CHAPTER IX.

When she turned into Grand Street at nearly six o’clock she scarcely

knew whether it was her own gate through which she passed or whether

the house was in its right place or had vanished with the old

associations; whether she walked up the wooden steps to a familiar door

or floated on air to the portal of a castle in Spain.

Warrener had telephoned that he would not be home before midnight; she

received the message with relief, although the name sounded with as

much indifference to her as though she heard it for the first time

that night.

She sat musing over her dinner, ate a little of it, left the table as

soon as she could, and restlessly wandered through the rooms from one

to the other, then upstairs to the “den,” where in the dark she threw

herself full length on George’s hard leather lounge.

The walk of several miles must have caused these excited feelings, this

glow; but she was conscious as well of a kind of suffering agitation.

She had walked many miles in her life with no such exhilaration as this.

To natures such as hers, by temperament sluggish, an awakening is

dangerous, and means revolution. She never had thought of love--that

is, in connection with herself or anyone she knew. The idea that a

married woman, a nice one--of course there were bad ones--could care

for another man had never occurred to her. The word “love” she had

never heard mentioned that she could recall. Men like Warrener do not

talk of love; they avoid the word and its chaotic consequences. She

had never said “I love you” in her life. Her wooing had consisted of

a timid kiss or two, a decorous marriage into whose ceremony the word

“love” had slipped unobserved, close to “honor” and “obey.” “Love,” in

that sentence, meant that she submitted always with a sort of shame

and humiliation to be a wife; “honor,” that neither of them would do

anything criminal, of course--how should they? “Obey,” that she would

keep house for George. These, had she been capable of pigeonholing

her ideas, were the grooves into which she would have slipped her

conceptions of wedded life.

It is not strange that a woman with a hostility to the laws of whose

mysterious passion she knows nothing should refuse to linger in her

thoughts on love when it is so mentally surrounded. Love stories she

rarely read; she thought them silly and little less than sane. She

couldn’t understand them--once or twice they had given her unhappy,

lonely feelings, and she had not sought their pages again.

On the sofa, in the dark, after the first dazzling force of the feeling

which suffused her and which she did not understand, she thought of her

clothes! She wished she had worn another dress, her new _beige_ and

a pair of new boots. As she had nothing but Mrs. Bellamy’s afternoon

dress with which to compare her wardrobe, she could not construct in

her mind any new costume fitting to such an occasion. Her coquetry had

not before been aroused. George did not care what she wore. “You’re all

right in anything,” she could hear him say.

No, she didn’t believe she was all right. Mr. McAllister was, though.

How elegantly he was dressed! His suit, his cravat, his hat and cane

and gloves! She was astonished at the vividness with which his image

came to her. He seemed to stand there smiling at her. It made her

uneasy to think of him so clearly. George dressed nicer than most men,

she had thought, but beside Mr. McAllister--why, he looked--he looked

common! The word was growing to be very useful to her.

After a little the effect of the open air and the excitement overcame

her reflections. She grew drowsy and fell into a light sleep. Her

subjective self, more keen and sensitive than her objective, was

released, and she dreamed, for a rare thing, dream after dream.

Strange, unrestful visions. Mr. McAllister was wound in and out of

them, tangled in their maze. She was trying to run away from him.

He was beside her, and she was trying to push him away. Out of the

indistinct and broken figures of sleep he became clearly defined--he

put his arm about her and kissed her. As Gertrude felt the unwonted and

confusing touch on her lips--the confusion of her senses--she sprang up

with a cry. There was some one in the room.

“Don’t be scared, Gerty; it’s only me.”

“Oh!” she shuddered. “How you frightened me, George! What did you do it

for?”

He turned up the light.

“Why, I couldn’t find you in our room or the spare room, so I came in

here. Fell asleep waiting for me, did you?”

He stood there, tired and grimy, his hair mussed, his collar lacking

its freshness.

“Well, you frightened me like anything,” she said, petulantly. “What

did you do? Did you shake me?”

“No, I didn’t--I kissed you.”

She got up without reply and went past him into the spare room.

Warrener said nothing until his preparations for the night were made,

then calling out: “Aren’t you coming to bed, Gertrude?” he went to the

spare-room door. It was locked.

Used to little petulant exhibitions of temper whose pricks he had

felt with no serious wound, tired out and rendered indifferent by the

unremitting brain and nerve tension of his life, Warrener yielded

passively, and, going into the other room with a sigh of fatigue,

sought his deserted bed.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[Illustration]

OCTOBER

In trails of fire across the land

October flings with lavish hand

The glowing bittersweet.

With gems and gold the trees are brave,

While spices that the East might crave

Float up beneath my feet.

ROSALIE ARTHUR.

AMERICA’S SOCIAL HOUSE OF PEERS

_By Anne Rittenhouse_

[Illustration]

The Dancing Assemblies of Philadelphia and the St. Cecilia Society of

Charleston, South Carolina, are the two oldest subscription balls in

the world. Their invitations for this winter mark three centuries in

which the elect of the Quaker and the Huguenot cities have been invited

to dance and to pay the fiddler.

The South Carolinians contend that their famous dance is older than the

Philadelphia one. Both began in the middle of the eighteenth century,

and the invitations went out through the rest of the century, the whole

of the nineteenth, and through a half decade of the twentieth century.

The exact date of the first St. Cecilia is not quite authenticated,

because the great fire which swept over Charleston in 1865 destroyed

St. Andrew’s Hall, where the records of this dance were kept. The

flames also melted the magnificent silver that had belonged to the

society for over a hundred years.

The date of the first Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia is precisely

fixed as 1749.

It is remarkable that two such exclusive and elective balls, bound by

such rigid rules, and so opposed to new members, should exist so long

in the whirling change of American life.

In Europe limited subscription balls have not continued. Almach’s in

London was the most famous, but it was swept out of existence by the

rising tide of wealth and new people.

The Patriarchs’ of New York, while being governed by the same rules,

and of the same character as these two existing balls, was not of great

age, and was abandoned years ago without a murmur by a society that had

outgrown anything so provincial as the subscription ball.

The St. Cecilia Society has continued its dances since the beginning,

but the Philadelphia Assemblies were discontinued through the Civil War.

Many have prophesied the dissolution of both societies, but no one has

seriously considered it. That these two balls continue to exist under

the present status of society, with its moneyed kings buying admission

everywhere, is a curious and contradictory phase of American life.

The fact that it is as difficult to enter each of them now as it was

in the latter half of the eighteenth century is never comprehended by

the newly rich or by the other millions of Americans who have not come

in contact with the aristocratic exclusiveness of these two social

institutions.

The St. Cecilia is more exclusive than the Assemblies for the reason

that Charleston has had her social lines arranged since the first

century of her existence. Wealth, power, genius, ambition, in a great

horde are not knocking at the doors of that ultra-refined Carolina city

for admission; but in a great city like Philadelphia unknown men become

captains of industry overnight, and their wives wail for admission into

the most fashionable function.

Tales that are told in broad social centers like New York, London and

Berlin, of the exclusiveness of these two dances, are laughed at as the

exaggerations of those with a gift greater for narrative than for fact.

In Charleston, when the St. Cecilia was begun, many years before the

Revolution, the first subscription list almost settled the question of

admission for the following centuries. On it were names more powerful

in the seats of the nation’s mighty then than now.

Many were of Huguenot origin, others of the first English blood. Among

the managers were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and names

which still govern the social register of to-day in Carolina, such as

Ravenel, Prioleau, Pringle, Drayton, Rhett, Huger, Middleton, Fraser,

Legare, Porcher, Miles, Calhoun and Pinckney.

These are not even a quarter of the names that before and after the

Revolution were an open sesame to American and European society.

As near as possible, the sixteen managers of the St. Cecilia have borne

the same name as the original managers. When one died, another of the

same name was put in his place, if he could be found in the United

States. No innovation has been permitted in the management regarding

admission, rules or customs of this delightful ball since its inception.

The person who is not on the list of the St. Cecilia is not “in

society” in Charleston, and the rest of America accepts this judgment

of the arbiters as regards Carolinians.

The aristocracy of the most exclusive city in America is on that list.

By strangers, it is said to be the best managed ball in America.

Everything moves like clockwork, because nothing is theoretical,

nothing is experimental. It was arranged in the early days of elegance,

when manners were supreme.

No one tries to break the rules, which are unique. Possibly the most

peculiar one is the refusal of the managers to allow women to sit

outside the ballroom with men. Stairway flirtations, cozy-corner

_tête-à-têtes_, are simply not allowed. The rest of the civilized

world may consider these elegant, the St. Cecilia does not. From this

verdict there is no appeal.

One woman, known throughout American society as one of the potential

leaders of the smart Newport set, thought herself above the traditions

of the Carolina ball. She was a guest at this dance when in Charleston,

and began the evening by sitting out dances in secluded corners

outside the ballroom. Comment ran rife. The sixteen managers consulted

together. The president, a man of great manner and unfailing elegance,

took upon himself the duty to correct the New York woman.

Finding her in a secluded corner, as usual, he kindly informed her of

the comment she brought upon herself by breaking the best-known rule of

the society. She was inclined to be ungracious about it, and intimated

that the managers were old fogies, and that any ball with such a

tradition would be unbearable.

“It is done in London and New York,” she defiantly said.

“But not in Charleston, madam,” answered the president, as he offered

her his arm, which he never removed until she took it. He then led her

back to the ballroom and offered her a chair.

The St. Cecilia gives three balls each winter, and the men subscribers

pay the expenses. It would be impossible to make them understand or

approve of the method of the Philadelphia Assemblies, which charge

women subscribers the full price of the ticket. In Charleston this

would be considered not only ungallant, but, frankly, an exhibition of

inferior breeding.

