OF TEMPERAMENT
We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to
dance. The art came to her naturally. Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose
mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and
whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore. He has a memory like
Mr. Gladstone's, and can give you a social history of the city that is
well worth your time and attention. He will tell you how, for instance,
he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of
his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although
Mr. Meeker's shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was
sent home in the carriage by himself,--a punishment, by the way, which
Mr. George desired above all things.
This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the
new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class
were held weekly. Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting
from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole
district fathoms deep in social obscurity. And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what
has become of her? And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?
All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be
written. This one is Honora's, and must be got on with, for it is to be a
chronicle of lightning changes. Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we
must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.
Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high
fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and
had given her initial ball, the dancing class began. It was on a blue
afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor
and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were
driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.
Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her,
with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and
mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden
represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport--had
Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything
she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing
into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in
a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.
"Come, Honora," said her aunt. "What's the matter, dear?"
How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things
gave her a sort of pain--when she did not yet know it herself? There was
the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted
by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and the
spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads (another
innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married); and at last,
far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above the trees towards
the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom,--the ballroom, with its
mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and blue set against the
walls, all of which made no impression whatever upon George and Mary and
Edith, but gave Honora a thrill. No wonder that she learned to dance
quickly under such an inspiration!
And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and
kissed Honora! She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to
her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built
her this house and presented her with a checkbook,--a check-book which
Virginia believed to be like the widow's cruse of oil-unfailing. Alas,
those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation,
the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the
young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played at
Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have
endured.
"Aunt Mary," asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of
the little sitting-room, "why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to
Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?"
Aunt Mary smiled.
"Because, Honora," she said, "because I am a person of no importance in
Mr. Meeker's eyes."
"If I were a man," cried Honora, fiercely, "I should never rest until I
had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle."
"Honora, come here," said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the
tense little figure by the mantel. "I don't know what could have put such
things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real
trouble it cannot save one."
"But it can save one from humiliation!" exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.
Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt
Mary was finding herself unable to cope. "I would rather be killed than
humiliated by Mr. Meeker."
Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in
dismay, found her sobbing a little later.
Poor Aunt Mary! Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her,
aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving
and undemonstrative devotion. Her words of comfort were as few as her
silent deeds were many.
But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr.
Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and
perplexed Cousin Eleanor. Mr. Meeker's cringing soul responded, and in a
month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and
was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should be
in deportment and bearing.
This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had
previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future,
she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a
tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a
high-handed way with him,--boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in
those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and
was rather undersized for his age--which was Honora's.
Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it
be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest. Nor
did he regard with favour Honora's triumphal progress, but sat in a
corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to
despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the
terpsichorean art came more naturally. Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for
example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king
had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen
suits enhanced the resemblance. Algernon, by the way, was the favourite
male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were
called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled
George with contemptuous rage. Algernon danced altogether too much with
Honora,--so George informed his cousin.
The simple result of George's protests was to make Honora dance with
Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a
commendable determination to resent dictation. George should have lived
in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as
yet unborn. Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the
hall.
"George," she said, "perhaps, if you'd let me alone perhaps I'd like you
better."
"Perhaps," he retorted fiercely, "if you wouldn't make a fool of yourself
with those mother's darlings, I'd like you better."
"George," said Honora, "learn to dance."
"Never!" he cried, but she was gone. While hovering around the door he
heard Mrs. Hayden's voice.
"Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear," that lady was remarking to
Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily's future millions were powerless to
compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily
married, "unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career. The child will
be a raving beauty. And she has to perfection the art of managing men."
"As her father had the art of managing women," said Mrs. Dwyer. "Dear me,
how well I remember Randolph! I would have followed him to--to Cheyenne."
Mrs. Hayden laughed. "He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,"
she said.
"He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for
it," said Mrs. Dwyer.
Virginia Hayden bit her lip. She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice,
"Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted."
"They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his
debts," continued Mrs. Dwyer, "although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury's
father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will. It was
twenty-five thousand dollars. James Hanbury, you remember, had him
appointed consul at Nice. Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of
conferring a favour when he borrowed money. I cannot understand why he
married that penniless and empty-headed beauty."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Hayden, "it was because of his ability to borrow
money that he felt he could afford to."
The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.
"I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but
I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If
Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She
has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her
with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person."
Mrs. Hayden's dimples deepened.
"Better than some grown-up women," she said. "She sat in my room while I
dressed the other afternoon. Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a note
about that French governess. And, by the way, she speaks French as though
she had lived in Paris."
Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.
"It doesn't seem natural, somehow. It doesn't seem exactly--moral, my
dear."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hayden. "Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child
the advantages which her companions have--Emily has French, hasn't she?"
"But Emily can't speak it--that way," said Mrs. Dwyer. "I don't blame
Mary Leffingwell. She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always
seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have
been brought up on bread and butter and jam."
"Honora would only have eaten the jam," said Mrs. Hayden. "But I love
her."
"I, too, am fond of the child, but I tremble for her. I am afraid she has
that terrible thing which is called temperament."
George Hanbury made a second heroic rush, and dragged Honora out once
more.
"What is this disease you've got?" he demanded.
"Disease?" she cried; "I haven't any disease."
"Mrs Dwyer says you have temperament, and that it is a terrible thing."
Honora stopped him in a corner.
"Because people like Mrs. Dwyer haven't got it," she declared, with a
warmth which George found inexplicable.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"You'll never know, either, George," she answered; "it's soul."
"Soul!" he repeated; "I have one, and its immortal," he added promptly.
In the summer, that season of desolation for Honora, when George Hanbury
and Algernon Cartwright and other young gentlemen were at the seashore
learning to sail boats and to play tennis, Peter Erwin came to his own.
Nearly every evening after dinner, while the light was still lingering
under the shade trees of the street, and Aunt Mary still placidly sewing
in the wicker chair on the lawn, and Uncle Tom making the tour of flowers
with his watering pot, the gate would slam, and Peter's tall form appear.
It never occurred to Honora that had it not been for Peter those evenings
would have been even less bearable than they were. To sit indoors with a
light and read in a St. Louis midsummer was not to be thought of. Peter
played backgammon with her on the front steps, and later on--chess.
Sometimes they went for a walk as far as Grand Avenue. And sometimes when
Honora grew older--she was permitted to go with him to Uhrig's Cave.
Those were memorable occasions indeed!
What Saint Louisan of the last generation does not remember Uhrig's Cave?
nor look without regret upon the thing which has replaced it, called a
Coliseum? The very name, Uhrig's Cave, sent a shiver of delight down
one's spine, and many were the conjectures one made as to what might be
enclosed in that half a block of impassible brick wall, over which the
great trees stretched their branches. Honora, from comparative infancy,
had her own theory, which so possessed the mind of Edith Hanbury that she
would not look at the wall when they passed in the carriage. It was a
still and sombre place by day; and sometimes, if you listened, you could
hear the whisperings of the forty thieves on the other side of the wall.
But no one had ever dared to cry "Open, Sesame!" at the great wooden
gates.
At night, in the warm season, when well brought up children were at home
or at the seashore, strange things were said to happen at Uhrig's Cave.
Honora was a tall slip of a girl of sixteen before it was given her to
know these mysteries, and the Ali Baba theory a thing of the past. Other
theories had replaced it. Nevertheless she clung tightly to Peter's arm
as they walked down Locust Street and came in sight of the wall. Above
it, and under the big trees, shone a thousand glittering lights: there
was a crowd at the gate, and instead of saying, "Open, Sesame," Peter
slipped two bright fifty-cent pieces to the red-faced German ticketman,
and in they went.
First and most astounding of disillusions of passing childhood, it was
not a cave at all! And yet the word "disillusion" does not apply. It was,
after all, the most enchanting and exciting of spots, to make one's eye
shine and one's heart beat. Under the trees were hundreds of tables
surrounded by hovering ministering angels in white, and if you were
German, they brought you beer; if American, ice-cream. Beyond the tables
was a stage, with footlights already set and orchestra tuning up, and a
curtain on which was represented a gentleman making decorous love to a
lady beside a fountain. As in a dream, Honora followed Peter to a table,
and he handed her a programme.
"Oh, Peter," she cried, "it's going to be 'Pinafore'!"
Honora's eyes shone like stars, and elderly people at the neighbouring
tables turned more than once to smile at her that evening. And Peter
turned more than once and smiled too. But Honora did not consider Peter.
He was merely Providence in one of many disguises, and Providence is
accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact.
The rapture of a young lady of temperament is a difficult thing to
picture. The bird may feel it as he soars, on a bright August morning,
high above amber cliffs jutting out into indigo seas; the novelist may
feel it when the four walls of his room magically disappear and the
profound secrets of the universe are on the point of revealing
themselves. Honora gazed, and listened, and lost herself. She was no
longer in Uhrig's Cave, but in the great world, her soul a-quiver with
harmonies.
"Pinafore," although a comic opera, held something tragic for Honora, and
opened the flood-gates to dizzy sensations which she did not understand.
How little Peter, who drummed on the table to the tune of:
"Give three cheers and one cheer more
For the hearty captain of the Pinafore,"
imagined what was going on beside him! There were two factors in his
pleasure; he liked the music, and he enjoyed the delight of Honora.
What is Peter? Let us cease looking at him through Honora's eyes and
taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about. From one
point of view, he is twenty-nine and elderly, with a sense of humour
unsuspected by young persons of temperament. Strive as we will, we have
only been able to see him in his role of Providence, or of the piper. Has
he no existence, no purpose in life outside of that perpetual gentleman
in waiting? If so, Honora has never considered it.
After the finale had been sung and the curtain dropped for the last time,
Honora sighed and walked out of the garden as one in a trance. Once in a
while, as he found a way for them through the crowd, Peter glanced down
at her, and something like a smile tugged at the corners of a decidedly
masculine mouth, and lit up his eyes. Suddenly, at Locust Street, under
the lamp, she stopped and surveyed him. She saw a very real, very human
individual, clad in a dark nondescript suit of clothes which had been
bought ready-made, and plainly without the bestowal of much thought, on
Fifth Street. The fact that they were a comparative fit was in itself a
tribute to the enterprise of the Excelsior Clothing Company, for Honora's
observation that he was too long one way had been just. He was too tall,
his shoulders were too high, his nose too prominent, his eyes too
deep-set; and he wore a straw hat with the brim turned up.
To Honora his appearance was as familiar as the picture of the Pope which
had always stood on Catherine's bureau. But to-night, by grace of some
added power of vision, she saw him with new and critical eyes. She was
surprised to discover that he was possessed of a quality with which she
had never associated him--youth. Not to put it too strongly--comparative
youth.
"Peter," she demanded, "why do you dress like that?"
"Like what?" he said.
Honora seized the lapel of his coat.
"Like that," she repeated. "Do you know, if you wore different clothes,
you might almost be distinguished looking. Don't laugh. I think it's
horrid of you always to laugh when I tell you things for your own good."
"It was the idea of being almost distinguished looking that--that gave me
a shock," he assured her repentantly.
"You should dress on a different principle," she insisted.
Peter appeared dazed.
"I couldn't do that," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because--because I don't dress on any principle now."
"Yes, you do," said Honora, firmly. "You dress on the principle of the
wild beasts and fishes. It's all in our natural history at Miss Farmer's.
The crab is the colour of the seaweed, and the deer of the thicket. It's
a device of nature for the protection of weak things."
Peter drew himself up proudly.
"I have always understood, Miss Leffingwell, that the king of beasts was
somewhere near the shade of the jungle."
Honora laughed in spite of this apparent refutation of her theory of his
apparel, and shook her head.
"Do be serious, Peter. You'd make much more of an impression on people if
you wore clothes that had--well, a little more distinction."
"What's the use of making an impression if you can't follow it up?" he
said.
"You can," she declared. "I never thought of it until to-night, but you
must have a great deal in you to have risen all the way from an errand
boy in the bank to a lawyer."
"Look out!" he cautioned her; "I shall become insupportably conceited."
"A little more conceit wouldn't hurt you," said Honora, critically.
"You'll forgive me, Peter, if I tell you from time to time what I think.
It's for your own good."
