The Two Rivals at Judge Owen's—A Combat a La outrance between the Bancker and the Wallace—Almost a Challenge, and a Trial of Every-day Courage.
Return we now to the somewhat too-long neglected Miss Emily Owen and the other inmates and intimates of Judge Owen's pleasant house near the Harlem River.
Some days had elapsed after the conversation between Emily and Aunt Martha, bringing the time to the first of July and the commencement of that fire-cracker abomination that was to culminate on the Fourth in a general distraction. Some days had elapsed—as has already been noted; and judging by the person who sat nearest to Miss Emily Owen in the faintly-lighted parlor, at about half past eight in the evening, the Judge's praises of Col. Bancker and animadversions of Frank Wallace had not been without their effect on the young girl. Both the rival suitors were present, and so was Aunt Martha; but Frank Wallace made a somewhat dim and undefined picture as he sat near one of the front windows, apparently observing the boys deep in the mysteries of fire-crackers and torpedoes; while the Colonel was in altogether a better light as he sat near Emily and nearly under the half-lighted chandelier. Emily was indulging in the peculiarly American vice of rolling backward and forward in a rocking-chair; the Colonel had one leg over the other and was drumming with the opened blade of his penknife on the cover of the book he held in his hand; and Aunt Martha was ruining what eyes she had left, by some kind of crochet-work in cotton that may possibly have been a "tidy."
Frank and the Colonel had come in very nearly together, yet not together, about half an hour before. Some little conversation had ensued, but very little, for the rivals instinctively hated each other, and Wallace could not manage to string ten words in his rival's presence without throwing hits at him in a manner decidedly improper. Perhaps Emily had taken the Colonel's part a little, spite of her aversion to him; and the result was that Master Frank had fallen partially into the sulks and gone off to the end of the room—quite as far as he intended to go at that juncture, however.
The young man might be pardoned if he felt for the moment a little vexed. Though not forbidden the house of Judge Owen, and treated with cold politeness when he entered it (of course with one exception)—he knew very well that he was an object of dislike to the portly Judge, and he always endeavored so to time his visits that he might avoid that parental potentate. That afternoon he had accidentally seen the Judge (who had anticipated his summer vacation) step on board the Hudson River cars, with Mrs. Owen, for a day or two somewhere up the Hudson; and he had very naturally made his calculations upon a quiet evening with Emily. And now to find the Colonel dividing the opportunity with him—nay more, to find Emily even siding a little with the valorous Colonel!—it was too bad, was it not?
Perhaps the young lover would not have fallen into his partial sulks quite so easily, had he been aware that Col. Bancker had announced his intention of being at the house in the evening (as he had not), and that Emily had begged her aunt to come down from her room and sit with her in the parlor, on purpose to prevent the expected Colonel having an opportunity for one word with her in private. But these men are so unreasonable as well as so blind! There is no satisfying them, especially with the amount of attention shown them by a woman whom they happen to fancy that they love. Perhaps men do not grow actually jealous any more easily than women, but they grow "miffed" and "hurt" a thousand times easier—let the fact be recorded. There is one instance on legendary record, of a woman who divided her husband with another, at the time of the chivalrous adventures of the Crusaders; but the instance has not yet come to light of the man who so divided his wife. Mormonism at the present day shows the pitch even of fanatical tolerance to which the female mind can be wrought in this direction; while we have yet to look for the corresponding instance on the other side, in which the women of a community appropriate to themselves half a dozen or fifty husbands each, and the men consent to the division.
This difference goes much farther even than the regulation (can such a thing be regulated?) of jealousy. Where no jealousy exists, exclusiveness and the sense of propriety comes into the account—again on the male side of the calculation. Jones and his wife being both wall-flowers at any evening party, Mrs. Jones did not feel aggrieved, but rather proud, at Mrs. Thompson's re-union, that Jones went off for an hour to pay the usual flirting attention to the wives of half a dozen of his acquaintances; while Jones colored to the eyes and could scarcely be restrained from making a fool of himself, because Robinson sat down in the vacant chair beside his wife, and tried to be agreeable. And when the Emperor and Lady Flora were at Niagara last summer, it is not upon record that the lady made any objection to the gentleman lingering an hour too late upon Goat Island with that blonde-haired English girl who was such an unmistakeable flirt,—while the gentleman went on like a madman on the balcony of the Cataract, because Lady Flora ran away for half an hour in broad daylight, to Prospect Point, with an old friend of her father's, œlat fifty and incurably an invalid. Ah, well—so it has been from the days of the first flirtation (always except that of Adam and Eve, when there was neither male nor female rival in the neighborhood), and so it will be to the last—with those arrogant, unreasonable, unsatisfied "lords of the creation."
A word of description of the two rivals, as yet unintroduced, who on that occasion sunned themselves in the eyes of Emily Owen, though at such different distances from the luminary.
Lt. Colonel John Boadley Bancker (let him have his full name once more, for the honor of the service—be the same more or less!) was a rather tall and slight man, gentlemanly in appearance and action, but with an occasional dash of swagger that somehow did not indicate courage, and the undefinable impression of the "old beau." His face was well-formed, except that the nose was too large and too prominently aquiline. He had faultlessly black side-whiskers and hair correspondingly black—too black, Frank Wallace said—not to have been "doctored" by Batchelor or Cristadoro, at least. The dark eyes were a little faded, and there were crows-feet at the corners of the same eyes, for age has its own way of telling its story, and not all of us who wish to be young can alter the record in the old family Bible. In dress Colonel Bancker presented no variation from the other colonels of the volunteer service—wearing the full blue uniform, shoulder-straps and belts, with the number of his regiment wrought in gold on the front of a broad brimmed hat lying on a book-table near him. Not an ill-looking man by any manner of means, in spite of the violent antipathy for him which Miss Emily had managed to transmute out of her regard for Wallace.
"Age before beauty!" is a motto somewhat popular, so the Colonel has had the preference. Frank Wallace, proprietor of a small but thriving job-printing establishment before spoken of, and would-be proprietor of the heart and hand of Miss Emily Owen—was altogether a different style of man from the puissant Colonel. As he lounged at the window in his suit of loose-fitting gray Melton, he looked very young indeed and created rather the impression of a "little fellow." He probably fell at least three or four inches short of the romantic six feet, in reality; but was the owner of a fine erect and well-rounded gymnastic form, not a little improved by frequent visits to the Seventh Regiment Gymnasium. A jolly round face with very fair complexion, a merry blue eye, short, curly brown hair and a full moustache somewhat darker,—made up the ensemble of the particular person destined to be the torment of Judge Owen—and of others. For Frank Wallace, be it understood, had other penchants besides his attachment to pretty Emily—fun being the other and leading propensity. He was a capital mimic, an incorrigible banterer, and in any other company than that of the woman he loved, and her family, the merriest and most jocular soul alive. Sometimes when alone with her, and with the "spooniness" which will attach to male courtship before twenty-five, fairly shaken off, he could be a gay, dashing and even a presuming lover. Just now he was unamiable—not to say wicked, and ready for any use of his glib tongue which could send the blue coat out of the house at "double-quick."