to feel in it," avowed Adele.
"Roswell," this from Mrs. Carter to her husband, ignoring the remark
from her daughter, "I had a note yesterday that I forgot to mention,
from charming old Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming. She says in the most
gracious way that nothing could prevent her coming to see your daughter
and Mamma's granddaughter, launched upon her career, and that she has a
graceless great-nephew living now in town who never comes to see her,
but whom she asks to bring with her."
Now it was conceded among Olympians that the social scepter was wielded
by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, aunt of Tuttle Jones, only because Mrs. Jinnie
Cumming grown old chose to pass it on.
"Mamma loves lions," said Adele and laughed a little nervously.
"Ergo, my dear young friend Selina," said Mr. Carter, suddenly
attentive and kindly and polite, as getting up to go from his untouched
dessert and hastily swallowed coffee, he came round to shake hands,
"bring a lion or two and find yourself persona grata. And in the mean
season, in the face of this discouragement from the cliques and sets,
don't go back on our Adele."
Nor did he nor Selina dream how literally and triumphantly in this
matter of lions she was to obey him! She was to rout disparagement at
least for once!
But in the immediate mean season she was hot and sore and indignant.
When she found herself alone with Adele again after dinner, she burst
forth: "Adele, why do you force your mother to ask us to your affairs?
She doesn't want us."
"Selina, Oh Selina, if you and Maud and Juliette go back on me! What
else have I got? Everything pleasant that I've known has come through
you or them. One of the really pleasant things, such as I mean,
happened the other night just before you got home. Mr. Cannon called
for the first time. He is so irrepressible and ridiculous and clever,
too, and jokes and quizzes so, I forget to be self-conscious. Mamma
wanted to know who he was and if I could vouch for him, but there's
always something. I answered pretty crossly, I expect. At any rate she
won't let me ask him for the reception. I feel terribly about it."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Selina's relatives, the Bruces, figured largely in what now followed,
by not figuring therein at all. One always could count on a Bruce to do
something unexpected.
It began with the absence of Marcus. Selina had not seen him since
her return and had a feeling that perhaps she did not care to. She
considered that she had grounds for still being indignant with him.
The unworthy and the inconsiderate flourish undeservedly, however,
as she reflected somewhat sorely. During the political campaign of
a year ago, Marcus in a temporary associated-press capacity, had
accompanied a presidential nominee and his party on their special car
on an unprecedented tour through the South. This nominee was now the
president of the United States, and about the time Selina was packing
her trunk to come home from the South, Marcus was offered the post of
consul to a group of islands in the bluest of semi-tropical seas. As
Selina came up from Florida, Marcus had passed her somewhere on the way.
"He's gone to ask Pocahontas whether he wants the appointment or not,"
Aunt Juanita, stopping by to say howdy to Selina, explained to her and
Mamma confidentially, "Of course you have grasped before this, Selina,
that Pocahontas is going to marry Marcus."
Selina nodded. She had not brought herself to feel great enthusiasm on
the subject even though she had been given the point of view of Miss
'Hontas to help her to it. And she did wish Aunt Juanita would take
time to fix her clothes! Tall and ungroomed, the feather on her bonnet
hung dejected by a thread, and three buttons were off her rusty shoe!
Still as in the case of Marcus with his questionable manners, you never
can tell. And Uncle Bruce, if possible, was the strangest, certainly
the most unkempt of the three, and see too what had come to pass about
him?
At about the same time the consulship was offered to Marcus, the home
papers copied an interview from the Washington journals in which the
name of Bruce figured gratifyingly. The personage of the interview was
an English parliamentarian and historian, the Honorable Verily Blanke.
According to the Washington papers, this gentleman was reported as
saying:
Perhaps I look forward as much as to any individual acquaintance I
hope to make in your country, to my meeting with your Mr. Aurelius
Bruce, whom I regard as one of the greatest living authorities on the
interpretative history of the American constitution. In the course
of my correspondence with this gentleman, at the time I was occupied
with those chapters in my history of popular government dealing
with your constitution, I promised myself if ever I should be in the
United States of America, the pleasure and personal gratification of a
meeting with this distinguished and profound jurist. From the nature
and the variety of the authorities he has been able to point me to,
affording me the desired passages from his own shelves, when these
authorities were not to be met with readily by me elsewhere, I should
rank his personal library devoted to American law and jurisprudence,
as one of the notable ones of the country.
