Home as Found. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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is not necessary, my dear cousin, to enter a house of four or five windows in front, to see it is not a house of twenty or thirty. I should be very unreasonable to expect an Italian palazzo, or a Parisian hotel, in this good town."
"We are not old enough for that yet, Eve; a hundred years hence, Mademoiselle Viefville, such things may exist here."
"Bien sûr. C'est naturel."
"A hundred years hence, as the world tends, Grace, they are not likely to exist any where, except as taverns, or hospitals, or manufactories. But what have we to do, coz, with a century ahead of us? young as we both are, we cannot hope to live that time."
Grace would have been puzzled to account satisfactorily to herself, for the strong desire she felt that neither of her companions should expect to see such a house as their senses so plainly told them did not exist in the place; but her foot moved in the bottom of the carriage, for she was not half satisfied with her cousin's answer.
"All I mean. Eve," she said, after a pause, "is, that one ought not to expect in a town as new as this, the improvements that one sees in an older state of society."
"And have Mademoiselle Viefville, or I, ever been so weak as to suppose, that New-York is Paris, or Rome, or Vienna?"
Grace was still less satisfied, for, unknown to herself, she had hoped that Mrs. Houston's ball might be quite equal to a ball in either of those ancient capitals; and she was now vexed that her cousin considered it so much a matter of course that it should not be. But there was no time for explanations, as the carriage now stopped.
The noise, confusion, calling out, swearing, and rude clamour before the house of Mrs. Houston, said little for the out-door part of the arrangements. Coachmen are nowhere a particularly silent and civil class; but the uncouth European peasants, who have been preferred to the honours of the whip in New-York, to the usual feelings of competition and contention, added that particular feature of humility which is known to distinguish "the beggar on horseback." The imposing equipages of our party, however, had that effect on most of these rude brawlers, which a display of wealth is known to produce on the vulgar-minded; and the ladies got into the house, through a lane of coachmen, by yielding a little to a chevau de frise of whips, without any serious calamity.
"One hardly knows which is the most terrific," said Eve, involuntarily, as soon as the door closed on them--"the noise within, or the noise without!"
This was spoken rapidly, and in French, to Mademoiselle Viefville, but Grace heard and understood it, and for the first time in her life, she perceived that Mrs. Houston's company was not composed of nightingales. The surprise is that the discovery should have come so late.
"I am delighted at having got into this house," said Sir George, who, having thrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room, where the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and to put aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town to see the other sex."
"To hear them, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York; and your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to be seen only."
The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to assent. Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating the proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she descended, followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John Effingham, whose arm she took as a step necessary even to decorum.
Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words, she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid a personal attention to her household, and had actually taught all her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments. She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at home from the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the opportunity of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead. Feminine, well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social condition, and naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs. Houston, supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see people with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of fashion, and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find it necessary to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be somebodies themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's happiness, or she fancied it did; and as every passion is known to increase by indulgence, she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied career until, as has just been said, she reached the summit.
"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes around two very pretty little narrow drawing-rooms, that were beautifully, not to say richly, furnished; "one wonders that the same contracted style of building should be so very general, in a town that increases as rapidly as this, and where fashion has no fixed abode, and land is so abundant."
"Mrs. Bloomfield would tell you," said Eve, "that these houses are types of the social state of the country, in which no one is permitted to occupy more than his share of ground."
"But there are reasonably large dwellings in the place. Mrs. Hawker has a good house, and your father's for instance, would be thought so, too, in London even; and yet I fancy you will agree with me in thinking that a good room is almost unknown in New-York."
"I do agree with you, in this particular, certainly, for to meet with a good room, one must go into the houses built thirty years ago. We have inherited these snuggeries, however, England not having much to boast of in the way of houses."
"In the way of town residences, I agree with you entirely, as a whole, though we have some capital exceptions. Still, I do not think we are quite as compact as this--do you not fancy the noise increased in consequence of its being so confined?"
Eve laughed and shook her head quite positively.
"What would it be if fairly let out!" she said. "But we will not waste the precious moments, but turn our eyes about us in quest of the belles. Grace, you who are so much at home, must be our cicerone, and tell us which are the idols we are to worship."
"Dîtes moi premierement; que veut dire une belle à New-York?" demanded Mademoiselle Viefville. "Apparemment, tout le monde est joli."
"A belle, Mademoiselle," returned John Effingham, "is not necessarily beautiful, the qualifications for the character, being various and a little contradictory. One may be a belle by means of money, a tongue, an eye, a foot, teeth, a laugh, or any other separate feature, or grace; though no woman was ever yet a belle, I believe, by means of the head, considered collectively. But why deal in description, when the thing itself confronts us? The young lady standing directly before us, is a belle of the most approved stamp and silvery tone. Is it not Miss Ring, Grace?"
The answer was in the affirmative, and the eyes of the whole party turned towards the subject of this remark. The young lady in question was about twenty, rather tall for an American woman, not conspicuously handsome, but like most around her of delicate features and frame, and with such a physique, as, under proper training, would have rendered her the beau idéal of feminine delicacy and gentleness. She had natural spirit, likewise, as appeared in her clear blue eye, and moreover she had the spirit to be a belle.
Around this young creature were clustered no less than five young men, dressed in the height of the fashion, all of whom seemed to be entranced with the words that fell from her lips, and each of whom appeared anxious to say something clever in return. They all laughed, the lady most, and sometimes all spoke at once. Notwithstanding these outbreakings, Miss Ring did most of the talking, and once or twice, as a young man would gape after a most exhilarating show of merriment, and discover an inclination to retreat, she managed to recall him to his allegiance, by some remark particularly pertinent to