THE PURPLE TEA.
"The Earl of Marmouth sends his regards. He will be unable to join us."
Tristram March held a coroneted note in his hands while he made this
announcement to the company. There was a faint salvo of regrets, meant
for the Violet's ears. Only Miss Milly Mills was heard remarking, sotto
voce:
"I'm glad the old bear is chained for once."
"But the grizzly is grand in its den, dear," chided Dorothea Goodbody, a
little louder.
"True. We do not fit everywhere," said the Violet, who had overheard
them. "Imagine Thoreau in a salon."
"Or Talleyrand in the Walden woods," added Count L'Alienado.
More than one of the company had noted this as the third occasion on
which his noble lordship avoided a meeting with the count. Was it that
in the reserved Spaniard he had encountered a force which he could not
overbear? Or was he jealous of the count's attention to the Violet?
Twice at the Ryecroft's hop she had inadvertently answered the slender
foreigner and turned her smooth, brown shoulder to the Englishman.
"Well," said Tristram, "the menagerie must perform without its lion."
"How flattering, brother!" cried Rosalie. Harry Arnold was leaning over
her chair. "You compare us to wolves and panthers."
"Not unhappily," said the Violet. "Mine host is clever. He will put us
all in an apologue like Aesop's. I am curious to see how I shall be
transformed."
"The mood is wanting," cried Tristram, while the young ladies seconded
the suggestion. "I am savage. I should affront you all with some furious
satire."
"Imagine Tristram furious," said Harry.
"A smothered volcano. I have committed to-day the sin against the Holy
Ghost. Guess what that is?"
"Success," said the Violet.
"Candor," the count.
"Bachelorhood," Miss Milly Mills.
"Punning," his sister Rosalie.
But Tristram shook his head drearily at each response.
"Well, then, tell us," cried a chorus of impatient voices.
"I have prostituted art to lucre--having disposed of my great design of
Ajax's shield--for what purpose, do you think?"
All the guesses were wild again.
"For a bed-spread," said Tristram, and there was a chorus of laughter,
amid which the circle broke up into little moving knots, all
electrically united, however, so that the talk flew from one part of the
room to another.
It was one of Tristram's soirees, which were the events of the season in
Lenox. The flavor of art was substituted for that of artificiality, and
usually some souvenir, bearing the touch of the host's own fanciful
hand, was carried away by each of the guests. The coveted invitation for
this night's affair announced "a purple tea," and the furnishings
verified the description. Rich muslin shades over the chandeliers
(Rosalie's work) purpled all the atmosphere of the parlors. Purple
hangings here and there carried out the suggestion, but not too
obtrusively, and each of the guests appeared with some purple garment.
Among the ladies these generally verged toward the wine-colored shades,
for they were all too young to carry well the full warmth of the Tyrian.
Thus the Violet's mantilla, Rosalie's cloud, Harry Arnold's sash, were
all steeped to the same dye, now the crimson, now the blue element
prevailing in the mixture. Count L'Alienado alone appeared to have
evaded the rule until, raising his right hand to smell a rose, he
scattered a pencil of purple light from an opalescent stone which none
present were learned enough in lapidary science to name.
"Let's have tableau charades!" cried Miss Milly Mills, who flitted from
person to person, from subject to subject, like a butterfly, and was
accused of a partiality for spruce gum. The suggestion was taken up with
approval, and nearly every one present acted out the first word that
came to him on the spur of the moment.
Tristram gave what he called a definition of himself in lengthy
pantomime which no one could fathom. So he was obliged to explain that
meed--eye--ochre--tea, summed up "mediocrity," at which one and all
protested. Most of the other attempts were quite as laborious. But when
the Violet stepped forward and trilled an upper C, then buzzed like an
insect and put her right foot forward, there was a unanimous cry of
"Trilby!" and the flatness began to be taken out of the game.
Then the pleasures grew more miscellaneous and Count L'Alienado found
himself for a time alone on the outer balcony with Mme. Violet. The sky
was starlit above, the shadows lay deep in the garden bushes below, and
the diamonds burned amid her braids. They talked of the Persian poets
till the light voice of Tristram within interrupted them and a ripple
of laughter from the purple interior reached their ears.
"Ah, this is not fair; that our wisest and wittiest should impoverish
the company by their absence. Your places are waiting and the bell is
tired of tinkling to you."
"We were lost among the stars," replied Count L'Alienado.
Opposite the count sat Harry Arnold; opposite the Violet, Rosalie.
Waiters were serving refreshments, and a purple tea was poured into the
wine-colored cups. On each table lay a souvenir containing verse or
prose by Tristram March, with fantastic decorations in the border. Harry
Arnold was just passing the souvenir of their table to Rosalie. It
contained a caricature in profile of Tristram himself, and a brief
"Autobiography," which Harry read aloud:
"I went to school
To Ridicule.
