Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl
of the season, There were hints from different quarters that she might
possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about
town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all
agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,--“best filly this grass,”
as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to
capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But
Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
have been to make out who was an especial favorite.
There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart
and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept
him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to
feel sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could
hardly doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in
the city,--even elegantly,--he had many of the lesser social
accomplishments, was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such
matters with the more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better
talker than most of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing
with than they could know. “You have only got to say the word, Murray,”
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum said to her relative, “and you can have her. But
don't be rash. I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there 's
something better there than possibilities.” Murray Bradshaw laughed,
and told Mrs. Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was
doing.
It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr.
Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with
her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical
admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two
elegant notes were accounted for.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world
of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she
called clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a
streak of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and,
if she could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an
Amazon who had captured a Centaur.
“There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay,” Mr.
Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.
“Better ask him. They say he 's the rising talent in his line,
architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way
of sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite
wonderful. I'll find his address for you.” So Mr. Clement Lindsay got
his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring
together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were
acquainted with each other.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have carte
blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord,
and she would see to the rest,--lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet.
He needn't be afraid: all he had to do was to keep out of the way.
Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization.
Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps
of many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the
promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'Alenyon must have
spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks
glowed like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard.
She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added
certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the
dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question
and then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for
effect. Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich
bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything
like it, and as some one whispered that it was “the last thing out,” it
was greatly admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the
few who had a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long
divorced from its once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim
consciousness through any of those who inherited her blood, it was then
and there that she breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The
young girl almost trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being,
soliciting every sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that
could make her feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all
its chords first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle,
whose mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always
made an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all
their portraits painted with halos round their heads), found herself
extinguished in this new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the
wall as if she had been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties
were dismayed and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if
she had been a Gorgon instead of a beauty.
The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time
making ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant
one; for 24 Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its
entertainments.
Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had,
however, been made a lion of several times of late, and was very willing
to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world.
It was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.
Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and
understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to
dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in
his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But
Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable
comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume.
The young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very
large breast-pin containing a gem which he was assured by the vender
was a genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently
effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to
convince him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more
fitted to the occasion.
On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw
received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as
he changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up
and down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing
of a certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this
telegram may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would
contrive an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as
a suitor to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely
certain of getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous
periods. Myrtle knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better
than when she was a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she
had been surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of
beauty, which had set her off so that she could not help seeing her
own attractions, rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little
experience in society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases
which all the Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to
land his fish now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked,
and he had a feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his
book. However, as he had made up his mind not to wait another day,
he addressed himself to the trial before him with a determination to
succeed, if any means at his command would insure success. He arrayed
himself with faultless elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an
occasion. He went forth firm and grave as a general going into a battle
where all is to be lost or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the
unfailing smile upon his lips, to which he set them as he set his watch
to a particular hour and minute.
The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow
before the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance
under which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene
over which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He
turned to Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his
inclinations led him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how
much light can a woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A
plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may
seem almost a beauty in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being
handsome, the more ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the
sunshine or the chandelier.
Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the brilliant effect of
Myrtle in full dress. He did not know before what handsome arms she
had,--Judith Pride's famous arms--which the high-colored young men in
top-boots used to swear were the handsomest pair in New England--right
over again. He did not know before with what defiant effect she would
light up, standing as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full
flower of flame, like a burning azalea. He was not a man who intended
to let his sentiments carry him away from the serious interests of his
future, yet, as he looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart gave one throb
which made him feel in every pulse that this way a woman who in her own
right, simply as a woman, could challenge the homage of the proudest
young man of her time. He hardly knew till this moment how much of
passion mingled with other and calmer motives of admiration. He could
say I love you as truly as such a man could ever speak these words,
meaning that he admired her, that he was attracted to her, that he
should be proud of her as his wife, that he should value himself
always as the proprietor of so rare a person, that no appendage to his
existence would take so high a place in his thoughts. This implied also,
what is of great consequence to a young woman's happiness in the
married state, that she would be treated with uniform politeness, with
satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a degree of confidence
quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect from a very
superior man, her husband.
If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against
which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for
the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her.
