has been coming to my house a good deal lately on business. I would tell
you all about it, but it's rather private." But, humbled as we were, we
could not hear this without a protesting murmur, disclaiming all vulgar
curiosity. I did, indeed, wonder for a moment if he were painting
Walter's portrait; if he were, I did not think it strange that the
latter looked a little sheepish about it; but I afterward found out
through Tom that it concerned some good offices of them both for an old
friend in distress. "When he came to my house in the evening when I was
out, it was to meet another person, and Mrs. Williams, half the time,
never saw either of them. As to that song at Mrs. Jenks's party, which,
I hear, created so much comment, she was feeling very unhappy that night
because little Violet had a cold, and she thought she might have made a
mistake in trying to keep her out, and toughen her, as you do your
children here. Perhaps that heightened her expression; but as to
breaking down on the last line of the song, that effect was one of
Giudotti's lessons, and he taught her how to give that look. He always
said she had the making of a great tragic actress in her. She does try
to look at the wall," went on Willie, simply, "but it was so crowded
there that she could not, and Mr. Dana could not help standing in the
way of it. I think I have said all I need say--and I hope you won't mind
it or think I am very impertinent, but I couldn't bear to have this
thing going on; and I hope we shall all be as good friends as we were
before, and that it will all be very soon forgotten." And he bowed and
departed, followed by Mr. Dana, with alacrity.
We were doubtful as to these happy results. We could all admire Willie
Williams for standing up so gallantly for his wife, but we did not like
her any the better for being so successfully stood up for, and we felt
that we could never forget the unpleasant sensation he had given us. It
took a long course of seeing him in his old shape and presentment among
us--working in the same flamboyant clothes, at paintings as execrable as
ever; with the same lisp, and the same trip and jerk, and the same easy
good nature, and trifling enthusiasms--to forget that he had ever
inspired us with actual fear, and might again, though he never has. We
came also, in course of time, to like Loulou better, though it was
rather galling to see how little she heeded the matter that cost us all
so much remorse; but she lost her reserve in great measure as her
children grew healthier and more like other people's. I think the
hatchet was fairly buried for good and all when, in another year, she
had another baby, a splendid boy weighing nine pounds and three
quarters, at whose birth more enthusiasm was manifested in Babyland than
on any similar occasion before, and who was loaded with the most
beautiful presents, one in particular from Minnie Mason, who was much
better, for her recovery of health dates from that sudden incursion into
our Tolstoi Club, and the shock it gave her.
I should have said as to that, that after the men had left us Blanche
Livermore exclaimed, "Well, girls, I think we are pretty sufficiently
crushed!"
This was generous of Blanche, when she was the only one among us who had
ever expressed any incredulity as to the "Russian novel," as we called
it. "The fact is," she went on, "I have come to the conclusion that we
have not yet advanced to the realistic period here; we are living in the
realms of the ideal; and, what is worse, I fear I am so benighted that I
like it best; don't you?" And, encouraged by an inarticulate but
affirmatory murmur from all of us, she proceeded:
"Let us all agree to settle down contentedly behind the age in our
provinciality; and, that we may keep so, let us cut the realists in
fiction, and take up something they don't approve of. I vote that we
devote the rest of the season to a good thorough course of Walter
Scott!"
And so we did.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A LITTLE FOOL
"What, my dear Marian! And do you really and truly mean to say you
thought of taking the girl without going to ask her character!"
"There are so many difficulties about it. You see, she lived last with
Mrs. Donald Craighead for two years, and that would be quite enough for
a character. They all went abroad in a great hurry on account of Mr.
Craighead's health, and Mrs. Craighead promised to give her one, but
forgot it, and she couldn't bear to bother them when they were all in
such trouble. I know myself that all that about them is true."
"So do I; but that does not prove that she ever lived with them. Cannot
she refer to any of the family?"
"No; she did nothing but laundry work there, and never saw any of their
friends, I fancy; but she does have a written character from the family
she lived with before them, very nice people in South Boston."
"What's their name?"
"I don't remember," said Miss Marian Carter, blushing, "but I have it
written down at home."
"I should certainly go there, if I were you."
"It is so far off, and I never went there in my life."
