Opening a Chestnut Burr | Page 4

he had ever known? Indeed, more than all,
had she not ventured to talk religion to him, so that for a time he had
regarded himself as in a very "hopeful frame of mind," and had been
inclined to take a mission-class in the same school with herself? How
lovely and angelic she had once appeared, stooping in elegant costume
from her social height to the little ragamuffins of the street that sat
gaping around her! As he gazed adoringly, while waiting to be her
resort home, his young heart had swelled with the impulse to be good
and noble also.
But one day she caused him to drop out of his roseate clouds. With
much sweetness and resignation, and with appropriate sighs, she said
that "it was her painful duty to tell him that their intimacy must
cease--that she had received an offer from Mr. Grobb, and that her
parents, and indeed all her friends, had urged her to accept him. She
had been led to feel that they with their riper experience and knowledge
of life knew what was best for her, and therefore she had yielded to
their wishes and accepted the offer." She was beginning to add, in a
sentimental tone, that "had she only followed the impulses of her
heart"--when Gregory, at first too stunned and bewildered to speak,
recovered his senses and interrupted with, "Please don't speak of your
heart, Miss Bently. Why mention so small a matter? Go on with your
little transaction by all means. I am a business man myself, and can
readily understand your motives;" and he turned on his heel and strode
from the room, leaving Miss Bently ill at ease.
The young man's first expression of having received, as it were, a
staggering blow, and then his bitter satire, made an impression on her
cotton-and-wool nature, and for a time her proceedings with Mr. Grobb
did not wear the aspect in which they had been presented by her friends.
But her little world so confidently and continually reiterated the
statement that she was making a "splendid match" that her qualms
vanished, and she felt that what all asserted must be true, and so entered
on the gorgeous preparations as if the wedding were all and the man
nothing.

It is the custom to satirize or bitterly denounce such girls, but perhaps
they are rather to be pitied. They are the natural products of artificial
society, wherein wealth, show, and the social eminence which is based
on dress and establishment are held out as the prizes of a woman's
existence. The only wonder is that so much heart and truth assert
themselves among those who all their life have seen wealth practically
worshipped, and worth, ungilded, generally ignored. From
ultra-fashionable circles a girl is often seen developing into the noblest
womanhood; while narrow, mercenary natures are often found where
far better things might have been expected. If such girls as Miss Bently
could only be kept in quiet obscurity, like a bale of merchandise, till
wanted, it would not be so bad; but some of them are such brilliant
belles and incorrigible coquettes that they are like certain Wall Street
speculators who threaten to "break the street" in making their own
fortunes.
Some natures can receive a fair lady's refusal with a good-natured
shrug, as merely the result of a bad venture, and hope for better luck
next time; but to a greater number this is impossible, especially if they
are played with and deceived. Walter Gregory pre-eminently belonged
to the latter class. In early life he had breathed the very atmosphere of
truth, and his tendency to sincerity ever remained the best element of
his character. His was one of those fine-fibred natures most susceptible
to injury. Up to this time his indiscretions had only been those of
foolish, thoughtless youth, while aiming at the standard of manliness
and style in vogue among his city companions. High-spirited young
fellows, not early braced by principle, must pass through this phase as
in babyhood they cut their teeth. If there is true mettle in them, and they
are not perverted by exceptionally bad influences, they outgrow the
idea that to be fast and foolish is to be men as naturally as they do their
roundabouts.
What a man does is often not so important as the state of the heart that
prompts the act. In common parlance, Walter was as good-hearted a
fellow as ever breathed. Indeed, he was really inclined to noble
enthusiasms.

If Miss Bently had been what he imagined her, she might have led him
swiftly and surely into true manhood; but she was only an adept at
pretty seeming with him, and when Mr. Grobb offered her his vast
wealth, with himself as the only incumbrance, she acted