CHAPTER XI.
ANOMALIES OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION--THE WATERING-PLACE RUSH OF 1863--A WHITE-MOUNTAIN PARTY DISEMBARKING AT LITTLETON--WHO FILLED THE CONCORD COACH--THE VANDERLYNS--SHODDY ON ITS TRAVELS--MR. BROOKS CUNNINGHAME AND HIS FAMILY--"H. T.," AND AN EXCITEMENT.
The War for the Union has been unlike all other great struggles,throughout, in nearly every characteristic that can be named. Unnatural inits inception, the rebellion has seemed to have the power of makingunnatural many of the details through which and in spite of which it hasbeen carried forward--of changing character and subverting all ordinaryconditions. There have been anomalies in the field: still more notableanomalies in society. Unflinching bravery and stubborn devotion to thefighting interests of the country have been found blended, in the same man,with pecuniary dishonesty which seemed capable of pillaging adeath-chamber. The greatest military ability has been found conjoined withsuch inactivity and tardiness as to paralyze action and destroy publicpatience. Rapidity of movement has been discovered to be wedded to suchUtopian want of understanding or such culpable recklessness as to makemovement not seldom a blunder instead of a stroke of policy. Times whichthreatened disaster have brought triumph; and the preparations made tocelebrate a victory have more than once been employed in concealing adefeat. All things have been mixed in estimation. The Copperhead,detestable on account of his view of the national duty, has yet compelledsome portion of respect by his real or affected reverence for a perilledConstitution; the Radical, worthy of all credit for his active spirit anduncompromising position, has yet deserved contempt for a narrowness of viewwhich made him almost as dangerous as disloyalty could have done; and theConservative, that man of the golden mean, that hope of the nation in manyregards, has bargained for a part of the abuse which he has received fromeither extreme, by faulting the active measures of both and offeringmeanwhile no active, practical course to supply their stead.
But amid the general anomaly perhaps fashionable (or would-be fashionable)society, and the world of ease and amusement, have supplied the mostinteresting and the most astounding study of all. The status of the"non-productive classes" is and has been, during most of the struggle,literally inverted, and the conditions of costly enjoyment have beenchanging as rapidly as if we were rioting through a carnival instead ofbreasting a rebellion. No nation ever carried on such a war as that wagedby this loyal people; and no nation ever spent so much blood and treasurein accomplishing the same comparative results. Naturally, in view of thepersonal bereavement, it might have been expected that society should bequiet in its amusements and low-toned in all its conversation: naturally, apeople bleeding at every pecuniary pore for the public good, might havebeen expected to diminish personal expenditure and husband those resourceson the holding-out of which so much must eventually depend. Instead ofthis, society, with the craped banners and the muffled drums every dayappealing to eye and ear, has grown continually louder in its tone and morepronounced and even blatant in its mirth; and reckless personal expenditurehas quite kept place with any general waste that the highwaymen orincapables of government had power to entail. The theatre and the circushave never before been so full, the opera has never before been sogenerally patronized. Babylon could never have rioted more luxuriously onthe very night before its fall, than have the people of our great citiesdined, ridden, danced and bathed themselves in seas of costly music, anyday since the first three months of the rebellion ended.
