Mr. Bryant and Mr. Gregory, who shared the box-seat, would doubtless have been in the forefront of the fashion about the same period. Their broad backs, their box-cloth, the shape and texture of their hats and the angle at which they wore them unmistakably belonged to a very early period of the world’s history. No, they did not wear side whiskers. We don’t know why. Perhaps it was that side whiskers were either a little in front or a little behind the mode in 1841. But it is enough that Mr. Bryant and Mr. Gregory did not wear them. And had they worn them, had the present biographer had reason for one single moment to suspect that Messrs. Bryant and Gregory had been in possession of these appendages, he would have given up this history. Really the line has to be drawn somewhere.
The progress along Bond Street was at the rate of two miles an hour. The horses, Castor and Pollux by name, were very fat and very somnolent, the yellow chariot was very unwieldy, and in the language of Constable X, who touched his helmet at the corner of Hanover Square, “it took up a deal o’ room.” None the less the progress of the vehicle was almost royal.
The old lady sat very upright in the center of the best seat, which she had all to herself. With a nose of the Wellington pattern and a chin to match, displayed under a canopy of feathers, she looked more like a macaw than ever. Miss Burden, in charge of Ponto and a pair of folders with a tortoiseshell handle, was seated opposite at a more modest elevation.
Every member of the male sex whom this redoubtable veteran chanced to meet, who had the good fortune to wear his clothes with a sufficient air of distinction, received a bow from her; and in return she was the recipient of some highly elaborate and wholly inimitable courtesies. With these she ranked as “an agreeable old woman.”
With the members of the other sex, which socially the more critical, who seated in their barouches, their victorias, their broughams, and their motors, who inclined their own distinguished heads from under their own barbaric canopies, yet with no vain strivings in the direction of effusiveness, she was greeted with a half-veiled hostility of the eyelids, and a whispered, “There goes that old cat.”
We offer no opinion on the justice or the taste of the remark. We claim no learning in feminology. Why these ladies, each of whom vied with the other in the propagation of good works, each of whom was an honored patroness of more than one institution for the amelioration of the human race, should apply such a figure of speech to one who was old and venerable it is not for us to conjecture.
Did they refer to the quantity of feathers she was wearing upon her helmet? If so, since April 1, 183-, she had caused many a beautiful and harmless bird to be destroyed. But then they themselves were wearing similar great canopies of feathers. Did they refer to her features? We think not, for although her nose was shaped like a talon of a bird of prey, they were not conspicuously feline. Perhaps it was that they referred to her personal character. At any rate they are known to be high authorities upon such a matter as the human character, and as a rule are very searching in their judgments. Certainly the old lady proceeding along Bond Street in her yellow chariot at the rate of two miles an hour had done a fair amount of mischief in her time; and if health and strength continued to be vouchsafed to her by an All-wise Creator, before she died she hoped to do a good deal more.
In her own little corner of her own little parish no old lady was more respected. Where she was not respected she was feared, and where she was neither respected nor feared she was very heartily hated. Of one thing we are sure. There was not a living creature who loved her, unless it was Ponto, who being a creature without a soul was denied the consolations of religion.
We don’t believe for a moment that Miss Burden loved her. She had caused her faithful gentlewoman, who in the space of twenty years had given all she had had of youth, beauty, and gayety in return for board and residence and forty pounds per annum, paid quarterly, to weep too many tears in the privacy of her chamber for such a sacred emotion as love to requite her persecutor. Yet it is far from our intention to dogmatize upon the female heart. If we do we are sure to be wrong. That complex and wonderful mechanism has defeated us too often. Therefore it is possible that Miss Burden hugged her chains to her bosom and lavished the poetry pent up in her soul upon the hand that chastened her. We say it is possible, but we protest that it is hardly likely. Yet do not let us express a positive opinion upon the emotional apparatus of even Miss Burden, who, whatever else she might be, was a woman and a gentlewoman and the thirteenth daughter of a rural dean.
It is really no use trying to hide the fact that the old lady in the yellow chariot had in the course of her seventy-three summers wrought a great deal of misery and unhappiness among her fellow-creatures. Nobody’s reputation was safe in her keeping. She never said a kind word of anybody if she could possibly help it; and although she may have done good by stealth she very seldom did it in the light of day. Yet there can be little doubt that Ponto loved her in his dumb way, and there is every reason to believe that Mr. Marchbanks respected her immensely.