A Frenchman, who has conceived designs against a married lady, only seeks to throw dust in the husband's eyes, and then if he cannot succeed in his final object, at least to establish sufficient intimacy to give him a plausible pretext for saying that he has succeeded; for in such a matter he is not scrupulous about lying a little—or a great deal. An American, bad enough for a similar intention (which usually presupposes a considerable amount of Parisianization), acts as much like a Frenchman—if anything, rather worse. An Englishman is not usually moved to the desire of an intrigue by vanity, but driven into it by sheer passion, and his first impulse is to run bodily off with the object of his misplaced affection; to take her and himself out of the country, as if he could thereby travel out of his moral responsibilities. Reader, did you ever notice, or having noticed, did you ever ponder upon the geographical distribution of morals and propriety which is so marked and almost peculiar a feature of the Anglo-Saxon mind? In certain outward looks and habits, the English may be unchangeable and unmistakeable all over the globe; but their ethical code is certainly not the same at home and abroad. It is pretty much so with an American, too, before he has become irreparably Parisianized. When he puts on his travelling habits, he takes off his puritan habits, and makes light of doing things abroad which he would be the first to anathematize at home. Observe, we are not speaking of the deeply religious, nor yet of the openly profligate class in either country, but of the general run of respectable men who travel; they regard a great part of their morality and their manners as intended solely for home consumption; while a Frenchman or a German, if his home standard is not so high, lives better up to it abroad. And yet many Englishmen, and some Americans, wonder why their countrymen are so unpopular as foreign travellers!
Ashburner, then, wanted to run away with Mrs. Harrison. How he could have supported her never entered into his thoughts, nor did he consider what the effect would be on his own prospects. He did not reflect, either, how miserably selfish it was in him, after all, to expect that this woman would give up her fortune and position, her children, her unbounded legitimate domination over her husband, for his boyish passion, and how infinitesimally small the probability that she would do so crazy a thing. Nor did Harrison ever arise before his mind as a present obstacle or future danger; and this was less frantic than most of his overlookings. The broker was a strong and courageous man, and probably had been once very much in love with his wife; but at that time, so far from putting a straw in the way of any man who wanted to relieve him of her, he would probably have been willing to pay his expenses into the bargain.
But how to declare his passion—that was the question. He saw that the initiatory steps, and very decided ones, must be taken on his part; and it was not easy to find the lady alone ten minutes together. People lived at Newport as if they were in the open air, and the volunteer police of ordinary gossip made private interviews between well-known people a matter of extreme difficulty. A Frenchman similarly placed would have brought the affair to a crisis much sooner: he would have found a thousand ways of disclosing his feelings, and at the same time dexterously leaving himself a loop-hole of escape. Very clever at these things are the Gauls; they will make an avowal in full ball-room, under cover of the music, if there is no other chance to be had. But tact in love affairs is not a characteristic of the Englishman, especially at Ashburner's age. He had none of this mischievous dexterity; perhaps it is just as well when a man has not, both for himself and for society. He thought of writing, and actually began many letters or notes, or billet-doux, or whatever they might be called; but they always seemed so absurd (as truly they were), that he invariably tore them up when half-finished. He thought of serving up his flame in verse (for about this time the unhappy youth wrote many verses, which on his return to sanity he very wisely made away with); but his emotion lay too deep for verse, and his performances seemed even to himself too ridiculous for him to dream of presenting them. Still he must make a beginning somehow; he could not ask her to run away with him apropos of nothing.
One of his great anxieties, you may be sure, was to find out if any other man stood in his way, and who that man might be. His first impulses were to be indiscriminately jealous of every man he saw talking or walking with her; but on studying out alone the result of his observations, he could not discover that she affected any one man more than another. For this was one of her happy arts, that she made herself attractive to all without showing a marked preference for any one. White, who among his other accomplishments had a knack of quoting the standard poets, compared her to Pope's Belinda—saying, that her lively looks disclosed a sprightly mind, and that she extended smiles to all, and favors to none. So that Ashburner's jealousy could find no fixed object to light on. At one time he had been terribly afraid of Le Roi, chiefly from having heard the lady praise him for his accomplishments and agreeable manners. But once he heard Sedley say, that Mrs. Harrison had been worrying Le Roi half out of his wits, and quite out of his temper.
"How so?"
"Oh, she was praising you, and saying how much she liked the English character, and how true and honest your countrymen were—so much more to be depended on than the French—and more manly, too; and altogether she worked him up into such a rage against ces insulaires, that he went off ready to swear."
