“Why, just in this way, my fine fellow. I told her Clawbonny was a farm, and not an estate, you know; that did a good deal, of itself. Then, I entered into an explanation of the consideration of farmers in this country, you know, and made it all as plain as A B C. She is a quick girl, is Emily, and takes a thing remarkably soon.”
“Did Miss Merton say anything to induce you to suppose she thought the less of me, for these explanations.”
“Of course not—she values you, amazingly—quite worships you, as a sailor—thinks you a sort of merchant-captain Nelson, or Blake, or Truxtun, and all that sort of thing. All young ladies, however, are exceedingly particular about professions, I suppose you know, Miles, as well as I do myself.”
“What, Lucy, Rupert?—Do you imagine Lucy cares a straw about my not being a lawyer, for instance?”
“Do I?—out of all question. Don't you remember how the girls wept—Grace as well as Lucy—when we went to sea, boy. It was all on account of the ungentility of the profession, if a fellow can use such a word.”
I did not believe this, for I knew Grace better, to say the least; and thought I understood Lucy sufficiently, at that time, to know she wept because she was sorry to see me go away. Still, Lucy had grown from a very young girl, since I sailed in the Crisis, into a young woman, and might view things differently, now, from what she had done three years before. I had not time, however, for further discussion at that moment, and I cut the matter short.
“Well, Rupert, what am I to expect?” I asked; “Clawbonny, or no Clawbonny?”
“Why, now you say the Mertons are to be of the party I suppose I shall have to go; it would be inhospitable else. I do wish, Miles, you would manage to establish visiting relations with some of the families on the other side of the river. There are plenty of respectable people within a few hours' sail of Clawbonny.”
“My father, and my grandfather, and my great-grand-father, managed, as you call it, to get along, for the last hundred years, well enough on the west side; and, although we are not quite as genteel as the east, we will do well enough. The Wallingford sails early in the morning, to save the tide; and I hope your lordship will turn out in season, and not keep us waiting. If you do, I shall be ungenteel enough to leave you behind.”
I left Rupert with a feeling in which disgust and anger were blended. I wish to be understood, more particularly as I know I am writing for a stiff-necked generation. I never was guilty of the weakness of decrying a thing because I did not happen to possess it myself. I knew my own place in the social scale perfectly; nor was I, as I have just said, in the least inclined to fancy that one man was as good as another. I knew very well that this was not true, either in nature or in the social relations; in political axioms, any more than in political truths. At the same time, I did not believe nature had created men unequal, in the order of primogeniture from male to male. Keeping in view all the facts, I was perfectly disposed to admit that habits, education, association, and sometimes chance and caprice, drew distinctions that produced great benefits, as a whole; in some small degree qualified, perhaps, by cases of individual injustice. This last exception, however, being applicable to all things human, it had no influence on my opinions, which were sound and healthful on all these points; practical, common-sense-like, and in conformity with the decisions of the world from the time of Moses down to our own, or, I dare say, of Adam himself, if the truth could be known; and, as I have said more than once in these rambling memoir's, I was not disposed to take a false view of my own social position. I belonged, at most, to the class of small proprietors, as they existed in the last century, and filled a very useful and respectable niche between the yeoman and gentleman, considering the last strictly in reference to the upper class of that day. Now, it struck me that Emily Merton, with her English notions, might very well draw the distinctions Rupert had mentioned; nor am I conscious of having cared much about it, though she did. If I were a less important person on terra firma, with all the usages and notions of ordinary society producing their influence, than I had been when in command of the Crisis, in the centre of the Pacific, so was Miss Merton a less important young lady, in the midst of the beauty of New York, than she had been in the isolation of Marble Land. This I could feel very distinctly. But Lucy's supposed defection did more than annoy me. I felt humbled, mortified, grieved. I had always known that Lucy was better connected than I was myself, and I had ever given Rupert and her the benefit of this advantage, as some offset to my own and Grace's larger means; but it had never struck me that either the brother or sister would be disposed to look down upon us in consequence. The world is everywhere—and America, on account of its social vicissitudes, more than most other countries—constantly exhibiting pictures of the struggles between fallen consequence and rising wealth. The last may, and does have the best of it, in the mere physical part of the strife; but in the more moral, if such a word can be used, the quiet ascendency of better manners and ancient recollections is very apt to overshadow the fussy pretensions of the vulgar aspirant, who places his claims altogether on the all-mighty dollar. It is vain to deny it; men ever have done it, and probably ever will defer to the past, in matters of this sort—it being much with us, in this particular, as it is with our own lives, which have had all their greatest enjoyments in bygone days. I knew all this—felt all this—and was greatly afraid that Lucy, through Mrs. Bradfort's influence, and her town associations, might have learned to regard me as Captain Wallingford, of the merchant-service, and the son of another Captain Wallingford of the same line in life. I determined, therefore, to watch her with jealous attention, during the few days I was to remain at Clawbonny. With such generous intentions, the reader is not to be surprised if I found some of that for which I so earnestly sought—people being very apt to find precisely the thing for which they look, when it is not lost money.