As Selina said when she read this in the daily paper, truly you cannot
foretell!
Aunt Juanita on the same occasion of her visit to see Selina, had
something to say about this tribute to Uncle Bruce, too.
"Marcus made his father write at once, or in the end, I believe,
compromised with his father by writing for him, asking this Mr. Verily
Blanke and his secretary, who the papers say is a grandson of some big
personage or other in England, here to be our guests. There has been no
answer to Marcus' letter, so I don't suppose there's a chance now they
will come."
As if the Bruces were not figuring enough in the public eye, the very
day after this talk, a signed communication from Aunt Juanita appeared
in the local papers. She was measurably concerned in the honors come to
her husband and her son, but her interest was in her own affairs.
TO THE EDITOR,
Sir: "The number of members of a body or corporation competent to
transact business by law or constitution," is a "quorum," Webster,
vide Quorum. Under our law a majority of the members of our City
Council constitutes a quorum, and a majority of the members present
is necessary for the carrying of a motion. Under this procedure, six
members out of a total membership of twenty were able to kill the very
necessary street watering-cart ordinance at the last meeting of our
City Council.
By what equity shall the will of a minority thus imposed on that of a
majority, be defended? I call the attention of women, and of women's
organizations, to wit, The Women's Rights Association of America, now
in session in Rochester, N. Y., to the dangers attendant on embodying
such fallacies in popular government in its constitution.
JUANITA LIVINGSTON BRUCE.
The noon of this same day Aunt Juanita came by again. There was an
air of preparation about her tall person this time. Her veil trailed
crookedly and her glove tips needed mending, but she carried a
satchel and umbrella. "On second thoughts, Lavinia, I am going on the
afternoon train to Rochester. I can't sit still with this question of
what proportion of a representative body shall constitute a working
majority, threatening the future of my sex. What I want to know is,
will you let Aurelius come here for his meals while I am gone? He can
sleep, in fact it is safer that he should sleep, at the house. Hester
will go round in the mornings and see to the anthracite in the hall
stove, and whatever else there is to be done." Hester was the Bruce's
servant, and like Aunt Viney had her home elsewhere.
This same afternoon, Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle came rolling around to the
Wistar home in her carriage and found Auntie and Selina in.
[Illustration: "Her veil trailed crookedly."]
"See here, Selina," she said so straightway one inferred it was what
she came for, "Tuttle has been around here three times in ten days,
I'm hearing. My dear child, look at me! So this is what your fool's
errand trip south with the Boswells did for you? Not a fool's errand,
I see, after all. Why she's come to real beauty, Ann Eliza! With all
that Wistar flaxen hair, and her fair skin, that's right, blush away
child, and her fine, clear profile, she's like a cameo. No, it won't
hurt her to know it, Ann Eliza. What she needs now is exactly what a
little conceit will give her. Now that I've seen you, my dear, I must
say I admire Tuttle's discrimination. There's more to him than I've
been giving him credit for. I began to be afraid for him about the time
when he saw to it that his mosquito bar was tied back with ribbons to
match his bureau cover, but that's past. He's mighty grand, I don't
dispute it, Selina, and a great beau. But he hasn't got a picayune but
what that vault door he keeps at the bank pays him, and that's little
enough, unless his father, and I, his aunt by marriage, being fools,
give it to him."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The one and only triumph of Selina's brief day drew nearer. And that
she should achieve it through a source hitherto so undervalued!
The worst about having Uncle Bruce coming for his meals was that
two-thirds of the time he forgot to come, and one-half of the remaining
times when he did come, he came trotting in after one had given
up expecting him. Mamma always waited a reasonable time, however,
insisting they owed this much to Uncle Bruce. Thus dinner was held back
on the evening of the reception at the Carters. Though they did not
expect to go over before say nine o'clock, certainly no sooner, Auntie
and Mamma dressed before dinner.
"I've reached a place in life when I don't like to be hurried,"
explained Auntie.
"There's something elegant about dressing for dinner at any time,"
claimed Mamma, "and if there weren't so many little things to see to in
the dining-room and pantry to help Viney along, I'd do it every day. I
must say this grenadine of mine has held its own. There's nothing like
a good stout cotton bag for hanging clothes away in, and camphor. I'll
touch myself up a bit again, one's hair does get so disarranged, before
going over to the Carters later."