It is unlike a Southern ball in the fact that the young women arrive,

enter the ballroom and return home with chaperons. No other method is

considered among society people in Northern cities, where girls are

not allowed to go alone with men to any place of entertainment, but in

Southern cities this rule is transgressed with the full approval of

society.

The reason for this is easily explained. Southern cities are small,

and the aristocratic community really goes together to any social

function, and there is no reason for surrounding a young girl with the

conventions necessary in a city of millions of people and miles of

crowded streets.

Before each dance the orchestra gives the signal for every girl to

return to her chaperon. She cannot leave the man with whom she is

talking to join the man to whom she is promised the next dance. This

partner must go to her chaperon and await her return.

It is there he must claim the engagement. This is not optional. It is

imperative. It would be considered the greatest breach of good behavior

not to do it. In truth, no one thinks of its being unique, or of not

doing it instinctively, because it is a tradition that has governed the

dance since before the Revolution.

Surely there is not a man in the world who does not see its advantages.

It prevents the possibility of being cornered with a girl through two

or three dances, or being compelled to find her a partner in order to

free himself to dance with some one else. In the slang of the day, it

saves the man from being “stuck.”

The instant the orchestra begins this preliminary canter to the dance,

every couple rises, and each girl expects her escort to leave her

the moment she reaches her chaperon. For him to remain would be an

exhibition of social awkwardness. A man can make as many engagements

on one girl’s card as she will let him, but they must not follow each

other.

Dozens of men have sighed for this rule at other balls, but so far the

St. Cecilia is the only one that had the courage to start it and the

conviction to retain it.

Chaperons sit around the dancing floor on a slight platform on which

are comfortable chairs. As all the girls return before each dance--not

after it, mind you--the women rise to receive them.

The young women make supper engagements for the balls as the Northern

girls do.

The president always leads the march to supper with the newest bride.

Supper is served promptly at midnight, and the ball opens at the early

hour of nine o’clock. The men arrive earlier, for the social conditions

are such in the South that there are more men than women, and if they

indulge in the foolish Eastern habit of arriving just before midnight,

they haven’t a chance of finding a single partner through the evening.

The society owns its present napery and silver, which it bought with

the first ready money that came in after the desperate financial

straits of the terrible reconstruction.

It is as handsome as their splendid plate of antebellum days, which was

destroyed by fire.

Both silver and napery bear the monogram of the society, and the linen

was especially woven in Ireland. This gives the table an aristocratic

air impossible when supper and silver are left to caterers.

The cook who prepares the supper is a gingerbread-colored genius. His

cooking of wild duck still brings water to the mouths of those who have

been asked to the feast.

The stranger might notice that the managers and a few older men are

absent for some time after the guests have returned from supper to the

ballroom for the two round dances. If they investigated they would find

that the chosen few were regaling themselves with supper made up of

even more epicurean dishes and rarer wines than the many had enjoyed.

This is the time for the colored cook to prove what he can do. Many a

_bonne bouche_ is served that goes into gastronomic history.

The most exciting moment of the supper room is the scramble of the men

for a sugar figure which is placed on the top of a huge fancy structure

of spun sugar. Each man tries to secure this souvenir for his partner.

No matter how large the list of the St. Cecilia has grown, the

invitations always have been delivered by hand. This custom is a

tradition that has come down since the days before a mail service was

ever thought of. As all other traditions were kept up, so was this.

Edmund is the name of the darky who possibly for half a century has

delivered these invitations from door to door. He has been almost as

important as the St. Cecilia. He is a social register for Charleston

“quality.” He is as proud of his descent, his position and his social

superiority as though his ancestors had landed in the bay under the

sturdy Lion of St. George or the Flying Fleur-de-Lys in the seventeenth

century.

The society has never permitted the german to be danced at this

ball, although it was introduced in other Southern cities several

years before the Civil War. This is a prejudice well known to the

Charlestonian, and ignorance of it once tripped up a social aspirant

who talked too much.

A certain man of wealth made many an inducement for those in and out

of power to have him invited as a guest to one of these balls while

he was an usher at a fashionable wedding in Charleston. He did not

succeed, but that did not prevent his talking glibly in his own city of

the charm and defects of the St. Cecilia as though he had been there.

A Charleston girl visiting in that city stood his criticism of her

beloved St. Cecilia until he spoke of the _cotillon_.

“Strange,” she interrupted, “that you should have danced a german

there. No set of managers has allowed this in one hundred and sixty

years.”

During the hardships of the Civil War and privations of the

reconstruction the men abandoned dress suits for these dances. They

wore what they could find. Purple and fine linen had disappeared, and

if the men who hadn’t patched gray uniforms could get whole suits of

unbleached Macon Mills cloth, with buttons of gourd seeds in some

cases, they were gay about it.

They danced as eagerly as they fought, and tripped the measures of the

quadrille as cheerily as they charged under the stimulus of the rebel

yell.

They carried their swords at their sides and their hearts on their

sleeves, and as willingly offered their sentiments to the prettiest

girl as they did their bodies to Federal bullets.

A part of the rare charm of the St. Cecilia dances lies in the presence

of the grandmothers and grandfathers of the young set. Delightful old

people are present who do not attend other entertainments. What would

the St. Cecilians do without Mr. Smith? “Turkey-tail Smith,” as he has

been called for decades; a nickname to which he does not object. Genial

and kindly, he is a part of the atmosphere, always fanning himself and

his partner with a turkey-tail fan.

Many a lovely bride treasures his gift of such a fan. Sad, sad the

ignorance of the East and West where the people know not what love and

laughter, what limpid eyes and charming mouths, are suggested by the

turkey-tail fan of Dixie.

It is natural that around the Philadelphia Assemblies there should have

gathered an atmosphere of anecdote. Its exclusiveness is so well known

that it is an honor for the man of millions to belong to it, and his

efforts, vain or successful, to enter this social sanctuary, have given

the elect many a happy moment.

When the demure little group of worldlings gathered together at

Hamilton’s Wharf to dance, they had no idea of the sorrow, the

heartaches, the Titanic struggles, they were bequeathing to posterity.

In 1749 a few married men and fewer unmarried beaux subscribed forty

shillings apiece for a series of dances to take place every Thursday

night during the winter. In those early days the men paid all the

expenses, and each subscriber had the privilege of taking some lady to

each dance. Charming belles of the day went down to the wharf on the

Delaware River on horseback, with riding habits over evening gowns.

The dancing began promptly at six o’clock and ended at eleven. The

invitations were printed on the backs of playing cards, as these were

the commonest bits of pasteboard in the Colonies. With the first

Assembly distinct social lines were drawn, but, of course, nothing

could equal or compare with the rigid rules that have governed the

Assemblies for the last century, which, if they were not taken so

seriously, might be absurd.

In those days no mechanic or tradesman of any line of work was allowed

to be a subscriber; and no young man was allowed to bring a young lady

out of the prescribed set.

After the Revolution an exceedingly keen social blow was given these

exclusive little dances by President George Washington.

The Virginian, whose blood was of the finest in the land, was invited

to dance at this Assembly on the same night that he was also invited

to a dance given by the tradespeople. He chose the latter, and led the

minuet with one of its prettiest young women.

A premium was put upon promptness in these old days by the managers,

who gave to the women arriving first the distinction of dancing in the

opening set. Those who came afterward were put in the second set, and

so on.

They had another plan of letting the women draw numbers and dance

in the sets which corresponded to the number they held. This was an

unhappy way to manage a ball. Historians of the city life tell us that

both of these customs were broken up through the rebellion of lovely

young Polly Riche, who, with the man of her choice, insisted on dancing

in any set she pleased.

The managers protested, but the young men sided with her, and the

result was that the Assembly took on more freedom and, therefore, more

pleasure.

These little dances had their serious troubles even then. The

Quakers had nothing to do with them, of course, but did not make any

serious comment upon them. Presbyterians loudly disapproved, but the

Episcopalians, even the clergy, lent not only tolerance, but cordial

indorsement.

The tiny list of subscribers has reached nearly a thousand in the

twentieth century. Instead of the little room lit by wax candles on the

Delaware River, and possibly filled with the fruity and salty odors

from merchants’ ships, the dancers now gather in the gorgeous salons

of the great new Bellevue Stratford Hotel. Instead of a few fiddlers,

there is one of the greatest dancing orchestras in America. Instead of

beginning at six o’clock and ending at midnight, the ball begins at

twelve o’clock and ends at dawn.

It may be of interest to those who care for the cakes and ale to read

the comparison between the “refreshments” served then and now.

In 1749 and throughout the next decade the supper consisted of nine

shillings’ worth of milk biscuit and five gallons of rum, added to two

hundred limes for a punch. And, mind you, this punch was served to only

a few people.

The supper served this last winter was as follows:

CHAUD

Bonne Bouche Assembly

Gumbo Passe

Terrapin

Poulet de Grain Supérieur

Pommes de Terre Nouvelles Rissoles

Jambon de Virginie

----

FROID

Chaufroix de Grouse

Cœur de Laitue

Filet de Bœuf

Salade de Chapon

----

Pudding Montrose

Croquants Marrons Glacé

Bonbons

Café

Instead of forty shillings for eighteen dances, each subscriber now

pays ten dollars for two. These two balls are given after New Year’s

and before Lent, and because of their exclusiveness, remain the most

unique function in Philadelphia life.

Old families who take admission into the Assemblies as a matter of

course will tell you how stupid they are, how tiresome, how foolish the

rules of admission are, and that really everybody can get in now; but

you would almost have to take their own invitations away over their

dead bodies.

As in Charleston, one sees at these balls men and women who rarely

put on evening clothes except for these affairs. It is a witticism

attributed to the dashing captain of the First City Troop of

Philadelphia that when asked why he didn’t like the Assemblies, he

responded: “I never could stand the smell of camphor and tar balls.”

