A Little Journey in the World. Charles Dudley Warner

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СКАЧАТЬ saw a picture in Punch of an auction, intended as an awful satire on American women. It struck me that it might have two interpretations.”

      “Yes, Punch is as friendly to America as it is to the English aristocracy.”

      “Well, I was only thinking that it is just an exchange of commodities. People will always give what they have for what they want. The Western man changes his pork in New York for pictures. I suppose that—what do you call it?—the balance of trade is against us, and we have to send over cash and beauty.”

      “I didn't know that Miss Debree was so much of a political economist.”

      “We got that out of books in school. Another thing we learned is that England wants raw material; I thought I might as well say it, for it wouldn't be polite for you.”

      “Oh, I'm capable of saying anything, if provoked. But we have got away from the point. As far as I can see, all sorts of people intermarry, and I don't see how you can discriminate socially—where the lines are.”

      Mr. Lyon saw the moment that he had made it that this was a suggestion little likely to help him. And Margaret's reply showed that he had lost ground.

      “Oh, we do not try to discriminate—except as to foreigners. There is a popular notion that Americans had better marry at home.”

      “Then the best way for a foreigner to break your exclusiveness is to be naturalized.” Mr. Lyon tried to adopt her tone, and added, “Would you like to see me an American citizen?”

      “I don't believe you could be, except for a little while; you are too British.”

      “But the two nations are practically the same; that is, individuals of the nations are. Don't you think so?”

      “Yes, if one of them gives up all the habits and prejudices of a lifetime and of a whole social condition to the other.”

      “And which would have to yield?”

      “Oh, the man, of course. It has always been so. My great-great-grandfather was a Frenchman, but he became, I have always heard, the most docile American republican.”

      “Do you think he would have been the one to give in if they had gone to France?”

      “Perhaps not. And then the marriage would have been unhappy. Did you never take notice that a woman's happiness, and consequently the happiness of marriage, depends upon a woman's having her own way in all social matters? Before our war all the men who married down South took the Southern view, and all the Southern women who married up North held their own, and sensibly controlled the sympathies of their husbands.”

      “And how was it with the Northern women who married South, as you say?”

      “Well, it must be confessed that a good many of them adapted themselves, in appearance at least. Women can do that, and never let anyone see they are not happy and not doing it from choice.”

      “And don't you think American women adapt themselves happily to English life?”

      “Doubtless some; I doubt if many do; but women do not confess mistakes of that kind. Woman's happiness depends so much upon the continuation of the surroundings and sympathies in which she is bred. There are always exceptions. Do you know, Mr. Lyon, it seems to me that some people do not belong in the country where they were born. We have men who ought to have been born in England, and who only find themselves really they go there. There are who are ambitious, and court a career different from any that a republic can give them. They are not satisfied here. Whether they are happy there I do not know; so few trees, when at all grown, will bear transplanting.”

      “Then you think international marriages are a mistake?”

      “Oh, I don't theorize on subjects I am ignorant of.”

      “You give me very cold comfort.”

      “I didn't know,” said Margaret, with a laugh that was too genuine to be consoling, “that you were traveling for comfort; I thought it was for information.”

      “And I am getting a great deal,” said Mr. Lyon, rather ruefully. “I'm trying to find out where. I ought to have been born.”

      “I'm not sure,” Margaret said, half seriously, “but you would have been a very good American.”

      This was not much of an admission, after all, but it was the most that Margaret had ever made, and Mr. Lyon tried to get some encouragement out of it. But he felt, as any man would feel, that this beating about the bush, this talk of nationality and all that, was nonsense; that if a woman loved a man she wouldn't care where he was born; that all the world would be as nothing to him; that all conditions and obstacles society and family could raise would melt away in the glow of a real passion. And he wondered for a moment if American girls were not “calculating”—a word to which he had learned over here to attach a new and comical meaning.

V

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      The afternoon after this conversation Miss Forsythe was sitting reading in her favorite window-seat when Mr. Lyon was announced. Margaret was at her school. There was nothing un usual in this afternoon call; Mr. Lyon's visits had become frequent and informal; but Miss Forsythe had a nervous presentiment that something important was to happen, that showed itself in her greeting, and which was perhaps caught from a certain new diffidence in his manner.

      Perhaps the maiden lady preserves more than any other this sensitiveness, inborn in women, to the approach of the critical moment in the affairs of the heart. The day may some time be past when she—is sensitive for herself—philosophers say otherwise—but she is easily put in a flutter by the affair of another. Perhaps this is because the negative (as we say in these days) which takes impressions retains all its delicacy from the fact that none of them have ever been developed, and perhaps it is a wise provision of nature that age in a heart unsatisfied should awaken lively apprehensive curiosity and sympathy about the manifestation of the tender passion in others. It certainly is a note of the kindliness and charity of the maiden mind that its sympathies are so apt to be most strongly excited in the success of the wooer. This interest may be quite separable from the common feminine desire to make a match whenever there is the least chance of it. Miss Forsythe was not a match-maker, but Margaret herself would not have been more embarrassed than she was at the beginning of this interview.

      When Mr. Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the excuse for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have in their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join in it. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, and looking into the fire, and said, abruptly, at last:

      “I called to see you, Miss Forsythe, to—to consult you about your niece.”

      “About her career?” asked Miss Forsythe, with a nervous consciousness of falsehood.

      “Yes, about her career; that is, in a way,” turning towards her with a little smile.

      “Yes?”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