pretty enough, Lavinia, to do without this foolishness," she insisted.
"It isn't on account of any brains she's got, or any she'll come to
have, for example, that Culpepper comes round here. Selina's pretty and
sweet and she looks up to him. So far as he and any other men she's
likely to meet go, what on earth more do they want in her? I'm an old
maid but I know."
CHAPTER TEN
It was the evening of the conversazione. Selina, dear child, as
Auntie called her, pretty and flushed and frankly excited, wore the
discredited graduation dress, furbished up once more by Mamma, and yet
once more pressed by Aunt Viney.
"Never, never again do we let her wear garments not her own," said
Mamma as Selina went down to welcome those first arrivals, the friends
of her youth.
"Thanks be, Lavinia, for that," said Auntie. "Maybe you'll come around
to my view of the mental furbelows next."
When Selina reached her friends below, she found Amanthus in yellow.
With a pretty mother who dressed well herself Amanthus always had
charming clothes. The corn-colored knotted sash and ribbons worn by her
to-night were the color of her abundant hair, and her fan of yellow
feathers seemed planned to open against her red lower lip while her
face dimpled and sparkled above it.
It was handsome Maud's self one saw, animated and sure and leading. You
hardly thought about, if you noted at all, her val-edged flounces and
her string of beads, though you did rejoice in her clear white and
red skin and her red-brown hair. Auntie said, you felt the courage and
vigor of Maud's Presbyterian forebears in her straightforwardness if
she did belie them in her impulsiveness.
Pretty Juliette's cheeks subdued her cherry ribbons, little gypsy
thing, and Adele's throat rose soft and white from her round-necked
blue cashmere. As for Miss Pocahontas Boswell who arrived here--but how
put into words that simplicity which is not simplicity at all, about
her amber draperies? Or how make plain the appreciation and interest in
her smiling eyes?
Mrs. William Williams, hearing of the occasion, had sent Selina a box
of hot-house flowers, half a dozen kinds at least laid on a bedding of
wet smilax, the endeavor in those days being for variety and assemblage
of colors. Combined with the smilax the whole made a mixed bowlful for
the table between the lace curtains of the two windows and, so Selina
felt, lent a riotous air of preparation and festivity to the parlors.
And now the remainder of the guests came, or seemed to come, at once.
Papa out in the hall, was shaking hands and exchanging little sallies
and seeing to the disposition of coats and hats, after which, having
sent, seen and brought the arrivals to the last one in, he went back to
his paper in the next room.
It was restoring to a hostess' anxious spirits now the actual moment
was come, to enumerate these arrivals in greeting them and in
presenting them to Miss Boswell. What can be more to the credit of a
hostess than an excess of the other sex?
Here were Bliss and Brent and Sam of their own set. But can it be that
familiarity in the long run does breed--well, an uncompromising eye?
For Bliss and Brent and Sam looked--it was the dismaying truth--they
looked young! They acted young, too, falling back the one against the
other at the parlor door, and reddening as they took the hand of the
guest as if they did not know what to do with it! And pretty Bliss,
rather spoiled on that account if the truth be told, with his ruddy
hair and his rosy checks, to have put on a pink neck-tie!
Culpepper and his friends arriving just here, made a gratifying and
convincing show: Mr. Cannon, alert and good-looking, enlivened by a
white vest; Mr. Tate, tall and decorous; Mr. Welling, square-set and in
spectacles. These with Culpepper were a force in themselves.
Bringing up the close came first the Reverend Mr. Wingham. Was it his
high vest or his high calling that gave the distinctive quality to his
good looks? And lastly came Algernon Charles Biggs, Culpepper evidently
on the lookout for him.
Algy was fearfully gloomy. As the company sat down he took his chair
with a furtive unwillingness, Culpepper seating himself near him almost
as if by intention.
With this exception, Selina felt, everything was quite _comme il faut_,
as Maude loved to say of an occasion, and even impressive and needless
to say, gratifying. Everybody sat around, the open grate the center,
so to speak, the firelight flickering on Auntie's especially burnished
fender and coal-bucket and fire-irons.
By the connivance of the four, Selina, Juliette, Maud and Adele, Mr.
Wingham was seated next Miss Boswell. He had shown brisk pleasure
on being presented to tall and dashing Maud and seemed willing to
linger and parry sallies with her; he had warmed, everybody warmed to
Juliette; while within the minute he was taking issue on some general
proposition with Adele. But these introductory passages over, they
passed him on to his place for the evening.
