The Lake Gun and other Stories. Джеймс Фенимор Купер

you say, are too gross to feel a pure friendship; in the first place, please to explain yourself on this point.”

      “Why I mean, that your friendships are generally interested; that it requires services and good offices to support it.”

      “While that of women depends on”

      “Feeling alone.”

      “But what excites this feeling?” asked Charles with a smile.

      “What? why sympathy – and a knowledge of each other’s good qualities.”

      “Then you think Miss Miller has more good qualities than Katherine Emmerson,” said Weston.

      “When did I ever say so?” cried Julia in surprise.

      “I infer it from your loving her better, merely,” returned the young man with a little of Miss Emmerson’s dryness.

      “It would be difficult to compare them,” said Julia after a moment’s pause. “Katherine is in the world, and has had an opportunity of showing her merit; that Anna has never enjoyed. Katherine is certainly a most excellent girl, and I like her very much; but there is no reason to think that Anna will not prove as fine a young woman as Katherine, when put to the trial.”

      “Pray,” said the young lawyer with great gravity, “how many of these bosom, these confidential friends can a young woman have at the same time?”

      “One, only one – any more than she could have two lovers,” cried Julia quickly.

      “Why then did you find it necessary to take that one from a set, that was untried in the practice of well-doing, when so excellent a subject as your cousin Katherine offered?”

      “But Anna I know, I feel, is every thing that is good and sincere, and our sympathies drew us together. Katherine I loved naturally.”

      “How naturally?”

      “Is it not natural to love your relatives?” said Julia in surprise.

      “No,” was the brief answer.

      “Surely, Charles Weston, you think me a simpleton. Does not every parent love its child by natural instinct?”

      “No: no more than you love any of your amusements from instinct. If the parent was present with a child that he did not know to be his own, would instinct, think you, discover their vicinity?”

      “Certainly not, if they had never met before; but then, as soon as he knew it to be his, he would love it from nature.”

      “It is a complicated question, and one that involves a thousand connected feelings,” said Charles. “But all love, at least all love of the heart, springs from the causes you mentioned to your aunt – good offices, a dependence on each other, and habit.”

      “Yes, and nature too,” said the young lady rather positively; “and I contend, that natural love, and love from sympathy, are two distinct things.”

      “Very different, I allow,” said Charles; “only I very much doubt the durability of that affection which has no better foundation than fancy.”

      “You use such queer terms, Charles, that you do not treat the subject fairly. Calling innate evidence of worth by the name of fancy, is not candid.”

      “Now, indeed, your own terms puzzle me,” said Charles, smiling. “What is innate evidence of worth?”

      “Why, a conviction that another possesses all that you esteem yourself, and is discovered by congenial feelings and natural sympathies.”

      “Upon my word, Julia, you are quite a casuist on this subject. Does love, then, between the sexes depend on this congenial sympathy and innate evidence?”

      “Now you talk on a subject that I do not understand,” said Julia, blushing; and, catching up the highly prized work, she ran to her own room, leaving the young man in a state of mingled admiration and pity.

      Chapter II

      An anxious fortnight was passed by Julia Warren, after this conversation, without bringing any tidings from her friend. She watched, with feverish restlessness, each steam-boat that passed the door on its busy way towards the metropolis, and met the servant each day at the gate of the lawn on his return from the city; but it was only to receive added disappointments. At length Charles Weston good-naturedly offered his own services, laughingly declaring, that his luck was never known to fail. Julia herself had written several long epistles to Anna, and it was now the proper time that some of these should be answered, independently of the thousand promises from her friend of writing regularly from every post-office that she might pass on her route to the Gennessee. But the happy moment had arrived when disappointments were to cease. As usual, Julia was waiting with eager impatience at the gate, her lovely form occasionally gliding from the shrubbery to catch a glimpse of the passengers on the highway, when Charles appeared riding at a full gallop towards the house; his whole manner announced success, and Julia sprang into the middle of the road to take the letter which he extended towards her.

      “I knew I should be successful, and it gives me almost as much pleasure as yourself that I have been so,” said the youth, dismounting from his horse and opening the gate that his companion might pass.

      “Thank you – thank you, dear Charles,” said Julia kindly. “I never can forget how good you are to me – how much you love to oblige not only me, but every one around you. Excuse me now. I have this dear letter to read: another time, I will thank you as I ought.”

      So saying, Julia ran into the summer-house, and fastening its door, gave herself up to the pleasure of reading a first letter. Notes and short epistles from her aunt, with divers letters from Anna written slyly in the school-room and slipped into her lap, she was already well acquainted with; but of real, genuine letters, stamped by the post-office, rumpled by the mail-bags, consecrated by the steam-boat, this was certainly the first. This, indeed, was a real letter: rivers rolled, and vast tracts of country lay, between herself and its writer, and that writer was a friend selected on the testimony of innate evidence. It was necessary for Julia to pause and breathe before she could open her letter; and by the time this was done, her busy fancy had clothed both epistle and writer with so much excellence, that she was prepared to peruse the contents with a respect bordering on enthusiasm: every word must be true – every idea purity itself. That our readers may know how accurately sixteen and a brilliant fancy had qualified her to judge, we shall give them the letter entire.

      My dearest love,

      “Oh, Julia! here I am, and such a place! – no town, no churches, no Broadway, nothing that can make life desirable; and, I may add, no friend – nobody to see and talk with, but papa and mamma, and a house full of brothers and sisters. You can’t think how I miss you, every minute more and more; but I am not without hopes of persuading pa to let me spend the winter with your aunt in town. I declare it makes me sick every time I think of her sweet house in Park-place. If ever I marry, and be sure I will, it shall be a man who lives in the city, and next door to my Julia. Oh! how charming that would be. Each of us to have one of those delightful new houses, with the new-fashioned basement stories; we would run in and out at all hours of the day, and it would be so convenient to lend and borrow each other’s things. I do think there is no pleasure under heaven equal to that of wearing things that belong to your friend. Don’t you remember how fond I was of wearing your clothes at school, though you were not so fond of changing as myself; but that was no wonder, for pa’s stinginess kept me so shabbily dressed, that I was ashamed to let you be seen in them. Oh, Julia! I shall never forget those happy hours; nor you neither. Apropos – I hope you have not forgot the frock you promised to work for me, to remember you by. I long for it dreadfully, and hope you will send it before the river shuts. I suppose you and Charles Weston do nothing but ride round among those beautiful villas on the island, and take comfort. I do envy you your happiness, I can tell you; for I think any beau better than none, though Mr. Weston is not to my taste. I am going to write you six sheets of paper, for there is nothing that I so delight in as communing with a friend at a distance, especially situated as I am without a soul to say a word to, unless it be my own sisters. Adieu, my ever, ever beloved Julia