If the rules were always consistently kept, there would not be such a

happy fund of anecdote around the Assemblies. The five managers, who

are called “czars” by the irreverent, do their best through the decades

to use judgment and consistency for the admission of new members, but

it is also true that some “queer” people have been admitted and that

some of the most delightful, with pedigrees as old as the hills, have

been kept out.

New rules have been constantly made in the attempt to meet new

emergencies. Everything tends to the same aim, which is to keep out all

new members except the children of parents who are already subscribers.

And it is also true that peculiar rules, which in many cases are only

known to the “czars” themselves, are made as an excuse to drop those

who for certain reasons may not be considered desirable.

The inner Philadelphian will tell you that a number of “peculiar”

people got in about fifteen years ago, when there was a year of laxity

regarding admission. It was just after this epoch that some of the

most influential financial powers in social life resigned from the

management because they frankly said they could not withstand the

pressure brought upon them by men closely associated with them in

business who wanted invitations for their wives.

Most of these men who clamored for membership threatened to “squeeze”

the managers of the Assemblies unless they could “pull the ropes” for

these admission cards.

Even now there are many embarrassing situations between men of millions

and poor men of social power. It is known that ambitious millionaires

have gotten young men clerkships in their offices and then held over

their heads dismissal or raise of salary according to their failure or

success in obtaining for their wives and daughters the coveted prize.

Scandal after scandal has arisen in this way, and dozens of men have

felt too nervous over such gossip to be seen much with their superiors

in wealth who are well-known social climbers.

The newcomers are usually the most blatant about the rules and the

traditions of the Assemblies. A certain couple in Philadelphia, who

have lived much in the great centers of Europe and been presented at

foreign courts, have been embittered for two decades because of the

refusal of a succession of “czars” to allow them the privilege of the

Assemblies.

Each new batch of managers were deftly and luxuriously entertained by

the millionaire couple. Their palates were tickled, their financial

interests promoted by subtle methods. But all was of no avail until a

near relative of the couple, a man of national power, arrived home,

bearing in his official cornucopia gifts for younger sons. In return,

his relatives were finally invited to become members of the Assemblies.

At the first ball the lady went to the man in charge of the supper

room, who was entirely new to the traditions of this dance, and between

them they reserved a table.

In true hotel fashion he tipped the chairs over on a round table

in the supper room. When two of the managers went to look over the

arrangements an hour before supper, they found the chairs in this

position. There was an indignant colloquy, and the head man was ordered

never to do it again. But as his bribe was probably worth while, he

fixed it so that when the grand march was over and the guests had

arrived in the supper room, the newcomers were at once placed at the

table for which they paid, although dozens of people who had belonged

to the Assemblies as a matter of course had to await their chances.

Another story is told of this same couple. On their entrance to the

ballroom, at their first appearance, they saw another couple, also

from up the State, who were their rivals for exclusive Philadelphia

favor, and also possessed of millions.

Putting up her lorgnon, the lady remarked in a voice that could well be

heard by the other couple: “How in the world did those people get here?”

The managers were fearful of dozens of intruders finding their way

into the social sanctuary this winter, when the balls were transferred

to the magnificent Bellevue Stratford, instead of being held in the

old Academy of Music. A hotel has a dozen entrances, and they feared

the “unwashed” might secure an entrance into the ballroom, or, what

was worse, go into one of the boxes that surrounded the dancing floor

and look on. This being suggested, there was tremendous commotion and

confusion among the elect. Orders were given right and left, and the

tortures of the Inquisition promised the doorkeeper if such a thing

happened.

A certain well-known couple who are anxious not to mix with those who

do not belong to the Assembly set were among the most ardent in their

endeavors to impress upon all men that no strangers should be allowed

through any entrance to boxes. The lady, wishing to see the scene from

an elevated position, went up to one of the boxes during the ball and

sat slightly back to get a commanding view, so she was not recognized

at the distance. Suddenly she was discovered by the managers. Her

husband was among the chief of those who insisted that peremptory

action must be taken. The doorman was sent to eject her from the box

or ask for her passport. He went with great hesitation, for the duty

was not a pleasant one. To give him courage the husband of the lady

followed, and he entered the box just as the colored man was ejecting

his wife!

The five managers who are at the head of these balls do not assume the

personal responsibility for the guests’ pleasure as do the sixteen

managers of the St. Cecilia.

There is no one person of any especial force or command who is looked

up to for detail.

When the late Ward McAllister, of New York, creator of the “Four

Hundred,” which, among other trivialities, gave him fame, was a

guest at one of the Assemblies, he was as pompous as usual and quite

interested in the social mechanism of this famous ball, the like of

which he had tried to create in the Patriarchs’, but couldn’t succeed.

He was walking with one of the well-known wits of Philadelphia, who was

a power in Assembly affairs.

“I would like to meet the man at the head of everything,” said Mr.

McAllister; “the one, you know, who has charge of the details. The

Patriarchs have such a man.” He referred to himself, of course. “And I

suppose there must be some one here who really takes charge, don’t you

know. Have I met him? You have such a one, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes,” answered his companion; “I think I know whom you mean. We

have such a man. It saves us all the trouble of detail. He is Holland,

the colored caterer. He is out in the supper room now.”

Mr. McAllister was more fortunate in getting into the Assemblies than

some other people who come from New York’s most distinguished families.

An incident illustrates the extreme indifference to any rules outside

of their own that the managers of the Assemblies have.

A beautiful Philadelphia girl was about to be married to the son of one

of New York’s social leaders. The mother of the bride-elect was one of

the most exclusive and aristocratic social figures in Philadelphia.

Three days before the ball was given she was in New York at some of the

pre-nuptial festivities, and when her prospective son-in-law’s family

became interested in her stories of the Assemblies and expressed a

desire to see such a ball, she cordially invited them over.

Eight of them came, with maids, valets and trunks of finery. The

Philadelphia hostess wrote a note to one of the managers, asking for

invitations, as these courtesies are extended to a few strangers

each year who are the guests of a subscriber. The lady’s request

was politely but firmly declined. She and her husband were amazed,

indignant and puzzled. In all her experience as an exclusive society

leader, she had never been “turned down” before. For generations, on

both her own and her husband’s side, members of their families had

served as managers of the Assemblies. Her husband went at once to his

intimate friends on the committee and explained the situation. It was

not necessary to explain who the New Yorkers were, for they also were

among the exclusive families in America.

Nothing had any effect. Persuasion won over four of the managers by

nightfall, but one remained obdurate, and one black ball is sufficient

to veto anything.

The eight New Yorkers repacked their finery and returned home,

absolutely turned down like the merest social adventurers by men who

wouldn’t break a rule in order to be courteous.

And the sole reason of it all was this: The list of guests had closed

on a fixed date, and no emergency could reopen it. The request was

presented too late.

It is not against the rules to invite strangers, but they can’t be

invited offhand. It would be like bestowing the Order of the Knight

of the Garter casually. Each name presented by a subscriber must be

investigated by the five managers, and then voted upon. The subscriber

must guarantee to the committee that the stranger is not living in

Philadelphia, or, if so, that the period of residence has not extended

over two years. Philadelphians who are born and have lived here for

generations, who go intimately with the smartest set, are declined

admission while they are here, because their ancestors were not

subscribers, but all they have to do is to move away for a year to any

other city, and their friends here can get them invitations at once as

“strangers.”

A woman who is not a subscriber may become one if she marries a

subscriber. If she is a subscriber when unmarried and weds a man who is

not a subscriber, she must forfeit the privilege of going, and not one

of her children can be admitted, except a daughter who remarries into

the subscribing set.

An outsider who can prove direct descent from an original subscriber

and then has a “pull” with the managers can be admitted for membership.

In the old days a man who married a woman subscriber could share her

honors and go with her. The custom prevailed until one of the most

popular girls in the Assembly married a man who, while personally

liked, belonged to an ordinary family, whose financial ways had not

been approved by Philadelphians for decades. The bridegroom came to the

ball with his bride, because a rule was a rule; so the managers met and

abolished the rule, but not the man. The groom, however, was not one

of the strugglers who want to kick down other climbers. He is a man of

humor as well as good sense, and he convulsed those who laugh at the

pretensions of the Assemblies by his response to a discussion regarding

the admission of another man who was not of the elect.

“Why can’t _he_ get in?” said the groom. “I’m in.”

Unfortunately for the managers, this new rule, which seemed so

satisfactory, gave them a bad quarter of an hour for the next ball.

The daughter of the chief and most distinguished manager married a

man who was not a subscriber. The couple were at once refused an

invitation for the next Assembly. This was quite too much for the

father, who was willing to turn down some one else, but one of his own

family--why--such a thing was never heard of. And so, in confusion and

dismay, the managers had to secretly break their new rule, and invite

this bride and groom, who have been going ever since.

When a male scion of one of the really great families married the

daughter of an all-too-well-known sporting man, he and his wife were

refused a subscription to the following balls.

“If he can’t go, neither can we,” wrote one hundred members of his

family. This was too much for the managers again, and they meekly

consented to let him enter.

When a girl who has not been able to go, no matter how charming and

attractive she is, marries a subscriber, the one comment that sweeps

over the church is: “Well, she can go to the Assemblies now.”

One mother, who all of her life had been ruled by this social law, wept

when her daughter told her that she was going to marry a man out of the

list. The girl was a healthy, straightforward, American type, who did

everything athletic and copied the field and turf when she talked. The

man she was to marry had every desirable quality, except his name on

the Golden Book.

“You will break my heart by such a marriage,” wailed the mother; “the

first of all our family to be denied the Assemblies. You must give this

man up.”

“Give up a bully man for a stupid ball? Well, I guess not,” was the

final answer of the frank daughter. And she married the man.