Summer recreations have perhaps told quite as significant a story as anyother feature, of the inevitable drift of society towards reckless expenseand extravagant display. The summer resorts within the rebel territory mayhave grown desolate or deserted--the buildings of the White Sulphur and theRockbridge Alum of Virginia may have been left empty or turned intohospitals, and Old Point may only have been visited for far other purposesthan the meeting of the sea-breeze there in midsummer; but a very differentfate has awaited the favorite hot-weather resorts of the North. Saratogaand Sharon of the chalybeates; Niagara and Trenton of the cataracts; theWhite Mountains, the Cattskills and the Alleghanies, of the high, pure airand the cloud shadow; Newport, Rockaway, Long Branch and Cape May of thesouth-eastern breeze and the salt aroma,--all have been, with the exceptionof a few frightened weeks of 1861, more densely filled during the war thanat any former period in the memory of the pleasure-seeker; and wealth andenjoyment have both run riot there to an extent but little in accordancewith the sack-cloth and ashes which the observant eye saw all the whilelying on the head of the nation itself. All this may have beeninappropriate and a part of it painful; but the result could not well havebeen otherwise. Some, with wealth honestly earned and no capacity for thepublic service, have needed rest or distraction and there found one or theother. Habitual idlers and professional students of society, neveravailable for any other purpose, have naturally, as ever, found there theirbest ground of personal study. Young girls have needed the experience, andmanaging mammas have quite as sorely needed those fields for matrimonialcampaigns. Invalids have needed their real or supposed opportunity for therecovery of lost health. Shoddy, grown suddenly rich while remainingincurably ignorant and vulgar, and finding it no easy task to force its wayinto the coveted "society" in the great cities, has eagerly welcomed theopportunities there afforded for at least learning the rudiments of what iscalled gentility, and creeping into that miscellaneous outer circle whichsurrounds the charmed inner. Politicians have found it necessary to do, insuch places, that particular portion of the great task of boring,button-holing, prying and packing which cannot be so well done either atthe primary election or the convention as around the spring or on thebeach--on the piazza of the Ocean House or the United States; and officerson furlough, who had fought enough for the time or had no intention tofight at all, have found no places like these for displaying jaunty uniformand decorated shoulder to the admiring eyes of that sex which descends fromAthena and recognizes the cousinship of Mars. Add to all this the rise ofexchange on Europe and the folly of steamship companies in charging goldrates for passages abroad, which have together almost checked the summerexodus to the Old World,--and there is no longer reason to wonder at thewatering-place crowds and the summer gayeties which have made carnivalthroughout the loyal States and filled the wallets of enterprizinglandlords.
The year of grace 1863 saw an earlier beginning to the summer hegira thanany other late year had done, as before its close it saw housesover-crowded, waiters overworked, and cots at a premium, from Casco toCresson. The smoke had not yet rolled away from Gettysburgh when "the greatNorth River travelling-trunk" began its perambulations; and by the middleof July everybody who was anybody (except a few in the city of New York,temporarily frightened or hindered by the riots) was gone from the greatcities, and they were given over to the temporary occupancy of thoselaboring starlings who could not "get out," and the ever ebbing and flowingwave of transient visit.
All this as a necessary reminder of the period and a back-ground to theincidents so soon to follow,--and because the course of narration, at thisjuncture, leads us for a time to one of the favorite shrines of Americansummer pilgrimage and into the whirl of that literal storm of fashion andcuriosity which eddies and sweeps, all summer long, around the peaks of theWhite Mountains--the Alps of Eastern America.
It was a somewhat varied as well as extensive crowd of passengers thatdisembarked from the cars of the White Mountain Railroad at Littleton, insight of the head-waters of the Connecticut, about five o'clock onWednesday afternoon, the 29th of July. The dog-days had begun; New York,Philadelphia and Boston were steaming furnaces, though partially emptied aswe have before had occasion to notice; and those who had already visitedthem during the month, declared that neither Saratoga, the Cattskills, oreven Lake George or Niagara, had the power to impart any coolness tosuffering humanity. The sea-shore or the northern mountains offered theonly alternative; and a very heavy list of passengers had come up that dayby the Norwich and Worcester line from New York, the Boston li
nes fallingin at Nashua Junction, and the Vermont Central throwing in itsreinforcement at Wells River.
Every portion of the loyal States (and no doubt a portion of the disloyal,if the truth could have been known!) had seemed to be represented in thecrowd that thronged the platforms while fighting for a mouthful of lunch atNashua Junction or crowding in to a hurried dinner at the poor substitutefor the burned Pemigawasset House at Plymouth. There were even half a dozenresident Europeans--English, Scotch, with one Frenchman who snuffedcontinually, and one Spaniard who smoked in season and out ofseason--people who had no doubt rushed over to see the "American war," butvery soon found the South too hot for comfort, in one sense or theother,--among the number destined to add variety to the overfilledcaravanserais of the Franconia and White ranges. A few had dropped away atWeir's Landing, for a day or two on Lake Winnipiseogee, enticed by thepleasant loom of Centre Harbor down the bright blue water and the romanticfigure of the Lady of the Lake on the prow of her namesake steamer; and afew more had left the train at Plymouth for the long coach-ride of thirtymiles through the mountains to the Glen House, or by the southern approachto the Profile or the Crawford. Two or three stage-loads, too, who had butone thought in their pilgrimage--Mount Washington,--were bustling in forthe immediate ride from Littleton to the Crawford; but there were stillfour heavy stage-loads--not less than forty to fifty persons--going on tothe crowded Profile House that evening.
