Miss Matchin picked up her train as she reached the gate, picked up her
train as she reached the gate, and walked down the street in a state of
mind by no means tranquil. If she had put her thoughts in words they
would have run like this:
"That was the meanest trick a gentleman ever played. How did he dare
know I wasn't nearsighted? And what a fool I was to be caught by that
photograph--saw it as plain as day three yards off. I had most made up
my mind to leave them off anyway, though they are awful stylish; they
pinch my nose and make my head ache. But I'll wear them now," and here
the white teeth came viciously together, "if they kill me. Why should
he put me down that way? He made me shy for the first time in my life.
It's a man's business to be shy before me. If I could only get hold of
him somehow! I'd pay him well for making me feel so small. The fact is,
I started wrong. I did not really know what I wanted; and that graven
image of an English butler set me back so; and then I never saw such a
house as that. It is sinful for one man to live there all alone. Powers
alive! How well that house would suit my complexion! But I don't
believe I'd take it with _him_ thrown in."
It is doubtful whether young girls of Miss Matchin's kind are ever
quite candid in their soliloquies. It is certain she was not when she
assured herself that she did not know why she went to Farnham's house
that morning. She went primarily to make his acquaintance, with the
hope also that by this means she might be put in some easy and genteel
way of earning money. She was one of a very numerous class in large
American towns. Her father was a carpenter, of a rare sort. He was a
good workman, sober, industrious, and unambitious. He was contented
with his daily work and wage, and would have thanked Heaven if he could
have been assured that his children would fare as well as he. He was of
English blood, and had never seemed to imbibe into his veins the
restless haste and hunger to rise which is the source of much that is
good and most that is evil in American life. In the dreams of his early
married days he created a future for his children, in the image of his
own decent existence. The boys should succeed him in his shop, and the
daughters should go out to service in respectable families. This
thought sweetened his toil. When he got on well enough to build a shop
for himself, he burdened himself with debt, building it firmly and
well, so as to last out his boys' time as well as his own. When he was
employed on the joiner-work of some of those large houses in Algonquin
Avenue, he lost himself in reveries in which he saw his daughters
employed as house-maids in them. He studied the faces and the words of
the proprietors, when they visited the new buildings, to guess if they
would make kind and considerate employers. He put many an extra stroke
of fine work upon the servants' rooms he finished, thinking: "Who knows
but my Mattie may live here sometime?"
But Saul Matchin found, like many others of us, that fate was not so
easily managed. His boys never occupied the old shop on Dean Street,
which was built with so many sacrifices and so much of hopeful love.
One of them ran away from home on the first intimation that he was
expected to learn his father's trade, shipped as a cabin-boy on one of
the lake steamers, and was drowned in a storm which destroyed the
vessel. The other, less defiant or less energetic, entered the shop and
attained some proficiency in the work. But as he grew toward manhood,
he became, as the old man called it, "trifling"; a word which bore with
it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke
Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But
it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse
month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen,
when not in the shop, with a gang of low ruffians, whose head-quarters
were in a den called the "Bird of Paradise," on the lake shore. When
his father remonstrated with him, he met everything with sullen
silence. If Saul lost his temper at this mute insolence and spoke
sharply, the boy would retort with an evil grin that made the honest
man's heart ache.
"Father," he said one day, "you'd a big sight better let me alone, if
you don't want to drive me out of this ranch. I wasn't born to make a
nigger of myself in a free country, and you can just bet your life I
ain't a-going to do it."
These things grieved Saul Matchin so that his anger would die away. At
last, one morning, after a daring burglary had been committed in
Buffland, two policemen were seen by Luke Matchin approaching the shop.
He threw open a back window, jumped out and ran rapidly down to the
steep bluff overlooking the lake. When the officers entered, Saul was
alone in the place. They asked after his boy, and he said:
"He can't be far away. What do you want of him? He hain't been doing
nothing, I hope."
"Nothing, so far as we know, but we are after two fellows who go by the
names of Maumee Jake and Dutch George. Luke runs with them sometimes,
and he could make a pile of money by helping of us get them."
