Chapter 6 No.6

We stayed in New York over ten days. In that time we seemed to have known the Lewises ten years. In the last three days I had some new views, however, and puzzled myself over manners which were apparently contradictory.

Lulu had told me in the morning that her husband was going to Philadelphia, and wouldn't be back for two days. I asked her if she were not going with him. She said, no,-that she wouldn't encounter the dust of those Jersey wagons again; and then described, with much vivacity, the method of transportation which was soon after succeeded by the present railroad.

"There were a hundred horses, at least," said she, "to drag us. Magnificent creatures, too. But nothing pays for having one's mouth and eyes full of grit."

As she spoke, Mr. Lewis passed by the door, and looked at her. She went to him at once, put up her lips to be kissed, and I heard his loving good-bye, as they went along the entry to the top of the stairway.

When she came back to my room, which was half an hour after, she was dressed to go out, in a new hat and pelisse of green silk, with a plume of the same. With her bright color, it was very becoming to her.

"I have just got these home. William just hates me in green, but I would have them. They make one think of fern-leaves and the deep woods, don't they?" said she, standing before the mirror with childish admiration of her own dress.

She turned slowly round, and faced me.

"Now I suppose you would dress up in a blue bag, if your husband liked to see you in it?"

I said I supposed so, too.

"That's because you love him, and know that he loves you!"

"I am sure, you may say one is true of yourself," said I, surprised at her knitted brow and flushed cheek.

"What was that you were reading last night in Plato's Dialogues? What does he say is real love? for the body or the soul?"

I was confounded. For I had never supposed she listened to a word that was read.

"If any one has been in love with the body of Alcibiades, that person has not been in love with Alcibiades," said she, reciting from memory.

"Yes, I remember."

"But one that loves your soul does not leave you, but continues constant after the flower of your beauty has faded, and all your admirers have retired."

I nodded, as much nonplussed as if she had been Socrates.

"That is a love worth having, is it not, which will continue, though the cheek be white and furrowed, and the eye dim?"

I nodded again, staring at her.

"And what is that worth," said she, stamping her foot, "which does not recognize a soul at all? If he ever encouraged me to improve,-if he ever read to me, or talked to me as he does to you, I might make something of myself! I am in earnest. I do want to be something,-to think, to learn, if I only knew how!"

Childish tears ran down her face as she spoke. Presently she went into her room and brought me a set of malachite, in exquisite cameo-cuttings. I took up a microscope, and began admiring and examining them, recognizing the subjects, which were taken from Raphael's History of Psyche.

"Beautiful! where did they come from?"

"William bought them of Lloyd, who had them long ago of the Emperor's jeweller. They had been ordered for Marie Louise."

"And why didn't she have them, pray?"

"Just the question I asked. He said, 'Oh, because the Emperor was down and the Allies in Paris, and the Emperor's jeweller nobody, and glad to sell the cameos for one-third their cost, when they were finished.'"

"Oh, yes! I see,-at the time of Waterloo."

Mrs. Lewis looked at me again with the same knitted brow and flushed cheek as before.

"All you say is Greek to me. I don't know what malachite is, nor who Raphael is, nor who Psyche is, nor who Marie Louise is, scarcely who Napoleon, and nothing about Waterloo. A pretty present to make to me, is it not? I could make nothing of it. To you it is a whole volume."

I said, with some embarrassment, that it was easy to learn, and that if she-that is, that women should endeavor to improve themselves, and so on. She heard me through, and then said, dryly,-

"How old were you when you were married?"

"I was nearly twenty."

"Were you well-informed? had you read a great deal?"

"What one gets in a country-school,-and being fond of reading;-but then I had always been in an atmosphere of books; and one takes in, one knows not how, a thousand facts"-

I stopped; for I saw by her impatient nodding that she understood me.

"Yes, yes. I knew it must be so. Now, if William would ever bring me books, instead of jewels, or talk to me and with me, I might have been a rational being too, instead of being absolutely ashamed to open my mouth!"

She clasped the jewel-case and went out; and I heard her chatting a minute after with some gentlemen in the house, as if she were perfectly and childishly happy.