Wanderings of a beauty

It was in her second wifehood that Evelyn, Lady Montgomery, first set foot on the shores of the New World. Our voyage across the broad Atlantic had been devoid of incident, and untroubled by storm. An occasional squall, it is true, would banish us for a day to our heaving couches, where, prostrate and utterly helpless, we felt as if our head, detached from our shoulders, were rolling about the cabin, and the malignant sprites of ocean were recklessly and remorselessly sporting with it as with a foot-ball.

We entered the magnificent bay of New York, lighted by the glorious August moon with her myriads of attendant stars, which, seen through the pure ether of the western firmament, seemed multiplied to infinity. The constellations of the belted Orion, the greater and lesser Bear, and others, appeared strangely familiar; viewing them, we were fain to forget the thousands of miles which now separated us from the land of our birth. But our first step on terra firma quickly dispelled the illusion. The disagreeables of the Custom House at an end, leaving our heavy baggage till the morrow, with difficulty we climbed into the heavy, hearse-like vehicle in waiting, which it seemed next to impossible to enter, and once in, equally vain and futile to attempt the getting out. Tossed and tumbled about on the roughest of pavements, our heads still giddy from our recent sea-voyage, we arrived at that gorgeous palace, yclept the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Happily, Mr. D’Arcy, (unable through press of public business to meet us,) had kindly written to secure rooms, which insured to our party the attention we should not otherwise have received.

Here let me observe that I entirely endorse all that my talented countryman, Anthony Trollope, has stated regarding the inhospitality of the enormous American hotels, where weary and travel-worn ladies are forced to await in the wretched reception parlors, the often long delayed advent of the official charged to show them their rooms, while gentlemen, still more unfortunate, must attend in the office the favor for which they have humbly made supplication to His Majesty the Book-keeper. How different from the hearty welcome of “Mine Host” and his worthy spouse, in the cheerful, old-fashioned inns of England; how cheerily the landlord enters, and stirring the fire, makes his guests feel instantly at home; while the good wife, were you an old acquaintance, could not proffer for you with greater kindness the best fare her house can afford. The pretty chambermaid, too, candle in hand, shows you to a clean, comfortable bedroom, leaving at the same time, all the requisites for your toilet; and as you discuss your cutlet or roast chicken, the waiter tells you of all to be seen in the town and neighborhood. He closes the shutters and draws the curtains, and your glass of sherry or old port, as may be, has quite a home flavor, as you draw your easy-chair cosily before the bright, glad fire, which itself sparkles and crackles its welcome.

I am not now describing the London or new railway hotels, Heaven forbid! they are less comfortable, and far more expensive than those in America; but I allude to the charming “hostelries” of the olden times, some of which still exist, though “few and far between.” Thanks, however, to the kind consideration of Mr. D’Arcy, we were ushered at once to our suite of elegantly furnished rooms, only too thankful to seek and find repose in the luxurious beds of this splendid Hotel. On awakening, next morning, my first impression of New York was as if I saw pictured before me, in giant proportions, one of the toy towns with their many colored houses, interspersed with green trees, that used to come to me in large oval deal boxes in the days of my youth. Red brick, grey, brown, white, dark chocolate stone—all of multiform size and shape, such is the description of the dwellings, in this metropolis of the west, now decked in its mantle of summer foliage.

Our heroine had been wedded about three months—was she blessed in her second union more than in her first marriage?

My kind and gentle readers, she was not happy—yet she was content. But had she ever before indulged in any illusions, as regards Sir Percy, they must have quickly faded. Even on returning from the Church, his bride at his side, not one word of affection did the newly-made husband utter; of himself alone he spoke—his position, his future; but then, to be sure, he was turned of fifty, and as Byron observes, rather than one husband at that mature age,

This was the beginning of sorrows.

Immediately after the breakfast, the impatient bridegroom, anxious, doubtless, to embrace the fair lady he dared now call his own, knocked at the door of her chamber, where, divested of her bridal costume, she was arraying herself in a becoming travelling toilette. When admitted, the grateful lover begged—now guess, dear ladies. I pray what——Why for the loan of a few hundred francs to pay his bill at the hotel. Rather early, methinks, to usurp marital rights over his wife’s purse. Poor Evelyn’s next fit of disgust was on the morrow of her bridal, when, in an elegant morning robe of the freshest muslin, her hair braided under the prettiest of caps, she with horror beheld Sir Percy enter the room, unwashed, uncombed, unbraced, and perfectly innocent of a clean shirt. Seating himself at the breakfast table, he commenced feeding, utterly unconscious of having committed an unpardonable crime against good manners. Unfortunate Evelyn! so refined, so fastidious, so exquisitely neat and clean in her personal habits, to be brought to this. “Oh! what a falling off was there!”

Sir Percy united in his own person those opposite defects which in others are usually compensated by corresponding virtues. He was at the same time a spendthrift, and the meanest of men. Hasty and imprudent, yet sly and cunning, with an appearance of frankness, he combined an utter disregard of truth. He seemed to lie for the pleasure of lying. His temper was alike quick, vindictive, and revengeful, and his character comprised the opposite qualities of weakness and obstinacy. A general lover of the female sex, he was utterly incapable of individual attachment. It was clear that the baronet had married for money, but finding that his wife contented herself simply with paying their mutual expenses, and refused to place her fortune in his power, he actually began to dislike her and made no secret of the feeling. One illustration I will give, and this is but a solitary instance of the extraordinary line of conduct pursued by Sir Percy towards her he had so recently sworn to love, protect and cherish during the term of their natural life.

Angered one night because Evelyn had left him a small portion of his own travelling expenses to pay, he rang up the servants of the hotel at midnight, and though we were to start on the following morning at break of day, he ordered his luggage to be transported and his bed made in a room at the most distant end of the corridor, thus making himself and his wife of a month, the laughing-stock of the hotel. We do not pretend the man was altogether devoid of good impulses; but the evil of his nature was strong—the good feeble. He was ungrateful, heartless, unprincipled. Evelyn had before known only the reverse of the picture; she had been adored, petted, spoiled. How could she conceive so exceptional a character as that of Sir Percy? How bear with him? Dear friends, she did bear with him, and she was not wretched, for she now knew that all trials are the just retribution for past sins committed, past duties unperformed. Alas! we cannot escape the past, still does it pursue us like an avenging spectre; and so she resolved to endure all, looking no longer to earth for bliss, living ever in the sweet calm and beauty of the inner life, which proceeds from the Christ who shines on the souls of all who will receive him as the pure and perfect law.

No longer spell-bound by her passionate love for D’Arcy, he was yet dear—dearer to her than ever, for to him alone she owed all her strength to bear, all her courage to do; through him she had been enabled to behold the radiant, the immeasurable life of the beyond, as the one great reality of our being, compared to which this earth life, did it last a century, is but as a span, a point in eternity, “a dream when one awaketh.” Oh, had she realized these blessed truths in earliest youth, how different might have been her fate! But, repulsed by narrow-minded sectarianism, miscalled religion, she had strayed without a guide in devious paths.

The idea of a future existence had then loomed darkly before her young imaginations as a vague terror, a portentous and lurid superstition forcing her to an unwilling lip-service of prayer. Now it was a glorious inspiration—hourly influencing her, and turning the common incidents of life into occasions for thanksgiving.

For she knew that the Infinite Father was calling his erring child home through her loves and through her griefs.

With this sweet conviction can tribulation harm her? I trow not. Rather do her crosses and her trials cause her lonely and unsatisfied heart to rise each day more purely, tenderly, devotedly, upward towards God. Then, too, she tremblingly believes she may, in a brighter sphere, be united in the sweet connubial tie to one who shall fully realize the ideal of her soul. So, loving and beloved, she will no longer dwell

Is she mistaken? I cannot think so. Is it possible to form too exalted an idea of the joys “God hath prepared for them that love him,” which, we are told, “it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive?” Yet, we may faintly shadow those ecstatic raptures, if we remember that every faculty of the mind, each affection of the spirit, will then be fully and forever occupied in fulfilling its highest destinies—Love, Knowledge, Use.^[4] Sublime trinity! Such the occupations of the angels throughout eternity; and for those who here exercise themselves in these Christian graces, heaven has already begun on earth!

Nor do these truly catholic doctrines militate against a life of activity here—they are rather anti-monastic—teaching that the life of the body is necessary for the soul, and that the happiness of the spirit hereafter will be proportionate to the use we make of all our faculties and talents in the terrestrial state; while the contrary must be expected in the world of spirits, from a life of idleness; truly blessed they