MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.
Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl of
the season, There were hints from different quarters that she might
possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about
town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all
agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,--"best filly this grass,"
as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to
capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But
Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
have been to make out who was an especial favorite.
There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart
and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept
him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to feel
sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could hardly
doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in the
city,--even elegantly,--he had many of the lesser social accomplishments,
was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such matters with the
more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better talker than most
of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing with than they
could know. "You have only got to say the word, Murray," Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum said to her relative, "and you can have her. But don't be rash.
I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there 's something
better there than possibilities." Murray Bradshaw laughed, and told Mrs.
Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was doing.
It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr.
Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with
her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical
admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two
elegant notes were accounted for.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world
of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she called
clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a streak
of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and, if she
could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an Amazon who
had captured a Centaur.
"There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay," Mr.
Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.
"Better ask him. They say he 's the rising talent in his line,
architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way of
sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite
wonderful. I'll find his address for you." So Mr. Clement Lindsay got
his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring
together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were
acquainted with each other.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have carte
blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord, and
she would see to the rest,--lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet. He
needn't be afraid: all he had to do was to keep out of the way.
Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization. Labor
was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of
many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the promenaders
and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'Alenyon must have
spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks glowed
like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard. She
was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added certain
audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the dead
beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and then the
admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for effect. Over
the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich bracelet, of so
quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything like it, and as
some one whispered that it was "the last thing out," it was greatly
admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the few who had a
taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long divorced from its
once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim consciousness through
any of those who inherited her blood, it was then and there that she
breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young girl almost
trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being, soliciting every
sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that could make her
feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all its chords
first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle, whose
mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always made an
obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all their portraits
painted with halos round their heads), found herself extinguished in this
new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the wall as if she had
been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties were dismayed and
dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if she had been a
Gorgon instead of a beauty.
The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time making
ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant one; for 24
Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its entertainments.
Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had,
however, been made a lion of several times of late, and was very willing
to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world.
It was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.
Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and
understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to
dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in
his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But
Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable
comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume. The
young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very large
breast-pin containing a gem which he was assured by the vender was a
genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently
effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to convince
him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more fitted to the
occasion.
On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw
received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as he
changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up and
down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing of a
certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this telegram
may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would contrive
an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as a suitor
to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely certain of
getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous periods. Myrtle
knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better than when she was
a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she had been
surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of beauty, which had
set her off so that she could not help seeing her own attractions,
rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little experience in
society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases which all the
Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to land his fish
now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked, and he had a
feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his book. However, as he
had made up his mind not to wait another day, he addressed himself to the
trial before him with a determination to succeed, if any means at his
command would insure success. He arrayed himself with faultless
elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an occasion. He went forth
firm and grave as a general going into a battle where all is to be lost
or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the unfailing smile upon his
lips, to which he set them as he set his watch to a particular hour and
minute.
The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow before
the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance under
which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene over
which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He turned to
Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his inclinations led
him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how much light can a
woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A plain girl in a
simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may seem almost a beauty
in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being handsome, the more
ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the sunshine or the
chandelier.
Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the brilliant effect of Myrtle in
full dress. He did not know before what handsome arms she had,--Judith
Pride's famous arms--which the high-colored young men in top-boots used
to swear were the handsomest pair in New England--right over again. He
did not know before with what defiant effect she would light up, standing
as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full flower of flame, like a
burning azalea. He was not a man who intended to let his sentiments
carry him away from the serious interests of his future, yet, as he
looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart gave one throb which made him feel
in every pulse that this way a woman who in her own right, simply as a
woman, could challenge the homage of the proudest young man of her time.
He hardly knew till this moment how much of passion mingled with other
and calmer motives of admiration. He could say I love you as truly as
such a man could ever speak these words, meaning that he admired her,
that he was attracted to her, that he should be proud of her as his wife,
that he should value himself always as the proprietor of so rare a
person, that no appendage to his existence would take so high a place in
his thoughts. This implied also, what is of great consequence to a young
woman's happiness in the married state, that she would be treated with
uniform politeness, with satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a
degree of confidence quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect
from a very superior man, her husband.
If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against
which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for
the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her.
