Complete March Family Trilogy , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. They first met in Boston, but the match was made in Europe, where they afterwards saw each other; whither, indeed, he followed her; and there the match was also broken off. Why it was broken off, and why it was renewed after a lapse of years, is part of quite a long love-story, which I do not think myself qualified to rehearse, distrusting my fitness for a sustained or involved narration; though I am persuaded that a skillful romancer could turn the courtship of Basil and Isabel March to excellent account. Fortunately for me, however, in attempting to tell the reader of the wedding-journey of a newly married couple, no longer very young, to be sure, but still fresh in the light of their love, I shall have nothing to do but to talk of some ordinary traits of American life as these appeared to them, to speak a little of well-known and easily accessible places, to present now a bit of landscape and now a sketch of character.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947967
Langue	English

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THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY
I. THE OUTSET
They first met in Boston, but the match was made inEurope, where they afterwards saw each other; whither, indeed, hefollowed her; and there the match was also broken off. Why it wasbroken off, and why it was renewed after a lapse of years, is partof quite a long love-story, which I do not think myself qualifiedto rehearse, distrusting my fitness for a sustained or involvednarration; though I am persuaded that a skillful romancer couldturn the courtship of Basil and Isabel March to excellent account.Fortunately for me, however, in attempting to tell the reader ofthe wedding-journey of a newly married couple, no longer veryyoung, to be sure, but still fresh in the light of their love, Ishall have nothing to do but to talk of some ordinary traits ofAmerican life as these appeared to them, to speak a little ofwell-known and easily accessible places, to present now a bit oflandscape and now a sketch of character.
They had agreed to make their wedding-journey in thesimplest and quietest way, and as it did not take place at onceafter their marriage, but some weeks later, it had all the desiredcharm of privacy from the outset.
“How much better, ” said Isabel, “to go now, whennobody cares whether you go or stay, than to have started off upona wretched wedding-breakfast, all tears and trousseau, and hadpeople wanting to see you aboard the cars. Now there will not be asuspicion of honey-moonshine about us; we shall go just likeanybody else, — with a difference, dear, with a difference! ” andshe took Basil's cheeks between her hands. In order to do this, shehad to ran round the table; for they were at dinner, and Isabel'saunt, with whom they had begun married life, sat substantialbetween them. It was rather a girlish thing for Isabel, and sheadded, with a conscious blush, “We are past our first youth, youknow; and we shall not strike the public as bridal, shall we? Myone horror in life is an evident bride. ”
Basil looked at her fondly, as if he did not thinkher at all too old to be taken for a bride; and for my part I donot object to a woman's being of Isabel's age, if she is of a goodheart and temper. Life must have been very unkind to her if at thatage she have not won more than she has lost. It seemed to Basilthat his wife was quite as fair as when they met first, eight yearsbefore; but he could not help recurring with an inextinguishableregret to the long interval of their broken engagement, which butfor that fatality they might have spent together, he imagined, injust such rapture as this. The regret always haunted him, more orless; it was part of his love; the loss accounted irreparablereally enriched the final gain.
“I don't know, ” he said presently, with as muchgravity as a man can whose cheeks are clasped between a lady'shands, “you don't begin very well for a bride who wishes to keepher secret. If you behave in this way, they will put us into the'bridal chambers' at all the hotels. And the cars— they'rebeginning to have them on the palace-cars. ”
Just then a shadow fell into the room.