Bliss, pretty, pouty boy, on whom Amanthus had been smiling since she
dismissed Tommy, was sulky because she, from some perversity, was off
to herself in an unillumined spot as it were, between the bookcase and
the door. Yet she illumined it; she was a lovely creature.
"'Like sunshine in a shady spot,'" Selina and Adele who were near
together heard Miss Boswell say to Mr. Wingham, and his attention thus
directed to Amanthus, he heartily agreed.
Then Selina charmingly flushed beneath the crown of her fair hair,
could she but have known it, and prettily anxious, became aware that
Maud had coughed, was coughing again. It was the signal agreed upon.
There came a rushing as of the seas in her ears, a sinking in the pit
of her person. Had they allowed Maud to coerce them into something
ill-advised again? Was Auntie right? Were they about to make themselves
preposterous and ridiculous? And what had Culpepper said--Culpepper
there across the circle next to Algy? That girls played at having a
knowledge that men had? Was he laughing at them now with that same look
of lenient enjoyment in his bold blue eyes that he usually gave to
Auntie? Tears almost of anger were in her eyes.
Not at all! She had had these hideous moments preceding the actual
plunge before, precursors always to the later joys of triumph. As, for
example, when she used to lead in the debate at The Sappho, and at call
for her secretarial report at the junior missionary society, and again
at the moment of her figuring at her graduation. Surely she knew them
for what they were now!
Maud had given definite instructions beforehand. "Let your start seem
casual, Selina, the mere off-throw from passing reflections."
And, recalling this and drawing a restoring breath of confidence,
Selina spoke to the circle of her guests, endeavoring to convey ease
along with the proposition which was to furnish subject and substance
for the conversazione, in a voice which would not be quite steady.
"But is there not a denial of the truth that the moral is necessarily
part with the beautiful, in such phrases as 'art for art's sake,'
'beauty for the sake of beauty'? So Selina."
Maud, as per arrangement and program, came sweepingly to the retort
direct, which she had taken from a volume belonging to The Sappho's
library, called "Prepared Debates." As she had pointed out, there's
nothing like getting the requisite impetus at the start!
"The moral changes with the times, the place and the peoples. Art is as
fixed as the gulf between itself and the ethical obligation is wide."
Juliette, with cheeks afire, rushed gallantly in, also as prearranged
by Maud, she being scheduled to be off-hand, playful and staccato. She
was to fling the proposition on at this point to one of the guests,
having been instructed which one:
"If eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being,"
said she gayly and insouciantly. "Isn't it so, er--Mr. Wingham?"
That very good-looking and well-set-up young clergyman across the
circle next to Miss Boswell, started ever so slightly at this call upon
him by name. He had been looking at Amanthus, lovely creature, who
needed neither vocabulary nor repartee either, in her business of life!
"It is," he agreed a little hastily; then gathering himself smilingly
together he said heartily, "It is eminently and conclusively its own
excuse and justification."
This coming from Mr. Wingham was a bit dismaying, as from the nature of
his cloth and calling, he had been counted on to take the moral issue
up at this point. It brought matters to an unprepared-for pause.
"The Puritan--" hurriedly began conscientious Adele, but with a glance
at Maud, stopped. The Puritan, as taken from "Prepared Debates," was
to follow in logical sequence after the support and exposition of the
moral by Mr. Wingham. Adele swallowed, and withdrew.
Whereupon support for the moral came from the other side of the circle,
from Culpepper nobly and by no sort of prearrangement either. One
could wish he would show more conviction and less jocularity about it,
however. The progenitors of this evening's business were of no mind
by now to be played with. Two of the friends of Culpepper, also, Mr.
Welling and Mr. Cannon, would bear looking after. Their markedly polite
attention almost would seem to cover ecstacy and enjoyment.
"In the ideals of that great old people, the Greeks," queried Culpepper
jocularly, "somehow I seem to recall that the symmetry of the human
body was the expression of the symmetry of the inner soul?"
Mr. Welling, he of the square person, resettled his spectacles. "As for
example, Aesop? Or shall we say Socrates?"
Mr. Cannon of the white vest burbled, then coughed to cover his
defection.
"The Puritan--" here ventured in Adele again, with an eye as to its
being proper business on Maud, who frowned darkly, whereupon Adele,
flushed but obedient again withdrew.