Less than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young
women; and it may be that the interior just drawn, fairly judged, belongs
to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or not, Myrtle did not see
this picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in front
of that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted all
sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young, handsome,
courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit, whose every
look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who was associated
with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared like old
friends in the midst of that cold alien throng. It seemed as if he could
not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never looked so
captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the eloquence of
love. And she--was not this delirious atmosphere of light and music just
the influence to which he would wish to subject her before trying the
last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a woman? He knew the
mechanism of that impressionable state which served Coleridge so
excellently well,--
"All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve
The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,"--
though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses and
jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
Hopkins and rhyming tom-tits of that feather.
Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with a
great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark ready
to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile upon his
lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have said he was
as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial good-matured
disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied
himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.
Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts that
he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as Myrtle
had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once caught
by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley, accompanied
by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped forward at
once to meet, and to present them.
Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and
respectable appearance. There was an unusual lock of benignity upon his
firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr.
Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed a
part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was
courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the
masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them
both into the immediate Presence.
"This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the honor
of introducing to you,--a very distinguished scholar, as I have no doubt
you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins, a young
poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it has not
come to your ears already."
The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little crushed
by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making polite
speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly delighted
to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet with a degree
of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive from his company.
They both brought with them so many reminiscences of familiar scenes and
events, that it was like going back for the moment to Oxbow Village. But
Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and had no opportunity to
enter into conversation just then with either of them. There was to be
dancing by and by, and the younger people were getting impatient that it
should begin. At last the music sounded the well-known summons, and the
floors began to ring to the tread of the dancers. As usual on such
occasions there were a large number of noncombatants, who stood as
spectators around those who were engaged in the campaign of the evening.
Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely, thinking of the minuets and the
gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who had never acquired
the desirable accomplishment of dancing, gazed with dazzled and admiring
eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the graceful performers. The music
stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young
persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of
excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen.
Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were
these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people
would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties
would be dead, or wrinkled and double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And
when they were all gone and forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still
fresh in the world's memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose
to his lips; he felt that the village boy who could look forward to fame
as his inheritance was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the
words he should set in verse would have an enduring lustre to which the
whiteness of pearls was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.
He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon
these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing but
perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he observed, were
fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little
self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of
dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings
going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:--
Which is it? Which is it?--Why, that one, there,--that young
fellow,--don't you see?--What young fellow are you two looking at? Who is
he? What is he?--Why, that is Hopkins, the poet.--Hopkins, the poet!
Let me see him! Let me see him! Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins? etc.,
etc.
Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did
unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him,
which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already
begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared
as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking
at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of
himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look
upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the way
with great people when going about the country. But this was only a
suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have
implied infatuation.
Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes.
At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived that
an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his rather
large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear. A not
very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the subject
of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much better taste
or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful poet was
receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little accident of
which her rural friend was the victim than she left her place in the
dance with a simple courage which did her credit.
"I want to speak to you a minute," she said. "Come into this alcove."
And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has to
other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he might
perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever he
went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the collective
admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the whisper would
pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"
Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to make
her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling happy
without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to make
would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural connection
to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called up. Not the
way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their great trial
scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as in business,
and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of Myrtle
Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury case
but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand, in the
first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by all, and
that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them to shape
their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own side of
the case?
Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, that
she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her,
and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could safely
give his confidence.
The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an
instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it all
in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy
savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval
great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, or
into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the
nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind
elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of Schehallion.
Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than so healthy a
girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady nerves of William
Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors tingling through them,
as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words with which he was to
make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His tones were becoming
lower and more serious; there were slight breaks once or twice in the
conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.
"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent
towards her--
A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master
Bytes Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I
promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to
be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have the
pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young
friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay."
Once mere, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to
face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which any
sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her half-hysteric
state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who found himself
unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have risked of his
own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the easy
self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social
exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy,
and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since
their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the
instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some
peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever
it was, it broke the charm which had been weaving between her and Murray
Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could
he find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do
with a lady to whom he had just been introduced, addressed a few polite
words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very
courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray
Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her attention,
at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded his arms
and waited,--but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which drew
Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley of the
Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave himself up
to the fascination of her presence.
The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the
moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the
first great game he had ever played may well be imagined. But it could
not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young
ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with
another,--that was all. Fortunately, for him the young man who had been
introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need
apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to
pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained
her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful
interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no
favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the
interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and
bring matters to a conclusion.
He called accordingly the next morning, but was disappointed in not
seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a
bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.
He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had just
left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village: