CLARICE.
The next summer Mrs. Percy bought a pretty little cottage on Oceanside,
which she occupied season after season, while Jack grew to manhood and
Clarice to a brilliant, beautiful girl. Mrs. Percy was a delicate woman,
and, aside from the cheapness of the place compared with more
fashionable resorts, the quiet and rest suited her, and she found her
pleasant, airy cottage a delightful change from her rather stuffy house
in Washington, with negro huts crowded close to it in the rear. Clarice,
on the contrary, detested it and the people, and took no pains to
conceal her dislike. She was a haughty girl, with all the pride of the
Percys, from the bondman down to old Roger, her grandfather, who, up to
the last, wore his dress suit to dinner when there was nothing better
than bacon and eggs. She gloried in such pride as that, she said, and
respected him far more than if he had sat down to his bacon and eggs in
his shirt sleeves. She knew her father had been a Treasury clerk, but he
was a Percy and a gentleman, and she had no fault to find with him
except that he did not leave more money. She wanted to be rich and live
in the style of rich people. She would like to have had a large
establishment, with housekeeper and butler and maids and horses and
carriages, and she meant to have all this some time, no matter at what
sacrifice. Given her choice between a man she loved who was poor, and a
man she didn’t love who was rich and not obnoxious to her, she would
unhesitatingly have taken the latter and overlooked any little escapades
of which he might be guilty, provided he gave her all the money she
wanted. In marrying Paul Ralston she was getting everything she
desired,—family, position, love and money. She had had Paul in her mind
for some time as a most desirable _parti_, provided one more desirable
was not forthcoming. In Washington, where her beauty attracted a great
deal of attention, she was much sought after by men who, while pleasing
her in many respects, lacked the one thing needful.
In Oak City, to which she always went unwillingly, she frequently met
men of her style,—_class_ she called it,—and in this class Paul stood
pre-eminent. With Ralph Fenner, whom Miss Hansford had designated as a
snipper-snapper, she had flirted outrageously, but with no serious
intent. He was too poor, and, although there was a title in his family,
there were three lives between it and himself. To marry him would not
pay, and over and above any other reasons which might influence her, she
had a genuine liking for Paul, and when he asked her to be his wife she
unhesitatingly answered yes.
After the betrothal there was no happier man in Paris than Paul Ralston.
He went everywhere Clarice wished to go, from the Grand Opera House to
the Champs d’Elysees, where Jenny Mills delighted a not very select
audience with her dancing. He accompanied her and her mother on their
shopping expeditions for the bridal trousseau, most of which was to be
made in Paris. It was on one of these occasions that he thought of Miss
Hansford and suggested getting her a dress to wear to his wedding.
“Do you propose to invite _her_?” Clarice asked, in some surprise, and
he replied, “Certainly. She is one of my best friends. I wouldn’t slight
her for the world.”
“An announcing card will answer every purpose,” was Clarice’s next
remark.
Paul did not think it would. He wanted Miss Hansford to see him married.
It would please her, and she had always been so kind to him. Clarice
made a little grimace and said, “Let’s get her a dress, then, by all
means. I want her to look decent if she comes,” and she selected the
grey silk at his request, and made some additions to it in the way of
laces and gloves, which last he forgot to take with him when he carried
the dress to Miss Hansford.
Clarice could scarcely have given any good reason for her antipathy to
Miss Hansford except on general principles. She did not like Oak City
and would never have come there from choice. It was not gay enough, nor
fashionable enough to suit her. She called Miss Hansford a dowdy and a
crank and included her in the category of second-class people who were
no society for her. All this was repeated to Miss Hansford by her
colored factotum, Martha Ann, who had taken Sally’s place at the Percys,
and, after a few weeks, had left because she was not allowed to
entertain her young men on the steps of the dining room, and had been
told she talked and laughed too loud for a servant. Her next place was
with Miss Hansford, to whom she retailed all she had heard and seen at
Mrs. Percy’s, with many additions. Miss Hansford knew it was not good
form to listen to the gossip, but when she became mixed with it
curiosity overcame her sense of propriety, and she not only listened but
questioned, while her wrath waxed hotter and hotter with what she heard.
“Said you’s a second-class and a crank, and she didn’t see why Miss
Ralston could make so much of you,” was Martha Ann’s last item, and then
Miss Hansford, who had never forgotten Mrs. Percy’s slight in not
returning her call, lost her temper entirely.
She had heard herself called a crank before, and, looking in the
dictionary, had found so many definitions to the word that she felt a
little uncertain as to which applied to herself.
“I s’pose I am queer and different from folks like the Percys, and I
thank the Lord I am,” she thought, but to the “second-class” she
objected.
She, whose lineage went back to Oliver Cromwell and Miles Standish and a
Scotch lord, she to be called second-class by Clarice Percy was too
much. Who were the Percys? she’d like to know. “Nobodies! Sprung from a
white slave! Talk to me of F. F. V.’s, as if I didn’t know all about
’em. Second-class, indeed! It makes me so mad!” and Miss Hansford banged
the door so hard that Martha Ann, who had evoked the storm and was
washing dishes in the sink, dropped a china saucer in her fright and
broke it.
After this, Miss Hansford’s antipathy to the Percys increased, and not
even the grey silk Clarice had selected mollified her completely. Still,
it did a good deal towards it, and she gradually became more reconciled
to the thought of the engagement.
“I s’pose Paul must marry sometime,” she said, “and if it was anybody
but Clarice, I’d try to be glad, but try as I will I can’t abide the
Percys.”