Dinner was put on the table a quarter of an hour late, and they were
sitting down, Mamma, Papa, Auntie and Selina, without Uncle Bruce, when
the doorbell rang. Aunt Viney having answered it, summoned Papa.
As it proved, it was old Uncle Taliaferro Bucklin at the door, a
brother-in-law of Aunt Viney, and owner and driver of a hack and two
white horses whereby he made a living, meeting trains for passengers at
the several railroad stations. His voice at the open door explaining to
Papa, came in through the parlor to the dining-room.
"Done took 'em to the Bruce resi-_dence_, a' th'ain't arry pusson thar.
Went aroun' to the kitchen doah at las' myself----"
"And you found nobody there, exactly," in Papa's quick and impatient
voice. "Get along with it, Bucklin."
Uncle Taliaferro pursued his own line in narrative undisturbed. "Got
thar trunks an' contraptions on top er the kerridge, wouldn't heah to
comin' long without 'em. Said they was expected on this train by Mr.
'Relius Bruce, so I brought 'em aroun' heah."
To get to the point, as Papa discovered on going out to the shabby
old hack, the fares of Uncle Taliaferro Bucklin proved to be the
Honorable Verily Blanke, parliamentarian and historian, his secretary,
the grandson of the personage and their man-servant, the only truly
intimidating and disturbingly superior one of the three as it turned
out.
[Illustration: "Owner and driver of a hack ... whereby he made a
living, meeting trains."]
Even so. And to get to a further point, the letter written from
Washington to Uncle Bruce by the secretary, accepting the invitations
sent by Marcus and announcing the date of their arrival, was discovered
in the pocket of the disturbed Uncle Bruce next day, unopened and
unrecalled.
Papa rose to the occasion as he did at those times when he abruptly
became the decisive head of his house. One marveled and wondered about
it afterward that he should not be this head always! He brought the
guests in, explaining to them something of the eccentricities of their
host, Uncle Bruce, presented them to Mamma, and accompanied by her,
took them upstairs to make themselves a little more comfortable after
their journey, for dinner.
Leaving them thus employed, he came down, got in the hack with Uncle
Taliaferro and the luggage above, and the man-servant within, and
drove around to the alley where according to Aunt Viney, Hester, the
servant of the Bruce household, lived. Found her, put her up on the box
by Uncle Taliaferro, took her to the house, and leaving her and the
man-servant there to make the guests' rooms ready, as well as leaving
the luggage of the guests, arrived at home again in time to meet the
descending gentlemen and take them in to the re-served dinner.
This from Papa! There were reserves and capabilities then in him, too,
unused and unsuspected, as in Auntie! Who or what had failed to draw
them out?
The delay had given Auntie and Selina opportunity to open some ginger
preserves, and search out some cake that was not too stale, from the
cake-box. It gave Selina time to speak her scandalized mind, too. She
was horrified!
"And they'll sleep there! In that house!" she managed to say to
Mamma. She meant the Bruce house, big, three-storied, of stucco, with
iron verandas upstairs and down, well enough outside, though needing
painting. But inside----!
"Certainly, we've nothing to do with that," said Mamma sensibly. "It
would have been no more in order if Juanita had been here and they had
been expected, you know that. They and your Uncle Bruce will eat here.
We'll do our part.
"Warn them about the books on the stairs and the landing, Lavinia,"
reminded Auntie.
She referred to Marcus' new Encyclopedia. When the twenty-five volumes
of it came home, there did not seem any place for them in the house
already overflowing with books, and Aunt Juanita piled them along the
stairs until a place for their disposal could be discussed, and nobody
ever had moved them.
* * * * *
Once more Aunt Viney in her best apron now, and a fresh and snowy
headkerchief, brought dinner in and put it on the table.
The Honorable Verily Blanke, across the table from Selina, was a
delightful, elderly personage with grizzled hair, and a well-kept
grizzled beard, whose head as if by its splendid weight, was sunk
forward between great shoulders. His eyes were blue and keen and
kindly, and he kept looking across with a wonderful gleam and smile in
them as if he found something there worth the looking at, in Selina,
whose cheeks with the wonderful exigency of it all, were their finest
coral, and whose pretty concern, nicely held in, was in itself a
tribute. Perhaps his eyes wandered in kindly fashion to Auntie, too,
comely and restful in her black velvet gown.