One of the momentous questions that cost the managers sleepless nights

was a question of ancestors, caused by two débutantes. They were

children of a couple who had married the second time. One, the wife’s

daughter, was by a former husband, who didn’t belong to the Assemblies.

The other was a daughter of the husband by a first wife, both of whom

belonged to the Assemblies. The girls had been brought up together from

childhood, and when they came out in society, the father asked for

their invitations together. This precipitated one of the most momentous

emergencies that the managers ever had to meet. This exact question

had never come before the Assembly. All kinds of advice, social and

legal, were asked, and the question convulsed society. Everyone debated

it, and everyone took sides. After many meetings by the managers, the

decision was reached that the stepdaughter of the father couldn’t be

invited, but that the stepdaughter of the mother could.

And such a hold have the rules of the Assembly on Philadelphians, that

nothing about this was considered unusual. Had it been a question of

admittance by descent into the House of Peers, it couldn’t have been

more important.

But if it were not for the peculiarity of these rules and customs

which govern the two oldest balls in the world, it is doubtful if they

would have become famous, or if they would have preserved, through the

centuries, their unique charm, their peculiar social aroma.

We are a restless, easily wearied, ever-changing people. It is

delightful to know that in the hurly-burly these two social affairs

live out the traditions of our ancestors.

May they always copy their manners!

[Illustration]

COUPLETS

’Tis strange that Youth himself the task would set

To learn the very things Age would forget!

We labor to possess a world of things,

And lose them through the toil their getting brings.

Who would but hold the earth in sober wit

Must never try to hold too much of it.

LEE FAIRCHILD.

FALSE EQUIVALENTS

By H. F. Provost Battersby

[Illustration]

The house stood in the corner of a quiet square, a little south and

west of the Green Park, and the room in which most of his evenings were

spent was on the balcony floor. The balconies had blossomed. They burst

in a wreath of color round the grim quadrangle in festal imitation of

the spring, when the newer beauties and the May buds were coming out;

but before Jim South’s windows were only a few green shrubs, which died

hard through the summer. He always admired his neighbors’ decorations,

without noticing the deficiencies of his own; yet that garland round

the old dark fronts often seemed to him like roses on a faded face;

there lurked a sort of shame behind the sweetness; it was almost a

trifling with age.

The square was a kind of back eddy to the Palace Road, and held a

strained hum from the traffic round it. The silence, which raised the

rents, had attracted South; he used more of it, he said, than most of

those who paid them, farming it himself.

He meant that he was less often an absentee than those about him, but

his phrase suggested an alternative of occupation which did not exist;

for never was a man with less of harness on his back. He lived solely

for his own amusement; cropping life’s greenness in a slow, easy,

ruminant fashion, and on a modest income. A cousin was his nearest

relative.

He had a fire this evening, though half May was past, and his book had

dropped from his hand, when the man who was owner, factotum and, with

his wife, comptroller to that small household of bachelors, announced:

“Miss Rosamond Merlin!”

It was a girl who entered; a girl with a woman’s buoyant movement

and pose; a woman with a girl’s footfall. She wore a cloak which was

somewhat oppressively magnificent, and held out a hand to South,

laughing, as he rose.

“Surprised?”

“Delighted!” he said.

She sighed as she dropped into his seat.

“I don’t suppose you are.”

He pushed a chair to the further side of the fireplace, and watched,

while she drew off slowly her long gloves, with the flicker of

curiosity which was always lambent on his face. It was like a color

there.

The girl bent down, and spread out her arms to the glow. She let them

fall on the front of her skirt, pressing it back from the little pink

and gold slippers on the grate stone.

“What a man you are for fires!” she said.

“I like warmth.”

“In coals,” was her retort.

She looked up at him sideways, smiling.

“Why don’t you ask to see my frock?”

“Because I want to,” he said.

Her eyes brimmed with unbelief.

“You know you don’t care tuppence,” she said; but she threw the cloak

at last from her shoulders, and leaned back in the chair, drooping

an admiring eye. She was on her way to the great costume ball of the

season, and forced from South a hazard at her masquerade.

“Apple blossom?” he ventured, and was complimented.

“Ah, you should see it standing up; but you’re not worth that. Look

there!”

She spread out the phantom of a fan, shaped and painted as a tuft of

its tinted bloom.

“Veynes gave it me,” she said.

“Oh, did he?”

“Ye-es, he did. Are you sorry for Veynes?”

“I!--why?”

“Oh, do be sensible!--you’re not that much of a fool;--because I’ve got

him, or he’s got me, whichever you like. Don’t you think it’s bad for

him?”

“It might be worse,” South said.

“Thank you. It might, you know; ’specially with Veynes. Oh, I say, do

you mind my coming here?”

“I can mind nothing else for days,” he laughed. “Why?”

“I thought your man looked a sort of piled-up disapproval when he let

me in.”

“For us all?”

“Yes; and for himself.”

“For himself! Why?”

“Oh, he’s probably seen my face too often in shop windows to care to

see it here. You’re all deadly respectable, aren’t you?”

“The whole square is; we’ve taken life policies in propriety. Money,

art and titles, and all of it married.”

She gave a little wince at that, but asked if he would offer her some

coffee. South was famous in a small way for making it, and his friends,

when out of humor with the world, would come and watch the brown

liquid bubble through the valves of some strange machine of copper and

nacreous glass he had picked up in the East, and regain their “values”

over a cup.

He pushed a hanging kettle across the flame, and knelt down by his

visitor to stir the fire.

“Turkish?” he inquired.

“That’s the gritty stuff, isn’t it? No, the other; and black. Why is

your hair so long?”

“Is it? I’ve forgotten it. What is this on your shoe?”

“The gold?”

“Yes.”

“Letters.”

“What?”

“R. E. V.”

“A monogram?”

“Yes.”

“Whose?”

“Nobody’s.”

She swept her train across her little feet and laughed at him.

“Are you learning to be inquisitive?” she inquired.

South did not say. He lifted the kettle from its crutch, and set the

_cafetière_ in action.

Rosamond screwed her chair round to the table, and spread her arms upon

it, resting her cheek on one of them to watch his proceedings.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked, presently.

The bubbles in the dim glass tubes ran to and fro half a minute before

he replied.

“To know what?”

“About my slippers.”

“Oh, curiosity,” he shrugged.

She tilted her face further over on her white forearm, and her eyes

came round to his.

“I thought you hadn’t any?” she said.

His “Only about trifles” was meant unkindly; but she refused to take

offense.

“I suppose that’s a compliment to my number threes,” she smiled; “so

I’d explain the letters on them if I could; but they came from Veynes

with the fan, so I can only guess--perhaps they stand for the motto of

his house.”

“Probably,” he assented, grimly. “_Regina ex vulgo_, or something of

the sort. Are you going to adopt it?”

“To adopt what?”

“The motto of his house.”

She rose without replying, and walked to an antique mirror which

covered a corner of the room. She faced it with a sigh of satisfaction,

and then turned slowly round upon her toes till her shoulders were

reflected. Her head was flung back out of the lamp light which yellowed

her breast, and the gold of her coiled hair floated over her in the

darkness like a misty moon.

She stood, poised doubtfully for some time, pinching her little waist

downward with both hands.

“Do you think it shows too much?” she inquired, presently, without

moving.

South looked up from the table.

“For what?” he said.

“For what do you mean?”

“For my taste, or for yours, or for Veynes’, or for modesty--or what?”

“For yours, if you like.”

“For mine, yes! I don’t mean that I see too much of you, but it’s so

tremendously announced; it’s squeezed into one’s eye.”

“And for modesty?”

“Oh, modesty doesn’t depend on clothes, any more than purity did on fig

leaves. Eve only began to sew when she had lost hers. Come and drink

your coffee.”

She came, after some further observation, and sipped in silence from

the cup he handed her. He had a dozen questions on his tongue, but

could not or would not put them; the girl seemed too independent. He

mentioned finally the current report that they were to see her in the

new piece at the Variety.

“Well, you’re not,” she said. “It’s a dancing part, and I’m going to

_act_ when I go back to the boards.”

“Why?”

“Because I can.”

“That would seem to be as good a reason the other way.”

“_You_ know,” she scoffed.

“I do; I saw you three times.”

“Three!--some men saw me thirty.”

“I dare say. I couldn’t afford it.”

“The price of a seat?”

“No, the solace of one; the one you’re in; it’s almost a housewife in

its economies.”

“Economies?”

“Yes, economies of content. It guarantees _that_ while I stay in its

arms. I think I buy it cheap.”

“Content! I wouldn’t take it as a gift; it’s a despair with a

trousseau, a sort of bridal and sanctified kind of funk. Oh, content’s

a miserable thing.”

South laughed.

“Well,” he said, “it’s not often offered with a ring. Will you take

another cup?”

She pushed hers toward him and asked if he had any brandy in the house.

South nodded at a liquor stand, but suggested _crème de menthe_.

“It’s not for me,” she explained, “but for my driver--he’s got an awful

cough; I’ve been listening to it up here all the time. Could you send

him a glass?”

South laid his hand on the bell.

“What driver?” he said.

“The man on my hansom; he’s been waiting for me.”

“Why do you keep him?”

“I don’t. Veynes does.”

“Is Veynes in the cab?”

“No, no, silly!--it’s Veynes’ hansom; he sent it round for me. The

driver of Veynes’ hansom has a cough, you have some brandy, and I want

you to send it down by your man to the driver, that his cough may be

stayed. Now do you understand?”

“No, I do not,” he said; but he did as she desired.

“I suppose that is a fresh indiscretion,” she remarked, as the man

retired.

“I suppose it is,” he replied, “but the freshness need not count for

much among so many. Is Veynes coming here for you?”