“Wasn't that thunder, Isabel? ” asked her aunt, whohad been contentedly surveying the tender spectacle before her. “Odear! you'll never be able to go by the boat to-night, if itstorms. It 's actually raining now! ”
In fact, it was the beginning of that terrible stormof June, 1870. All in a moment, out of the hot sunshine of the dayit burst upon us before we quite knew that it threatened, evenbefore we had fairly noticed the clouds, and it went on frompassion to passion with an inexhaustible violence. In the squareupon which our friends looked out of their dining-room windows thetrees whitened in the gusts, and darkened in the driving floods ofthe rainfall, and in some paroxysms of the tempest bent themselvesin desperate submission, and then with a great shudder rent awaywhole branches and flung them far off upon the ground. Hail mingledwith the rain, and now the few umbrellas that had braved the stormvanished, and the hurtling ice crackled upon the pavement, wherethe lightning played like flames burning from the earth, while thethunder roared overhead without ceasing. There was somethingsplendidly theatrical about it all; and when a street-car, laden tothe last inch of its capacity, came by, with horses that prancedand leaped under the stinging blows of the hailstones, our friendsfelt as if it were an effective and very naturalistic bit ofpantomime contrived for their admiration. Yet as to themselves theywere very sensible of a potent reality in the affair, and atintervals during the storm they debated about going at all thatday, and decided to go and not to go, according to the changingcomplexion of the elements. Basil had said that as this was theirfirst journey together in America, he wished to give it at thebeginning as pungent a national character as possible, and that ashe could imagine nothing more peculiarly American than a voyage toNew York by a Fall River boat, they ought to take that routethither. So much upholstery, so much music, such variety cfcompany, he understood, could not be got in any other way, and itmight be that they would even catch a glimpse of the inventor ofthe combination, who represented the very excess and extremity of acertain kind of Americanism. Isabel had eagerly consented; butthese aesthetic motives were paralyzed for her by the thought ofpassing Point Judith in a storm, and she descended from her highintents first to the Inside Boats, without the magnificence and theorchestra, and then to the idea of going by land in a sleeping-car.Having comfortably accomplished this feat, she treated Basil'sconsent as a matter of course, not because she did not regard him,but because as a woman she could not conceive of the steps to herconclusion as unknown to him, and always treated her own decisionsas the product of their common reasoning. But her husband held outfor the boat, and insisted that if the storm fell before seveno'clock, they could reach it at Newport by the last express; and itwas this obstinacy that, in proof of Isabel's wisdom, obliged themto wait two hours in the station before going by the land route.The storm abated at five o'clock, and though the rain continued, itseemed well by a quarter of seven to set out for the Old ColonyDepot, in sight of which a sudden and vivid flash of lightningcaused Isabel to seize her husband's arm, and to implore him, “Odon't go by the boat! ” On this, Basil had the incredible weaknessto yield; and bade the driver take them to the Worcester Depot. Itwas the first swerving from the ideal in their wedding journey, butit was by no means the last; though it must be confessed that itwas early to begin.
They both felt more tranquil when they wereirretrievably committed by the purchase of their tickets, and whenthey sat down in the waiting. room of the station, with all thetime between seven and nine o'clock before them. Basil would haveeked out the business of checking the trunks into an affair of somelength, but the baggage-master did his duty with pitiless celerity;and so Basil, in the mere excess of his disoccupation, bought anaccident-insurance ticket. This employed him half a minute, andthen he gave up the unequal contest, and went and took his placebeside Isabel, who sat prettily wrapped in her shawl, perfectlycontent.
“Isn't it charming, ” she said gayly, “having towait so long? It puts me in mind of some of those other journeys wetook together. But I can't think of those times with any patience,when we might really have had each other, and didn't! Do youremember how long we had to wait at Chambery? and the numbers ofmilitary gentlemen that waited too, with their little waists, andtheir kisses when they met? and that poor married militarygentleman, with the plain wife and the two children, and atarnished uniform? He seemed to be somehow in misfortune, and hismustache hung down in such a spiritless way, while all the othermilitary mustaches about curled and bristled with so much boldness.I think 'salles d'attente' everywhere are delightful, and there issuch a community of interest in them all, that when I come hereonly to go out to Brookline, I feel myself a traveller once more, —a blessed stranger in a strange land. O dear, Basil, those werehappy times after all, when we might have had each other anddidn't! And now we're the more precious for having been so longlost. ”
She drew closer and closer to him, and looked at himin a way that threatened betrayal of her bridal character.
“Isabel, you will be having your head on myshoulder, next, ” said he.
“Never! ” she answered fiercely, recovering herdistance with a start. “But, dearest, if you do see me going to—act absurdly, you know, do stop me. ”
“I'm very sorry, but I've got myself to stop.Besides, I didn't undertake to preserve the incognito of thisbridal party. ”
If any accident of the sort dreaded had reallyhappened, it would not have mattered so much, for as yet they werethe sole occupants of the waiting room. To be sure, theticket-seller was there, and the lady who checked packages left inher charge, but these must have seen so many endearments passbetween passengers, — that a fleeting caress or so would scarcelyhave drawn their notice to our pair. Yet Isabel did not so mucheven as put her hand into her husband's; and as Basil afterwardssaid, it was very good practice.
Our temporary state, whatever it is, is oftenmirrored in all that come near us, and our friends were fated tomeet frequent parodies of their happiness from first to last onthis journey. The travesty began with the very first people whoentered the waiting-room after themselves, and who were a veryyoung couple starting like themselves upon a pleasure tour, whichalso was evidently one of the first tours of any kind that they hadmade. It was of modest extent, and comprised going to New York andback; but they talked of it with a fluttered and joyful expectationas if it were a vo