About this time all the papers were giving considerable attention
in the columns which they headed variously: "Social Doings," "Among
the Four Hundred,"--a phrase just then coming into notoriety,--"The
Society Calendar," etc., to Mrs. Pallinder's house-party. That lady
herself, her establishment, her clothes, her diamonds had provided us
with gossip, as I have endeavoured to show, for the past two years.
But if we were inured to Mrs. Pallinder, Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter
was something new. Everyone entertained for her; it was a matter of
pride with us to give our English girl-visitor an unapproachably "good
time," to prove to her how much the best country in this best of all
possible worlds America was for the young, well-born, well-mannered,
good-looking, and happy--ourselves, in short. Not one of us had the
slightest acquaintance with English society; but we were confident
our own was immeasurably better. Twenty-five years ago, it must be
remembered, there was a chillier feeling between the two countries;
and, of course, our provincialism accented it. The eagle ramped upon
his perch; the lion suffered a deal of tail-twisting; hands across
the sea were not quite so fervent in their clasp then as now. Our
demagogues flung about dark hints concerning the machinations of
the "Cobden Club." American protectionists, American free-traders
bellowed themselves purple in the face from the stump in defence
of their several creeds, and strangely enough, found in England
equally an awful example, and a beacon-light of progress! The last,
for obvious reasons, was a very unpopular view; in those Arcadian
days the main diversion of a certain class of our politicians was
the ferocious baiting of perfidious Albion. The Oriental-war scares,
the race-problems, the anti-trust, and anti-railroad agitations of
to-day must cause these amiable jingoes--a name, by the way, which
they never heard--to turn in their graves. Bless thee, Bottom, how
art thou translated! In that year, the Pendleton Civil-Service Reform
Bill was the most important measure before the two Houses; and "to the
victors belong the spoils," was the cry most frequently raised against
it. That admirable argument, at once so condensed and so forcible,
what respectable person would dare to utter it to-day? Blaine was
alive; Tilden was alive; Ben Butler was governor of Massachusetts,
he of fragrant memory, house-cleaner of New Orleans, promulgator of
Regulation 19--or was it 29? Iram indeed is gone with all his rose, and
Ben and all the rest along with him; and we have ceased, at a woeful
expense, to be provincial. We were not bothering our heads _then_,
about tropical canals and the Philippines--oh, all-but-forgotten Golden
Age!
We were not always certain what sort of impression we were making on
Muriel; and, however eager we might have been to find out, there are
some questions any girl would go to the scaffold rather than ask. But
I know that on one point we were intolerably vain; perhaps that vanity
was the most honest, creditable, endearing quality we possessed; and
something of the same feeling stirs me even now. Where, where on this
globe, we asked ourselves triumphantly, would Muriel find anything to
match the ready deference, the kind, half-humorous, wholly charming
devotion of the American man to his womankind? Indeed, it was plain
to see she was unused to this Sir Walter Raleigh attitude; she was as
much puzzled as pleased by it. I think we were somewhat disposed to
patronise her; and Kitty Oldham declared openly she didn't believe Miss
Baxter had ever had an offer in her life. She was an exceptionally
handsome girl; she must have had a far wider social experience than
ours; but, for all that, and in spite of her size and the splendid
unconscious ease of her bearing, we detected in her a curious timidity.
It suited her. Had she attempted to imitate the brisk, fearless,
autocratic American girl, she would have been merely a big hoyden.
There was, after all, something sweet in her naïve tactlessness, her
awkward conscientious efforts at adapting herself to ways she could
not understand, and perhaps at heart, did not really like. To one of
us, at least, the association was not without profit. I used to feel
that someone ought in conscience to explain Mrs. Botlisch to Muriel,
to apologise for that really terrible old woman; the irritating thing
was that Muriel accepted her without comment, exactly as she accepted
the rest of us--as if, I thought with annoyance, we were all freaks
together! "Mazie's grandmother is not--well--er--she's not at all--you
know?" I said, feeling, notwithstanding this public-spirited effort, a
little embarrassed under Muriel's direct, serious gaze. "Mrs. Botlisch
is--well, she's really not--er--very good style, nobody else here is
like her--you must have noticed it. She's awfully _common_--of course,
we didn't know much about the Pallinders before they came here--nobody
knows how they--they got _in_, you see----"
"I shouldn't think you'd come to the house so much if you feel that
way," said Muriel. "I wouldn't."
