers pa.s.ses, until another that is better, arrives. It is a singular, but a very general mistake, I believe, of the people of this country, in supposing that they can exist under the present regime, when others would fail, because their opinions keep even pace with, or precede the actual condition of society; whereas, those who have thought and observed most on such subjects, agree in thinking the very reverse to be the case."
"This would be a curious condition for a government so purely conventional," observed Sir George, with interest, "and it certainly is entirely opposed to the state of things all over Europe."
"It is so, and yet there is no great mystery in it after all.
Accident has liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are like a vehicle on the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed beyond the point of resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid of horses. One may follow with the team, and hook on when it gets to the bottom, but there is no such thing as keeping company with it until it arrives there."
"You will allow, then, that there is a bottom?"
"There is a bottom to every thing--to good and bad; happiness and misery; hope, fear, faith and charity; even to a woman"s mind, which I have sometimes fancied the most bottomless thing in nature. There may, therefore, well be a bottom even to the inst.i.tutions of America."
Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his cla.s.s always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is about to favour his own political predilections, and he felt encouraged to push the subject further.
"And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by collision, and opposition is known even to create love.
Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd.
She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her country"s social organization, as is almost universally the case with the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her sentiments on such a point.
"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.
"A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of reasoning, or even to leave me familiar with the terms."
"Oh! I am not about to a.s.sail you with _sequiturs_ and _non sequiturs_ dialectics and all the mysteries of _Denk-Lehre,_ but simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our inst.i.tutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual sense. I mean that we are getting to understand them, which, I fear, we did not absolutely do at the commencement of the "experiment.""
"But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward."
"Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive, and the people, as they cannot go "up," betray a disposition to go "down.""
"You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you."
"I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the people--_le peuple_ you will understand--begin to accept money. In both particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse, within my own recollection."
Mrs. Bloomfield then changed her manner, and from using that light- hearted gaiety with which she often rendered her conversation _piquante_, and even occasionally brilliant, she became more grave and explicit. The subject soon turned to that of punishments, and few men could have reasoned more sensibly, justly or forcibly, on such a subject, than this slight and fragile-looking young woman. Without the least pedantry, with a beauty of language that the other s.e.x seldom attains, and with a delicacy of discrimination, and a sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered a theme interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding, veiling all its odious and revolting features in the refinement and finesse of her own polished mind.
Eve could have listened all night, and, at every syllable that fell from the lips of her friend, she felt a glow of triumph; for she was proud of letting an intelligent foreigner see that America did contain women worthy to be ranked with the best of other countries, a circ.u.mstance that they who merely frequented what is called the world, she thought might be reasonably justified in distrusting. In one respect, she even fancied Mrs. Bloomfield"s knowledge and cleverness superior to those which she had so often admired in her own s.e.x abroad. It was untrammelled, equally by the prejudices incident to a fact.i.tious condition of society, or by their reaction; two circ.u.mstances that often obscured the sense and candour of those to whom she had so often listened with pleasure in other countries.
The singularly feminine tone, too, of all that Mrs. Bloomfield said or thought, while it lacked nothing in strength, added to the charm of her conversation, and increased the pleasure of those that listened.
"Is the circle large to which Mrs. Hawker and her friends belong?"
asked Sir George, as he a.s.sisted Eve and Grace to cloak, when they had taken leave. "A town which can boast of half-a-dozen such houses need not accuse itself of wanting society."
"Ah! there is but one Mrs. Hawker in New-York," answered Grace, "and not many Mrs. Bloomfields in the world. It would be too much to say, we have even half-a-dozen such houses."
"Have you not been struck with the admirable tone of this drawing- room," half whispered Eve. "It may want a little of that lofty ease that one sees among the better portion of the old _Princesses et d.u.c.h.esses_, which is a relic of a school that, it is to be feared, is going out; but in its place there is a winning nature, with as much dignity as is necessary, and a truth that gives us confidence in the sincerity of those around us."
"Upon my word, I think Mrs. Hawker quite fit for a d.u.c.h.ess."
"You mean a _d.u.c.h.esse_" said Eve, "and yet she is without the manner that we understand by such a word. Mrs. Hawker is a lady, and there can be no higher term."