"Very pleasant it must be to a lady," said Ashburner, "that a man should be at the same time wearying her to death with his company, and perilling her reputation out of doors by his language."
"By Jove, it's dinner time!" exclaimed Benson, pulling out a microscopic Geneva watch. "I thought the clock of my inner man said as much." And back they hurried through the woods to the Glen House, but were as late for the dinner as they had been for the dance. Harrison and Benson found seats at the lower end of the table, where they established themselves together and began, à propos of Edwards's misadventure, to talk horse, either because they had exhausted all other subjects, or because they did not think the company worthy a better one. Mrs. Benson beckoned Ashburner up to a place by her, but, somehow, he found himself opposite Mrs. Harrison's eyes, and though he could not remember any thing she said ten minutes after, her conversation, or looks, or both, had the effect of transferring to her all the interest he was beginning to feel for her husband—of whom, by the way, she took no more notice than if he had not belonged to her.
"Poor Harrison!" said Benson, as he and Ashburner were walking their horses leisurely homeward that evening (they both had too much sense to ride fast after dinner), "he is twice thrown away! He might have been a literary gentleman and a lover of art, living quietly on a respectable fortune; but his father would make him go into business. He might be a model family man, and at the same time a very entertaining member of society; but his wife has snubbed and suppressed him for her own exaltation. If, instead of treating him thus, she would only show him a little gratitude as the source of all her luxury and magnificence, her dresses and her jewelry, her carriage and horses (what a pair of iron-grays she does drive!), and all her other splendors—if she would only be proud of him as the great broker—not to speak of his varied knowledge, of which she might also well be proud—if she would take some little pains to interest herself in his pleasures and to bring him forward in society—how easily she could correct and soften his little uncouthnesses of person and dress, if she would take the trouble! Why should she be ashamed of him? He is older than she—how much? ten years perhaps, or twelve at most. He is not a beauty; but in a man, I should say, mind, comes before good looks; and how infinitely superior he is in mind and soul to any of the frivolous little beaux, native or foreign, whom she delights to draw about her!"
"I fear I shall never be able to regard Mr. Harrison with as much respect as you do. It may be ignorance, but I never could see much difference between a speculator in stocks and a gambler."
"When a man is in his predicament domestically there are three things, to one, two, or all of which he is pretty sure to take—drink, gambling, and horses. Harrison is too purely intellectual a man to be led away by the vulgar animal temptation of liquor, though he has a good cellar, and sometimes consoles himself with a snug bachelor dinner. Stock-jobbing is, as you say, only another sort of gambling, and this is his vice: at the same time you will consider that it is his business, to which he was brought up. Then, for absolute relaxation, he has his 'fast crab.' Put him behind his 2' 45" stepper and he is happy for an hour or two, and forgets his miseries—that is to say, his wife."
"But you talk as if his marriage was the cause of his speculations, whereas you told me the other day that his speculations were the indirect cause of his marriage."
"You are right: I believe the beginning of that bad habit must be set down to his father's account; but the continuance of it is still chargeable on his wife. I have heard him say myself that he would have retired from business long ago but for Mrs. Harrison—that is to say, he had to go on making money to supply her extravagance."
One fine morning there was a great bustle and flurry; moving of trunks, and paying of bills, and preparations for departure. The fashionables were fairly starved out, and had gone off in a body. The brilliant equipages of Ludlow and Löwenberg, the superfine millinery of the Robinsons, the song and story of the Vicomte, the indefatigable revolutions of Edwards, were all henceforth to be lost to the sojourners at Oldport. Mr. Grabster heeded not this practical protest against the error of his ways. He had no difficulty in filling the vacant rooms, for a crowd of people from all parts of the Union constantly thronged Oldport, attracted by its reputation for coolness and salubrity; and he rather preferred people from the West and South, as they knew less about civilized life, and were more easily imposed upon. To be sure, even they would find out in time the deficiencies of his establishment, and report them at home; but meanwhile he hoped to fill his pockets for two or three seasons under cover of The Sewer's puffs, and then, when business fell off, to impose on his landlord with some plausible story, and obtain a lowering of his rent.
Some few—a very few—of "our set" were left. Our friend Harry stayed, because the air of the place agreed remarkably with the infant hope of the Bensons; and a few of the beaux remained—among them Sumner, White, and Sedley—either out of friendship for Benson, or retained by the attractions of Mrs. Benson, or those of Mrs. Harrison; for the lionne stayed of course, it being her line to do just whatever the exclusives did not do. But though Benson remained, he was not disposed to suffer in silence. All this while The Sewer had been filled with letters lauding every thing about the Bath Hotel; and communications equally disinterested, and couched in the same tone, had found their way into some more respectable prints. Benson undertook the thankless task of undeceiving the public. He sat down one evening and wrote off a spicy epistle to The Blunder and Bluster, setting forth how things really were at Oldport. Two days after, when the New-York mail arrived, great was the wrath of Mr. Grabster. He called into council the old gentleman with the melodious daughter, The Sewer reporters, and some other boarders who were in his confidence; and made magnificent, but rather vague promises, of what he would do for the man who should discover the daring individual who had thus bearded him in his very den; simultaneously he wrote to The Blunder and Bluster, demanding the name of the offender. With most American editors such a demand (especially if followed up with a good dinner or skilfully-applied tip to the reporter or correspondent) would have been perfectly successful. But he of The Blunder and Bluster was a much higher style of man. As Benson once said of him, he had, in his capacity of the first political journalist in the country, associated so much with gentlemen, that he had learned to be something of a gentleman himself. Accordingly he replied to Mr. Grabster, in a note more curt than courteous, that it was impossible to comply with his request. So the indignant host was obliged to content himself for the time with ordering The Sewer to abuse the incognito. Before many days, however, he obtained the desired information through another source, in this wise.
Oldport had its newspaper, of course. Every American village of more than ten houses has its newspaper. Mr. Cranberry Fuster, who presided over the destinies of The Oldport Daily Twaddler, added to this honorable and amiable occupation the equally honorable and amiable one of village attorney. Though his paper was in every sense a small one, he felt and talked as big as if it had been The Times, or The Moniteur, or The Blunder and Bluster. He held the President of the United States as something almost beneath his notice, and was in the habit of lecturing the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and other foreign powers, in true Little Pedlington style. Emboldened by the impunity which attended these assaults, he undertook to try his hand on matters nearer home, and boldly essayed one season to write down the polka and redowa as indecent and immoral. But here he found, as Alexander, Napoleon, and other great men, had done before him, that there is a limit to all human power. He might better have tried to write off the roof of the Bath Hotel, which was rather a fragile piece of work, and might have been carried away by much less wind than usually served to distend the columns of The Twaddler. The doughty Tom Edwards snapped his heels, so to speak, in the face of the mighty editor, and the exclusives continued to polk more frantically than ever in the teeth of his direst fulminations. One practical effect, however, these home diatribes had, which his luminous sallies on foreign affairs altogether failed to effect—they put money into his pocket. The next thing Americans like to hearing themselves well praised, is to hear somebody, even if it be themselves, well abused; and accordingly, on the mornings when Mr. Fuster let out an anti-polka article, the usually small circulation of his small sheet was multiplied by a very large factor—almost every stranger bought a copy, the million to see the abuse of the fashionables, the fashionables to see the abuse of themselves.