Afloat and Ashore, James Fenimore Cooper [romantic story to read TXT] 📗

all contributed to make me momentarily forget my private griefs, and to enter cheerfully into the enjoyment of the hour.

I greatly disliked passengers. They appealed to me to lessen the dignity of my position, and to reduce me to the level of an inn-keeper, or one who received boarders. I wished to command a ship, not to take in lodgers; persons whom you are bound to treat with a certain degree of consideration, and, in one sense, as your superiors. Still, it had too much of an appearance of surliness, and a want of hospitality, to refuse a respectable man a passage across the ocean, when he might not get another chance in a month, and that, too, when it was important to himself to proceed immediately. In this particular instance, I became the dupe of a mistaken kindness on the part of my former owners. These gentlemen brought to me a Mr. Brigham--Wallace Mortimer Brigham was his whole name, to be particular--as a person who was desirous of getting to France with his wife and wife's sister, in order to proceed to Italy for the health of the married lady, who was believed to be verging on a decline. These people were from the eastward, and had fallen into the old error of Americans, that the south of France and Italy had residences far more favourable for such a disease, than our own country. This was one of the provincial notions of the day, that were entailed on us by means of colonial dependency. I suppose the colonial existence is as necessary to a people, as childhood and adolescence are to the man; but, as my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu told her friend, Lady Rich--"Nay; but look you, my dear madam, I grant it a very fine thing to continue always fifteen; that , everybody must approve of--it is quite fair: but, indeed, indeed, one need not be five years old."

I was prevailed on to take these passengers, and I got a specimen of their characters even as we dropped down the bay, in the midst of the agreeable scene to which I have just alluded. They were gossips ; and that, too, of the lowest, or personal cast. Nothing made them so happy as to be talking of the private concerns of their fellow-creatures; and, as ever must happen where this propensity exists, nine-tenths of what they said rested on no better foundation than surmises, inferences drawn from premises of questionable accuracy, and judgments that were entered up without the authority, or even the inclination, to examine witnesses. They had also a peculiarity that I have often remarked in persons of the same propensity; most of their gossiping arose from a desire to make apparent their own intimacy with the private affairs of people of mark--overlooking the circumstance that, in thus making the concerns of others the subjects of their own comments, they were impliedly admitting a consciousness of their own inferiority; men seldom condescending thus to busy themselves with the affairs of any but those of whom they feel it to be a sort of distinction to converse. I am much afraid good-breeding has more to do with the suppression of this vice, than good principles, as the world goes. I have remarked that persons of a high degree of self-respect, and a good tone of manners, are quite free from this defect of character; while I regret to be compelled to say that I have been acquainted with divers very saintly professors , including one or two parsons, who have represented the very beau ideal of scandal.

My passengers gave me a taste of their quality, as I have said, before we had got a mile below Governor's Island. The ladies were named Sarah and Jane; and, between them and Wallace Mortimer, what an insight did I obtain into the private affairs of sundry personages of Salem, in Massachusetts, together with certain glimpses in at Boston folk; all, however, referring to qualities and facts that might be classed among the real or supposed. I can, at this distant day, recall Scene 1st, Act 1st, of the drama that continued while we were crossing the ocean, with the slight interruption of a few days, produced by sea-sickness.

"Wallace," said Sarah, "did you say, yesterday, that John Viner had refused to lend his daughter's husband twenty thousand dollars, to get him out of his difficulties, and that he failed in consequence?"

"To be sure. It was the common talk through Wall Street yesterday, and everybody believes it"--there was no more truth in the story, than in one of the forty reports that have killed General Jackson so often, in the last twenty years. "Yes, no one doubts it--but all the Viners are just so! All of us, in our part of the world, know what to think of the Viners."

"Yes, I suppose so," drawled Jane. "I've heard it said this John Viner's father ran all the way from the Commons in Boston, to the foot of State Street, to get rid of a dun against this very son, who had his own misfortunes when he was young."

"The story is quite likely true in part," rejoined Wallace, "though it can't be quite accurate, as the old gentleman had but one leg, and running was altogether out of the question with him . It was probably old Tim Viner, who ran like a deer when a young man, as I've heard people say."

"Well, then, I suppose he ran his horse," added Jane, in the same quiet, drawling tone. " Something must have run, or they never would have got up the story."

I wondered if Miss Jane Hitchcox had ever taken the trouble to ascertain who they were! I happened to know both the Viners, and to be quite certain there was not a word of truth in the report of the twenty thousand dollars, having heard all the particulars of the late failure from one of my former owners, who was an assignee, and a considerable creditor. Under the circumstances, I thought I would hint as much.

"Are you quite sure that the failure of Viner & Co. was owing to the circumstance you mention, Mr. Brigham?" I inquired.

"Pretty certain. I am ' measurably acquainted ' with their affairs, and think I am tolerably safe in saying so."

Now, "measurably acquainted" meant that he lived within twenty or thirty miles of those who did know something of the concerns of the house in question, and was in the way of catching scraps of the gossip that fell from disappointed creditors. How much of this is there in this good country of ours! Men who live just near enough to one another to feel the influence of all that rivalry, envy, personal strifes and personal malignancies, can generate, fancy they are acquainted, from this circumstance, with those to whom they have never even spoken. One-half the idle tales that circulate up and-down the land, come from authority not one tittle better than this. How much would men learn, could they only acquire the healthful lesson of understanding that nothing , which is much out of the ordinary way, and which, circulates as received truths illustrative of character, is true in all its material parts, and very little in any . But, to return to my passengers, and that portion of their conversation which most affected myself. They continued commenting on persons and families by name, seemingly more to keep their hands in, than for any other discoverable reason, as each appeared to be perfectly conversant with all the gossip that was started; when Sarah casually mentioned the name of Mrs. Bradfort, with some of whose supposed friends, it now came out, they had all a general visiting acquaintance.

"Dr. Hosack is of opinion she cannot live long, I hear," said Jane, with a species of fierce delight in killing a fellow-creature, provided it only led to a gossip concerning her private affairs. "Her case has been decided to be a cancer, now, for more than a week, and she made her will last Tuesday."

"Only last Tuesday!" exclaimed Sarah, in surprise. "Well, I heard she had made her will a twelvemonth since, and that she left all her property to young Rupert Hardinge; in the expectation, some persons thought, that he might marry her."

"How could that be, my dear?" asked the husband; "in what would she be better off for leaving her own property to her husband?"

"Why, by law, would she not? I don't exactly know how it would happen, for I do not particularly understand these things; but it seems natural that a woman would be a gainer if she made the man she was about to marry her heir. She would have her thirds in his estate, would she not?"

"But, Mrs. Brigham," said I, smiling, "is it quite certain Mrs. Bradfort wishes to marry Rupert Hardinge, at all?"

"I know so little of the parties, that I cannot speak with certainty in the matter, I admit, Captain Wallingford."

"Well, but Sarah, dear," interposed the more exacting Jane, "you are making yourself unnecessarily ignorant. You very well know how intimate we are with the Greenes, and they know the Winters perfectly well, who are next-door neighbours to Mrs. Bradfort. I don't see how you can say we haven't good means of being 'measurably' well-informed."

Now, I happened to know through Grace and Lucy, that a disagreeable old person, of the name of Greene did live next door to Mrs. Bradfort; but, that the latter refused to visit her, firstly, because she did not happen to like her, and secondly, because the two ladies belonged to very different social circles; a sufficient excuse for not visiting in town, even though the parties inhabited the same house. But, the Brighams, being Salem people, did not understand that families might reside next door to each other, in a large town, for a long series of months, or even years, and not know each other's names. It would not be easy to teach this truth, one of every-day occurrence, to the inhabitant of one of our provincial towns, who was in the habit of fancying he had as close an insight into the private affairs of all his neighbours, as they enjoyed themselves.

"No doubt we are all as well off as most strangers in New York," observed the wife; "still, it ought to be admitted that we may be mistaken. I have heard it said there is an old Mr. Hardinge, a clergyman, who would make a far better match for the lady, than his son. However, it is of no great moment, now; for, when our neighbour Mrs. John Foote, saw Dr. Hosack about her own child, she got all the particulars out of him about Mrs. Bradfort's case, from the highest quarter, and I had it from Mrs. Foote, herself."

"I could not have believed that a physician of Dr. Hosack's eminence and character would speak openly of the diseases of his patients," I observed, a little tartly, I am afraid.

"Oh! he didn't," said Sarah, eagerly--"he was as cunning as a fox, Mrs. Foote owned herself, and played her off finely; but Mrs. Foote was cunninger than any half-dozen foxes, and got it all out of him by negations."

"Negations!" I exclaimed, wondering what was meant by the term, though I had understood I was to expect a little more philosophy and metaphysics, not to say algebra, in my passengers, than usually accompanied petticoats in our part of the world.

"Certainly, negations " answered the matron, with a