The southern literary messenger, Vol. II., No. 7, June, 1836

“Je le servirais mieux, si je l'eusse aimé moins.”

The first thing to disturb the kind of quiet that Julia enjoyed, was the prospect of another party. One morning, while at the breakfast table, a card was brought in from Mr. and Mrs. Parker, who were to be “at home” on Friday evening. After looking at the card, Julia handed it to Mr. Westbury in silence.

“It will be proper that we accept the invitation,” said Mr. Westbury.

The remembrance of the agony she endured at the last party she attended, caused Julia's voice to tremble a little, as she said—

“Just as you think best—but for my own part, I should seldom attend a party for the sake of enjoyment.”

“If Mrs. Westbury thinks it proper to immure herself as if in a convent, she can,” said Mr. Westbury; “for myself, I feel that society has claims upon me that I wish to discharge.”

“I will go if you think there would be any impropriety in my staying away,” said Julia.

“Situated as you are, I think there would,” said Mr. Westbury.

“Situated as I am!” thought Julia; “what does he mean? Does he refer to my station in society? or does he fear that the world will think me an unhappy wife, that wishes to seclude herself from observation?”

In the course of the morning, Julia called on Mrs. Cunningham, and found that lady and her husband discussing the point, whether or not they should attend Mrs. Parker's party.

“Are you going, Mrs. Westbury?” asked Mrs. Cunningham.

“Yes—Mr. Westbury thinks we had better do so,” Julia replied.

“Hear that, Edward!” said Mrs. Cunningham. “You perceive that Mr. Westbury likes that his wife should enjoy the pleasures of society.”

{418} Mr. Cunningham looked a little hurt, as he said—“my dear Lucy, am I not _more than willing_ to indulge you in every thing that will add to your happiness? I have only been trying to convince you how much more comfortable we should be by our own fireside, than in such a crowd as must be encountered at Mrs. Parker's. For myself, the society of my wife is my highest enjoyment, and of her conversation I never grow weary.”

“Thank you for the compliment, dear,” said Mrs. Cunningham—“and we will settle the question at another time.”

One of the first persons Julia distinguished amid the company, as she entered Mrs. Parker's drawing-room, was Mrs. Cunningham, who gave her a nod, and an exulting smile, as much as to say—“you see I have carried the day!” Julia had endeavored to arm herself for this evening's trial, should Miss Eldon make one of the company; and accordingly she was not surprised, and not much moved, when she saw her husband conversing with that young lady. She was too delicate in feeling, too refined in manner, to watch them, even long enough to catch the expression of Mr. Westbury's face; but resolutely turning her eyes another way, she endeavored to enter into conversation with the persons near her.

Mr. Westbury had not been in Mrs. Parker's drawing-room half an hour, ere Miss Eldon contrived to place herself in such a situation as to render it impossible for him to avoid addressing her; and this point once gained, to escape from her was impracticable. A strong sense of honor alone led him to wish to escape, as to be near her was to him the most exquisite happiness; but the greater the delight, the more imminent the danger; of this he was sensible, and it was not without some resistance that he yielded to her fascination. Could she once secure his attention, Miss Eldon well knew how to get at his heart; and at those moments when she was sure that no ear heard, and no eye observed her but his own, she let an occasional touch of the _penserosa_ mingle so naturally with her half subdued sprightliness, as to awaken, in all their original strength, those feelings, and those regrets, he was striving to subdue. For the time he forgot every thing but that they mutually loved, and were mutually unhappy. They had been standing together a considerable length of time when they were joined by Mr. Cunningham, who abruptly remarked—

“You don't enjoy yourself this evening, Westbury.”

“What makes you think so?” Mr. Westbury inquired.

“You look worn out, just as I feel,” answered Mr. Cunningham. “How strange it is,” he added, “that married men will ever suffer themselves to be drawn into such crowds!”

“Why not married men, as well as bachelors?” asked Miss Eldon.

“Because they relinquish real happiness and comfort, for a fatiguing pleasure—if pleasure it can be called,” answered Cunningham. “One's own hearth and one's own wife, is the place, and the society, for unalloyed enjoyment. Am I not right, Westbury?”