And then Ashburner suspected what he afterwards became certain of—that this was only one of the pleasant little ways the woman had of amusing herself. Whenever she found two men who were enemies, or rivals, or antagonists in any way, she would praise each to the other, on purpose to aggravate them: and very successful she was in her purpose; for she had the greatest appearance of sincerity, and whatever she said seemed to come right out of her heart. But if any lingering fears of Le Roi still haunted the Englishman's mind, they were dispelled by his departure along with the main body of the exclusives. Though always proud to be seen in the company of a conspicuous character like Mrs. Harrison, the Vicomte more particularly cultivated the fashionables proper, and gladly embraced the opportunity of following, in the train of the Robinsons.
Perhaps, after all, Ashburner would have preferred being able to concentrate his suspicions upon one definite person, to feeling a vague distrust of somebody he knew not whom, especially as the presence of a rival might have brought the affair to a crisis sooner. To a crisis it was approaching, nevertheless, for his passion now began to tell on him. He looked pale, and grew nervous and weak—lay awake at nights, which he had never done before, except when going in for the Tripos at Cambridge—and was positively off his feed, which he had never been at any previous period of his life. He thought of tearing himself away from the place—the wisest course, doubtless; but, just as he had made up his mind to go by the next stage, Mrs. Harrison, as if she divined what he was about, would upset all his plans by a few words, or a look or smile—some little expression which meant nothing, and could never be used against her; but which, by a man in his state, might be interpreted to mean a great deal.
One morning the crisis came—not that there was any particular reason for it then more than at any other time, only he could hold out no longer. It was a beautiful day, and they had been strolling in one of the few endurable walks the place afforded—a winding alley near the hotel, but shrouded in trees, and it was just at the time when most of the inhabitants were at ten-pins, so that they were tolerably alone. Now, if ever, was the time; but the more he tried to introduce the subject, the less possible he found it to make a beginning, and all the while he could not avoid a dim suspicion that Mrs. Harrison knew perfectly well what he was trying to drive at, and took a mischievous pleasure in saying nothing to help him along. So they talked about his travels and hers, and great people in England and France, and all sorts of people then at Oldport, and the weather even—all manner of ordinary topics; and then they walked some time without saying anything, and then they went back to the hotel. There he felt as if his last chance was slipping away from him, and in a sudden fit of desperate courage he followed her up to her parlor without waiting for an invitation. Hardly was the door closed—he would have given the world to have locked it—when he begged her to listen to him a few minutes on a subject of the greatest importance. The lady opened her large round eyes a little wider; it was the only sign she gave of any thing approaching to surprise. Then the young man unbosomed himself just as he stood there—not upon his knees; people used to do that—in books, at least—but nobody does now. He told her how long he had been in love with her—how he thought of her all day and all night, and how wretched he was—how he had tried to subdue his passion, knowing it was very wrong, and so forth; but really he couldn't help it, and—and—there he stuck fast; for all the time he had been making this incoherent avowal, like one in a dream, hardly knowing what he was about, but conscious only of taking a decisive step, and doing a very serious thing in a very wild way—all this time, nevertheless, he had most closely watched Mrs. Harrison, to anticipate his sentence in some look or gesture of hers. And he saw that there did not move a line in her face, or a muscle in her whole figure—not a fibre of her dress even stirred. If she had been a great block of white marble, she could not have shown less feeling, as she stood up there right opposite him. If he had asked her to choose a waistcoat pattern for him, she could not have heard him more quietly. As soon as he had fairly paused, so that she could speak without immediate interruption, she took up the reply. It was better that he should go no further, as she had already understood quite enough. She was very sorry to give him pain—it was always unpleasant to give pain to any one. She was also very sorry that he had so deceived himself, and so misapprehended her character, or misunderstood her conversation. He was very young yet, and had sense enough to get over this very soon. Of course, she would never hear any repetition of such language from him; and, on her part, she would never mention what had occurred to any one—especially not to Mr. Harrison (it was the first time he had ever heard her allude to the existence of that gentleman); and then she wound up with a look which said as plainly as the words could have done, "Now, you may go."
Ashburner moved off in a more than usual state of confusion. As he approached the door it opened suddenly, and he nearly walked over one of the little Bleeckers, a flourishing specimen of Young New-York, with about three yards of green satin round his throat, and both his hands full of French novels, which he had been commissioned to bring from the circulating library. Ashburner felt like choking him, and it was only by a great effort that he contrived to pass him with a barely civil species of nod. But as he went out, he could not refrain from casting one glance back at Mrs. Harrison. She had taken off her bonnet (which in America is denominated a hat), and was tranquilly arranging her hair at the glass.