A TAILOR-MADE FATE.
Helen Simms was a young woman who had cantered gracefully under the
flick of society’s whip since the night of her début. Occasionally she
broke into a trot, and anon into a run. The speedier locomotion took
place on unworn by-paths; when on the broad highway she was a most
sedate representative of her riding-school. At times she had been
known—to a select few—to kick; and the kick had invariably occurred at
the crossing of the highway and the by-path, and just before she had
made up her mind to forsake the road for the hedges.
She had all the virtues of her kind. On Sunday mornings she attended St.
Thomas’s, and after service was over walked home with her favorite
youth, whom she patronizingly spoke of as her “infant.” In the afternoon
she entertained another “infant” or read a French novel. Nor was her
life entirely given over to frivolity. She belonged to the sewing-class
of her church, and like its other members fulfilled her mission as a
quotable example, if she pricked her fingers seldom; and once a week she
attended a Shakespeare “propounding.” She took a great deal of exercise,
skimmed through all the light literature of the day, including the
magazines, and even knew a little science, just enough to make the
occasional clever man she met think her a prodigy as she smiled up into
his face and murmured something about “the great body of force” or a
late experiment in telepathy.
She had a bright way of saying nothing, a cool, shrewd head, and an
endless stock of small-talk. Both sexes approved of her as a clever,
charming, well-regulated young woman—all of which she indisputably was.
Enthusiasm had long since been drilled out of her, but she had for
Hermia an attachment very sincere as far as it went—it may be added
that, if there had been more of Miss Simms, there would have been more
attachment. It is possible that Hermia, without her brilliant position,
would not have attracted the attention of Miss Simms, but it is only
just to Helen to say that the conditions affected her not a whit; she
was quite free from snobbery.
She liked Hermia because she could not understand her—much as she was
influenced by the sea in a storm, or by mountains with lightning darting
about their crests. Whenever she entered Hermia’s presence she always
felt as if the air had become suddenly fresher; and she liked new
sensations. She did not in the least resent the fact that she could not
understand Hermia, that her chosen friend was intellectually a
hemisphere beyond her, and in character infinitely more complex. She was
pleased at her own good taste, and quite generous enough to admire where
she could not emulate.
She was constantly amused at Hermia’s abiding and aggressive desire to
fall in love, but she was by no means unsympathetic. She would have
regarded an emotional tumult in her own being as a bore, but for Hermia
she thought it quite the most appropriate and advisable thing. Once in a
while, in a half-blind way, she came into momentary contact with the
supreme loneliness and craving of Hermia’s nature, and she invariably
responded with a sympathetic throb and a wish that the coming man would
not tarry so long.
She was so glad she had thought of Cryder. She honestly believed him to
be the one man of all men who could make the happiness of her friend;
and she entered the ranks of the Fates with the pleasurable suspicion
that she was the author of Hermia’s infinite good.
She surprised her father, the morning after her last interview with
Hermia, by coming down to breakfast. She was careful to let him finish
his roll to the last crumb and to read his paper to the acrid end. Then
she went over and put her finger-tips under his chin.
He glanced up with a groan. “What do you want now?” he demanded, looking
at her over his eye-glasses. His periodical pettings had made him
cynical.
“Nothing—for myself. Did you not say that some one had sent you tickets
for the next meeting of the Free Discussion?”
“Yes; but you can’t have them to give to some girl who would only go to
show herself, or to some boy whose thimbleful of gray matter would be
addled before the lecture was half over. I am going to hear that lecture
myself.”
“How perfectly enchanting! That is what I wished, yet dared not hope
for. And you are not only going yourself, but you are going to take
Hermia Suydam with you.”
“Oh!” Mr. Simms raised his eyebrows. “I am? Very well. I am sure I have
no objection. Miss Suydam is the finest girl in New York.”
“Of course she is, and she will make a sensation at the club; you will
be the envied of all men. And there is one thing else you are to do. As
soon as the exercises are over I want you to present Ogden Cryder to
her. I have particular reasons for wishing them to meet.”
“What are the reasons?”
“Never mind. You do as you are told, and ask no questions”—this in a
tone which extracted the sting, and was supplemented by a light kiss on
Mr. Simms’ smooth forehead.
“Very well, very well,” said her father, obediently, “she shall meet
him; remind me of it just before I leave. And now I must run. I have a
case in court at ten o’clock.”
He stood up and gave one of his handsome, iron-gray side-whiskers an
absent caress. He was not a particularly good-looking man, but he had a
keen, dark eye, and a square, heavy jaw, in both of which features lay
the secret of his great success in his profession. He was devoted to
Helen, and had allowed her, with only an occasional protest, to bring
him up. He could be brusque and severe in court, but in Helen’s hands he
was a wax ball into which she delighted to poke her dainty fingers.
Helen wrote a note to Hermia, and he took it with him to send by an
unwinged Mercury.
On Friday morning Helen went over to Second Avenue to make sure that her
friend had not changed her mind. She found Hermia in her boudoir, with
one of Cryder’s books in her hand and another on a table beside her.
“What do you think of him?” demanded Miss Simms, somewhat anxiously, as
she adjusted her steel-bound self in a pile of cushions—straight-backed
chairs in this room there were none.
Hermia shrugged her shoulders: “A decorous seasoning of passion; a
clear, delicate gravy of sentiment; a pinch of pathos; a garnish of
analysis; and a solid roast of dialect. Woe is me!—I have read two
whole volumes; and I pray that I may like the author better than his
books. But he is clever; there is no denying that!”
“Oh, horribly clever! What are you going to wear, to-night?”
“That dark-green velvet I showed you the other day.”
“Lovely! And it will match your eyes to a shade. You will look, as
usual, as if you had just stepped out of an old picture. Mr. Cryder will
put you in a book.”
“If he does I shall be a modern picture, not an old one. That man could
not write a tale of fifty years ago.”
“So much the better for you! What you want is to fall in love with a
modern man, and let him teach you that the mediæval was a great animal,
who thought of nothing but what he ate and drank. I do not claim that
the species is extinct; but, at least, in these days we have a choice.”
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