She did not mean it as a rebuke; she was only saying, as usual,
precisely what she thought. But all at once, with the uncompromising
harshness of youth, I saw and denounced myself inwardly for a petty
groundling, eating people's bread with a covert sneer, and parading
their shortcomings before a stranger. No, Muriel would not have done
it. _Noblesse oblige!_
The Pallinders, to their honour be it said, never seemed to be ashamed
of Mrs. Botlisch. They had their notions of _noblesse oblige_, too,
strange as that may sound. Reflecting upon it now, I see certain
a heroism in the respect they paid that dreadful, screeching,
vile-tongued old termagant. I have known prosperous, reputable
families, who paid the butcher and thought it a sin to play cards,
wherein the unornamental older members were not treated with one-half
the consideration these kind-hearted, conscienceless outlaws bestowed
on Mrs. Botlisch. She was a fat harridan of seventy with a blotched red
face, a great, coarse, husky voice like a man's and thick hands, the
nails bitten down to the quick. She liked to go about without corsets
or shoes in a shapeless gaberdine she called a double-gown--not too
clean at that. She kept a bottle of whisky on her mantelpiece; she
had a disconcerting habit of whisking out her teeth and laying them
down wherever she chanced to be; you might come upon them grinning
amongst Mazie's music on the piano, or under the sofa-cushions. She
frankly enjoyed a loose story, and made a point of telling them in
mixed companies of young people. She alternately bullied the servants
and gossiped with them in the kitchen; once I most inopportunely
happened upon Mrs. Botlisch engaged in a battle-royal with one of the
chambermaids over some trifle--a broken dish, perhaps--in the pantry.
Fortunately, I could not understand one word they uttered; and after
a little, Mrs. Pallinder came, looking quite grey over her handsome
resolute face, and took her mother away still shrieking hideous abuse.
"Ma is so eccentric," she said to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile;
and some feeling, of mingled horror and compassion, withheld me from
reporting the wretched scene. In most households, these undesirable
parents can be thrust, gently or not, into the background; in fact,
very many parents retire thither of their own accord. But Mrs. Botlisch
was not of that type.
"I like to set in the parlour an' see the young folks," she said.
"Mirandy she don't want me to, but I says to her, 'Mirandy,' says I,
'don't you worry. I'm goin' ter keep my uppers an' lowers in, 'less
I git a fish-bone er a hunk o' meat under the plate at dinner, an' I
ain't a-goin' to no bed till I git sleepy,' says I. She says, 'Ma, I'm
afraid you won't be comf'ble with your--you know--on all evenin'.'"
(Here she gave J. B. a poke in the side and dropped her left eyelid).
"'Lord love you, don't set there lookin' so innercent like you'd
never saw a woman undress in yer life--don't come that over _me_,
young feller. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you'll feel kinder tight an'
uncomf'ble with 'em on all evenin' 'long as you ain't used to wearin'
'em much in the daytime,' she says. 'Land!' says I. 'Mirandy,' I ain't
squoze inter my cloze by main stren'th the way Mazie is. 'F I feel
uncomf'ble, I'll just undo the bottom buttons of my basque an' I'll be
all right, you see.'"
And there she sat, true to her word, creaking in her black silk and
bugles (with the bottom buttons undone!), perspiring greasily over her
fat red face; and shouting rough, humorous, and frequently shrewd
criticism at our amateurs during rehearsal until midnight, when we
went out to the dining-room for oysters, egg-nogg, and the too lavish
entertainment of Colonel Pallinder's sideboard. The first time this
occurred Teddy Johns retreated precipitately from the table, and, being
sought, was discovered at last, pallidly reclining on the library
lounge.
"I'm all right, old man," he said feebly. "Just a minute, please. I
couldn't stand seeing old Mrs. Botlisch wallop down those oysters,
that's all."
There lies before me now a square of rough paper (designedly rough),
with jagged edges (designedly jagged), tinted in water colours an
elegant cloudy blue, with a butterfly, or some such insect, painted
in one corner, and a slit diagonally opposite through which we stuck
a single rosebud, as I remember. Slanting across the sheet in loose
gilt lettering I read "Programme," and a date beneath. This confection
represented days of effort and ingenuity on the part of those young
ladies among my contemporaries who painted china, or were otherwise
"artistic." Some of them took the "Art Amateur," at a ruinous
expenditure; that publication has long since gone the way of all flesh
and most print, in company, it would appear, with the amateurs for whom
it was destined. Nobody is either "artistic" or amateurish any more. We
did the jagging with a meat-saw, I believe--what a spectacle for our
accomplished posterity!
If I reverse the sheet, I find upon the other side, in a correct
angular hand (it may well be my own, for angularity was much the
fashion in those days; and the inartistic ones let what aid they could
to the task of programme-making), I find, I say, the