considering, quizzing way of his, his spectacles somehow always seeming
to intensify the effect, you know what I mean, and with his lips pursed
as if he were having a jolly good time for some unseen reason. He
generally is when he looks that way, and at somebody else's expense,
too. I hurried to add that of course I supposed I ought to show more
interest in questions of the day and that perhaps I would if the papers
were ever at hand around the house."
"I never read them much myself," agreed Selina, "except when something
comes up that I hear Papa and Culpepper talking to each other about.
Then I try to remember to look it up."
"Well, listen now to what followed. We're only highly diverting and
amusing to 'em, Selina. This morning I received notices by mail of
subscriptions in my name to two papers, one local and one not, and
a note from Mr. Welling. Listen to it, Selina, and then you'll know
what they think of us. He's laughing at me from the very start to the
finish."
"My dear Miss Maud:
"I am going to hope that you will read the editorials in these two
papers every day. It is unnecessary to say I have no sinister object
in view such as putting that in your way which might influence you
adversely to the political faith you say you have elected to move in.
It is rather because I consider that newspapers typify the most virile
and living English of our day, as well as embody the history of our
own times, and for these reasons as well as for their perforce certain
amount of incisive logic, are a means of disciplining and cultivating
the mind. Such articles as appear in a reputable paper's editorial
columns, not now and then, but in every issue of every first rate
daily, will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to
form by absorption--"
Maud lowered the sheet of close-written paper and looked over at
Selina. An indignant color glowed in her face. "You notice he restricts
himself to the one pronoun, Selina, 'and cause her to form by
absorption---- '"
"I did notice," agreed Selina unwillingly.
"Wait till you hear the whole of it," Maud lifted the pages and resumed:
--"will gradually effect an undisciplined reader, and cause her to
form by absorption, habits of logical contemplation and discussion
which eventually will enable her to discern the salient points and
the related elements of a question, than which there is no greater
conscious pleasure. And when she arrives at that stage of development,
to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?)--"
Again Maud lowered the page.
"There's a question mark in parenthesis after the 'finding out,' I
ought to tell you, Selina. He was afraid the implication might escape
me. Well, if he's amused, I suppose we ought to be willing to supply it
to him."
She resumed:
"--to say what she means instead of gradually finding out (?) what she
means from what she says. I take it that intelligent thinking requires
as much mental discipline as military action requires physical
discipline. I trust you will not consider it a _noblesse oblige_ to
read the tariff articles too, though their disciplining effect would
also be excellent. But if it requires any grinding, I beg of you to be
certain you are acquitted of any obligation in this direction, resting
upon the claim of so virulent a disciple to free trade as myself,
suggesting it."
Maud flung the several pages down, and faced Selina. "There! Certainly
you can see that he's laughing at me! What else can you make of it? And
that's what they really think of us, Selina, and our attainments we
rather flattered ourselves over."
"It--er--shows trouble he's taken, too," from Selina weakly and as she
felt as she said it, without conviction.
"It shows an abysmal depth of pity, not to say hilarity with the pity,"
gloomily.
"Maud," from Selina with reluctance and hesitation, "what's free trade
that he says he's such a virulent disciple of? Has it to do with
the--er--tariff?"
"That's the trouble," bitterly. "I don't know."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Amanthus stopped by one afternoon a week later, to see Selina. If Adele
was entirely occupied in going to luncheons, dinners and cotillions,
where she did not shine, so that Selina saw little of her, Amanthus was
equally occupied in going to these same affairs, where she did shine,
and Selina saw less of her.
She was returning from a luncheon now, lovely child, and a fawn-colored
hat set off her hair and face, and a fawn-colored wrap enveloped her.
She had come by with a message.
"But first I ought to say, Mr. Verily Blanke and Mr. Doe sent back
polite messages. I haven't seen you since the day Mamma and I spent
with them at my uncle's stock-farm. They're going out as far as
California while they're in this country, stopping everywhere, and up
into Canada. They don't go back to England before next summer. If Mamma
and I go east to her cousin's summer place, we'll see them again at Bar
Harbor. And, Selina, Mr. Doe says everybody in London, to the plainest
and the ugliest, even the princesses royal, have bangs. He wasn't
talking about horses as I thought at first, but about people. Mamma
says bangs are copied from a doubtful person, an actress, and she's not
sure she wants to see me have them. And that brings me to what I came
for. And first, may I go out to the mirror in the hat-tree and fix my
hat on better? It feels crooked and I'm going from here to pay a party
call."
She went out to the glass and talked back from this point as she
resettled her hat. "Mamma is trying this new thing, of serving tea in
the afternoon, as perhaps you know, Selina. She thought my coming-out
winter was a good time to begin it. It was while you were away we
started it, and she wants you and Maud and Juliette and Adele to come
for a cup to-morrow."
Selina very ardently adored Mrs. Harrison and an invitation from her
was a privilege.
"There's sure to be some men drop by, too, now it's getting to be
understood about it," explained Amanthus coming back into the parlor,
"your Mr. Tate, for one," as though this person in kind were a creature
entirely peculiar to Selina's world and unclassified in hers, "ever
since we asked him to our dance in fact. Lately Mr. Welling and Mr.
Cannon and Culpepper have been coming, too, as if they do it to plague
him. He told them real testily, the last time, he wished they would not
follow him around."
"That's why they do it," said Selina, even while she was adapting
herself to this new and surprising viewpoint of Culpepper and his
group, habitués at Mrs. Harrison's!
Amanthus rather unexpectedly resented this imputation on Mr. Tate.
She replied almost sharply, "I like Mr. Tate myself, though I suppose
he comes more to see Mamma. He talks to me about the Caesars and the
Atlantic cable and Garfield. You think I don't know how the rest of
you, Maud and every one of you, change the subject when I come and talk
down to me, but I do."
True enough, every word of this indictment! And true also that Mr. Tate
did talk to Amanthus and Amanthus was pleased that he should.
"Shall I tell Mamma you'll come, Selina?"
"Oh, always, Amanthus, you know I'd never decline a chance to be where
your mother is."
The next afternoon, Selina went downstairs in best dress, coat, hat
and gloves, to join Adele come by for her and waiting on the doorstep
outside in velvet coat, velvet hat and furs against a background of
early dusk and spitting snow. As they neared the Harrison house at the
other end of the block, a brick dwelling with a slate mansard, sitting
high in its trim corner yard, they saw Maud and Juliette on the steps.
Maud in hunter's green, and Juliette still wan of cheek, but as if a
bit defiantly, tricked out in brave scarlet. Hurrying they joined the
two as Hetty, the maid, opened the door.
[Illustration: "They found Mrs. Harrison ... before the open fire."]
Ushered in they found Mrs. Harrison in the second of the two parlors in
a big and comfortable chair before the open fire. They loved her fair
hair drawn in water waves about her brow and temples; they loved her
flowing apricot-toned cashmere with its fichu and hand ruffles and its
touches of blue; they loved her fine and frankly beautiful face.
They long had known her story, too, from their elders. A rich girl,
raised by her uncle, owner of the Selimcroft stock-farm, she had
married a man considerably her senior, a person of charm and much
social note, who bringing her here to this community, had wasted her
property in shocking fashion in his own behalf, and practiced economy
almost to scandal upon her. Since his death when Amanthus was a bit of
thing, she had managed the wreck of her affairs herself, prudently and
thriftily, bringing herself and her child to where they were.
Mrs. Harrison laid her book on the table by her as the group came in.
She, without being aware of it, was advocate and sponsor for much of
their present reading, a recently heard of English writer, one Hardy,
being the latest met with at her hands, she claiming for him a new
departure in heroines. "A Pair of Blue Eyes," was the volume she was
laying down now, as their quick eyes saw. By the end of the week, some
one of them would have secured it from the circulating library, and the
four would have read it, too. In what way were these heroines of this
Hardy new in departure? Just what did Mrs. Harrison mean? Was Hardy
defending them in their types because they were what the world had
made them? These were the questions the four asked each other after
reading each volume.
"Well, my dears! Let Hetty have your wraps and come and join me.
Amanthus is the victim of her own pertinacity. I gave in at last this
morning and agreed she might go down to Miss Lucy at the hair-store and
have her hair shingled into a bang. With every one of you now snipping
surreptitiously at her hair more and more each day--yes, you well may
blush, Maud, you bear the proofs upon you--we opposing elders may as
well give in and let you have your bangs. The deed being done, Amanthus
had to rush downtown again this afternoon with Mary, the upstairs maid,
carrying band-boxes, every hat she owns proving too big in the crown
from this cropped arrangement. She'll be in presently. I'm glad to have
you to myself this bit."
They came flocking back after depositing their coats, and found seats
about the fire as near to her as might be. They loved her hands which
were white and shapely and well cared for. They loved her generous
comprehendings and her unfailing appreciations. They knew, for example,
that she already would have noted and with pleasure in the noting,
that Adele's new ruche was becoming, that Maud was wearing her first
man-tailored suit, that Juliette's scarlet box-coat just removed,
was fetching, that Selina in her cashmere that was open a bit at the
throat, had lowered her abundant hair to a Langtry knot at the nape of
her pretty neck, if her mother wouldn't let her have a Langtry bang
over her forehead.
"Amanthus told Selina we talk down to her, Mrs. Harrison," burst forth
little Juliette. "Though I can't see why, with her dozen to our one of
every sort of thing, she should care. We felt we'd have to tell you."
"That I might absolve you?" smiled Mrs. Harrison. "Amanthus is a dear
goose, a very dear but palpable goose."
Did this lovely lady with the sweet and even pityingly tender eyes
pause here, as with one deliberating, and in resuming, speak as to a
seen end? Or was she by chance a Medea sowing dragon's teeth for these
of her own sex from which should spring the discontents of the future?
"Amanthus is a dear goose," slowly, "but has it occurred to you alert
young people, that so long as things are as they are for us women,
so long as our only avenue to place and establishment continues to
be through marriage, Amanthus is the enviable one among us, the one
forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured within the confines of
her own docility and femininity, the one that will never rebel, the one
that will never ask why? And that as things are as they are, we perhaps
should be the more rejoiced to have Amanthus as she is."
"_So long as things are as they are?_" "_So long as our only avenue to
place and establishment continues to be through marriage?_"
This group of four young people looked at Mrs. Harrison startled, and
as though not sure they quite were getting her meaning.
The outer door was heard to open and close, and Amanthus quite
literally blew in, snow-sprinkled and wind-tossed, Amanthus who brought
into dim rooms the golden effulgence of youth and radiance and beauty,
Amanthus, the forever safe and contentedly sweet and insured.
She tossed off her big, softly plumed beaver hat, and behold, she was
shingled to her yellow crown! But also, she was in despair.
"Mamma--girls, I'm so glad to see you--I was reading the fashion-paper
I bought on the way, while I waited at the milliner's. It's too
discouraging. It says Queen Victoria has tabooed bangs. What sort do
you suppose tabooed bangs are? The latest thing I suppose! And here,
just to-day, I've had mine shingled into Langtry ones!"
"And yet," said Mrs. Harrison laughing, even if tenderly, and drawing
Amanthus down to her and kissing her, the while she gave a look all
whimsical to the others across the yellow-head, "and yet, in the name
of every one of us, why would we have her one whit different?"
What did Mrs. Harrison mean? Why was she thus including them and not
Amanthus in these implications and indictments? The four looked at each
other, non-plussed and wondering, and for some reason just the least
bit disturbed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Here Mr. Tate was shown in by Hetty. He was exceedingly tall and his
cheek-bones were prominent, and so was his earnestness. His skirted
coat seemed ponderous and so did he.
Maud, for one, never had cared for Mr. Tate, possibly because he seemed
so little aware of her. She was in a gloomy frame of mind anyway, not
having cheered up since, so she put it, she'd seen herself as Mr.
Welling and his sex saw her. She said afterwards, that this afternoon
at the Harrisons only confirmed the point of view. Mr. Tate in his
frock coat and his earnestness seemed to provide an outlet for her
immediate ill-humor.
"When a person's dressed with all that excess of correctness, he only
looks ridiculous," she told Selina, by whom she was sitting.
Amanthus apparently did not think so. She smiled for Mr. Tate and that
marvel of a dimple showed and she gave him her soft hand. Mrs. Harrison
smiled for him, too, and offered a hand and told him that she and
Amanthus had enjoyed his matinée tickets hugely.