"I'll tell him when he comes in," said Saul, but he never saw or heard
of his son again.
With his daughters he was scarcely more successful. For, though they
had not brought sorrow or shame to his house, they seemed as little
amenable to the discipline he had hoped to exert in his family as the
boys were. The elder had married, at fifteen years of age, a journeyman
printer; and so, instead of filling the place of housemaid in some good
family, as her father had fondly dreamed, she was cook, housemaid, and
general servant to a man aware of his rights, and determined to
maintain them, and nurse and mother (giving the more important function
precedence) to six riotous children. Though his child had thus
disappointed his hopes, she had not lost his affection, and he even
enjoyed the Sunday afternoon romp with his six grandchildren, which
ordinarily took place in the shop among the shavings. Wixham, the
son-in-law, was not prosperous, and the children were not so well
dressed that the sawdust would damage their clothes.
The youngest of Matchin's four children was our acquaintance Miss Maud,
as she called herself, though she was christened Matilda. When Mrs.
Matchin was asked, after that ceremony, "Who she was named for?" she
said, "Nobody in partic'lar. I call her Matildy because it's a pretty
name, and goes well with Jurildy, my oldest gal." She had evolved that
dreadful appellation out of her own mind. It had done no special harm,
however, as Miss Jurildy had rechristened herself Poguy at a very
tender age, in a praiseworthy attempt to say "Rogue," and the delighted
parents had never called her anything else. Thousands of comely damsels
all over this broad land suffer under names as revolting, punished
through life, by the stupidity of parental love, for a slip of the
tongue in the cradle. Matilda got off easily in the matter of
nicknames, being called Mattie until she was pretty well grown, and
then having changed her name suddenly to Maud, for reasons to be given
hereafter.
She was a hearty, blowzy little girl. Her father delighted in her
coarse vigor and energy. She was not a pretty child, and had not a
particle of coquetry in her, apparently; she liked to play with the
boys when they would allow her, and never presumed upon her girlhood
for any favors in their rough sport; and good-natured as she was, she
was able to defend herself on occasion with tongue and fists. She was
so full of life and strength that, when she had no playing to do, she
took pleasure in helping her mother about her work. It warmed Saul
Matchin's heart to see the stout little figure sweeping or scrubbing.
She went to school but did not "learn enough to hurt her," as her
father said; and he used to think that here, at least, would be one
child who would be a comfort to his age. In fancy he saw her, in a neat
print dress and white cap, wielding a broom in one of those fine houses
he had helped to build, or coming home to keep house for him when her
mother should fail.
But one day her fate came to her in the shape of a new girl, who sat
near her on the school-bench. It was a slender, pasty young person, an
inch taller and a year or two older than Mattie, with yellow ringlets,
and more pale-blue ribbons on her white dress than poor Mattie had ever
seen before. She was a clean, cold, pale, and selfish little vixen,
whose dresses were never rumpled, and whose temper was never ruffled.
She had not blood enough in her veins to drive her to play or to anger.
But she seemed to poor Mattie the loveliest creature she had ever seen,
and our brown, hard-handed, blowzy tomboy became the pale fairy's
abject slave. Her first act of sovereignty was to change her vassal's
name.
"I don't like Mattie; it ain't a bit romantic. I had a friend in
Bucyrus whose name was Mattie, and she found out somehow--I believe the
teacher told her--that Queen Matilda and Queen Maud was the same thing
in England. So you're Maud!" and Maud she was henceforward, though her
tyrant made her spell it Maude. "It's more elegant with an _e_," she
said.
Maud was fourteen and her school-days were ending when she made this
new acquaintance. She formed for Azalea Windora one of those violent
idolatries peculiar to her sex and age, and in a fort-' night she
seemed a different person. Azalea was rather clever at her books, and
Maud dug at her lessons from morning till night to keep abreast of her.
