“Indeed he was a long time resolved to do that; but, being a very handsome man, I was told no fashionable lady would intrust to him the instruction of her daughter: so he cut the matter short by opening a fashionable boarding-house; just the thing for him, you know; he speaks half-a-dozen languages, and plays the piano equal to some of your first professors.”
“O horror!” exclaimed the young lady. “A marquis establishing a boarding-house! If I had known that, I should not have mentioned his name. That must, of course, have thrown him at once out of society.”
“I believe he had prudence enough to quit society before the latter had a chance to abandon him,” observed my friend calmly.
The young lady made no reply, and was fortunately relieved from her embarrassment by another negro summons to tea, equally loud, though less potent in its consequences than that which had called us to dinner. I expected another rush to the dining-room, but was agreeably disappointed. Not a single gentleman made his appearance; so that, with the exception of the two young ladies whom we had before had the honour of escorting, the women were obliged to form into single file, which proceeded with the solemnity and slowness of a funeral procession.[5]
Arrived near the table, they took their seats in profound silence, and with such evident signs of exhaustion from fatigue, that I felt inclined to believe that they had not yet recovered from the exertion of the dinner. Nothing, indeed, can be more tiresome than a dinner at which one does not eat; it is equal to a ball at which one does not dance, or to a conversazione at which one is obliged merely to listen to the nonsense of others. I inquired what had become of the gentlemen? and was told that they had not yet returned from their counting-rooms,—that they hardly ever took tea, but were rarely absent from supper, which was sure to be put on the table at nine o’clock in the evening, in order to remain there till three or four in the morning. The gentlemen, moreover, I was informed, were so much in the habit of eating oyster suppers early in the morning, in some of those innumerable subterraneous eating-houses and oyster-rooms which decorate the Park and other fashionable avenues of the city, that they did not “particularly care” about taking a cup of tea and a cold piece of meat at seven o’clock with the ladies. Dinner was quite a different concern, for which they were always ready to suffer some inconvenience.
The conversation at tea flagged from the very beginning; and it was easy to perceive that the ladies, being accustomed to make this meal the occasion of their regular confabulations, considered my and my friend’s company rather de trop. We therefore pleaded an appointment with some gentlemen, and, in the words of a French vaudevillist, “did them the pleasure of afflicting them with our departure.”
“What are you going to do with yourself this evening?” demanded my friend, as we were going towards the Astor House.
“I shall look into the Park-street theatre,” replied I, “and then spend the remainder of the evening at Mrs. ***’s.”
“Then I shall have the pleasure of being with you all the evening,” rejoined he. “Mrs. ***’s party will be one of the finest given this season.”