The Honorable Cyril Doe, the grandson of the personage, was very much
less satisfactory. His chin was on a line with the dome center of his
head, his body seemed to lack co-ordination and to be about to drop an
arm or a leg or two from sheer disinterestedness in holding to them any
longer, and on being addressed he started and ejaculated in British.
The older gentleman on the contrary, spoke quietly in English of his
pleasure in meeting American life and customs.
"Will not you and Mr. Doe go with us this evening across to our
neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Roswell Carter, who are entertaining for their
young daughter?" asked Mrs. Wistar.
"For myself, I shall have pleasure in going with you," said Mr. Blanke.
"How is it with you, Cyril? We will both go. We are desirous to see
just as much of the South and its life as we may be permitted to."
So after dinner Papa took the gentlemen up to the Bruce house to dress,
and Selina hastened upstairs to her own room to get herself ready that
she might go across to the Carters ahead of the others, and make the
proper explanations.
Her new little evening dress of white net was very nice. Auntie had a
real genius for making clothes! She viewed herself and her slim bare
neck and her smooth young arms in the mirror of her big old bureau,
with approval. Her first real evening gown! She took the evening cape
of white cloth from her wardrobe and slipped it about her with some
complacency. Persons, just as a matter touching on self-respect, she
reflected as she viewed the effect of this, have no right to be without
those garments reasonably suited to the occasion. It was gratifying,
too, to note how readily she adapted herself to them when she became
their owner. It seemed to argue an intention in the stamp of her by
nature, for these fitnesses and niceties! So pretty Selina!
She did not get to the Carters ahead of the others, after all. As she
came downstairs in her pleasing array, white fan and white gloves added
to the festive rest, Aunt Viney, already delayed in her home-going
past all timeliness, was opening the door to Mr. Tuttle Jones in cape
overcoat and top-hat, and to Uncle Bruce in Mr. Jones' firm grasp! It
was to be an evening of superlatives!
Hearing the voices Mamma came hurrying down with her scarf and wrap on,
and Auntie with her Paisley shawl about her velvet dress, followed a
minute later.
Mr. Jones, his small moustaches exquisitely exact, his collar and shirt
front protected by his deftly adjusted muffler, the pearl-gray glove on
the hand staying and steadying his companion, immaculate, had steered
Uncle Bruce in and was setting him down in a hall chair.
Then he turned to Mamma and Auntie from a last regard of Uncle Bruce
after getting him deposited. One saw now that there were tiny beads as
of stress upon the forehead of young Mr. Jones, though his manner to
Mamma was perfect.
"It is owing to the particular shade of blue in the legal papers Mr.
Bruce here had in his hand at something to five o'clock that I'm spared
being his unintentional murderer."
He mopped his brow with an immaculate handkerchief, the while giving
the ladies time to disburden themselves of their ejaculations, then
continued his explanation.
"While dressing to start out for the evening, dressing before dinner
I'm gratefully able to add, this peculiar quality in blue, the exact
thing I've been trying to visualize for my mother's projected scheme
in her new Dutch dining-room--foolscap blue shall we call it?--kept
recurring to me. As I reached for my scarf-pin, the collusion between
the recall and the original came to me with a crash. Mr. Bruce here,
our lawyer for the bank, has his private box with us as a sort of
special privilege. I'd let him go into the vault to this box after
hours, reading a bulk of blue papers as he went, and though I couldn't
recall seeing him come out, I'd locked that vault door myself at five
o'clock and gone home. I've had him in a drug store for an hour since
I got him out. If we'd had a modern vault with one of these new time
locks, his end would be on my soul."
Uncle Bruce came into the talk here. The bow to his cravat was at the
back of his neck and his beard and hair stood rumpled wildly.
"It was highly important I should finish reading those papers before
locking them up. I found myself with only a few matches in my pocket
and some loose papers to convert into spills to break the stygian
darkness he left me in," he spoke testily.
"Aurelius," said Mamma, slowly and with the careful emphasis one uses
to some harmless but trying irresponsible whose attention must be held,
"that very delightful Englishman and his secretary are here that Marcus
sent the invitation to. Robert is up at your house with them now. It's
very necessary we should find out from you what you want to do with
them."