"I try to realize that," replied Peter, humbly. "How do you wish me to
dress--like Mr. Rossiter?"
The picture evoked of Peter arrayed like Mr. Harland Rossiter, who had
sent flowers to two generations and was preparing to send more to a
third, was irresistible. Every city, hamlet, and village has its Harland
Rossiter. He need not be explained. But Honora soon became grave again.
"No, but you ought to dress as though you were somebody, and different
from the ordinary man on the street."
"But I'm not," objected Peter.
"Oh," cried Honora, "don't you want to be? I can't understand any man not
wanting to be. If I were a man, I wouldn't stay here a day longer than I
had to."
Peter was silent as they went in at the gate and opened the door, for on
this festive occasion they were provided with a latchkey. He turned up
the light in the hall to behold a transformation quite as wonderful as
any contained in the "Arabian Nights" or Keightley's "Fairy Mythology."
This was not the Honora with whom he had left the house scarce three
hours before! The cambric dress, to be sure, was still no longer than the
tops of her ankles and the hair still hung in a heavy braid down her
back. These were positively all that remained of the original Honora, and
the change had occurred in the incredibly brief space required for the
production of the opera "Pinafore." This Honora was a woman in a strange
and disturbing state of exaltation, whose eyes beheld a vision. And
Peter, although he had been the subject of her conversation, well knew
that he was not included in the vision. He smiled a little as he looked
at her. It is becoming apparent that he is one of those unfortunate
unimaginative beings incapable of great illusions.
"You're not going!" she exclaimed.
He glanced significantly at the hall clock.
"Why, it's long after bedtime, Honora."
"I don't want to go to bed. I feel like talking," she declared. "Come,
let's sit on the steps awhile. If you go home, I shan't go to sleep for
hours, Peter."
"And what would Aunt Mary say to me?" he inquired.
"Oh, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't even know it."
He shook his head, still smiling.
"I'd never be allowed to take you to Uhrig's Cave, or anywhere else,
again," he replied. "I'll come to-morrow evening, and you can talk to me
then."
"I shan't feel like it then," she said in a tone that implied his
opportunity was now or never. But seeing him still obdurate, with
startling suddenness she flung her arms mound his neck--a method which at
times had succeeded marvellously--and pleaded coaxingly: "Only a quarter
of an hour, Peter. I've got so many things to say, and I know I shall
forget them by to-morrow."
It was a night of wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant Peter,
who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed into a
brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a movement
that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling back a "good
night" to her out of the darkness. He did not even wait to assist her in
the process of locking up. Honora, profoundly puzzled, stood for a while
in the doorway gazing out into the night. When at length she turned, she
had forgotten him entirely.
It was true that she did not sleep for hours, and on awaking the next
morning another phenomenon awaited her. The "little house under the hill"
was immeasurably shrunken. Poor Aunt Mary, who did not understand that a
performance of "Pinafore" could give birth to the unfulfilled longings
which result in the creation of high things, spoke to Uncle Tom a week
later concerning an astonishing and apparently abnormal access of
industry.
"She's been reading all day long, Tom, or else shut up in her room, where
Catherine tells me she is writing. I'm afraid Eleanor Hanbury is right
when she says I don't understand the child. And yet she is the same to me
as though she were my own."
It was true that Honora was writing, and that the door was shut, and that
she did not feel the heat. In one of the bookcases she had chanced upon
that immortal biography of Dr. Johnson, and upon the letters of another
prodigy of her own sex, Madame d'Arblay, whose romantic debut as an
authoress was inspiration in itself. Honora actually quivered when she
read of Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Miss Burney. To write a
book of the existence of which even one's own family did not know, to
publish it under a nom de plume, and to awake one day to fetes and fame
would be indeed to live!
Unfortunately Honora's novel no longer exists, or the world might have
discovered a second Evelina. A regard for truth compels the statement
that it was never finished. But what rapture while the fever lasted!
Merely to take up the pen was to pass magically through marble portals
into the great world itself.
The Sir Charles Grandison of this novel was, needless to say, not Peter
Erwin. He was none other than Mr. Randolph Leffingwell, under a very thin
disguise.