Less than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young
women; and it may be that the interior just drawn, fairly judged,
belongs to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or not, Myrtle did
not see this picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in
front of that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted
all sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young,
handsome, courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit,
whose every look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who
was associated with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared
like old friends in the midst of that cold alien throng. It seemed as if
he could not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never
looked so captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the
eloquence of love. And she--was not this delirious atmosphere of light
and music just the influence to which he would wish to subject her
before trying the last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a
woman? He knew the mechanism of that impressionable state which served
Coleridge so excellently well,--
“All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve
The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,”--
though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses
and jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
Hopkins and rhyming tom-tits of that feather.
Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with
a great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark
ready to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile
upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would
have said he was as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial
good-matured disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton
who had tied himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.
Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts
that he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as
Myrtle had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once
caught by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley,
accompanied by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped
forward at once to meet, and to present them.
Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and
respectable appearance. There was an unusual look of benignity upon his
firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr.
Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed
a part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was
courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the
masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them
both into the immediate Presence.
“This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the
honor of introducing to you,--a very distinguished scholar, as I have
no doubt you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins,
a young poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it
has not come to your ears already.”
The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little
crushed by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making
polite speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly
delighted to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet
with a degree of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive
from his company. They both brought with them so many reminiscences of
familiar scenes and events, that it was like going back for the moment
to Oxbow Village. But Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and
had no opportunity to enter into conversation just then with either of
them. There was to be dancing by and by, and the younger people were
getting impatient that it should begin. At last the music sounded the
well-known summons, and the floors began to ring to the tread of
the dancers. As usual on such occasions there were a large number of
noncombatants, who stood as spectators around those who were engaged
in the campaign of the evening. Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely,
thinking of the minuets and the gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted
Hopkins, who had never acquired the desirable accomplishment of dancing,
gazed with dazzled and admiring eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the
graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been
introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he
began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of
a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he
thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty
years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands.
In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled and
double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And when they were all gone and
forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still fresh in the world's
memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose to his lips; he felt
that the village boy who could look forward to fame as his inheritance
was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the words he should set
in verse would have an enduring lustre to which the whiteness of pearls
was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.
He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon
these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing
but perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he
observed, were fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little
self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of
dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings
going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:--
Which is it? Which is it?--Why, that one, there,--that young
fellow,--don't you see?--What young fellow are you two looking at? Who
is he? What is he?--Why, that is Hopkins, the poet.--Hopkins, the poet!
Let me see him! Let me see him! Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins? etc.,
etc.
Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did
unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him,
which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already
begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared
as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking
at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of
himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look
upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the
way with great people when going about the country. But this was only
a suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have
implied infatuation.
Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes.
At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived
that an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his
rather large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear.
A not very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the
subject of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much
better taste or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful
poet was receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little
accident of which her rural friend was the victim than she left her
place in the dance with a simple courage which did her credit.
“I want to speak to you a minute,” she said. “Come into this alcove.”
And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has
to other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he
might perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever
he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the
collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the
whisper would pass from one to another, “That's him! That's Hopkins!”
Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to
make her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling
happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to
make would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural
connection to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called
up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their
great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as
in business, and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of
Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury
case but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand,
in the first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by
all, and that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them
to shape their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own
side of the case?
Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact,
that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from
her, and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could
safely give his confidence.
The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an
instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it
all in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy
savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval
great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock,
or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the
nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere
blind elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of
Schehallion. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster
than so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady
nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors
tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words
with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny.
His tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks
once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.
“There is but one word more to add,” he murmured softly, as he bent
towards her--
A grave voice interrupted him. “Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw,” said Master
Bytes Gridley, “I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I
promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to
be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have
the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young
friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay.”
Once mere, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to
face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which
any sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her
half-hysteric state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who
found himself unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have
risked of his own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the
easy self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social
exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy,
and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since
their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the
instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some
peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever
it was, it broke the charm which had been weaving between her and Murray
Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could he
find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do
with a lady to whom he had just been introduced, addressed a few
polite words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very
courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray
Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her
attention, at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded
his arms and waited,--but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which
drew Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley
of the Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave
himself up to the fascination of her presence.
The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the
moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the
first great game he had ever played may well be imagined. But it could
not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young
ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with
another,--that was all. Fortunately, for him the young man who had been
introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need
apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to
pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained
her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful
interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no
favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the
interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and
bring matters to a conclusion.
He called accordingly the next morning, but was disappointed in not
seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a
bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.
He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had
just left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village: