Georginas Reasons | Page 7

black hair, arranged in a way peculiar to herself,--with so many combs
and bands that it had the appearance of a national coiffure. There was
an impression in New York, about 1845, that the style was Danish;
some one had said something about having seen it in
Schleswig-Holstein.
Mrs. Portico had a bold, humorous, slightly flamboyant look; people
who saw her for the first time received an impression that her late
husband had married the daughter of a barkeeper or the proprietress of
a menageria. Her high, hoarse, good-natured voice seemed to connect
her in some way with public life; it was not pretty enough to suggest
that she might have been an actress. These ideas quickly passed away,

however, even if you were not sufficiently initiated to know--as all the
Grossies, for instance, knew so well--that her origin, so far from being
enveloped in mystery, was almost the sort of thing she might have
boasted of. But in spite of the high pitch of her appearance, she didn't
boast of anything; she was a genial, easy, comical, irreverent person,
with a large charity, a democratic, fraternizing turn of mind, and a
contempt for many worldly standards, which she expressed not in the
least in general axioms (for she had a mortal horror of philosophy), but
in violent ejaculations on particular occasions. She had not a grain of
moral timidity, and she fronted a delicate social problem as sturdily as
she would have barred the way of a gentleman she might have met in
her vestibule with the plate-chest The only thing which prevented her
being a bore in orthodox circles was that she was incapable of
discussion. She never lost her temper, but she lost her vocabulary, and
ended quietly by praying that Heaven would give her an opportunity to
show what she believed.
She was an old friend of Mr. and Mrs. Gressie, who esteemed her for
the antiquity of her lineage and the frequency of her subscriptions, and
to whom she rendered the service of making them feel liberal,--like
people too sure of their own position to be frightened. She was their
indulgence, their dissipation, their point of contact with dangerous
heresies; so long as they continued to see her they could not be accused
of being narrow-minded,--a matter as to which they were perhaps
vaguely conscious of the necessity of taking their precautions. Mrs.
Portico never asked herself whether she liked the Gressies; she had no
disposition for morbid analysis, she accepted transmitted associations,
and she found, somehow, that her acquaintance with these people
helped her to relieve herself. She was always making scenes in their
drawing-room, scenes half indignant, half jocose, like all her
manifestations, to which it must be confessed that they adapted
themselves beautifully. They never "met" her in the language of
controversy; but always collected to watch her, with smiles and
comfortable platitudes, as if they envied her superior richness of
temperament She took an interest in Georgina, who seemed to her
different from the others, with suggestions about her of being likely not
to marry so unrefreshingly as her sisters had done, and of a high, bold

standard of duty. Her sisters had married from duty, but Mrs. Portico
would rather have chopped off one of her large, plump hands than
behave herself so well as that She had, in her daughterless condition, a
certain ideal of a girl that should be beautiful and romantic, with
lustrous eyes, and a little persecuted, so that she, Mrs. Portico, might
get her out of her troubles. She looked to Georgina, to a considerable
degree, to gratify her in this way; but she had really never understood
Geoigina at all She ought to have been shrewd, but she lacked this
refinement, and she never understood anything until after many
disappointments and vexations. It was difficult to startle her, but she
was much startled by a communication that this young lady made her
one fine spring morning. With her florid appearance and her
speculative mind, she was probably the most innocent woman in New
York.
Georgina came very early,--earlier even than visits were paid in New
York thirty years ago; and instantly, without any preface, looking her
straight in the face, told Mrs. Portico that she was in great trouble and
must appeal to her for assistance. Georgina had in her aspect no
symptom of distress; she was as fresh and beautiful as the April day
itself; she held up her head and smiled, with a sort of familiar bravado,
looking like a young woman who would naturally be on good terms
with fortune. It was not in the least in the tone of a person making a
confession or relating a misadventure that she presently said: "Well,
you must know, to begin with--of course, it will