“Mercy, no!” she laughed. “He wouldn’t quite understand it; it doesn’t

occur to him that a girl who kicks her skirts about at so much a week

can ever want anything of a man but flattery and new frocks. A good

deal of dullness goes with a title, you know.”

“If by dullness you mean bewilderment, I might be a duke. Will you

explain?”

“Why I’m here?”

“Oh, no, I understand that; you’ve tried to make me envy Tantalus

before; but why you’ve forgotten your prudence and your promises--I

used to believe in both--and what has become of your chaperon; and how

deep Lord Veynes is in it.”

She left all but the last question unanswered, and said, looking from

him toward the fire:

“He wants me to marry him.”

She missed the quick spring of his eyes to her face, but she met them

the next moment.

“Am I to congratulate you?” he inquired.

“You might have said _him_,” she remarked; “however, it’s good of you

not to jump--but you always could sit still. I know you’re saying

something nasty inside of you; mayn’t I hear it?”

“I don’t think I am,” he replied. “I was wondering precisely where I

came in?”

“You come in here,” she laughed, with halting mirth; “you’re the

oracle; you roll out the future in a hollow voice; you say what you

think.”

He shook his head.

“No, I forgot,” she ran on, “you never do; you say what you think some

one else will think of what you wouldn’t say if you thought it; isn’t

that it? You explained it to me once, but it wasn’t clear. Well, say

that! Say something! You’ve known Veynes longer than I have; say he’s

not good enough for me!”

“Oh, that’s understood,” he murmured.

“By Veynes?”

“By Veynes just at present, probably. I meant by you and me.”

“Oh, you!” she flouted. “You mightn’t think yourself good enough.”

It was a curious challenge for a man’s matrimonial amen. The woman

thirsting for love and eager to drink it; the man thirsty and afraid.

She did not see the sudden change in his eyes, as though a flame went

through them. She was looking the other way. But she heard the parry of

his low “I should not” to her thrust. It pierced like the white pinch

of frost, it ran cold even into her voice.

“Ah, you’re too modest,” she rallied, so briskly that he did not notice

the shiver in her throat. “Besides, you’re rather cowed by my frock;

but how about the family?”

“Veynes’?”

“Yes.”

“There’s only Lord Egham.”

“Only Lord Egham! No sisters, mothers, aunts--nothing? Oh, come, that’s

better. And what is he like?”

“He’s a dear old gentleman who dotes on his son.”

“Then he’d take me badly?”

“I fancy so.”

“Why?”

“Ah, that’s a big question. Perhaps his education was defective.”

“I dare say. He’s an earl, isn’t he?”

“Yes, the Earl of Egham, sits as Viscount Alderly.”

“I see; and some day I might be a countess?”

“You might.”

“That’s a bribe; I like the word awfully; it sounds _good_; it’s like a

stare to say it--the countess!--but I fancy it would be rather dreadful

being one--that is, if you weren’t born to it--in the cast all along,

don’t you know. Of course, then you could do what you liked; but if

you’d only been made one, and made from a dancing girl, you’d _have_

to be proper, just to show how easy it came! And I think it would be

dull,” she drawled. “What do you say?”

“Nothing,” he affirmed.

“Not even to save poor Veynes from his fate? You could save him.”

He looked slowly across at her face, which lay back idly under the

yellow light, and she held her eyes squarely to his, as a maid holds

a mirror to her mistress. He might search them for reflections, but

he would see nothing more. In point of fact, he looked for some time

without troubling their surface.

“Marry him,” he said.

“And the earl?”

“Oh, you must treat him kindly, and show him what an excellent countess

you can make.”

“Shall I?”

“I fancy not. You’re too human, you see; this warm, kind world is too

near your heart. The great lady has nothing there but her corset; and

the world--her little cold world--at her fingers’ ends, in a descending

scale of chilliness. Besides, you’re too pretty.”

“To be a countess?”

“No, to be made one. You can’t melt beauty for new molds without

breaking the old, you know; something goes.”

“And yet you say--marry him.”

“Well, I won’t say it,” he replied.

She had turned her head away, and was stretching over her shoulders for

her wrap.

“I’m going,” she said.

He rose to put it round her, and caught the reflection in the glass of

her averted eyes. They were shining with tears.

She held out her hand, shook his shortly, and went toward the door.

“You needn’t come down,” she said, as he followed her.

“No, but I will.”

“No, you won’t; I don’t want you.”

There was something more imperative in her decree than its tone--a sob;

that stopped him at the open door.

The sound of her feet ceased from the stair, the front door slammed,

and he walked across to the window, waiting there till the noisy motion

of her hansom ebbed into the dull roar of the streets.

He stayed even longer, and the May sky had lost its last memory of the

day ere he sat down again before his dying fire.

The girl’s gay audacity seemed to linger like an odor in the room;

made pungent, as it were, by that sob. He had not noticed it before.

Conscious audacity it was not; for she wore her beauty as a sort of

decoration, the star of some regal order, which sanctioned the fine

animal magnificence with which she had set the obligations of nobility

behind those of good looks, and doubted if the charmed circle of

coronets might not prove too dull for her endurance; putting, without a

tinge of affectation, nature’s creations before those of dead kings.

But it was not of her vivid exuberance that South was thinking; he had

inhaled that before, and the intoxication of it was dissolved. But

those sly touches of humility, too faint to be felt through the written

record of her words, dropped lids, and looks, and pauses, so unlike

her, pressed still as a hand upon his lifted arm. Yet he told himself

he had understood them, without the compulsion of her tears.

At least he understood this: that she had thrown the weight of her

beauty without avail against the ease and freedom of his unwedded days.

Yet it left him with a pricking sense--not of repentance--but that

repentance might confront, might even confound, him.

II.

Some five months earlier in the year Lord Veynes had returned from a

voyage round the world.

It was to have completed his education, which included, besides some

Greek grammar, the use of a cue, a little Cavendish and the racing

calendar. He was five-and-twenty, a gentleman; dressed well, looked

well and lived well; on the whole, a nice fellow, deeply attached to

his father and devotedly to himself.

The former was becoming an old man, having married late in life; was

short, had a stoop, a halo of whitened hair, and a face that was a mask

of merriment. His kindliness and humor were bywords, and his stories

always made a widening silence in a room, to which fresh listeners

drifted. He would laugh at them himself, yet his laughter seemed their

best part, their sincerest compliment; it was like humor itself holding

its sides.

He had filled every county dignity in turn, but they made no mark on

him nor he on them; he bore them dutifully, but he was glad to be rid

of them; they added something to his tales, to the fullness of his

humor, to the softness of his heart; perhaps to public knowledge of

his incompetence. Yet he was liked none the less for his failures; his

blunt honesty thrust out of them obtrusively, as an elbow through a

ragged sleeve.

Veynes was the one relic of his married life, having cost his mother

her life; and he was adored as things may be that are made so ruinously

unique. He was a good boy, and stood a great deal of spoiling; but he

had argued, naturally, his own adorableness from so much adoration, and

would have honored his father’s encomiums to any amount.

His home-coming had all the decoration of triumphal entries--flags,

festival arches and singing children; afterward a tenant dinner, tenant

humor and considerable drowsiness.

When it was all over, and the two men sat together by the log fire in

the hall, which burned red splashes on the armored walls, the earl

opened the subject nearest his heart--an heir.

“I want to see him here before I’m gone,” he concluded, with a kind of

ruefulness which was a part of his pathos and of his humor; “and, by

George, my boy, if you don’t marry soon, I will.”

“Oh, I’ll marry, I’ll marry,” laughed the other, “but you must find me

the girl.”

Love, however, did that, though the earl was assiduous, surrounding

the young man for the betterment of his choice with half the eligible

petticoats in the county; a mistake, seeing that iteration and

propinquity in affairs of the heart are of more assistance than variety.

Yet it was, in the end, variety which succeeded, in the person of Miss

Rosamond Merlin.

She had come to lend terpsichorean relief to an amateur performance of

burlesque in the neighborhood, and her appearance transformed Veynes,

in a single night, from a conscientious brigand to a distracted and

distracting piece of stage furniture; though it is but fair to add he

was not the only one affected; for none of his brother bandits were,

when slain--while Miss Rosamond was upon the stage--as stiff as their

previous rigidity had led one to expect.

Miss Merlin attended but three rehearsals; yet ere the night of the

performance, Veynes had decided, as he put it, that they were made

for one another--a phrase which has not, in a man’s mouth, all the

reciprocity that it conveys. He offered the idea to Miss Rosamond while

applying some powder to her cheek.

She laughed, knocked the puff out of his hand, and ran on to the stage;

but she found him awaiting her exit, deaf to cues and stage directions,

in a kind of tragic calm.

“I mean it,” he protested.

She widened her eyes.

“Well, mean it a little later,” she said.

He took the hint and waited till, having found her some food, they

were sitting in the deserted supper room, in an atmosphere of

exhausted hilarity, among the ruins of the waiters.

“Have you thought it over?” he asked, impressively.

“I, no!--do I ever think anything over but a new step? Besides, such a

simple little thing!”

“Simple!” he stammered.

“To say no to. Do you think I’d have the cheek to marry you?”

“Wouldn’t you?” dropped the young man, feebly.

He was innocent of having conceived, still less suggested, so

tremendous a contingency; indeed, her contemplation of it, even in

dismissal, appeared unseemly. For he had been strictly brought up,

and had added, “Thou shalt not wed the name of Veynes in vain,” to a

decalogue somewhat abridged, and, as his, father put it, “edited by

Debrett.”

But neither his decalogue nor his delicacy prevented him from sketching

airily the insignificance of wedding symbols in an aristocratic

connection when the heart was involved.

“People talk such nonsense, you know,” he said.