"He's never offered us matinée tickets," sotto voce from Maud at
Selina's elbow. "That earnestness of his keeps its eye on exactly what
it wants and doesn't waste itself elsewhere. He's recognizing we're
here now and he's coming to tell us so. That's something to be grateful
for."
He shook hands with Adele and called her Miss Adelina. She and her
identity always seemed vague to him. He shook hands with Selina and
asked her about her mother and her aunt; he shook hands with Juliette.
He came to Maud. Her attitude to him at times savored of belligerency.
She wasn't fond of persons who ignored her, but as she explained
afterward, she hardly had flattered herself he'd noticed this manner.
"Miss Maud," Mr. Tate having said this in recognition of her as he put
out his hand, paused, then said the name over again as if struck for
the first time with the sound and significance of it. "Miss _Maud_?"
consideringly and reflectively. "There's something then in names?
Juliette now," with a beneficent wave of the hand in the direction
of that pretty, dark, little person, "diminutive of Julia; Amanda,
Amanthus, and the further derivatives," he turned and bowed gallantly
in the direction of this young lady, "worthy to be loved--Matilda,
Matilde, Maud--mighty battle maid."
Perhaps it was fortunate that Hetty came in here, this time ushering
Mr. Welling, Mr. Cannon and Culpepper. They seemed to bring in with
them the bracing of the outside cold and something of its vigor as to
a man they rallied about their hostess, their spirits effervescent.
"We had your note," from Mr. Cannon, the good-looking and the
debonaire, cheerfully.
"We've primed ourselves with the law on the subject of cook-ladies and
their husbands and their wages," from Culpepper genially.
"We were pricking Tate, old man, into coming this afternoon anyway,
before we heard from you, to give us an excuse for following him," from
Mr. Welling.
"Tate's been right testy because you asked us instead of him for that
advice. He prefers to think the whole lien on things around here is
his," from Mr. Cannon.
They came about the room now shaking hands generally.
"You here, Selina? That's good," from Culpepper.
"And you won't forgive me, Miss Maud?" from Mr. Welling to this
energetically handsome young lady in her cloth suit of hunter's green.
"Won't believe me that my motives, far from trying to win you over to
my democracy, were unmixed and pure? Wouldn't see me when I called the
other evening! Haven't answered my pleading note! I appeal to you, Mrs.
Harrison. I've a question in ethics, moral, social and otherwise that
Miss Amanthus once told me about. Or perhaps I'd better put it direct
to Miss Maud. _Will a lady say she's out when she's in?_ I'm coming
around again to satisfy myself as to this, to-morrow night."
And meanwhile did Mr. Cannon--perish the thought!--approximate a
wink at Adele as he approached her? At Adele who when she used to
sportively skip rope did it with such painful conscientiousness one's
heart ached to watch her? At Adele who constitutionally would be so
embarrassed with a wink thus placed on her hands, one could not figure
out the consequences? Certainly this Mr. Preston Cannon the naughty did
something with an eyelid quite confidentially as he reached her. And
who pray had told him of his recent double identity in connection with
the Carter reception?
"The vagabond interloper is discovered in the cherished nephew," he was
saying jocularly to Adele whose face was scarlet.
But even so, despite this effervescence of good spirits bestowed
around, the younger ladies could not deceive themselves. The gentlemen
were glad to find them here, of course, but incidentally, their own
coming and their own ardor being for Mrs. Harrison!
For the third time Hetty appeared, now bringing in the tea and its
accompaniments, which she put down on a table before Mrs. Harrison.
Whereupon the gentlemen rallied to their hostess again, rallied with a
zest and heartiness that spelled homage. Culpepper at the table by her
elbow, with the silver tongs suspended above the silver sugar bowl,
waited her word to distribute the cubes to saucers. Culpepper--the
blunt and self-avowed scorner of the lady's man!
Mr. Welling went about carrying cups. According to Maud's undertones to
Selina, his facetious speeches as he distributed these merely sounded
excessive.
"And silly," she added a moment later to the first indictment.
It was his speech calling attention to the gracious occupation of the
hostess at the tea-table, that provoked this last comment.
"Juno, to human needs sweetly descent, pours tea," Mr. Welling
diagramed it, as he handed Maud a cup of the brew.
"He mails mental pabulum to me, and bestows compliments elsewhere," she
remarked scathingly as he moved on.
Amanthus, artless sight, her shingled yellow bang altogether fetching,
followed in the wake of Mr. Welling, with cakes in a silver basket. He
called back gallantly over his shoulder diagraming her, too.
"Hebe to the children of earth," he explained.
It was nauseating, that is if one agreed with Maud.
Mr. Tate followed after the cups and the cakes with lemon and with
cream. It was a risk to let him. He earnestly and even decorously
stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream, and as earnestly and
decorously looked annoyed and recovered himself. He also made rejoinder
to Mr. Welling.
"Juno and Hebe, if you will, Henry," he was the only known soul
apparently who addressed this gentleman by his Christian name, "except
that in both cases, our Juno and our Hebe are first and last and
always, radiantly and commendably, woman!"
[Illustration: "He ... stumbled over a rug and slopped the cream."]
Selina who earlier in the afternoon felt she was looking her best in
her cashmere with its open throat and the knot of her hair at the nape
of her neck, but was less fondly hopeful about it now, took her tea
from Mr. Welling, her cake from Amanthus, her cream from Mr. Tate, but
something of her state of mind from Maud.
She did not care for tea. If the truth be told, while she was a little
sensitive about the childish look of the thing, a goblet of milk
still stood at her plate three times a day, Mamma discouraging even
a tentative cup of coffee at breakfast. But it was not her lack of
ardor for the tea now in her hand which was dampening her spirits, but
the realization that she and her companions were but incidents to a
foreground adequately filled for these young gentlemen.
A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by
Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate,
too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute
deliberately to invite such recognition.
Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they
passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? Auntie had
deplored the borrowed furbelows with deep distress. Were she and her
group paying the penalty of trying to be what they were not?
These young gentlemen whose good opinions the group yearned to
possess, bantered them instead with jocularity, and gave sincerity and
admiration to Mrs. Harrison. If Selina could judge, it was the same
nature of homage men offered to Miss Pocahontas Boswell, that most
natural and unassuming of persons.
Had Selina laid bare the secret? For was not Mrs. Harrison nobly
and simply herself? Each charm and each loveliness taking its toll
rightfully her own? And her interests and her occupations and her
reading, her assumptions and her opinions, were not these too gently
and quietly her own?
She had faced about from the tea-table now, her own cup in hand and
was speaking. How lovely her fair hair was, how pleasing the apricot
tones of her dress! And Mamma and Auntie said there was no degradation
a husband might descend to that her money was not taken to pay for,
no price a humiliated young wife could be taxed, her personal fortune
did not stand voucher for! Why should a woman permit it? Why not
consider her own to be her own, in such a case? Selina, looking at Mrs.
Harrison, wondered.
She herself was speaking. "And now about old colored Aunt Hosanna in
my kitchen. She has a lazy, ne'er-do-well husband, girls, though I've
probably mentioned it before to you, who as regularly as the week-end
rolls around, appears and collects her week's wages for her. I have
asked to be assured by these young lawyers-to-be, that he has every
right to do it, before I give in to him any longer."
"He has every right," from Mr. Welling, square-set now like his
spectacles, and earnest and definite. "The common law, covering the law
of husband and wife, has been modified in some of the states, but here
in our own, is practically unchanged."
"Culpepper," from Mrs. Harrison still playing with her tea-cup, to this
black-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman in a chair to her left, "you
promised to look up the case of that little dressmaker for me. Don't
think I hunt these things. By some force of attraction seemingly, they
seek me."
Culpepper took advantage of the opportunity to put his cup down. Its
undiminished contents would indicate that he didn't care for tea as a
beverage either. He, too, was business-like and definite.
"I took the address you gave me," he said, "and went around to see her
carpenter husband. She's temporarily left him since you saw her. He
admits the house was bought and paid for by her out of her earnings
before he knew her. And he admits he mistreats her every time he's
drunk. But the house and its contents he proposes to keep if she leaves
him."