"Well, you ought. It sounds very suspicious. Of course there are a few
nice people in South Boston; they have to live there because they own
factories and things, and have to be near them; but then, again, there
are such dreadful neighbourhoods there. Most likely she depends on your
not taking the trouble, and you will find the number she gave you over
some low grog-shop."
"Oh, I should be so frightened! I really do not think I can go!"
"You surely ought not to risk taking her without, and very likely have
her turn out an accomplice of burglars, like that Norah of mine, through
whom I lost so much silver."
"I thought you had a character with her."
"So I did, or I should not have taken her. I make it a principle not to.
It only shows how great the danger is with a character; without one it
amounts to a certainty."
"She was such a nice-looking girl!"
"That makes no difference. I always mistrust maids who look too nice.
They are sure to have some story, or scrape, or something, like that
Florence of mine, who looked so much of a lady, and turned out to be a
clergyman's daughter, and had run away from her husband--a most
respectable man. He came to the house after her, and gave no end of
trouble."
"But this girl did not look at all like that; not a bit above her place,
but so neatly dressed, and with a plain, sensible way about her; and her
name is Drusilla Elms--such a quaint, old-fashioned, American-sounding
name, quite refreshing to hear."
"It sounds very like an assumed name. The very worst woman I ever had
was named Bathsheba Fogg; she turned out to have been a chorus girl at
some low theatre, and must have picked it up from some farce or other."
"Then you really think I ought to go to South Boston?"
"I should do so in your place," replied Mrs. William Treadwell.
This gave but scant encouragement, for Marian could not but feel that
the result of her friend's going and that of her own, might be very
different; and Mrs. Treadwell, as she watched her visitor off, smiled
good-humouredly, but pityingly. "Poor dear Marian! What a little fool
she is to swallow everything that she is told in that way! It is a
wonder that the Carters ever have a decent servant in their house."
However much of a wonder it might be, it was still a fact; but it did
not occur to Marian, as she bent her way homeward, to revive her feeble
self-confidence, crushed flat by her friend's scorn, with any
recollection that such fearful tales as she had just heard were without
a parallel in her own experience. It is to be feared that she was a
little fool, though she kept her mother's house very well and carefully,
if, indeed, it were her mother's house. Nobody but the tax-gatherer knew
to whom it really belonged, and he forgot between each assessment. It
stood on Burroughs street, Jamaica Plain, a neighbourhood that still
boasts an air of dignified repose. It was without the charm of a really
old-fashioned house, or even such as may be possessed by a modern
imitation of one; indeed it bore the stamp of that unfortunate period
which may be called the middle age of American architecture, extending,
at a rough estimate, from 1820 to 1865; but it was a well-built house,
and looked, as at present inhabited, a pleasant abode enough, of
sufficient size to accommodate a numerous female flock--Marian's
grandmother and her great-aunt, her mother and her aunt, her widowed
sister and two children, a trained nurse who was treated as one of the
family, three servants, and Marian herself to make up the round dozen.
The grandmother had lost the use of her limbs, and the great-aunt that
of her mind; the mother and the trained nurse were devoted to them, and
the aunt to philanthropic objects, and the sister to her children; so
the housekeeper's duties devolved on Marian, though she was still but a
child in her elders' eyes, and were well discharged, as they all
allowed, though qualifying their praise with the remark that it was
"easy enough to keep a house without a man in it."
As Marian Carter passed along bustling, suburban Centre Street, she
looked a very flower of the Western world of feminine liberty; fine and
fair, free and fearless, coming and going at her own pleasure, on foot
or by the horse-cars, those levellers of privilege; no duenna to track
her steps, no yashmak or veil to hide her charms. Yet the fact was that
she knew less of men than if she had lived in a harem or a convent. She
had no sultan, no father confessor. She could not, like Miss Pole of
Cranford memory, claim to know the other sex by virtue of her father
having been a man, for Marian's father had died before she was born. Her
sister Isabel and she had had friends, and had gone into society in a
mild way, and being pretty girls, had met with a little general
attention, but nothing ever came of it. The family never entertained,
except now and then an old friend to tea, their means and opportunity
being small; nor could young men venture to call. The grandmother had
been a great invalid before she lost the use of her limbs, and the
great-aunt a formidable person before she lost that of her mind, while
Aunt Caroline from her youth upward had developed a great distaste for
the society of men, even when viewed as objects of philanthropy.
When Isabel was four and twenty she went to New York to visit some
cousins, and though they lived very quietly, she made the acquaintance
of a young civil engineer, at home on a vacation from his work in the
United States of Colombia, who had married and borne her off after the
briefest possible courtship, never to see her old home again till she
came back, ten years after, a widow with two children, to eke out her
small means by the shelter of the family abode. I cannot delay the
humiliating confession, postponed as long as may be for the sake of the
artistic unity of my picture, that the youngest of these children was a
boy, if, as his mother was wont to plead, "a very little one." He was
dressed in as unboyish a fashion as possible, and being christened
Winthrop, was always called Winnie. He was a quiet, gentle child, kept
down by his position; but though thus made the best of, he was felt to
be an inconvenience and an encumbrance, if not now, certainly in the
future. There was no end to the trouble it would make when Winnie grew
older, and required a room to himself, and would be obliged to go to a
boys' school, which might even lead up to the direful contingency of his
"bringing home other boys."
After Isabel's departure, Marian, though the prettier of the two, found
it dull to go about alone. No one asked her to New York; the cousin had
died, and the cousin's husband had married again; and when she grew past
the dancing age, perhaps earlier than she need, she went nowhere where
she had any chance of meeting any men but the husbands of one or two
married friends, and she was such a little fool that she fancied they
despised her for being an old maid. She knew she was five-and-thirty on
her last birthday, and was foolish enough to be afraid and ashamed of
owning to it. She need not have done so, for she did not look a day
older than twenty-five; but the memories of her contemporaries were
pitiless.
She enjoyed her housekeeping, which gave her life some object, and her
intercourse with her butcher, a fine young fellow who admired her
hugely, was the nearest approach to a love-affair in which she had ever
indulged, so much sentiment did he contrive to throw about the legs of
mutton and the Sunday roast. Though honestly thinking herself happy,
and her position a fortunate one, she relished a change, which seldom
came, and was glad of the prospect of a visit to South Boston, now that
she could conscientiously say she ought to go since Emma Treadwell had
ordered it. The excitement of going off the beaten track was heightened
by the mystery which invested the affair. Marian had not dared to
confess to her managing friend that the "written character" to which she
referred had struck her rather oddly when the neat, civil, young, but
not too young woman whose appearance had so favourably impressed her had
handed it to her with an air which seemed to indicate that nothing more
need be said on the subject, although it only said, "Drusilla Elms
refers by permission to ---- Hayward, City Point, South Boston," in a
great, scrawling, masculine-looking hand. The name was easy enough to
read, a painful effort having evidently been made to write thus much
legibly; but the title, be it Mr., Mrs., or Miss, was so utterly
unreadable that Marian, who dreaded, like most timid people, to put a
direct question, ventured upon an indirect one:
"Is--Mr. Hayward a widower?"
"Oh, dear, no, ma'am!" replied Drusilla, emphatically.
"And--they--still live there?"
"Oh, dear, yes, ma'am!"
Marian was very glad that the Saturday she chose for her expedition was
Aunt Caroline's day for the Women's and Children's Hospital, and that
Isabel had taken Minna and Winnie for a holiday trip into town to see
the Art Museum, which left fewer people at home to whom to explain her
errand, and to whose comments to reply. Mrs. Carter said it was silly to
go so far, and if she couldn't be satisfied to take the girl without,
she had better find some one near by. The trained nurse, who was slowly
but surely getting the whole household under her control, said that Miss
Carter's beautiful new spring suit would be ruined going all the way to
South Boston in the horse-cars; and Mrs. Carter, who would never have
thought of this herself, seconded her. Marian did not argue the point,
but she wore the dress nevertheless. She never felt that anything she
wore made any impression on any one she knew, but she could not help
fancying that if she had the chance she might impress strangers. No one
she knew ever called her pretty, and perhaps five-and-thirty was too old
to be thought so; and yet, if there was any meaning in the word, it
might surely be applied to the soft, shady darkness of her hair and
eyes, and the delicate bloom of her cheeks and lips, set off by that
silver-grey costume, with its own skilfully blended lights and shades of
silk and cashmere, and the purple and white lilacs that were wreathed
together on her small bonnet. She made a bad beginning, for while still
enjoying the effect of her graceful draperies as she entered the