Some of the occupants of one of those heavy stages, rolling away towardsthe Profile, require, for the purposes of this narration, a somewhat closerview than was probably taken of them by many of their fellow-passengers;and that view cannot be more appropriately taken than at this moment.
On the back seat of that vehicle sat two ladies, with a troublesome boy often years wedged in between them as if to come the nearest possible togetting him out of the way. Neither paid the youngster that attention whichwould have indicated that he belonged to them or was travelling in theircompany; and indeed they had every right as well as every inclination towash their hands of his relationship if they could not wash from theirtravelling-dresses the marks of his taffy-smeared fingers. The two ladieswere evidently mother and daughter; and at least one person in the coachhad remarked them as they came up from Concord, and seen that their solechaperon and protector seemed to be a son of the one and brother of theother, some eighteen or twenty years of age. As he saw them then and as heafterwards better knew them, they may be briefly described.
The Vanderlyns were Baltimoreans--the widow and children of a man of largewealth and considerable distinction, who had died three or four yearsbefore in that city, after having amassed a fortune by propertyspeculations and subsequently filled more than one responsible office underthe State government. They had the true Southern pride in wealth andposition; and the hand of the daughter had already been sought, howeverineffectually, by scions of the best families in and about the Monumentalcity. Let it be added that they belonged, whatever may have been theirpride and arrogance as a family, to the not-too-extensive class of _loyal_Marylanders,--and then a better title of nobility will have been enrolledthan any that Clayton Vanderlyn's money and former public employments hadpower to supply. The widowed mother and her children were among the fewresidents below Mason and Dixon's line who had not forgotten the pleasantsummer days of old in the North, when Puritan and Cavalier met as friendsand brothers; and this summer tour, which was to include Saratoga andNewport before it closed, was a result of the old recollection.
Mrs. Vanderlyn, the mother, seemed forty-five, but was fine-looking and hadevidently been handsome in her youth--with those splendid brown eyes thatmust then have sparkled so much more brilliantly than at this period, andthat perfect wealth of chestnut hair, not yet in the least sprinkled withgray, which must then have been a charm and a glory. Her travelling-dresswas very plain, but of the best materials; and every thing in herappearance--especially pride of look and action,--spoke of wealth, thehabit of mingling in that indefinable but actual thing, good society, and aperfect consciousness of what she was and what she possessed. Those wholooked twice upon Mrs. Vanderlyn, with keen eyes, had no difficulty indeciding that she might be a very pleasant acquaintance for those in herown "set" and whom she considered her equals,--but that she would be anything but a pleasant acquaintance for those whom she despised or with whomshe chanced to fall into feud.
Clara Vanderlyn, the daughter, was a yet more interesting study than hermother; and it seemed altogether probable that the same observer beforementioned, and who will be hereafter more particularly introduced, comingup in the same car from Nashua and again thrown into near proximity in thecoach, had read and was reading that second page of the Vanderlyn genealogywith peculiar care and attention. She was of middle height; slight, butwell-rounded and evidently elastic in figure, with a clearly cut but verypleasant face, eyes a shade darker than Mrs. Vanderlyn's, and hair whatthat lady's had probably been twenty years before. A wonderful feature,indeed, was that head of hair--fine, silken, but perfectly massive inprofusion, with more of a tendency to the wave than the curl, and of thatrich golden chestnut or true auburn so seldom seen though so often lauded.At the first observation, it seemed that Clara Vanderlyn's hair was thegreat charm of her presence; but those who had the good fortune to be manyhours in her company, learned that a still stronger and more abiding charmlay in the affability of her manners, the expression of thorough goodnessin her whole demeanor, and the purity and sweetness of her smile. That facewas certainly worthy of the fixed gaze which had rested upon it quite asoften during the afternoon as delicacy permitted; and it might even havefurnished excuse for glancing at it a moment too long, and planting blusheson those cheeks that the lip could have no hope of gathering.
The third and youngest of the family, Frank Vanderlyn, did not enter intothe group under observation, as he was at that time on the top of the coachwith half a dozen others, enjoying the cigar which had been impossible inthe passenger-car. But the glimpses caught of him before disembarking, maysuffice to complete the family triad. He seemed a well-grown stripling,verging upon manhood, with a face distantly reminding the observer of hissister's, but with darker hair than either Mrs. Vanderlyn or Clara, andwith an expression of settled hauteur upon his well-cut features, whichvery much detracted from the charm of a face that would otherwise have beensingularly handsome. He was dressed a little too well for dusty travel, andwore more wealth in a single diamond in his cravat and a cluster-ring onthe little finger of his right hand, than most young men would have beeneither able or willing to devote to such purposes of mere ornament.
This description of the occupants of that singularly-fortunate coach mayhave very little interest beyond that of a mere catalogue; yet it must becontinued, for Fate, that grim old auctioneer who sometimes knocks us downat very low prices and to odd owners, may have some necessity for amercantile list of his chattels.
The occupants of the middle seat were three in number, and they could havefurnished any needed information as to the personality of the troublesomeboy with the taffied fingers, who had been wedged between Clara Vanderlynand her mother. All of one family--that second triad: Mr. BrooksCunninghame, Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, and Miss Marianna Brooks Cunninghame.The first, a squat man of fifty-five, with a broad, coarse, beardless face,bad teeth and bristly gray hair just suffering under its first inflictionof slaty-brown hair-dye. His large hands had been all day cased in kidgloves, spite of the heat of the weather; and his gray suit, of really finematerial, had a sort of new look, and did not seem to be worn easily. Therewas an impression carried about by the man and disseminated at everymovement, that another and a much shabbier suit hung immediately behind hisbed-room door at home, and that in that he would have been easy andcomfortable, while in the fashionable garb he was laboring under a sort ofSunday-clothes restraint. The second, a stout woman of fifty, with reddishhair, a coarse pink face, high cheek bones and pert nose, correspondingwell with her lord in conformation, while it wore an expression of dignityand
self-satisfaction to which the countenance of that poor man could nothave made the least pretension. She was only a _little_ overdressed, fortravelling--her bonnet of fine straw too much of a flower-garden for heryears, a heavy gold watch-chain with the watch prominent, a diamondbreastpin flashing hotly, and her voluminous blue lawn of costly fabricpartially covered by a long gray mantle which must have been recommended toher by some mantua-maker with a "spasm of sense." But if there was anyrestraint in the make-up of Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, that restraint wasfully compensated by the gorgeousness of the general arrangement of MissMarianna. That young lady of thirty, with a large mouth, sandy hair, bluishgray eyes and freckles, a dumpy figure and no eye-brows whatever, wasarrayed--shade of Madame La Modiste forgive us while we pen therecord--arrayed for that hot and dusty day of railroad and coach riding, ina rich pink silk flounced and braided to the extreme of the currentfashion; with a jockey leghorn and white feather which--well, we may saywith truth that they _relieved_ her face; with a braided mantle of whitemerino that might have been originally designed for an opera-cloak; whitekid gloves in a transition state; and such a profusion of gold watch, goldchain, enamelled bracelet, diamond cluster-breastpin, costly lace, andother feminine means of attracting admiration and envy, that the brain of amasculine relator reels among the chaos of finery and he desists indespair. The fourth of this family was Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame,_aetat_ ten, wedged in between the two aristocratic representatives of theVanderlyn exclusiveness, and the freckles on his coarse little face andhands about equally balanced by the dauby debris of more or less hardenedtaffy to which allusion has before been unavoidably made.
