Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, July 1847

by Various

This was the excitement he had longed for. He now felt that he had gained the open space he wanted, and his mother, flattered and delighted, spoke of him as one of the leaders of the party. There’s no telling the visions with which his brain now teemed; but as most dreamers, whether waking or sleeping, are the principal figures in their visions, so he himself always occupied the foreground in all his mental pictures. Meantime his nights were passed chiefly in clubs, and halls, and committee-rooms, where he condescended, in the hot conflict of political feeling, to companionship he would once have stood aloof from as from something quite contaminating. He made himself conspicuous at the next election, expecting to be taken up after that as one of the prominent men himself. But when the second term came round, Arthur saw his means well nigh exhausted, and he no nearer the goal than when he first started. His mortification and disappointment were extreme, when he found he had no chance for any nomination whatever, either for general, state, or even City Councils; for he would have been glad to run for any thing rather than not run at all. But they would not even take him up. In fact they found he was neither a useful nor a popular man. Talents and information of a commanding order may dispense with the minor morals of good manners; but Harrington’s conceit was not atoned for by any such qualifications; and arrogance that is not backed by decided talent and sound information meets with small favor from the community at large.

And so he had had a few years of excitement, and spent his little patrimony, and was now just where he had started—if that can be said of any man, when years have passed over his head bringing neither added reputation nor knowledge. He had lost time and gained nothing; and, moreover, as we have said, had spent the little independence left him by his father.

It was now necessary for him to do something, for though his mother could give him a home, her fortune was not sufficient for them both. There was his profession, which he hated. He could not go back and drudge for dollars and cents. Beside it was too late—others that had started with him had got before him. Those who had kept to the beaten well-worn path, while he had been hunting for a short-cut, had reached the goal before him. As for Ashhurst, he was not only doing a good business, but beginning to be known. His name was mentioned with respect, and he was often associated as junior counsel with the leaders of the bar.

There, too, was his pen. But sketchy articles and slight productions, which are kindly received as the efforts of a boy, elicit no applause when coming from a man of mature years. And Harrington had not risen with the public; he had been called a “youth of promise” when a lad, but his manhood had not kept pace with the promise. He had made no friends and some enemies in his state of political effervescence, when he had dealt round accusations and epithets that scarcely even electioneering excitement will excuse. So now what to do he knew not. He paused and looked around, discomfited and mortified. He complained loudly, of course, of the treatment that he had met with—for injustice, as we have seen, had pursued Arthur from a boy, and now he was growing bitter—a keen sense of ill-usage is sometimes a great comfort—and his mother listened to his out-pourings with the deepest sympathy; for Arthur’s ambition and conceit had been of her cultivation. She had planted the seed, and now the tree over-shadowed her. She was deeply chagrined by his failure in all he had undertaken, or rather, we should say, commenced; for, like him, she did not comprehend that there is no rail-road to fame. But still she did not give up. Matrimony, woman’s great resource, was left him. She had always wanted him to marry; and now an heiress seemed the readiest means of mending his broken fortunes. Harrington himself saw no other; and so he entered society again with other views beside amusement.

A new set of beaux and belles were occupying the places of those who had been prominent when he first came forward; those who had been the gayest of the dancers then, were now wives and mothers, and most of them withdrawn from such assemblies. The men looked to him like boys, and the “boys” returned the compliment, and called him an “old fellow.” The beauties were most of them penniless; and it so happened that the few girls of fortune in society just at that time, were any thing but beauties; and Harrington wanted to suit his taste as well as his necessities, and he hated to do any thing he did not like; and he detested an ugly woman. He had always been very dainty of his feelings, and he could now neither work nor marry, if it was not in exact accordance with his taste. And, altogether, society did not seem to him the same as it once had been. Somehow it had lost its zest and freshness. He did not know where the change was, but he felt there was a change that robbed it of all its charm.

The secret was, that he was no longer a person of consequence, and excited no sensation among the young belles he saw around him. His first glow of youth and beauty was gone; and he had acquired no reputation to stand him in its stead in youthful eyes. He had no fortune either, and mammas and daughters don’t court and flatter a ci-devant jeune homme, who is no match. Nor was he called agreeable. He was bitter, and cynical, and egotistical; and girls don’t want to talk to men who talk always of themselves, particularly when there is nothing in their attentions to flatter their vanity. Women expect either to be amused, or to have their feelings interested, or their pride gratified. Now Arthur Harrington did none of these things, and consequently he thought society a “bore,” and society was beginning to return the compliment.

There was but one person who at all interested him, not that he thought of her—for she had no fortune, and would not do—but still he admired her. Sybil Effingham he could not look at nor listen to, without partly forgetting himself. She was in truth a bright, spirited, beautiful creature, high-toned, with a look of sensibility and disinterestedness—a something to touch the imagination—altogether a being that made him sigh as he thought of his altered fortunes; and though he meant nothing, he could not help visiting at her father’s more frequently than he thought quite prudent. To his surprise he occasionally met Ashhurst there; and what surprised him more was the consideration with which he was received when he did come. But Ashhurst was now a marked man, distinguished for his age, and women always yield a ready homage to talent, and delight in honoring those whom the world honors. And, moreover, Ashhurst was a man to please, though Harrington could not comprehend it; and, indeed, few men understand the female taste in that respect. What is called a “lady’s man,” is not, as men suppose, the most agreeable to women. Those are not the men who excite enthusiastic and romantic attachments. A woman’s imagination must be roused before her heart is deeply touched; and it is only a man of superior mind and character that does that.

And Ashhurst’s was an earnest, vigorous spirit, and the beautiful Sybil felt her soul awaken in his presence, and she listened to his words of power and truth as she listened to no other man. But if Harrington was surprised and vexed to see the reputation and ascendancy Ashhurst was gaining, his feelings were as nothing to his mother’s on the subject. It was really amusing to see the tenacity with which she clung to early impressions, (and Mrs. Harrington was a woman who had great faith in her own “impressions.”) She had pronounced him then a “heavy boy,” and altogether thought him a very coarse piece of clay, compared to her son of delicate porcelain; and how he had stood the fire and heat, and come out so much truer tempered through the rough usage of the world, was a matter she did not comprehend or patiently acquiesce in.

But to return to Arthur. He found it would not do to spend his time dangling after Sybil Effingham; and, perhaps, the coolness with which she received his attentions helped to awaken him to their folly; and about this time, too, a really pretty, high-bred heiress made her appearance on the horizon of fashion, and set all the gay world in a commotion, and among the first and most assiduous of her admirers was Arthur Harrington. But the young lady, like most heiresses and beauties, knew her own claims quite as well as anybody, and expected as much for her money as Arthur could for his name and talents; and so, to his great wrath and amazement, he was coolly rejected.

Her fashion and beauty were now his misfortunes, as in making her prominent in society, they also made her suitors conspicuous, and consequently, Arthur’s rejection was immediately as well known to the public as if it had been published in the papers; and he who one heiress wont have, another is very apt to refuse, because he has already been rejected—and one or two offers settles him as a fortune-hunter, and then his business is done.