Uncle Bruce, little mummified, scholarly person, from his position of
temporary collapse on the hall chair, glared at her. He grasped his
beard below his chin with an exasperated hand, and his wild rumple of
hair seemed almost to lift and stiffen with his irritation.
"Do with 'em? Do with 'em?" said Uncle Bruce with testy finality. "Tell
'em from me to go to the devil."
"Mr. Bruce," said Mamma with dignity, "you forget yourself!"
"Not a bit of it," from Auntie shortly, who had small use for any of
the Bruce family.
"Well then," said Uncle Bruce flinging his little person up from the
chair and making a snatch at his hat on the hat-tree by him, "if you
like it any better, tell 'em from me, I've gone there."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was a gratifying entry that finally was made at the Carters, Uncle
Bruce ultimately being pacified and left at home in the care of the
English servant, and Mr. Jones, after meeting the guests and hearing
the program for the evening, glancing across at Selina in her white net
dress and evening cape, and asking to go along.
Papa and Mamma were justly proud of their guests, pre-eminently
the older one. And Mr. Roswell Carter was equally and as sincerely
gratified to find them his guests. He asked Papa to arrange with Uncle
Bruce that he be privileged to have a dinner followed by a smoker at
the club that the men of the community be given the opportunity to meet
the gentlemen. And Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle coming sailing up in all her
splendor to Papa and Mamma and the distinguished strangers, asked to be
permitted to arrange for a dinner party on the next evening.
But while these staid elders were doing the honors thus to the guests
from the old world over in the more sedate library, Selina was feeling
the thrill and the importance of her entrance into the embowered
parlors with Mr. Tuttle Jones.
Adele in an even overly-modish dress which sat uneasily upon her, dear
Adele with her conscientious face and her serious eyes, stood between
her mother and her grandmother, a seeming shrine of palms and floral
decorations for background.
Selina deep in her heart was proud of the casual manner with which
she came up and presented Mr. Jones. There was no question of his
welcome being assured. Mrs. Grosvenor, elaborate as to hair and
impressive gown, smiled graciously upon this sought-after young man,
and anticipating her daughter, spoke first: "It is very lovely in you
to challenge our leniency as you put it, Mr. Jones, and come over with
Selina. She is like a second daughter in our house, I may say, she and
Adele, my granddaughter, being inseparable. Adele, have you spoken to
Mr. Jones?"
Mrs. Carter, also elaborate as to gown and hair, was equally affable:
"Charming old Mrs. Jinnie Cumming has given us the pleasure of having
her with us this evening. It is inevitable she is going to demand you
come and speak to her? Shall I anticipate and take you to her? My
duties to arriving guests seem to be about over. Mrs. Cumming claims to
have waived formality, too, and has brought a drolly delightful nephew
with her, a recent comer in the city."
And Mrs. Carter laid a hand on the arm of Mr. Jones and carried him
off, Mrs. Grosvenor turned to bespeak a possible next guest if there
be one, and Adele sometimes surprisingly dry-spoken for a girl of
eighteen, laid her hand on Selina's gloved arm.
"Unfortunately that's just like Mamma, overlooking the fact he was your
escort because she wanted him then herself. And who do you suppose the
droll nephew is that Mrs. Jinnie Cumming brought with her? The humor of
it's helped me bear up under this ridiculous dress. I must look like an
irresponsible in its spangles, don't I, Selina, for I feel like one?"
"It's really a wonderful dress, Adele. Who's the droll nephew?"
"Our Mr. Cannon that Mamma wouldn't let me ask here to the reception
to-night. I was perfectly hateful and threw it up to her a bit ago."
Did Adele here look away and her cheek grow pink with rare color? Was
she pleased that it should be Mr. Cannon?
With a change of tone she spoke again. "Juliette wouldn't come at the
last moment. Selina, she's unhappy, and I think we ought to tell you
so. It happened while you were gone." Again with a change of tone: "Did
you ever see anything so lovely as Amanthus and so entrancing?"
"Our Mr. Doe thinks so," said Selina. "Witness, please."
Across the hall in the open doorway of the library stood Mr. Cyril Doe,
the secretary, endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye with all the
awkwardness of one about to lose an arm or a leg or two from sheer
inability to hold on to them.