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 ****** and intelligent. She might be a girl from a Normal School."