This group (the fact may as well be set down in this place as at any laterperiod)--this was Shoddy on its summer tour. Mr. Brooks Cunninghame hadbeen, a considerable number of years before, Patrick B. Cunningham; and hisname had been scrawled, many hundreds of times, to receipts for work doneas a petty contractor about the streets of New York City, with one horseand a dirt-cart, digging out cellars, and helping to cart the dirt ofpipe-layings and excavations. Gradually he had crept up to two carts, andthen to three. Eventually he had reached the employing of a dozen or two,with the bipeds that drove and the quadrupeds that drew them. By that timehe had removed from his shanty of one story and rented a house. Then he hadgone into ward politics and contracts with the city, at about the sametime, and emerged into possession of a couple of brown-stone-front housesand a seat in the Board of Aldermen, at periods not very far apart. Peoplesaid that the seat in the municipal board, with the "ring" performances(more or less clown-ish) thereunto appertaining, were made the means ofincreasing the two houses to four and of causing Mrs. Patrick B. Cunninghamto forget the whole of her husband's first name and merely use the initials"P. B.," which might or might not stand for 'Pollo Belvidere. Then had comethe war, with that golden opportunity for all who stood prepared for it.Mr. P. B. Cunningham had been at that time the proprietor of some fifty orsixty gallant steeds used before dirt-carts, and his vigorous and patrioticmind had conceived the propriety of aiding the country by disposing ofthose mettled chargers as aids towards a first-class cavalry mount. He hadsold, prospered, bought more dirt-cart and stage-horses with an admixtureof those only to be discovered between the thills of clam-wagons, found nodifficulty in passing them as fit for the service, through the kindness ofa friendly inspector who only charged two dollars per head for decidingfavorably on the quadrupeds,--sold and prospered again and yet again. Mr.P. B. Cunningham had accordingly found himself, three months before theperiod of this narration, the lawful proprietor of half a million, acquiredin the most loyal manner and without for one moment wavering in hisconnection with either Tammany Hall, through which he managed theDemocrats, or the Loyal League by which he kept in favor with theRepublicans.
So far Mr. P. B. Cunningham had been uninterruptedly successful--themonarch as well as architect of his own fortune. But at that period (thethree months before) he had suddenly been made aware that every man has hisfate and the end of his career of supremacy. Mrs. P. B. Cunningham hadproved herself his fate and put a sudden end to his supremacy. That lady,all the while emerging, had emerged, from the dust and darkness of lowerfortune, and become a fashionable butterfly. She had ordered him to buy afour-story brown-stone front, finer than any that he owned, on one of theup-town streets not far from _the_ Avenue; and he had obeyed. She hadordered him to discard his old clothes, and he had obeyed again, thoughwith a sincere reluctance. She had changed his name to Brooks Cunninghame,(observe the _e_!) her own to Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, that of Mary Ann toMiss Marianna Brooks Cunninghame, and that of the male scion of the house,_aetat_ ten as aforesaid, to Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame. Thedoor-plate of the new house could not be arranged in accordance with thenew programme, for door-plates had been voted vulgar and abandoned by the_creme de la creme_; but the family cards had been made to bear all theblushing honors in steel engraving and round-hand. This done, the requisitejewelry bought, and some other little arrangements perfected which maydevelop themselves in due time, the lady had informed Mr. BrooksCunninghame that both the health and the dignity of the family requiredsummer recreation, and dragged him away on that tour of which we have theprivilege of witnessing one of the progresses.
Some reference has been made to the array, rather gorgeous than otherwise,of Miss Marianna, for dusty travel. A few words which had passed betweenthe three heads of the family at one of the Boston hotels that morning, maygive a little insight into the philosophy of this arrangement. Mr. BrooksCunninghame, yet retaining a little of the common-sense of his dirt-cartdays, had ventured to suggest that "Mary Ann mought wear her commoner dudsto ride in, for thim fineries 'ud be spiled before night wid the dustintirely;" and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, alike indignant at a suggestion sosmacking of low life and grieved to find that her husband would persist inretaining a few touches of the brogue of which she had cured herself andher children so triumphantly,--had answered with a sort of verbal two-edgedsword that did fatal execution on both the others:
"Brooks Cunninghame, you'd better keep your mouth shut if you can't open itwithout letting out some of that low Irish! One would think you drove adirt-cart yit! And you, my dear"--to Marianna (the mother had been "postingherself" in some of the phrases of "good society," as well as in some otherthings which may also yet develop themselves)--"you, my dear, put on thevery best o' them things that you've got! Ain't we rich, I should like toknow? We may see a good many folks to-day, in them cars, and who knowswhether you mightn't lose a beau that'd take a fancy to you, if you wentslouchin' around with your old things on? Dress up, my dear!"
Mr. Brooks Cunninghame had succumbed; Miss Marianna had "dressed up," asper order; and collective Shoddy was thus far on its way, without accident,towards the first halting-place in the grand tour of the mountains.
But what of the observer who has more than once before been mentioned, andwho sat in the corner of the front seat, half buried under the voluminousskirts of two ladies who have nothing whatever to do with this narration,but looking so steadily (people who have habitually ridden in those Concordcoaches know that the front is another back, and that the occupants of thefront and back seats face each other)--looking so steadily, we say, atevery permissible opportunity, into the sweet face of Clara Vanderlyn? Hewas a man of apparently thirty years of age, rather tall and veryvigorous-looking even if slight, with curling dark hair, almost or quiteblack, and worn short, the face finely cut and showing no beard except aclose, full moustache of raven blackness, the complexion (brow and all, ascould be noticed when he lifted his hat from his head, as he often did, forcoolness) of such a dark clear brown as to mark him of Southern birth orblood, clothes of thin dark gray material, with a round tourist hat and aduster, the small hands gloved in summer silk, and the whole appearance andmanner that of a gentleman, used to good society, and very probablyprofessional. He had been reading, nearly all the way up from Worcester,some of the other passengers noticed--though it must be confessed that apart of his
reading had been over the top of the book at that attractivelarge type formed by a pretty human face; and no blame is intended to becast upon Clara Vanderlyn when we say that that young lady had more thanonce met the evidently admiring glance of so fine-looking a man, with thelittle tinge of color that was becoming, but without any expression uponher face or any thought in her mind, resenting any more than returning anadmiration which she believed that she had a right to receive and anygentleman to pay thus respectfully. He had spoken but seldom, during theride, in such a way that any person then present had heard him; but once hehad taken (or _made_) occasion to apologize to Miss Vanderlyn and hermother for being thrown against their seat by the motion of the car whilewalking through it, on the rough road when coming up from Plymouth to Wellsriver; and his few words, as the lady remarked, consorted well with therespectability (to say the least) of his appearance. As to his personality,which there did not seem the slightest occasion for his wishing todisguise, there was a big black trunk in the baggage-wagon following behindthe line of coaches, and a small satchel strapped over his shoulder as herode; and the first bore the initials "H. T." and the direction"Cincinnati."
While so much attention has been paid to the occupants of that singlecoach, leaving the others and even the noisy passengers on the roof ofthis, unnoticed, the vehicles had been buzzing and clattering along overthe table-land lying at the foot of the mountains, past the little hamletof Franconia, and nearing the mountains themselves. A glorious July eveningit was, with the fiery air which had been so oppressive below graduallycooled by the approach to the presence of the monarchs, and the smoke fromthe fires in the woods playing fantastic tricks among the peaks, andcompensating for the absence of the clouds which sometimes enveloped them.Not half the passengers in those four stages had ever seen the mountainsbefore; and not one, even of those accustomed to such scenery, but felt theblood beating a little quicker as the mountain road beyond Franconia wasreached, and they began to experience those rapid ascents, and yet morerapid descents, which accompany thence all the way to the Notch, with grandold woods overhanging, steep and sheer ravines at the side of the road thatmade the head dizzy in looking, reverential glimpses of the awful peaks ofLafayette and the Cannon frowning ahead, and of Washington, grander still,towering far away over the White range, and with all the otheraccompaniments of the finest mountain scenery on the Atlantic coast of theAmerican continent. There was quite enough, indeed, to engage the attentionof any except the most blase and ennuyee traveller, in the grandeur of thescenery and the excitement of being galloped in rocking, lumbering,four-horse coaches, down declivities of road which would have made a driverin any ordinary hill-country draw tight rein and creep down with a heavyfoot on the brake.
Not a few nervous passengers, first or last, dashing up and down the slopesof the White Mountain roads, have been more or less frightened, and wishedthat they could be once more on terra firma without incurring the penaltyof a laugh at their cowardice; and in the present instance this little bitof locomotion was not to be allowed to pass without an adventure.
Half an hour from the foot of the mountain the coach went rapidly up asharp ascent in the road, then dashed down again at full gallop, strikingone of those necessary nuisances known as "breakwaters" when a few yardsfrom the top, with a shock that sent the coach-body leaping on its leathernjacks like a yawl-boat in a heavy surf, made some of the outsiders on thetop shout and hold on merrily to keep from being whirled off into one ofthe side-ravines, and created such a state of affairs inside the vehicle,generally, as effectually broke up the monotony. That shock drove the headof Mrs. Vanderlyn back against the leathern cushions with a force seriouslydamaging to the crown of her bonnet, brought a slight scream from Clara,who was frightened for the instant, made the troublesome Master BrooksBrooks yell and dash a dirty hand into the dress of each of the ladies whohad the honor of the same seat, and elicited from Mrs. Brooks Cunninghameand her husband one of those brief but very significant marital displayswhich were no doubt afterwards to edify so many. Whether the lady hadascertained that fashionable people must always fall and faint under anysudden excitement, or whether the shock really frightened as well asunseated her, is a matter of no consequence: certain it is that she at thatjuncture threw up her hands and rolled up her eyes, gave one scream thatdegenerated into a groan, rolled from her seat and subsided into the bottomof the coach, under the feet of "H. T.," in what seemed to be a fit of somedescription. Miss Marianna, really alarmed, with the affectionate if notclassic words, "Oh, mammy!" made a grab at that lady, clutching the back ofher hat and tearing it from the head it crowned, while Master Brooks Brookschanged his yell into a howl and Mr. Brooks Cunninghame stooped down,terror in his face and his hands feeling around at the bottom of thevehicle for any portion of what had been his wife, with the affectionatebut not politic inquiry: "Is it kilt ye are, Bridget?"
Not politic?--no, certainly not! A stronger word might be applied withoutrisk to the unfortunate expression. Among the changes in family polity notbefore indicated, had been an indignant throwing over of her very honestname of "Bridget" by the wife of the horse-contractor, and the adoption of"Julia" in its stead. More than one curtain-lecture had poor Mr. BrooksCunninghame endured, before leaving New York, on the necessity of avoidingany blunder in that regard, when they should be "away from home"; and hehad not escaped without severe drill and many promises of perfection in hispart. And now to have forgotten the adopted "Julia" and used the tell-tale"Bridget" at the very moment of the family's entering upon their firstessay in fashionable watering-place life, was really a little too much forpatience not entirely angelic.
Both the poets and the romancers tell of cases in which some word ofheart-broken affection, uttered at the instant when the death-film wasstealing over the eyes of the beloved one, has had power to strike thedulled sense and call back for a moment the fleeting life when it hadescaped far beyond the reach of any other sound. Something of the samecharacter--not quite so romantic, perhaps, but quite as real,--wasdeveloped in the present instance. The woman may have been falling into anactual faint; but if so, that offensive word pierced through the gatheringmists of insensibility, and she crawled out from the entanglement of legsbefore any effectual aid could be afforded her, and with such a look ofcontempt and hatred burning full upon her unfortunate husband that he musthave felt for the moment as if placed directly under the lens of asun-glass at focus. Mr. Brooks Cunninghame shrank into his number elevenpatent-leathers, and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame "swatted" herself (there is noother word in or out of the language that will quite so well express theact) down on the seat with an air that implied a wish for some one's headbeing beneath her at that juncture. Her glance had not at all softened, norhad "H. T." ceased looking out of the window or Clara Vanderlyn (behindher) yet taken her handkerchief from her mouth, when the female Cunninghamesaid, in what she thought very honeyed accents:
"Mr. Brooks Cunninghame, I wish you would find some other time to go andcall me nicknames, than when I am jolted out of my seat in that way anda'most dead!"
The stroke of policy was a fine one, and even the thick head of Mr. BrooksCunninghame recognized the necessity of following it up--an act which heperformed thus gracefully and with a look intended for one of the staringladies on the front seat:
"Yes, mim, her name isn't Bridget at all at all, but Julia. It's only a bitof a way I have of jokin' wid her, mim!"
This was satisfactory, of course--absolutely conclusive; and so Mrs. BrooksCunninghame grew mollified by degrees; the redness which had come into theface of Miss Marianna gradually faded out; Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghametook occasion to manifest his filial fondness by reaching over and hugginghis mother with hands just re-coated with candy dug out of his capaciouspocket; and the Concord coach, with its consorts, rolled and jolted andswayed along, up and down the mountain road to its destination.
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 13