horse-car for Boston, she carelessly caught the handle of her nice grey
silk sunshade in the door, and snapped it short in the middle. She could
have cried, though the man who always mended their umbrellas assured
her, with a bow and smile, that it should be mended, when she called for
it on her way back, "so that she would never know it;" but it deprived
her costume of the finishing touch, and she really needed it on this
warm sunny day; then, it was a bad omen, and she was foolish enough to
believe in omens. Her disturbance prevented her from observing much of
the route after she had drifted into a car for South Boston, and had
assured herself that it was the right one. Perhaps this was as well, as
the first part of the way was sufficiently uninviting to have frightened
her out of her intention had she looked about her. When at last she did,
they were passing along a wide street lined with sufficiently
substantial brick buildings, chiefly devoted to business, crossed by
narrower ones of small wooden houses more or less respectable in
appearance; but surely no housemaid who would suit them could ever have
served in one of these. Great rattling drays squeezed past the car, and
Chinese laundrymen noiselessly got in and out. The one landmark she had
heard of in South Boston, and for aught she knew the reason of its
existence, was the Perkins Institution for the Blind, which her Aunt
Caroline sometimes visited. But she passed the Institution, and still
went on and on. That the world extended so far in that direction was an
amazement in itself; she knew that there must be something there to fill
up, but she had had a vague idea that it might be water, which is so
accommodating in filling up the waste spaces of the terrestrial globe.
Finally the now nearly empty car came to a full stop at the foot of a
hill, the track winding off around it, and the conductor, of whom she
had asked her way, approached her with the patronising deference which
men in his position were very apt to assume to her: "Lady, you'll have
to get out here, and walk up the hill. Keep straight ahead, and you
can't miss it."
"And can I take the car here when I come back?" asked Marian, clinging
as if to an ark of refuge.
"Oh, yes," said the man, encouragingly; "we're along every ten minutes.
It ain't far off."
Marian slowly touched one little foot, and then another, to the unknown
and almost foreign soil of South Boston. She looked wistfully after the
car till it turned a corner, and left her stranded, before she began
slowly to climb the hill. It was warm, and she missed her sunshade. "I
shall be shockingly burned!" she thought. She looked about her, and
acknowledged that the street was a pleasant, sunny one, and that its
commonplace architecture gained in picturesqueness by its steep ascent.
As she neared the top the houses grew larger, scattered among garden
grounds, and she at last found the number she looked for on the
gate-post of one of the largest. She walked up a brick-paved path to the
front door between thick box borders, inclosing beds none too well
weeded, but whose bowery shrubs and great clumps of old-fashioned bulbs
and perennials had acquired the secure possession of the soil that comes
with age. Behind them were grape-vines trained on trellises, over which
rose the blossoming heads of tall old cherry-trees, and through the
interstices in the flowery wall might be caught glimpses of an old
garden where grass and flowers and vegetables mingled at haphazard. It
dated from the days when people planted gardens with a view to what they
could get out of them, regardless of effect; and the house, in like
manner, had been built to live in rather than to look at. No one could
say how it had looked before trees had shaded it and creepers enveloped
it so completely. The veranda which ran around it was well sheltered
from the street, fortunately, thought Marian, for the bamboo chairs and
sofas, piled up with rugs and cushions, with which it was crowded, were
heaped with newspapers, and hats, and tennis-rackets, and riding-whips,
and garden-tools, and baskets, tossed carelessly about. On the door-mat
lay a large dog, who flopped his tail up and down with languid courtesy
as she approached. She was terribly afraid of him, but thought it safer
to face him than to turn her back upon him, and edging by him, gave a
feeble ring at the door-bell. No one came. She rang again with more
energy, and then, after a brief pause, the door was opened by a
half-grown boy.
Marian only knew a very few families who aspired to have their doors
opened by anything more than a parlour-maid, and these had butlers of
unimpeachable respectability. But this young person had a bright, but
roguish look, which accorded better with the page of farce than with one
of real life. He seemed surprised to see her, though he bowed civilly.
"Is Mrs. Hayward at home?" asked Marian, in the most dulcet of small
voices; and as he looked at her with a stare that seemed as if it might
develop into a grin, she added, "or any of the ladies of the family? I
only wish to see one of them on business."