Miss Eldon turned her eyes on Mr. Westbury, as she waited to hear his answer, and an expression, compounded of curiosity, contempt, and satisfaction, met his eye. It was the first time he had ever remarked an unlovely, an unamiable expression on her countenance. He calmly replied to Mr. Cunningham—

“Unquestionably the pleasures of domestic life are the most pure, the most rational, that can be enjoyed.”

“O, it is strange,” said Mr. Cunningham, “that any one can willingly exchange them for crowded rooms, and pestilential vapors, such as we are now inhaling! There is nothing to be gained in such a company as this. Take any dozen, or half dozen of them by themselves, and you might stand some chance to be entertained and instructed; but bring them all together, and each one seems to think it a _duty_ to give himself up to frivolity and nonsense. I doubt whether there have been a hundred sensible words uttered here to-night, except by yonder circle, of which Mrs. Westbury seems to be the centre. There seems to be something like rational conversation _there_.”

Mr. Westbury turned his eyes, and saw that Julia was surrounded by the _elite_ of the party—who all seemed to be listening with pleased attention to a conversation that was evidently carried on between herself and Mr. Eveleth, a gentleman who was universally acknowledged as one of the first in rank and talent in the city. For a minute Mr. Westbury suffered his eyes to rest on Julia. Her cheek was suffused with the beautiful carmine tint of modesty, and her eyes were beaming with intellectual light—while over her features was spread a slight shade of care, as if the heart were not perfectly at ease. “She certainly looks very well,” was Mr. Westbury's thought; and his feeling was one of gratified pride, that she who was inevitably his wife, did not find her proper level amongst the light, the vain, and the frivolous.

* * * * *

“You have been delightfully attentive to your wife, this evening, my dear,” said Mrs. Cunningham to her husband, as soon as they were seated in their carriage on their way home.

“I am not sensible of having neglected you, Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham.

“No—I suppose not; nor of having been very attentive to another!”

“I certainly am not. To whom do you allude?”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Cunningham, “that Mr. Westbury is equally unconscious of having had his attention engrossed by any particular individual.”

“You surely cannot mean that I was particularly attentive to Miss Eldon, Lucy?”

“O, how could I mean so?” said Mrs. Cunningham, with a kind of laugh that expressed any thing rather than pleasure, or good humor. “I really wonder how you came to recollect having seen such a person as Miss Eldon to-night!”

“Your remark concerning Westbury brought her to my mind,” said Mr. Cunningham.

“How strange!” said his wife, “And how extreme that young lady's mortification must have been, that she could not detain two newly married gentlemen near her for more than an hour and a half at one time! Seriously, Mr. Cunningham, the company must have thought that you and Westbury were striving which should do her most homage.”

“And seriously, my dear Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham, taking the hand of his wife, which she reluctantly permitted him to detain—“seriously, it was merely {419} accidental that I spoke to Miss Eldon this evening. There is not a person on earth to whose society and conversation I am more completely indifferent—so, take no offence, love, where none was meant. There is no one whose conversation can compensate me for the loss of yours; and it is one reason why I so much dislike these crowds, that, for a time, they necessarily separate us from each other.”

* * * * *

The following morning, Mrs. Cunningham called on Mrs. Westbury, who, at the moment of her arrival happened to be in her chamber—but she instantly descended to receive her visitor. When Mrs. Westbury left the parlor a short time previous, her husband was there; but he had disappeared, and she supposed he had gone out. He was, however, in the library, which adjoined the parlor, and the door between the two rooms was not quite closed. After the compliments of the morning, Mrs. Westbury remarked—

“I was somewhat surprised to see you at Mrs. Parker's last evening.”

“Surprised! why so?”

“You recollect the conversation that took place on the subject, the morning I was at your house?”

“O, yes—I remember that Mr. Cunningham was giving a kind of dissertation on the superior pleasures of one's own chimney-corner. Really, I wish he did not love home quite so well—though I don't despair of teaching him, by and by, to love society.”

“Can it be possible that you really regret your husband's attachment to home?” asked Mrs. Westbury.

“Yes, certainly—when it interferes with my going out. A man and his wife may surely enjoy enough of each other's society, and yet see something of the world. At any rate, I shall teach Ned, that I am not to be made a recluse for any man!”

“Have you no fears, my dear Mrs. Cunningham,” said Mrs. Westbury, “that your want of conformity to your husband's taste, will lessen your influence over him?”

“And of what use is this influence,” asked Mrs. Cunningham, “unless it be exerted to obtain the enjoyments I love?”

“O, pray beware,” said Mrs. Westbury, with much feeling,—“beware lest you sacrifice your happiness for a chimera! Beware how you trifle with so invaluable a treasure as the heart of a husband!”

“Pho—pho—how serious you are growing,” said Mrs. Cunningham. “Actually warning and exhorting at twenty years of age! What a preacher you will be, by the time you are forty! But now be honest, and confess that you, yourself, would prefer a ball or a party, to sitting alone here through a stupid evening with Westbury.”

“Then to speak truth,” said Julia, “I should prefer an evening at home to all the parties in the world—balls I never attend, and do not think stupidity necessary, even with no other companion than one's own husband.”

“Then why do you attend parties if you do not like them?”

“Because Mr. Westbury thinks it proper that I should.”

“And so you go to him, like miss to her papa and mamma to ask him what you must do?” said Mrs. Cunningham, laughing. “This is delightful, truly! But for my part, I cannot see why I have not as good a right to expect Edward to conform to my taste and wishes, as he has to expect me to conform to his. And so Westbury makes you go, whether you like to or not?”

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Westbury. “I never expressed to him my aversion to going, not wishing him to feel as if I were making a great sacrifice, in complying with his wishes.”

“Well, that is pretty, and dutiful, and delicate,” said Mrs. Cunningham, laughing again. “But I don't set up for a _pattern_ wife, and if Edward and I get along as well as people in general, I shall be satisfied. But to turn to something else. How do you like Miss Eldon?”

“I am not at all acquainted with her,” said Julia.

“You have met her several times,” said Mrs. Cunningham.

“Yes, but have never conversed with her. Her appearance is greatly in her favor; I think her very beautiful.”

“She is called so,” said Mrs. Cunningham; “but some how I don't like her looks. To tell the plain truth, I can't endure her, she is so vain, and artful, and self-complacent.”

“I have not the least acquaintance with her,” repeated Julia; “but it were a pity so lovely a face should not be accompanied by an amiable heart. Are _you_ much acquainted with her?”

“Not personally. Indeed I never conversed with her for ten minutes in my life.”

“Then you may be mistaken in thinking her vain and artful,” said Mrs. Westbury.

“O, I've seen enough to satisfy me fully as to that point,” said Mrs. Cunningham. “When a young lady exerts herself to engross the attention of newly married men, and when she looks so self-satisfied at success, I want nothing more. She can have no delicacy of feeling—she must be a coquette of the worst kind.”

It was now Mrs. Westbury's turn to change the subject of conversation, and simply remarking—“that we should be extremely careful how we judge of character hastily”—she asked some question that drove Miss Eldon from Mrs. Cunningham's mind. Soon after the visitor departed, and Julia returned to her chamber.

* * * * *

In the evening when Mr. Westbury came in, he found Julia reading, but she immediately laid down her book, and resumed her work. She thought it quite as impolite to pursue the solitary pleasure of reading while her husband was sitting by, as to have done so with any other companion; and she knew no reason why he was not as much entitled to civility as a stranger, or common acquaintance. It was not long before Mr. Westbury inquired “what book had engaged her attention.” It was Dr. Russel's Palestine.

“It is a delightful work,” said Julia. “I have just read an extract from Chateaubriand, that I think one of the most elegant passages I ever met with.”

“I should like to hear it,” said Mr. Westbury. Julia opened her book, and the passage lost none of its beauty by her reading. She read the following:—

“When you travel in Judea the heart is at first filled with profound melancholy. But when, passing from solitude to solitude, boundless space opens before you, this feeling wears off by degrees, and you experience a {420} secret awe, which, so far from depressing the soul, imparts life, and elevates the genius. Extraordinary appearances everywhere proclaim a land teeming with miracles. The burning sun, the towering eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all the pictures of Scripture are here. Every name commemorates a mystery, every grotto announces a prediction, every hill re-echoes the accents of a prophet. God himself has spoken in these regions, dried up rivers, rent the rocks, and opened the grave. The desert still appears mute with terror, and you would imagine that it had never presumed to interrupt the silence, since it heard the awful voice of the Eternal.”