She smiled with engaging innocence, and he edged a little nearer to his

meaning, hoping she would meet him halfway.

It was like laying a wash of color beside another which might be wet;

he was horribly afraid of a smear; he thought she might have assured

him, figuratively, that she would not run. But she only helped herself

to another _meringue_.

He made pauses and filled the silence with his eyes; but she met

them with a pensive examination through the prongs of her fork; and

the smiles he fancied ambiguous seemed, reflected on her mouth, to

be merely inane; so he was driven back upon words and impersonal

allusiveness. He groaned, in explanation, over the austerity which

would tie all love knots to a wedding ring; suggesting that some people

were able to conceive of them apart.

“Couldn’t you?” he inquired.

She gleamed with malicious coquetry.

“Couldn’t and wouldn’t,” she said, decisively. “Love and marry and

trust to luck, that’s my sentiment; but don’t marry if you can’t love;

and don’t love if you can’t marry; and don’t do either----”

“Well?”

“If you think you’re going to do both.”

“Poof!” he pouted.

“Oh, no, it’s not; it’s the very sober fact. Love’s a fever, you

know, and no better than most of them--contagious and malagious and

infectious and--and----”

“Go on!”

“But that’s the truth; it’s carried in frocks, pretty ones; and it’s

caught by touching, and it’s regular poison to breathe! Then it must

be in the air, because people take it in clumps, perfect epidemics;

and the best way to catch it is to let yourself get low and dumpy.

When you’ve got it, the only thing to cure you is marriage--and it

does generally--a ring dissolved in syrup night and morning; kind of

quinine, you know; takes away the shivering and gives you a headache.”

His face was whitening with disapproval, and she burst, as she caught a

glimpse of it, into a gust of laughter.

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s a matter of taste,” he remarked, with a further twist of

his nose, to indicate that its flavor, at least in his mouth, was

nasty. It is never the hangman can joke when he is hung.

She looked at him, with her head tilted over her plate, and a slow,

broad smile.

“You’ll do!” she said. “But you know even your eight pearls won’t run

to quite all that--every time.”

He moved impatiently on his chair as she raised her champagne glass and

peered mockingly at him across its yellow brim.

She set it down with a laugh.

“My!” she exclaimed; “what a row they are making upstairs! Come along,

I believe they are dancing.”

She went up three steps at a time, but Veynes followed more slowly. He

feared he was sickening for the fever.

III.

The woman’s orbit--in a civil state--is, like that of other celestial

bodies, either annular or elliptic.

Those of the circle are orderly satellites, turning an eternal sameness

to the attraction they patrol, and as incapable of suiting themselves

to a suitor, or of varying their reflection of his passion to a man’s

requirements, as of coyness with its quoted sunlight is the cold face

of the moon.

And the moons are many. They rise, wax, wane; are new, old and

eclipsed; pass by progressive phases of the familiar to the lean

crescent of contempt, with a constancy in decrepitude--speaking

amorously--which cannot only be followed, but--foretold.

And those of the ellipse? They, too, revolve, but come, enkindled,

from the unknown night, torn with fantastic splendors toward their

sun--drawn into him, it may be, by his spell, or past him with

unsolved desires, yet bent to him still--dying out, darkened, into

the empty way, spent, speedless, splendorless; a danger to orderly

patrollers of an orbit, and a possible acquisition for any new system

of superior attractions; being, at their ebb, but weak and idle

wanderers--inconstant, easily attached; though at other times superb,

imperious; yet malign portents to the thatched propriety that lives in

fear of sparks.

Such divide the sex, the passive and the passionate; the reflectors

and the inflamed. Men love the second, but they wed the first--moon,

not comet, and they do well. For men prefer comfort to coronation, and

like the easy sense of lordship which a satellite confers; for there is

something soothing to mortal vanity in centripetal rigors when oneself

is the center sought; and, though men disparage the sameness which they

wive, they would be but ill content with its reverse.

Veynes knew as much; or, rather, knew that as much was known. He had,

morever, warning in the fate of a too recent ancestor, who, allying

himself to one of the comet kind--the frame of her picture still

hung empty, in evicted memorial, at the court--came to unrecounted

grief. So, fearing his desires, and the failure of his desires, and

the outcome of either, he told himself, shaking his head with that

unvalorous and how-to-perform-I-wot-not wisdom of youth, that his

refined perceptions had been estranged by Miss Rosamond’s too candid

lack of quality. Which may have been; for our refined perceptions are

so often only an injected opiate, in spite of which our heart still

beats and sickens. Yet he shook his head sadly. He had his father to

consider; he had the estate to consider; he had his name to consider;

but, firstly and finally, he had himself. And, alas! it takes more than

honor, piety and pride together to make a man forget that. And a young

man in especial. For we are very practical when young, and only fight

the good fight for a substantial share in the plunder; we ask what a

man will _get_ in exchange for his soul.

Veynes fought it, there is that to his credit; and it is pleasant

to remember that, of all his obligations, duty to his father died

the hardest; sheer tenderness for the old man’s hopes often wringing

from him a resolve to conquer passion and wed a pedigree. But the

resolutions of the young are, happily, impermanent; and this kind

beyond the rest, being written in acid, eats its way out--through the

stuff of our wills.

So it was that, in spite of this clamoring chorus of expediencies, the

small voice which claims in every man the justice of joy made itself

heeded, and Miss Merlin received an offer of marriage; which, stung by

South’s indifference, she allowed herself to accept.

After that, of course, the deluge!--and, thinking to float it out the

better on a certificate of marriage, Veynes took Miss Rosamond to the

registrar.

Then, with Lady Veynes in her prettiest frock, they went down together

to the court, and crossing, with a sense of diplomacy, from the station

by a field path into the French garden, which lay behind the western

wing of the house, Veynes left his wife and advanced alone.

He was some time gone, and the lady, tired at last of the flowers, the

reflector, and the mossy sundial, and tempted by the cropped turf,

turned to her ancient consolation for leisures that were too long; so

that the first thing which met Veynes’ eye on his return was her lithe

figure, in fawn and gold, doing a little melancholy dance between the

scarlet flower beds.

The sight did not sweeten his temper; it emphasized too loudly

reproaches which hummed still against his ears. Even those red

blossoms, which had lived in their mute livery so many years about the

court, might have been too surprised to recognize, by the swift, small

feet that brushed their petals, a future mistress.

As Veynes drew near, the dance became a little more flamboyant, still

further ruffling him; the spaces of dainty petticoat seemed to enlarge

his grievance.

“Well?” she inquired, loftily, as he approached, dropping into an

attitude.

“Well,” he echoed, gruffly, “you needn’t fool about for the benefit of

the gardeners. He won’t see you.”

His tone sided with the rebuff, and brought a flush of color to her

face. She had been his wife only a night and a day.

“All right,” she replied, simply. “I will see _him_; and meanwhile the

gardeners are very welcome.”

He flung himself into a seat. “Just as you please,” he grunted; “only

he doesn’t know you’re here.”

She took no heed to the hint, but walked in her deliberate fashion to

the edge of the lawn; then she turned and came back more slowly.

“What did you tell him?” she asked her husband.

His arms were stretched along the top of the seat, and he was staring

gloomily at the house. He did not look up.

“I told him I was married. He nearly bucked out of his chair, and

looked as frightened as if he’d heard I was dead. So I said: ‘To an

actress,’ and he put his face into his hands and cried.”

“What a soft!”

“Oh, anything you please! He said some other things that were a bit

harder.”

“About me?”

“About the whole sickening concern. Said I might go to the deuce my

own way, but it shouldn’t be through the Court; and that while he

lived--which wouldn’t be for long--the old place should know only its

own sort of people.”

“What sort is that?”

“People of birth and breeding, I suppose.”

“I see! Like Lord Egglesham, for instance, who shared the honeymoon

with his fond parents; or Aubrey Beauthair, who gets fuzzy before

ladies. Well, I’m going to show your father what a person is like who

has been neither born nor bred; I dare say it will interest him. Shall

I say that you’ll dine here?”

“Say what you like,” he growled.

She turned again toward the long west wing of the great house, which

glowed above the box hedges, warm and red with sunlight above its

clinging roses.

Her heart was not so brave as her words, but it carried her past the

powdered footman with the air of a duchess, as she gave her name,

though she read doubts in his curdling face as to her reception, and

shared them herself. But therein she wronged a man too proud to let any

woman suffer a slight in his own house; and in due time the heavily

curtained library door was opened, and the earl entered and bowed.

“I am Lady Veynes,” said his visitor, quietly. She felt a sudden

kindness and pity for the frail, bent old man, who was still as white

as his son had reported.

He bowed again.

“I was waiting in the garden when my hus--your son was in here,” she

went on, simply; “he came out and told me all about it. I’m very sorry.

I mean I’m very sorry it is so bad for you. Your son said you’d wish

him better dead. I hope you won’t. He’s an awfully good son; he thinks

no end of you; and he’s outside now tremendously cut up.”

Lord Egham made no sign, but he was looking in the woman’s face.

“I’ve never thought about it,” she continued, naïvely, “but I didn’t

suppose there was such a difference between people as--as there seems

to be. I thought if a man’s wife was pure and true to him, and loved

him, he got all his change--I mean all he stood to; isn’t that it? You

don’t think so, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything about

you, you see,” she explained, with warming sympathy; “you were only the

Earl of Something, and it didn’t seem to matter much what an earl felt;

he didn’t seem quite human; it really didn’t seem as if he _could_ feel

so very much. But you see you do.”

The earl bent his head gravely, but there was the ghost of a smile

about his drawn lips.