"Walk in, please, ma'am, and I'll see," faltered the porter, appearing
perplexed; and he opened the door, and ushered Marian across a wide hall
with a great, old-fashioned staircase at the further end--a place that
would have had no end of capabilities about it in a modern decorator's
eyes, but which looked now rather bare and unfurnished, save for pegs
loaded with hats and coats, and stands of umbrellas--into a long, low
room that looked crowded enough. Low bookcases ran around the walls, and
there were a great many tables heaped with books and magazines, and a
piano littered with music in a most slovenly condition; a music-stand or
two, and a violin and violoncello in their cases clustered about it. The
walls over the books were hung with old portraits, which looked as if
they might be valuable; among them were squeezed in whips, and long
pipes on racks, and calendars, and over them were hung horns and heads
of unknown beasts, whose skins lay on the floor. Over the fireplace hung
a sword and a pair of pistols in well-worn cases, but they were free
from dust, which many of the furnishings were not. The long windows at
the side opened on to the veranda, which was even more carelessly
strewed with the family possessions than at the front door, and from
which steps led down to a tennis-court in faultless trim, the only
orderly spot on the premises.
What a poor housekeeper Mrs. Hayward must be! She must let the men of
the family do exactly as they pleased, and there must be at least half a
dozen of them, while not a trace of feminine occupation was to be seen.
No servant from here could hope to suit the Carter household, no matter
how good a character she brought. But somehow the intensely masculine
air of the place had a wild fascination for Marian herself, in spite of
warning remembrances of how much her family would be shocked. There was
something delicious in the freedom with which letters and papers were
tossed about, and books piled up anywhere, while their proper homes
stood vacant, and in the soothing, easy tolerance with which persecuted
dust was allowed to find a quiet resting-place. A pungent and pleasing
perfume pervaded the premises, which seemed appropriate and agreeable to
her delicate senses, even though she supposed it must be tobacco-smoke.
She had smelled tobacco only as it exhaled from passers in the street,
and surely this fine, ineffable aroma came from a different source than
theirs! While she daintily inhaled it as she looked curiously about, her
ears became aware of singular sounds--a subdued scuffling and scraping
at the door at the further end of the room, and a breathing at its
keyhole, which gave her an unpleasant sensation of being watched; and
she instantly sat stiffly upright and looked straight before her, her
heart beating with wonder and affright lest the situation might prove
actually dangerous. The sounds suddenly ceased, and in a moment more a
halting step was heard outside, and a gentleman came in at the other
door--a tall man, whose hair was thick, but well sprinkled with grey;
whose figure, lean and lank, had a certain easy swing about its motions,
in spite of a very perceptible limp; and whose face, brown and thin, and
marred by a long scar right across the left cheek, had something
attractive in its expression as he came forward with a courteous,
expectant look. Marian could only bow.
"I beg your pardon; did you wish to see me?" inquired the stranger, in a
deep, low voice that sounded as if it might be powerful on occasion.
"Oh, I am very sorry to trouble you! I only wanted to see the mistress
of the house, if she is able----"
"I am afraid I am the only person who answers to that description."
There was a good-natured twinkle in his eye, and he had a pleasant
smile, but his evident amusement abashed her. "I keep my own house," he
went on.
"Oh, I beg your pardon! I thought there was a Mrs. Hayward!"
"I am sorry to say that there is none. But I am Mr. Hayward, and shall
be very glad if I can be of any service to you."
"I don't want to disturb you," said Marian, blushing deeply, while Mr.
Hayward, with, "Will you allow me?" drew up a chair and sat down, as if
to put her more at her ease. "It is only--only--" here she came to a
dead stop. "I do not want to take up so much of your time," she
confusedly stammered.
"Not at all; I shall be very happy--" he paused too, not knowing how to
fill up the blank, and waited quietly, while Marian sought frantically
in her little bag for a paper which was, of course, at the very bottom.
"It is only," she began again--"only to ask you about the character of a
chambermaid named Drusilla--yes, Drusilla Elms. I think it must be you
she refers to; at least I copied the address from the reference she
showed me; here it is," handing him the slip of paper; and as he took
out his eyeglass to study it, "only I couldn't tell--I didn't
know--whether it was Mr., or Mrs., or what it was before the name, I am
very sorry."