Julia closed the volume, and Mr. Westbury, after bestowing just praise on the extract she had read, took up the work, and proposed to read to her if she would like it. She thanked him, and an hour was very pleasantly spent in this manner. A little time was occupied in remarking on what had been read, when, after a short silence, Mr. Westbury inquired of Julia, “whether she saw much of Mrs. Cunningham.”

“Not a great deal,” was Julia's answer.

“She was here this morning?” said Mr. Westbury. “She was,” replied Julia.

“Do you intend to be intimate with her?” inquired Mr. Westbury.

“I have no intention about it;” said Julia—“but presume I never shall, as I fear our views and tastes will prove very discordant.”

“I am happy to hear you say so,” said Mr. Westbury. “I am not prepossessed in her favor, and greatly doubt whether an intimacy with her would be salutary. Such a person as I conceive her to be, should be nothing more than an acquaintance.”

Nothing more was added on the subject, and Julia wondered, though she did not ask, what had given her husband so unfavorable an impression of Mrs. Cunningham's character. The truth was, he overheard the conversation of the morning, which he would have frankly confessed to his wife, but for a kind of delicacy to her feelings, as he had heard her remarks as well as those of Mrs. Cunningham. He knew that it was not quite honorable to listen to a conversation without the knowledge of the parties; but he could not close the library door without betraying his proximity; he wished not to see Mrs. Cunningham; he therefore remained quiet, and heard their whole colloquy.

A few days after this circumstance occurred, an invitation to another party was received. Mr. Westbury looked at the card first, and handing it to Julia, said:

“I would have you act your pleasure with regard to accepting this invitation.”

“It will be my pleasure,” said Julia, hesitating and coloring a little—“it will be my pleasure to consult yours.”

“I have little choice about it,” said Mr. Westbury, “and if you prefer declining to accepting it, I would have you do so.”

“Shall you attend it?” asked Julia, while a shade of anxiety passed over her features.

“Certainly not unless you do,” Mr. Westbury replied.

“Then,” said Julia, “if it be quite as agreeable to you, I had a thousand times rather spend it at home, alone with”—she checked herself, colored crimson, and left the sentence unfinished.

The morning after the levee, Mrs. Westbury was favored with another call from Mrs. Cunningham.

“Why, on earth were you not at Mrs. B——'s last night?” asked she almost as soon as she entered the house. “You can imagine nothing more splendid and delightful than every thing was.”

“You were there then?” said Julia.

“Yes, certainly—though I went quite late. Edward was sick of a violent head-ache, and I was obliged to see him safely in bed before I could go; but nothing would have tempted me to miss it.”

“How is Mr. Cunningham this morning?” Julia inquired.

“Much better—though rather languid, as is usual after such an attack. But I came in on an errand this morning, and must despatch business, as I am somewhat in haste. Mrs. T—— is to give a splendid party next week—by the way, have you received a card yet?”

“I have not,” said Julia.

“Neither have I—but we both shall. I want to prepare a dress for the occasion, and came in to look at the one you wore to Mrs. Parker's, as I think of having something like it.”

Mrs. Westbury was about to ring the bell, and have the dress brought for her visitor's inspection, but Mrs. Cunningham stopt her by saying,

“No, no—do not send for it. Let me go with you to your wardrobe, I may see something else that I like.”

Mrs. Westbury complied, and they went up stairs together. Mrs. Cunningham was delightfully free in examining the articles exposed to her view, and expressed such warm admiration of many of them, such an ardent desire to possess the like, that it was rather difficult to forbear telling her they were at her service. The blond mantle, with a blue border, struck her fancy particularly, and Mrs. Westbury begged her to accept it, saying “that she should probably never wear it again, as the color was not a favorite with her husband.”

Mrs. Cunningham hastened home, delighted with her acquisition, and immediately hastened to the chamber, to which her husband was still confined by indisposition, to display to him her prize.

“See what a beautiful little affair that dear Mrs. Westbury has given me,” she cried. “How lucky for me that Mr. Westbury don't like blue, else I should not have got it, I suppose, though, she could spare this, and fifty other things, as well as not. Why, Edward, you don't know what a delightful wardrobe she has! Really, you must indulge me a little more in this way, I believe.”

“I am sure no one looks better dressed than yourself, Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham, in a languid voice.