Georginas Reasons | Page 3

had but lately ceased to be suburban, when the squares
had wooden palings, which were not often painted; when there were
poplars in important thoroughfares and pigs in the lateral ways; when
the theatres were miles distant from Madison Square, and the battered
rotunda of Castle Garden echoed with expensive vocal music; when
"the park" meant the grass-plats of the city hall, and the Bloomingdale
road was an eligible drive; when Hoboken, of a summer afternoon, was
a genteel resort, and the handsomest house in town was on the corner of
the Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street. This will strike the modern
reader, I fear, as rather a primitive epoch; but I am not sure that the
strength of human passions is in proportion to the elongation of a city.
Several of them, at any rate, the most robust and most familiar,--love,
ambition, jealousy, resentment, greed,--subsisted in considerable force
in the little circle at which we have glanced, where a view by no means
favorable was taken of Raymond Benyon's attentions to Miss Gressie.

Unanimity was a family trait among these people (Georgina was an
exception), especially in regard to the important concerns of life, such
as marriages and closing scenes. The Gressies hung together; they were
accustomed to do well for themselves and for each other. They did
everything well: got themselves born well (they thought it excellent to
be born a Gressie), lived well, married well, died well, and managed to
be well spoken of afterward. In deference to this last-mentioned habit, I
must be careful what I say of them. They took an interest in each
other's concerns, an interest that could never be regarded as of a
meddlesome nature, inasmuch as they all thought alike about all their
affairs, and interference took the happy form of congratulation and
encouragement. These affairs were invariably lucky, and, as a general
thing, no Gressie had anything to do but feel that another Gressie had
been almost as shrewd and decided as he himself would have been. The
great exception to that, as I have said, was this case of Georgina, who
struck such a false note, a note that startled them all, when she told her
father that she should like to unite herself to a young man engaged in
the least paying business that any Gressie had ever heard of. Her two
sisters had married into the most flourishing firms, and it was not to be
thought of that--with twenty cousins growing up around her--she
should put down the standard of success. Her mother had told her a
fortnight before this that she must request Mr. Benyon to cease coming
to the house; for hitherto his suit had been of the most public and
resolute character. He had been conveyed up town from the Brooklyn
ferry, in the "stage," on certain evenings, had asked for Miss Georgina
at the door of the house in Twelfth Street, and had sat with her in the
front parlor if her parents happened to occupy the back, or in the back if
the family had disposed itself in the front. Georgina, in her way, was a
dutiful girl, and she immediately repeated her mother's admonition to
Beuyon. He was not surprised, for though he was aware that he had not,
as yet, a great knowledge of society, he flattered himself he could tell
when--and where--a young man was not wanted. There were houses in
Brooklyn where such an animal was much appreciated, and there the
signs were quite different They had been discouraging--except on
Georgina's pail--from the first of his calling in Twelfth Street Mr. and
Mrs. Gressie used to look at each other in silence when he came in, and
indulge in strange, perpendicular salutations, without any shaking of

hands. People did that at Portsmouth, N.H., when they were glad to see
you; but in New York there was more luxuriance, and gesture had a
different value. He had never, in Twelfth Street, been asked to "take
anything," though the house had a delightful suggestion, a positive
aroma, of sideboards,--as if there were mahogany "cellarettes" under
every table. The old people, moreover, had repeatedly expressed
surprise at the quantity of leisure that officers in the navy seemed to
enjoy. The only way in which they had not made themselves offensive
was by always remaining in the other room; though at times even this
detachment, to which he owed some delightful moments, presented
itself to Benyon as a form of disapprobation. Of course, after Mrs.
Gressie's message, his visits were practically at an end; he would n't
give the girl up, but he would n't be beholden to her father for the
opportunity to converse with her. Nothing was left for the tender
couple--there was a curious mutual mistrust in their tenderness--but to
meet