Tall Mr. Tate, the third of the friends of Culpepper, had looked across
each time at Adele's remark twice ventured and twice withdrawn. With
the exceptions of these glances in her direction, he like Mr. Wingham,
had been looking at Amanthus. Even so, something of what Maud called
scholastic earnestness sat upon Mr. Tate, and he was disposed, too,
to treat the evening with gratifying sincerity. There was that in the
subject twice introduced and twice withdrawn by the young lady in blue
as he afterward designated Adele, which evidently appealed to him to
the momentary eclipsing of Amanthus' charms.
"The Puritan--" he took the suggestion up the least bit sententiously
and with courteous acknowledgment toward the source of its origin,
"that great timely force for moral power which is moral beauty, was----"
Mr. Cannon indisputably naughty by this time, pulled down his white
vest and wickedly concluded the sentence--"'was at once known from
other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of
his face, the up-turned whites to his eyes'--how does the rest of the
paragraph go, Welling?" Which was not in the least what Mr. Tate nor
yet Adele had in mind to say.
But even so, was not this the mounting joy of wit? Of give and take? Of
stimulation? This the hitherto imagined delight of social intercourse?
So Selina. But a hostess must keep a hostess' wit and head! Everyone
must be won and led to speak! But wait, Miss Boswell, and smiling as
with one lending herself prettily to the moment, is talking:
"In speaking of beauty perhaps we're thinking a bit too much of the
quality in an object which in regarding it excites pleasing emotions?
Surely we're to believe that the terms of beauty apply to qualities
that arouse admiration and approval. I for one shall insist on there
being intellectual and moral beauty--and beauty of goodness and
utility. But if I understand just right, Mr. Biggs here is far better
qualified to define beauty than the rest of us. And with a great poet's
authority behind him, too!"
Big, handsome, gloomy Algy nearly fell over with his chair which at the
moment he was uneasily balancing on one leg as some perception of what
he was in dawned on him.
"I--Oh say now, any of 'em will tell you I've never read a word of him
in my life. Never could find the hitch--er--don't you know, between the
words and the sense. Quit it, will you, Culpepper, kicking me?"
"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" gayly chanted dependable
little Juliette who true to the program was to throw herself and her
munitions into breaches as needed.
"'Handsome is as handsome does,'" suddenly observed Bliss, very young
and passing bitter, with an obviousness patent to those who understood
the evening's coolness between him and Amanthus, "'Beauty is only skin
deep.'" Could it be that Bliss had noted the glances of two of the
company, Mr. Wingham and Mr. Tate, fixed upon Amanthus even now?
"And yet," it was the first spontaneous contribution to the evening
from the Reverend Mr. Wingham, his gaze returning from that retired
corner where it had been drawn again and again, "the eternal youth of
the beautiful!" Certainly Amanthus did not need vocabulary or repartee
in the least!
Adele with new courage, and this time at a signal from Maud, began
again: "The Puritan through his great exponent----"
The doorbell rang. Kind conventions! _Comme il faut!_ Had Selina really
been congratulating herself in these gratifying terms?
It was Cousin Marcus Bruce; she recognized his voice as Papa let him
in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At least the guests were continuing to talk, though in the interruption
from the doorbell and the answering of it by Papa, Adele evidently
had lost out. For as the divided attention of Selina came back to
the circle about her, Miss Boswell for whom all these endeavors
and proprieties had been evoked, was doing her best to defend the
utilitarian beauty of woolen gloves and ear-muffs, propounded upon her
original proposition by spectacled Mr. Welling, backed by Mr. Cannon of
the white vest.
The while Selina heard Papa urging Marcus to give up his umbrella and
to take off his cape which she knew to be a waterproof cloth voluminous
affair to which he was much addicted. It gave one a sense of storm and
stress of weather and downpour without, whereas in reality it was a dry
and mild starlit night. It was merely of a piece with Marcus.
And here he came strolling in, casual as always. Marcus was tall,
lithe and thin. One lock of black hair fell anywhere, according to the
moment, over onto his long, thin-flanked face, to be brushed aside
continually by his long fingers, out of his deliberately roaming and
observing blue eyes, the remaining black locks throwing themselves
anyhow backward onto his old velvet coat collar. You never knew
what a Bruce might do, but you could be sure he would do something
extraordinary. Papa's overtures in the hall had only partly prevailed,
for Marcus coming strolling in, had retained his strapped and buckled
Arctic overshoes.
"Well, Selina? How are you little people?" This to Maud and Juliette,
Amanthus and Adele whom he had seen grow up along with Selina. The
meanwhile, Cousin Marcus was cheerfully and as a matter of course
shaking hands with--of all persons--Miss Boswell! "Everybody don't get
up, everybody don't change places, I went around to the hotel to find
you," this to Miss Boswell, "and your aunt telling me you were here, I
trusted Selina for grace and followed."
Marcus on terms of evident and easy friendliness with Miss Pocahontas?
Marcus, whom Selina had repudiated!
But in the meanwhile everybody had gotten up, and everybody was
changing places. In the readjustment Marcus was found to be in
possession of the chair next to Miss Boswell. His keen eyes patently
taking in much, roved delightedly, seeing among other things as it
proved, the well-set-up and good-looking Mr. Wingham hasten to carry a
chair for himself to that bit of obscurity lighted by the sunny hair,
the dimples, and the violet eyes of Amanthus. Saw him arrive with his
chair just in time to circumvent Mr. Tate who was doing likewise. Saw
Maud look incensed as Mr. Wingham contentedly sat himself down in this
haven where he would be, saw Selina and Juliette look indignant, Adele
incredulous. Else why should those keen eyes of Marcus thus roving,
grow delighted as with a comprehending sense of the situation? But they
roamed on, their owner accompanying their survey with comment:
"So, it's a conversazione, Selina, Cousin Robert tells me? In the name
of eloquence, Algernon Charles Biggs, how did you get in it?"
The worm turned. Big Algy reddened angrily. "Culpepper here got me in.
He swore it was a candy-pulling!"
Mr. Cannon snorted; Mr. Welling it was who this time coughed, and tall
Mr. Tate, who failing a place by Amanthus had come back and taken his
seat in the circle, looked sincerely annoyed.
"Apropos of Mr. Algernon," said Miss Boswell, still well-meaning,
seeing that Algy had been pointed to her as a card by her young
hostesses. She paused. Did the desperate look at her here by the
goaded Algy enlighten her as to something being wrong. "No, not Mr.
Algernon at all." She went on a little hurriedly. "Mr. Bruce," she
turned about to Marcus next to her. "Mr. Bruce here and I are old
friends," evidently she meant to be certain of her ground this time,
"thanks to his winters for his newspaper in our little city during the
legislatures. We've quarreled over such questions as these too often
for me not to know where he stands. So, self-avowed seeker after the
pleasing even to expedience, what are we to accept as the definition of
beauty?"
"Exactly," said Marcus cheerfully. "I would call it one thing, you or
Miss Maud or Algy here, another," he paused, to give Algy full time
to start and be quieted down by Culpepper, "while Mr. Welling and
Mr. Cannon stand ready to confute the lot of us. Still, we'll try it
around, Mr. Wingham," those eyes of Marcus had been roving as he spoke,
"give us an idea of what you hold it to be?"
"It--" said Mr. Wingham suddenly and a little tartly as he bandied the
impersonal and unenlightening pronoun thus thrust upon him, sparring
for time. He had been contentedly talking to Amanthus and as was
evident, had lost the trend of the discussion he had been asked here to
partake in. "It--er--I should claim, is, admitting of course, the term
to be indefinite--" the poor gentleman was floundering.
"It's so conceded to be," from Marcus encouragingly.
But everybody rushed to say something here to spare the guest, Maud and
Juliette as to beauty being beauty, Miss Pocahontas as to ethics and
utility being beauty, Bliss, put to it by Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon,
as to beauty being vanity, and Adele with final arrival as to "the
Puritans' greatest exponent, Milton, being proof and utterance of the
beauty and poetry at the moral heart of Puritanism!" Which indeed she
owed to Maud and the "Prepared Debates." And in this general chorus,
Mr. Wingham and his impersonal pronoun was lost sight of, or at any
rate, sound of.
At half-past ten when the removal of the screen by Papa disclosed Mamma
with her precious bits of Honiton lace on her head and at her throat,
behind the chocolate pitcher, and Auntie in her black silk and long
gold chain behind the coffee urn, Mr. Wingham was found to be lost
again as well as Amanthus and this time in a more literal sense.
Selina had seen it when it happened, and so had Maud, Juliette and
Adele. One fancied Mr. Tate was aware of it, and so it now proved, was
Marcus.
"Wingham," his best and mellowest voice called as the company arose
to adjourn to the back parlor, "that cosy corner of sofa and lamp
under the stairs is very well for tête-à-tête, but how about bread and
butter?"
Nor did Amanthus and Mr. Wingham look too well pleased as they came in.
As Marcus who was on his good behavior, carried cups and passed
sandwiches, he leaned presently and spoke to Miss Boswell, just as
Selina arrived with cake:
"Your coupé has come, Pocahontas, may I go out and send it away and
you walk back to the hotel with me?" This from Marcus whom Selina had
deemed unworthy the occasion!
It happened, however, that Marcus took Amanthus to her home at the
corner first. Mr. Wingham went promptly after supper with somewhat the
air of one who has been unfairly treated. Bliss who still was in the
sulks went speedily too. Mr. Tate even while he struggled against the
coercion, was borne off bodily by Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon whose
delight seemed to be in circumventing him. The two of them in leaving
made what Auntie would have called their devoirs, both for themselves
and him, though he struggled to make his own.
"Minerva over Venus ever, Miss Selina," from Mr. Cannon of the white
vest. "It's for that we're carrying Tate off. After his recovery from
this temporary dereliction, he'll be grateful to us."
"Ear-muffs and woolen gloves for the soul's sake, every time, Miss
Selina," from Mr. Welling of the spectacles, "and as a rule you would
have had Tate heart and soul with you. He's been adamant to dimples
before, so it must have been the hair or the eyes. We're hurrying him
off for his safe-keeping."
Culpepper and Algy already were gone, taking Maud and Adele to their
doors across the street. Juliette here by Selina's side in the hall
seeing the last of their guests off, was to spend the night with her.
Marcus happening out from the parlor along with Amanthus at this
moment, and discovering, so to speak, an empty hall, took in the
situation. If he had noted a little chill in manner toward Amanthus
since supper on the part of her four friends--and what was there ever
that Marcus did not note?--he recalled that chill now and evidently
coupled it with her uncavaliered situation. It is so men unfairly judge
of all women.
He went and found her cloak on the rack and brought it. Humming as he
did so, he broke forth lightly into words:
"Morality thou deadly bane,"
He put the soft and hooded wrap about her nicely, for him even
carefully and prettily,
"Thy tens of thousands hast thou slain."
He picked up his slouch hat and donned his disreputable old cape,
"Vain is his hope whose stay and trust is
In moral mercy, truth and justice!"
Having rooted out his umbrella and tucked Amanthus, pretty thing, onto
his arm, Marcus here paused within the doorway and said backward over
his shoulder mellowly to Selina and Juliette.
"Kindly explain for me to Miss Boswell that it will take me just three
minutes to go and return. She's talking in the parlor with your mother
and your aunt, Selina. Amanthus," still more mellowly, "shall I make
an utterance for you as you are leaving? Your single contribution to
the evening's parley? That, so far as I have been present to observe,
you have been a silently eloquent and irrefutable argument for the
affirmative? Don't ask Amanthus what irrefutable means, my cousin
Selina, nor brisk Juliette? That were unworthy of you, and unkind!"
[Illustration: "Rooted out his umbrella and tucked Amanthus, pretty
thing, onto his arm."]
Juliette turned indignantly upon Selina as Marcus and Amanthus left.
"It's we who're left in the ungenerous attitudes!" hotly. "How did we
get there?"
Later, after Marcus in his old hat and shabby cape had returned, and
again had departed, with Miss Boswell in his keeping, Selina cast
herself upon her mother and burst into tears.
"Are we as impossible, as ridiculous and absurd, as we are to judge we
are from what they all imply?" she sobbed hotly.
"More so, even, no doubt," from Juliette bitterly.
A caressing arm and hand came around Selina's shoulder as she wept on
her little mother's bosom, the hand of her father.
"But even so, delightful," said that gentleman comfortingly, "far more
delightful, if an onlooker may testify, than you'll ever quite know."
"We sent the borrowed dress home to Anna," said Auntie. "Let's pack the
mental furbelows up and send them over to Maud."
"We'll borrow them again," came from Selina in muffled tones of
bitterness. "We never learn."
"Or lend her ours, let's be quite honest," from little Juliette.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From the evening of the conversazione, Marcus aroused to a livelier
sense of his pretty cousin Selina, and she gained a new conception of
him. How had she failed to realize that it was not so much that he was
singular as significant? She said as much to her mother and Auntie.
"He's Juanita's son," said Mamma guardedly. "If she is my sister, I
have to allow that she's at times both eccentric and trying."
"He's Juanita's son but his own keeper," avowed Auntie. "If he's ever
thought in his life for anybody but himself, I've yet to hear of it."