He taught me civility,
The peacock humility,
Depth and subtility
Feste, the fool.
Meeker and meeker becomes my mood
From studying Conscious Rectitude;
And if my speech be firm and pat,
Madam Garrulity taught me that."
"Oh, I hate sarcasm," burst out Rosalie. "Why won't you be literal,
commonplace, something positive, if it's only a woman-hater?"
"An abominable fault, brother Tristram," said Harry, sternly.
"Hideous!" cried the others, drowning poor Rosalie's homily in a flood
of irony more heartless than Tristram's own.
Then Rosalie gave him up as incorrigible.
"I wonder if Count L'Alienado's jewel has not a legend attached to it?"
said some one.
"It is an alamandine ruby from Siam," began the count.
"Oh, do go on," cried Miss Milly Mills from the rear, who had been
listening over her shoulder. "Tell us the story. I'm sure it will be
better than Cleverly's last book."
"Oh, if it isn't better than that----"
"But the setting was fresh," said Tristram, who was Cleverly's friend.
"He rehangs his gallery well, even if the portraits are familiar."
"This talisman of mine has indeed a story attached to it," said Count
L'Alienado at last, "but you may read hundreds better in any book of
oriental tales. Its quality, however, is curious. You know that
mesmerism has long been known in the east, and that many of the occult
feats of the Hindoo magicians are ascribed to that power. It was an Arab
caliph who first attributed to this stone the quality of securing
immunity to its possessor from the magic trance. As a matter of fact, I
have never been hypnotized while I wore it."
"A challenge, Harry," said Tristram.
"You possess the power?" asked the count.
"So I am told," laughed Harry.
"People go to sleep at his bidding," said Tristram. "He is the surest
recipe I have seen for insomnia."
"Except the Rev. Dr. Fourthly," whispered Miss Milly Mills, but at this
Dorothea Goodbody looked shocked.
"Shall I hypnotize you, Rosalie?" smiled Harry to his sweetheart.
But Rosalie shook her head with a little shudder.
"The count," said the Violet.
"The count! Hypnotize the count!" a chorus echoed.
"Very well," said the Spaniard; "a moment till I invoke the genii of the
carbuncle. Now."
"Are you ready?" said Harry, laughing a little awkwardly. He made one or
two cabalistic passes with his hands, looking straight into the eyes of
the count. They were large burning eyes, the like of which Harry had
never met before. Gazing into their depths, he seemed to feel a new
spell. They were drawing him, drawing his soul away. Other objects
disappeared. Rosalie, Tristram, the Violet--he clutched at them, but
they were gone. The count himself grew shadowy. Only his eyes--fixed,
haunting, luminous--remained, centering a vast drab vault, which was all
that was left of the populous world and its occupants. What could Harry
do but surrender his faculties and be absorbed like the rest?
"It is Harry who is hypnotized," cried Tristram. Rosalie fixed her gaze
on her lover's face.
"Raise your right hand," said the count. Harry obeyed. His stare was
glassy, his lower lip stupidly dropped.
"Do you know this glove?" asked the count, raising a lemon-colored kid.
"I do," came the answer, mechanical, monotonous.
"Try it on."
Harry drew the glove on his right hand, his eyes never leaving those of
the count.
"Button it tightly," said the Spaniard. "Do you remember where you wore
this glove last?"
"I do."
"Can you see the side door opening from the passageway?"
"I can."
"Do you recognize the youth who is entering?"
"I do."
"Is it Harry Arnold?"
"It is Harry Arnold."
"Does he listen cautiously?"
"He listens cautiously."
"Does he climb the stairs softly?"
"He climbs the stairs softly."
"Does he enter the study?"
The young man's face twitched and convulsed. His eyes started from their
sockets. The foam rose to his lips as they worked.
"Harry!"
It was the agonized cry of Rosalie March, throwing herself upon her
lover and turning defiantly at Count L'Alienado, whose fierce insistence
had amazed the onlookers. The spell seemed to be broken, for Harry sunk
from his chair, supported by Rosalie's arms.
"Some wine," cried Tristram, chafing Harry's forehead and gently
striving to unclasp his sister's arms. But she clung to her sweetheart
with love in her eyes.
Count L'Alienado approached the unconscious man, the crowd parting
before him.
"Wake!" he said, "and forget!" Harry's eyes shut naturally and then
opened. He drank the wine which Rosalie pressed to his lips. In a few
minutes he was erect, eagerly questioning the company.
"Call it a faint," said Count L'Alienado, quietly. "It is better that he
should not know."
"But what was it all about?" asked Miss Milly Mills, on tiptoe with
curiosity.
"Only an experiment in clairvoyance," answered Count L'Alienado.