Her idol was exquisitely neat in her dress, and Maud acquired, as if by
magic, a scrupulous care of her person. Azalea's blonde head was full
of pernicious sentimentality, though she was saved from actual
indiscretions by her cold and vaporous temperament. In dreams and
fancies, she was wooed and won a dozen times a day by splendid
cavaliers of every race and degree; and as she was thoroughly false and
vain, she detailed these airy adventures, part of which she had
imagined and part read in weekly story-papers, to her worshipper, who
listened with wide eyeballs, and a heart which was just beginning to
learn how to beat. She initiated Maud into that strange world of vulgar
and unhealthy sentiment found in the cheap weeklies which load every
news-stand in the country, and made her tenfold more the child of
dreams than herself.
Miss Windom remained but a few months at the common school, and then
left it for the high school. She told Maud one day of her intended
flitting, and was more astonished than pleased at the passion of grief
into which the announcement threw her friend. Maud clung to her with
sobs that would not be stilled, and with tears that reduced Miss
Azalea's dress to limp and moist wretchedness, but did not move the
vain heart beneath it. "I wonder if she knows," thought Azalea, "how
ugly she is when she bawls like that. Few brunettes can cry stylishly
anyhow." Still, she could not help feeling flattered by such devotion,
and she said, partly from a habit of careless kindness and partly to
rescue the rest of her raiment from the shower which had ruined her
neck-ribbon,--
"There, don't be heart-broken. You will be in the high school yourself
in no time."
Maud lifted up her eyes and her heart at these words.
"Yes, I will, darling!"
She had never thought of the high school before. She had always
expected to leave school that very season, and to go into service
somewhere. But from that moment she resolved that nothing should keep
her away from those walls that had suddenly become her Paradise.
Her mother was easily won over. She was a woman of weak will, more
afraid of her children than of her husband, a phenomenon of frequent
occurrence in that latitude. She therefore sided naturally with her
daughter in the contest which, when Maud announced her intention of
entering the high school, broke out in the house and raged fiercely
for some weeks. The poor woman had to bear the brunt of the battle
alone, for Matchin soon grew shy of disputing with his rebellious
child. She was growing rapidly and assuming that look of maturity which
comes so suddenly and so strangely to the notice of a parent. When he
attacked her one day with the brusque exclamation, "Well, Mattie,
what's all this blame foolishness your ma's being tellin' me ?" she
answered him with a cool decision and energy that startled and alarmed
him. She stood straight and terribly tall, he thought. She spoke with
that fluent clearness of girls who know what they want, and used words
he had never met with before out of a newspaper. He felt himself no
match for her, and ended the discussion by saying: "That's all
moonshine--you shan't go! D'ye hear me?" but he felt dismally sure that
she would go, in spite of him.
Even after he had given up the fight, he continued to revenge himself
upon his wife for his defeat. "We've got to have a set of gold spoons,
I guess. These will never do for highfliers like us." Or, "Drop in at
Swillem's and send home a few dozen champagne; I can't stummick such
common drink as coffee for breakfast." Or, "I must fix up and make some
calls on Algonkin Av'noo. Sence we've jined the Upper Ten, we mustn't
go back on Society." But this brute thunder had little effect on Mrs.
Matchin. She knew the storm was over when her good-natured lord tried
to be sarcastic.
It need hardly be said that Maud Matchin did not find the high school
all her heart desired. Her pale goddess had not enough substantial
character to hold her worshipper long. Besides, at fifteen, a young
girl's heart is as variable as her mind or her person; and a great
change was coming over the carpenter's daughter. She suddenly gained
her full growth; and after the first awkwardness of her tall stature
passed away, she began to delight in her own strength and beauty. Her
pride waked at the same time with her vanity, and she applied herself
closely to her books, so as to make a good appearance in her classes.
She became the friend instead of the vassal of Azalea, and by slow
degrees she found their positions reversed. Within a year, it seemed
perfectly natural to Maud that Azalea should do her errands and talk to
her about her eyes; and Miss Windom found her little airs of
superiority of no avail in face of the girl who had grown prettier,
cleverer, and taller than herself. It made no difference that Maud was
still a vulgar and ignorant girl--for Azalea was not the person to
perceive or appreciate these defects. She saw her, with mute wonder,
blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child,
with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall,
slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and
whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot
herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit
and romance between them. Azalea, whose brother was a train-boy on the
Lake Shore road, had a constant supply of light literature, which the
girls devoured in the long intervals of their studies. But even the
romance of Miss Matchin had undergone a change. While Azalea still
dreamed of dark-eyed princes, lords of tropical islands, and fierce and
tender warriors who should shoot for her the mountain eagle for his
plumes, listen with her to the bulbul's song in valleys of roses, or
hew out a throne for her in some vague and ungeographical empire, the
reveries of Miss Maud grew more and more mundane and reasonable. She
was too strong and well to dream much; her only visions were of a rich
man who should love her for her fine eyes. She would meet him in some
simple and casual way; he would fall in love at sight, and speedily
prosper in his wooing; they would be married,--privately, for Maud
blushed and burned to think of her home at such times,--and then they
would go to New York to live. She never wasted conjecture on the age,
the looks, the manner of being of this possible hero. Her mind
intoxicated itself with the thought of his wealth. She went one day to
the Public Library to read the articles on Rothschild and Astor in the
encyclopedias. She even tried to read the editorial articles on gold
and silver in the Ohio papers.
She delighted in the New York society journals. She would pore for
hours over those wonderful columns which described the weddings and the
receptions of rich tobacconists and stock-brokers, with lists of names
which she read with infinite gusto. At first, all the names were the
same to her, all equally worshipful and happy in being printed, black
on white, in the reports of these upper-worldly banquets. But after a
while her sharp intelligence began to distinguish the grades of our
republican aristocracy, and she would skip the long rolls of obscure
guests who figured at the: "coming-out parties" of thrifty shop-keepers
of fashionable ambition, to revel among the genuine swells whose
fathers were shop-keepers. The reports of the battles of the Polo Club
filled her with a sweet intoxication. She knew the names of the
combatants by heart, and had her own opinion as to the comparative
eligibility of Billy Buglass and Tim Blanket, the young men most in
view at that time in the clubs of the metropolis.
Her mind was too much filled with interests of this kind to leave any
great room for her studies. She had pride enough to hold her place in
her classes, and that was all. She learned a little music, a little
drawing, a little Latin, and a little French--the French of
"Stratford-atte-Bowe," for French of Paris was not easy of attainment
at Buffland. This language had an especial charm for her, as it
seemed a connecting link with that elysium of fashion of which her
dreams were full. She once went to the library and asked for "a nice
French book." They gave her "La Petite Fadette." She had read of
George Sand in newspapers, which had called her a "corrupter of
youth." She hurried home with her book, eager to test its corrupting
qualities, and when, with locked doors and infinite labor, she had
managed to read it, she was greatly disappointed at finding in it
nothing to admire and nothing to shudder at. "How could such a smart
woman as that waste her time writing about a lot of peasants, poor as
crows, the whole lot!" was her final indignant comment.
By the time she left the school her life had become almost as solitary
as that of the bat in the fable, alien both to bird and beast. She made
no intimate acquaintances there; her sordid and selfish dreams occupied
her too completely. Girls who admired her beauty were repelled by her
heartlessness, which they felt, but could not clearly define. Even
Azalea fell away from her, having found a stout and bald-headed railway
conductor, whose adoration made amends for his lack of romance. Maud
knew she was not liked in the school, and being, of course, unable to
attribute it to any fault of her own, she ascribed it to the fact that
her father was a mechanic and poor. This thought did not tend to make
her home happier. She passed much of her time in her own bedroom,
looking out of her window on the lake, weaving visions of ignoble
wealth and fashion out of the mists of the morning sky and the purple
and gold that made the north-west glorious at sunset. When she sat with
her parents in the evening, she rarely spoke. If she was not gazing in
the fire, with hard bright eyes and lips, in which there was only the
softness of youth, but no tender tremor of girlhood's dreams, she was
reading her papers or her novels with rapt attention. Her mother was
proud of her beauty and her supposed learning, and loved, when she
looked up from her work, to let her eyes rest upon her tall and
handsome child, whose cheeks were flushed with eager interest as she
bent her graceful head over her book. But Saul Matchin nourished a
vague anger and jealousy against her. He felt that his love was nothing
to her; that she was too pretty and too clever to be at home in his
poor house; and yet he dared not either reproach her or appeal to her
affections. His heart would fill with grief and bitterness as he gazed
at her devouring the brilliant pages of some novel of what she imagined
high life, unconscious of his glance, which would travel from her
neatly shod feet up to her hair, frizzed and banged down to her
eyebrows, "making her look," he thought, "more like a Scotch poodle-dog
than an honest girl." He hated those books which, he fancied, stole
away her heart from her home. He had once picked up one of them where
she had left it; but the high-flown style seemed as senseless to him as
the words of an incantation, and he had flung it down more bewildered
than ever. He thought there must be some strange difference between
their minds when she could delight in what seemed so uncanny to him,
and he gazed at her, reading by the lamp-light, as over a great gulf.
Even her hands holding the book made him uneasy; for since she had
grown careful of them, they were like no hands he had ever seen on any
of his kith and kin. The fingers were long and white, and the nails
were shaped like an almond, and though the hands lacked delicacy at the
articulations, they almost made Matchin reverence his daughter as his
superior, as he looked at his own.
One evening, irritated by the silence and his own thoughts, he cried
out with a sudden suspicion:
"Where do you git all them books, and what do they cost?"
She turned her fine eyes slowly upon him and said:
"I get them from the public library, and they cost nothing."
He felt deeply humiliated that he should have made a blunder so
ridiculous and so unnecessary.
After she had left the school--where she was graduated as near as
possible to the foot of the class--she was almost alone in the world.
She rarely visited her sister, for the penury of the Wixham household
grated upon her nerves, and she was not polite enough to repress her
disgust at the affectionate demonstrations of the Wixham babies.
"There, there! get along, you'll leave me not fit to be seen!" she
would say, and Jurilda would answer in that vicious whine of
light-haired women, too early overworked and overprolific: "Yes,
honey, let your aunt alone. She's too tiffy for poor folks like us";
and Maud would go home, loathing her lineage.
The girls she had known in her own quarter were by this time earning
their own living: some in the manufactories, in the lighter forms of
the iron trade, some in shops, and a few in domestic service. These
last were very few, for the American blood revolts against this easiest
and best-paid of all occupations, and leaves it to more sensible
foreigners. The working bees were clearly no company for this poor
would-be butterfly. They barely spoke when they met, kept asunder by a
mutual embarrassment. One girl with whom she had played as a child had
early taken to evil courses. Her she met one day in the street, and the
bedraggled and painted creature called her by her name.
"How dare you?" said Maud, shocked and frightened.
"All right!" said the shameless woman. "You looked so gay, I didn't
know."
Maud, as she walked away, hardly knew whether to be pleased or not.
"She saw I looked like a lady, and thought I could not be one honestly.
I'll show them!"
She knew as few men as women. She sometimes went to the social
gatherings affected by her father's friends, Odd Fellows' and Druids'
balls and the festivities with which the firemen refreshed themselves
after their toils and dangers. But her undeniable beauty gained her no
success. She seemed to take pains to avoid pleasing the young
carpenters, coachmen, and journeyman printers she met on these
occasions. With her head full of fantastic dreams, she imagined
herself a mere visitor at these simple entertainments of the common
people, and criticised the participants to herself with kindly sarcasm.
If she ever consented to dance, it was with the air with which she
fancied a duchess might open a ball of her servants. Once, in a round
game at a "surprise" party, it came her turn to be kissed by a young
blacksmith, who did his duty in spite of her struggles with strong arms
and a willing heart. Mr. Browning makes a certain queen, mourning over
her lofty loneliness, wish that some common soldier would throw down
his halberd and clasp her to his heart. It is doubtful if she would
really have liked it better than Miss Maud did, and she was furious as
a young lioness. She made herself so disagreeable about it that she
ceased to be invited to those lively entertainments; and some of the
most eligible of the young "Cariboos"--a social order of a secret and
mysterious rite, which met once a week in convenient woodsheds and
stable-lofts--took an oath with hands solemnly clasped in the intricate
grip of the order, that "they would never ask Miss Matchin to go to
party, picnic, or sleigh-ride, as long as the stars gemmed the blue
vault of heaven," from which it may be seen that the finer sentiments
of humanity were not unknown to the Cariboos.
Maud came thus to be eighteen, and though she was so beautiful and so
shapely that no stranger ever saw her without an instant of glad
admiration, she had had no suitor but one, and from him she never
allowed a word of devotion. Samuel Sleeny, a carpenter who worked with
her father, and who took his meals with the family, had fallen in love
with her at first sight, and, after a year of dumb hopelessness, had
been so encouraged by her father's evident regard that he had opened
his heart to Saul and had asked his mediation. Matchin undertook the
task with pleasure. Pie could have closed his eyes in peace if he had
seen his daughter married to so decent a man and so good a joiner as
Sleeny. But the interview was short and painful to Matchin. He left his
daughter in possession of the field, and went to walk by the lake shore
to recover his self-possession, which had given way beneath her firm
will and smiling scorn. When he returned to the shop Sleeny was there,
sitting on a bench and chewing pine shavings.
"What did she say?" asked the young fellow. "But never mind--I see
plain enough it's no use. She's too good for me, and she knows it."
"Too good!" roared Saul. "She's the golderndest----"
"Hold on there," said Sleeny. "Don't say nothin' you'll have to take
back. Ef you say anything ag'in her, you'll have to swaller it, or whip
me."
Saul looked at him with amazement.
"Well! you beat me, the pair of you! You're crazy to want her, and
she's crazy not to want you. She liked to a' bit my head off for
perposin' you, and you want to lick me for calling her a fool."
"She ain't no fool," said Sleeny with sullen resignation; "she knows
what she's about," and lie picked up another shaving and ruminated upon
it.
The old man walked to and fro, fidgeting with his tools. At last he
came back to the young man and said, awkwardly dusting the bench with
his hand:
"Sam, you wasn't 'lowin' to leave along o' this here foolishness?"
"That's just what I was 'lowin' to do, sir."
"Don't you be a dern fool, Sam!" and Saul followed up this judicious
exhortation with such cogent reasons that poor Sleeny was glad to be
persuaded that his chance was not over yet, and that he would much
better stay where he was.
"How'll _she_ like it?"
"Oh! it won't make a mite o' difference to her," said the old man
airily, and poor Sam felt in his despondent heart that it would not.
He remained and became like the least of her servants. She valued his
attachment much as a planter valued the affection of his slaves,
knowing they would work the better for it. He did all her errands;
fetched and carried for her; took her to church on evenings when she
did not care to stay at home. One of the few amusements Saul Matchin
indulged in was that of attending spiritualist lectures and seances,
whenever a noted medium visited the place. Saul had been an unbeliever
in his youth, and this grotesque superstition had rushed in at the
first opportunity to fill the vacuum of faith in his mind. He had never
succeeded, however, in thoroughly indoctrinating his daughter. She
regarded her father's religion with the same contempt she bestowed upon
the other vulgar and narrow circumstances of her lot in life, and so
had preferred her mother's sober Presbyterianism to the new and raw
creed of her sire. But one evening, when she was goaded by more than
usual restlessness, Sleeny asked her if she would go with him to a
"sperritual lectur." To escape from her own society, she accepted, and
the wild, incoherent, and amazingly fluent address she heard excited
her interest and admiration. After that, she often asked him to take
her, and in the long walk to and from the Harmony Hall, where the
long-haired brotherhood held their sessions, a sort of confidential
relation grew up between them, which meant nothing to Maud, but bound
the heart of Sleeny in chains of iron. Yet he never dared say a word of
the feeling that was consuming him. He feared he should lose her
forever, if he opened his lips.
Of course, she was not at ease in this life of dreamy idleness. It did
not need the taunts of her father to convince her that she ought to be
doing something for herself. Her millionaire would never come down to
the little house on Dean Street to find her, and she had conscience
enough to feel that she ought to earn her own clothes. She tried to
make use of the accomplishments she had learned at school, but was
astonished to find how useless they were. She made several attempts to
be a teacher, but it was soon found that her high-school diploma
covered a world of ignorance, and no board, however indulgent, would
accept her services. She got a box of colors, and spoiled many fans and
disfigured many pots by decorations which made the eyes of the beholder
ache; nobody would buy them, and poor Maud had no acquaintances to whom
she might give them away. So they encumbered the mantels and tables of
her home, adding a new tedium to the unhappy household. She answered
the advertisements of several publishing companies, and obtained
agencies for the sale of subscription books. But her face was not hard
enough for this work. She was not fluent enough to persuade the
undecided, and she was too proud to sue _in forma pauperis_; she had
not the precious gift of tears, by which the travelling she-merchant
sells so many worthless wares. The few commissions she gained hardly
paid for the wear and tear of her high-heeled boots.
One day at the public library she was returning a novel she had read,
when a gentleman came out of an inner room and paused to speak to the
librarian's assistant, with whom Maud was at the moment occupied--a
girl whom she had known at school, and with whom she had renewed
acquaintance in this way. It was about a matter of the administration
of the library, and only a few words were exchanged. He then bowed to
both the ladies, and went out.
"Who was that?" Maud asked.
"Don't you know?" rejoined the other. "I thought everybody knew the
elegant Captain Farnham. He is president of our board, you know, and he
is just lovely. I always manage to stop him as he leaves a board
meeting and get a word or two out of him. It's worth the trouble if I
only get a bow."
"I should think so," assented Maud. "He is as sweet as a peach. Is
there any chance of getting one of those places? I should like to
divide those bows with you."
"That would be perfectly splendid," said her friend, who was a
good-natured girl. "Come, I will introduce you to the old Doctor
now."
And in a moment Maud was in the presence of the librarian.
She entered at a fortunate moment. Dr. Buchlieber was a near-sighted
old gentleman who read without glasses, but could see nothing six feet
away. He usually received and dismissed his visitors without bothering
himself to discover or imagine what manner of people they were. "I do
not care how they look," he would say. "They probably look as they
talk, without form and void." But at the moment when Maud entered his
little room, he had put on his lenses to look out of the window, and he
turned to see a perfect form in a closely fit ting dress, and a face
pretty enough to look on with a critical pleasure. He received her
kindly, and encouraged her to hope for an appointment, and it was in
accordance with his suggestion that she called upon Farnham, as we have
related.
She did not go immediately. She took several days to prepare what she
called "a harness" of sufficient splendor, and while she was at work
upon it she thought of many things. She was not even yet quite sure
that she wanted a place in the library. The Doctor had been very kind,
but he had given her clearly to understand that the work required of
her would be severe, and the pay very light. She had for a long time
thought of trying to obtain a clerkship at Washington,--perhaps Farnham
would help her to that,--and her mind wandered off among the
possibilities of chance acquaintance with bachelor senators and
diplomats. But the more she thought of the coming interview, the more
her mind dwelt upon the man himself whom she was going to see--his bow
and his smile, his teeth and his mustache, and the perfect fit of his
clothes. One point in regard to him was still vague in her mind, and as
to that her doubts were soon resolved. One evening she said to her
father:
"Did you ever see Captain Farnham?"
"Now, what a foolish question that is I'd like to know who built his
greenhouses, ef I didn't?"
"He is pretty well off, ain't he?"
Saul laughed with that satisfied arrogance of ignorant men when they
are asked a question they can answer easily.
"I rather guess he is; that is, ef you call three, four, five millions
well off. I don't know how it strikes you" (with a withering sarcasm),
"but _I_ call Arthur Farnham pretty well fixed."
These words ran in Maud's brain with a ravishing sound. She built upon
them a fantastic palace of mist and cloud. When at last her dress was
finished and she started, after three unsuccessful attempts, to walk to
Algonquin Avenue, she was in no condition to do herself simple justice.
She hardly knew whether she wanted a place in the library, a clerkship
at Washington, or the post of amanuensis to the young millionaire. She
was confused by his reception of her; his good-natured irony made her
feel ill at ease; she was nervous and flurried; and she felt, as she
walked away, that the battle had gone against her.