“Sir,” she said, with a little gesture which opened her arms and seemed

pathetically to expose herself, “I am sorry to be here to trouble you;

I didn’t come for that. I suppose you think I was very glad to catch

your son, and his title, and money, and things; but I wasn’t. I didn’t

want them; I don’t know what you do with them; but I wanted to belong

somewhere. I’m all by myself, you see,” with a little isolating wave of

her hand, “and that’s dreary enough at times, especially for a woman.”

She waited a moment to allow the earl to fill the gap, but he did not.

He was watching her intently.

“I came down here with my husband,” she continued at length, with an

air of embroidering the interval; “he didn’t want me to come in to--to

bother you, but I felt I must. I don’t want you to fall out with him;

you haven’t had him back so long, I know; it seems pretty rough on you

every way; but if you can’t take us both on, I’ll go. Of course I can’t

go for good, but it’ll seem good enough, I dare say; I can keep out

of the way, and you can have him to yourself; and you won’t have to

apologize to all your friends for his making a fool of himself.”

There was some gentle irony in her voice, and it wavered as she

concluded:

“I’ve been pretty lonely before, but it was never anything like this;

and if I’d known how bad you’d take me I’d have stayed so.”

Her nervousness and her desire for simple expression soaked her speech

in a kind of sweetened slanginess, from which, usually, she was able to

wring out her thoughts into very clean English. Slang was, in fact, the

charcoal outline of most of her talk, but it was generally concealed

by the color. The latter she supplied on this occasion in person. She

was a very pretty woman, and seemed able to look her prettiest at

will; the need for beauty painting it freshly on her face. She had the

dancer’s trick, too, of seeming to float above her anchored feet, like

a butterfly with folded wings.

There were tears in her eyes, which aided the apparent sincerity in her

tone, though, indeed, she was sufficiently sorry for the silent man

before her to make it a very solid counterfeit of the fact; but the

tears were come of disappointment and hurt pride.

However, to a man, the tear in a woman’s eye is always a tear, a salt

tear; and in such eyes they looked well enough, and ill enough, to warm

a colder heart than was in Lord Veynes’ father; for age is tenderer

to beauty than youth, being a wayfarer among flowers which the other

wears; besides, it sees at sundown, and lips seem redder and eyelids

sadder when they face the sunset.

Lord Egham made a step forward, and offered her a seat. And Rosamond

murmured to herself: “I’ve come to stay!”

IV.

But she had not; at least not so speedily as she supposed. She returned

that evening to town with her husband, and crossed the Channel

the following day for a honeymoon, which was rather endured than

desired. But the earl proved, in the end, gentleman and philosopher

enough--synonyms for gracious acceptance of the inevitable--to make

his bow to necessity, and take fate and the prettiest lady in London on

his arm.

South had heard from her twice, from Venice and Corfu; long, trivial,

ill-spelt letters, lined with a secret wistfulness he had not

perceived, under the brave talk of travel.

He received the second while away from town, and only learned, on his

arrival in the end of October, that Lady Veynes and her husband had

called some weeks earlier, and had inquired the date of his return.

He was puzzled by their presence at that time in London, and a

telegram which came from the Court a few days later did not aid his

enlightenment. It ran: “Please be at home this evening.--R. E. V.” He

had indulged in the unusual extravagance of a box at the Variety for

the amusement of some country friends who were doing London in the

dull season, and was most anxious to entertain them; yet he provided a

substitute and an excuse without a murmur, and dined early by himself.

Then, the day having been close and warm, he pushed his chair beside

the roasted greenness on the balcony and sat looking down idly, in the

early evening, from behind the thick stone balusters upon the square.

The sky was clear above the mulled October mist, and a few pale stars

had appeared already, weak and white as city children; there was a reek

of heated brick, and an odor of brown leaves drifted from the park with

the damp smell of its autumn water.

The roar of traffic had died down; it was always quieter there in

the fall, and a piano-organ in the Palace Road seemed to play in an

exhausted air. A clatter of wheels crushed through its tune as a hansom

shot round the narrow entry and rattled across the quad.

The panels clanged, and South could hear the click of small-heeled

shoes upon the pavement. The pause which might cover a payment, the

long wheep of the whip, the sudden clash of hoofs, the thin clang of

the bell below--all seemed borne up to him with abnormal clearness.

He sat where he was till the door opened and Lady Veynes was announced;

then he rose, outlined in the open window against the sky, and called,

as his landlord retired, for the lamps. Rosamond walked across to the

balcony and stood beside him, gazing absently into the square; then

she turned her head quickly and looked up into his eyes. There was an

urgent smile in hers which was almost an appeal, but his in return

seemed to satisfy it, for she stole out her hand and caught his arm

lightly above the elbow.

“What does it mean?” he inquired.

She looked over his shoulder as the man entered and placed a lamp on

the table; and when he had retired she stepped across the room and

snapped it out.

“I don’t know why you called for it,” she said. “Was it to tint the

proprieties?”

“I suppose so,” he replied, regarding her, “but I’m afraid it won’t.”

“No, it won’t. I’m going to sit in your seat here by the window; pull

another beside it.”

He did as he was told, and she laid her arms limply along those of the

chair, leaned back and sighed.

“Don’t you know why I’m here?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“I’m going away.”

“From what?”

“From the Court, and my husband, and his excellent father, and

everything! I’m sick of it all.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you guess? Because I’m not one of them. I’m a kind of curiosity

in the house; people come to stare at me, they do, really; possibly

they think I’ll kick their hats off at afternoon tea, or pass them

the bread and butter on my toe; I don’t know. But I don’t mind that

so much, it’s the feeling that I mustn’t do these things because I

can. If I was a real lady I might do anything; but because I’m not I

must do nothing. Smile, sigh and say good-by; and be a pretty piece of

furniture to decorate the rooms and support my husband. But I won’t. I

wasn’t made on castors.”

“Well?” he smiled.

“Well, I’m going to run--on wheels!”

“Are they unkind to you?”

“No, they’re not; they’re kind, rather too kind. I mean they make you

feel it’s a moral obligation to treat such an outsider humanely. Of

course they can’t help it, and it’s nasty of me to mention it, but I

can’t help feeling it, either, and it makes me mad. Everything does

down there, from morning prayers, with half a squadron of bluey-white

servants on red chairs, to the candles at ten o’clock, and to bed

with what appetite you mayn’t. And I’ve _got_ to do it! If I suggest

anything fresh and sensible they look at me as if I were a sort of

missing link. So I shut up and scream inside me and wish for something

to bite. Put your hand here.”

He smiled at the sudden change, but laid his hand on the arm of her

seat, and she closed her gloved fingers over it.

“Do you want it to bite?” he asked.

“No. Jim!”

“Well?”

“Do you think me a fool?”

“No; I understand.”

There was a breadth in his tone which comforted her.

“You said: Marry him,” she pleaded.

“Yes, I did; perhaps _I_ was the fool; but I didn’t say ‘for three

months.’”

“Three? Six!”

“Never!”

“Five, then; I _ought_ to know.”

A certain sharpness in her registry seemed to give it claims to be

considered calendar. South looked up at her quickly, and she flushed

scarlet.

“Well, five,” he said; “hardly time for a very exhaustive study of the

married state.”

“Oh, it’s not the married state,” she explained, slowly, looking out

over the square. “I shouldn’t mind being married--married to a man. I’m

married to a house.”

“It’s a very good house.”

“I dare say it is; but I’m not a snail, and can’t stand having it on my

back;’ I wasn’t born under family bricks.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to leave them.”

“And why did you come here?”

She turned her head and flashed a shy glance across his eyes.

“I thought you might be leaving, too.”

She looked away as she said it, and he did not immediately reply.

Presently she loosened her fingers from his, and laid her hand in her

lap. She broke the silence sharply.

“I don’t understand you,” she said; “why do you suppose I’ve come here,

ever? Do you fancy it’s for the pleasure of a little talk? Why, I’ve

gone home sometimes clinching my hands to keep from crying, and hating

you fit to kill you.”

South sighed.

“Have you?” he said.

“Yes, I have! It’s horrid of me, I know, because you’ve tried to be

kind, mostly; but being kind is worse than anything, sometimes.”

She turned toward him, and through the shadow upon her face her eyes

glowed molten, as lead grows red in the ladle.

“Well,” he said, “you may forgive me; I haven’t tried to be kind. I

thought all the kindness on the other side. Your very coming was a

concession.”

“To what?”

“To a man unknown and immaterial; to the genius of futility.”

“Genius of fiddlesticks! Why did you suppose I came?”

South swung his head in pendulous ignorance.

“Oh, you needn’t mind my blushes, it’s too dark to see them. And when I

startled you with Veynes’ proposal, and bored you to admire my figure,

and my frock, and everything _he_ might be master of, was that a

concession?”

“To my stupidity?” he parried.

“No; the genius for futility--a woman’s!” she said, with drawn

bitterness. “All the same, if you guessed?”

“Oh, guessing!” he shrugged.

“No! You’re no such fool. Are you?”

She leaned somewhat away from him with a suggestion of disdain.

“No,” he replied, slowly, rising, “I did not guess; I knew.”

She heard him pacing in the dusky room behind her, and stop at last

before the fireplace. He laid one hand over the other and pressed them

with his forehead against the mantelpiece.

Cries, shrill and hoarse, drifted in with the darkness from the Palace

Road; the evening’s pennyworth of print in shouted headlines, the

details draining incoherently into the night.

“Won’t you say you’re sorry?” she inquired, presently.

“For you?”

“No, for yourself. Mightn’t we both have done better?”

“I’ve done nothing,” he murmured, between his arms.

“It’s not a fine confession,” she laughed, curtly; “but you chose.”

“Between what?”

“Between these arms and mine,” she said, slowly, tapping the chair;

“between horsehair and flesh and blood. And you chose the horsehair.”

“It’s permanent,” he retorted, somewhat piqued, “and it hasn’t a pulse.”

“Oh, no,” she sighed, “it’s a ‘dead-sure thing’--dead and sure, they’re

about the same; you can’t reckon up things that live; and, as for a

pulse, it beats faster for other things than fever, you know, and it’s

not only the doctor who feels it.”

“Feels it flag?” he queried.

“Oh, bother you!” she exclaimed. “If all men were such chickens, who’d

ever marry?”

“The women,” he suggested.

“No, I think they’d be too wise,” she said.

He laughed, an echo of hers; there was not much mirth between them.

“That last day I came here,” she continued, presently, with a musing

air, “you might have said more than you did.”

“More?”

“Yes, more for me; something to pretend you couldn’t see me; I felt

stripped.”

He smiled at the fire-dogs, remembering her dress.

“I didn’t know it,” he said.

“No, a man never does. Some men, you know, lie to a woman to be rid of

her, lie about their love and about their life; say it’s heartbreaking,

but impossible; one forgives that--it’s craven but it’s kind; but one

can’t forgive the men who lie by saying nothing, merely to be rid of

her the sooner, when she might go comforted, and only a little slower,

by just one whisper of the love they have.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“Oh, no,” she sighed, “we never do, we women. We pray not to sometimes;

pray to be kept blind, dull, doting.” She laughed abruptly. “Well, I

wish you’d said you loved me then, Jim; even though I might have hugged

you. Couldn’t you say it now?”

“It’s not lawful.”

“Oh, no,” she sighed again, but reminiscently, “it’s not lawful; but

it would be kinder and better than many things that are. Besides, you

might rise in my esteem.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling, pushing himself erect. “I think I’ll stay

as I am. I’m high enough now to feel dizzy sometimes when you commend

me. The question is, where are _you_ going to stay?”

“To-night at the Grand; my things are there. To-morrow I shall be

across the Channel.”

She swung her chair round toward the room.

“Am I going alone?”

“No,” he said, decidedly. “I want you to wait a day.”

“With you?”

“No, but for me. I’m going down to the Court.”

“To give me away?”

He had been staring at the dark mirror. He turned his face slowly

toward her with a smile.

“I suppose I need not deny that,” he said. “I shall not give you away,

even for your good; you know that.”

“Then for what are you going?”

“You’re making a mistake,” he said, ignoring her question. “If you

must leave your husband, you should go by the front door; it’s a

higher class of exit, pleasanter, more modern, and more effective;

besides, it prevents the good man running after you with a posse of

detectives.”

“Do you think he’ll do that?” she groaned.

“Doubtless; perhaps offer a reward. Now, to avoid that and live secure,

you’ll grant me a day’s grace, won’t you--and wait?”

“I shall be trusting you,” she said.

“And now you’d better go. I have to catch the nine-fifteen, isn’t it?

And I’m very certain you’ve had no dinner.”

“Besides, appearances!” she mocked.

“Yes; or non-appearances, as at present,” he replied, unruffled. “If

you’ll wait I’ll call a hansom.”

But she said she would go down with him; and after a glance at her

frock, a traveling one, before the mirror, opened the door as he relit

the lamp. He followed her along the dusk of the passage to show her the

way, but she stopped abruptly on the edge of the stairs, throwing back

her head so that it nearly struck him.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

“No,” he said, quietly; “you’re not mine to kiss.”

She bent her right arm back with a quick movement behind his head, and

drew his lips down to her face.

“Ah! if it were only a question of possession,” she sighed, as she

pressed them to her own.

She turned on the stairs and looked back at him.

“You don’t resent it?” she inquired.

“Why should I?”

“Oh, because you’re not mine to kiss, I suppose.”

“Ah! that’s your affair,” he smiled.

At the hall door she suggested that, being bound for Waterloo, he might

accompany her.

“I’m afraid of you,” he said.

“You needn’t be,” she murmured. “I’m done.”

In the end she waited while he packed a bag, and they drove together

under the withered planes through the park to her hotel. But she

declined to alight.

“You promised to be good,” he reminded her.

“I’m good--good as gold--I wouldn’t touch you for the world, but I’m

going to see you off. Jim, do let me! I’ll come straight back and eat

no end of dinner; I will, really! But I must say good-by to you there!”

“Why?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand; it’s a presentiment.”

“Presentiments are all stuff.”

“Yes, I know; so are women; but one has them both in--hansoms. Jim!”

“All right; but only to the station, not inside!”

She assented, and they parted, finally, with a feminine complexity of

farewell, under the glass-roofed entry; South arriving on the platform

to discover that the nine-fifteen had been advanced ten minutes since

the first of the month, and that, thanks to Rosamond’s presentiments,

he had lost the last train to Veyne St. Mary’s by a few seconds.

V.

Vexed as he was with the woman who had barred the way, he was almost

minded, driving back, to acquaint her with his failure.

The inclination was perverse and not in his sanest manner; but her

presence had overpowered him that night as an inhaled narcotic;

something diffusive in her strong, warm beauty, filling his room, had

numbed him as he breathed it.

But his senses came again in the night air, and he kept on, after

crossing the river, by the abbey, and his homeward way.

He had left his key behind him, and learned, on entering, that a

gentleman awaited him above.

“Who?” he inquired, and was told Lord Veynes.

“Said as ’e couldn’t afford to miss you, sir; so ’e’d wait, and take

’is chance.”

South always faced trouble, but he went more slowly upstairs. The door

of his room was ajar, the lamp had been relit upon the table, and

soused in its shaded dome of light was the figure of a man, stretched

along the big chair before the fire. Veynes did not respond to his

host’s hail of welcome; his eyes were staring into the shadowy mirror;

and his face reflected there was like a ghostlight on the glass.

Knowing something of his visitor’s moods, South took no notice of his

silence, but, drawing a chair beside him, brought his hand down on the

other’s fingers with an exclamation of abusive kindliness.

One speaks of words frozen on the lips, but those seemed frozen in the

air, ringing with an awful icy vibration in the silent room, as South

started back, dumb with horror, for the hand upon which his had fallen

was damp with the grip of death.

* * * * *

Of the days which followed, South could never give a complete account.

A stranger to sorrow, almost, indeed, to every ruinous emotion, the

scenes he witnessed seemed to alter the spacing of the hours so that no

two were of a length.

The noise and crush of daily life were suddenly muted, as though death

had closed a door and shut them out; and within, behind the bolted

silence of despair, were tears, sad talk, mourning darkness, and the

melancholy business of the dead, haunted, as with pale marsh lights, by

the pitiful inquisition in the dead eyes which he had closed.

His consolation, in that dreary time, was that he bore half the burden

of its grief.

The earl knew nothing of his son’s death but what the doctors could

tell him, for Lady Veynes, with a curious, but to her a natural,

discretion had kept the motive of her movements a secret even from her

maid.

So the two chief agents in the tragedy carried the weight of it between

them, and alone heard the inquest verdict of “an overstrained heart,”

with the desolate knowledge of all it meant--South with dry eyes, so

dry that their color seemed faded, and hers so wet that they seemed

mixed with their tears.

He had feared once, only once, that she would forget the righteous

necessities of her secret, and admit another, with cruel penitence, to

its miserable pale.

It was on her first entry to the room where the body was lying, the

earl sitting by it, his face almost as gray and sharp as that of the

dead. One of his hands was on his son’s, the other crept presently to

Rosamond’s golden hair. She had dropped on her knees beside the bed,

her eyes buried in the coverlet, her arms flung out across it, moaning

an inarticulate torrent of useless tenderness, and penitence, and

despair. Her head was shaken by its sorrow like a yellow leaf, but the

old man’s grief ran silently, as a stream that dries upon its stones.

That was the one occasion when South had distrusted the charity and

shrewdness of her discretion; after that his doubts were at rest.

She was everything a woman could be who would not sink her duties in

sorrow, and South often wondered what the earl would have done without

her.

He had beside ample reason for surprise. Her delicate little

performance as a woman of affairs for the benefit of the lawyers, her

equally fine and far more difficult personation before the family as

lady paramount, were revelations of an ability he had been indisposed

to admit.

He called it mummery to himself, but there was a dreary earnestness

and effort in it which gave his slight the lie. He would not see the

whiteness of her face, or the sorrow in her clouded eyes; and for

a curious reason, because her grief left him, and it seemed with

deliberate intention, in the cold.

She bore it with a certain stiffness of control as a burden she was too

proud to share, yet which bent her into measured steps.

But South, who felt himself almost an accessory to her fate, could

better have endured complaint; he would sooner have been hated, so he

told himself.

So, since that memorable morning when she had flung a crumb of toast

across the table at the gravity on his face, gray as it was with its

news, and, afterward, in anguish and self-contempt, laid her sobbing

head among the breakfast things, South had doubted everything about her

but her charm.

Yet her sorrow proved, as he was finally to discover, exceedingly

sincere; it outlasted even his demands upon it; but it lived, as all

her clouds, in a windy sky; and broke, and blew over.

Ere that, however, or the lightening of her widow’s crape, a fresh link

was welded from her life, which gave the sad earl a joy in his old age,

and a despot to Veynes Court.

South used to run down, sometimes, on the summer evenings, to watch

Lady Veynes, the earl and his grandson playing like three children in

the dappled sunlight on the lawn.

Or, at least, if there were other reasons for his appearance, he was

not on thinking terms with them.

Lady Veynes was. She thought, moreover, that his visits were far too

few.

[Illustration]

THE RIVALS

Strange when you passed me with him in the crowd,

That twixt us two the selfsame thought should be:

“So this _was_ she!” your long glance spake aloud;

And I, to my own heart, “So this _is_ she!”

THEODOSIA GARRISON.

CONVERSATIONS WITH EGERIA

_The Feminine Temperament_

_By_ MRS. WILSON WOODROW