mystery; but for four years she had been supposed by that whole world
of which we have spoken to be destined for Jack Allston. Jack was young,
handsome, rich, of good family, and so rising in his profession, the
law, that no one could suppose he lacked brains, though in general
matters they were not so evident. For four years he had skated with
Lily, danced with her, sung with her, ridden, if not driven, with her,
sent her flowers, and scarcely paid a single attention of the sort to
any other girl; and Lily had danced, sung, ridden, skated with him, at
least twice as often as with any other man. Jack had had the _entree_ of
the Carey house, where old family friendship had admitted him from
boyhood, almost as if he were another son, and was made far more useful
than sons generally allow themselves to be made. He came to all parties
early and stayed late, danced with all the wall-flowers and waited upon
all the grandmothers and aunts, and prompted and drew up the curtain,
and took all the "super" parts at their theatricals. He was "Jack" to
all of them, from Papa Carey down to Muriel of four years old. The Carey
family, if hints were dropped, disclaimed so smilingly that everyone was
convinced that they knew all about it, and that Mrs. Carey, a most
careful mother, who spent so much time in acting chaperon to her girls
that she saw but little of them, would never have allowed it to go so
far unless there were something in it. Why this something was not
announced was a mystery. At first many reasons were assigned by those
who must have reasons for other people's actions, all very sufficient:
Lily too young, Jack not through the law-school, the Allstons in
mourning, etc., etc.; but as one after another exhibited its futility,
and new ones were less readily discovered, the subject was discussed in
less amiable mood by tantalised expectants, and the ominous sentence was
even murmured, "If they are not engaged they ought to be."
On October 17, 1887, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe stock was quoted at
90-1/2, and the engagement of Mr. John Somerset Allston to Miss Julia
Henrietta Bradstreet Noble was announced with all the formality of which
Boston is capable on such occasions. It can hardly be said which piece
of news created the greater sensation; but many a paterfamilias who had
dragged himself home sick at heart from State Street found his family so
engrossed in their own private morsel of intelligence that his, with all
its consequences of no new bonnets and no Bar Harbor next summer, was
robbed of its sting. All was done according to the most established
etiquette. Jack Allston had told all the men at his lunch club, and a
hundred notes from Miss Noble to her friends and relatives, which she
had sat up late for the two preceding nights to write, had been received
by the morning post. Jack had sat up later than she had, but only one
single note had been the product of his vigils.
Unmixed surprise was the first sensation excited as the news spread. It
was astonishing that Jack Allston should be engaged to any girl but Lily
Carey, and it was not much less so that he should be engaged to Miss
Noble. She was a little older than he was, an only child, and an orphan.
Her family was good, her connections high, and her fortune just large
enough for her to live upon with their help. She was of course invited
everywhere, and received the attentions demanded by politeness; but even
politeness had begun to feel that it had done enough for her, and that
she should perform the social _hara-kiri_ that unmarried women are
expected to make at a certain age. She was very plain and had very
little to say for herself. Her relatives could say nothing for her
except that she was a "nice, sensible girl," a dictum expressed with
more energy after her engagement to Jack Allston, when some of the more
daring even discovered that she was "distinguished looking." The men had
always, from her silence, had a vague opinion that she was stupid, but
amiable; the other girls were doubtful on both these points, certain
double-edged speeches forcibly recurring to their memory. Their doubts
resolved into certainties after her engagement was announced, when she
became so very unbearable that they could only, with the Spartan
patience shown by young women on such occasions, hold their tongues and
hope that it might be a short one. Their sole relief was in discussing
the question as to whether Jack Allston had thrown over Lily, or whether
she had refused him. Jack was sheepish and shy at being congratulated;
Lily was bright and smiling, and in even higher spirits than usual; Miss
Noble spoke very unpleasantly to and of Lily whenever she had the
chance; but all these points of conduct might and very likely would be
the same under either supposition. Parties were pretty evenly balanced,
and the wedding was over before they had drifted to any final
conclusion. As the season went on Lily looked rather worn and fagged,
which gave the supporters of the first hypothesis some ground; but when,
in the spring, her own engagement came out, it supplied a sufficient
reason, and gave a triumphant and clinching argument to the advocates of
the second. She looked happy enough then, though her own family gave but
a doubtful sympathy. Mr. Carey refused to say anything further than that
he hoped Lily knew her own mind; she must decide for herself. Mrs.
Carey looked sad, and changed the subject, saying there was no need of
saying anything about it at present; she was sorry that it was so widely
known and talked about. The younger Carey girls, Susan and Eleanor,
openly declared that they hoped it would never come to anything. Poor
Mr. Ponsonby! His picture was very handsome, and the parts of his
letters they had heard were very nice, but he did not seem likely to get
on in the world, and he could not expect Lily to wait forever. "Would
you like to see his picture?--an amateur one, taken by a friend; and
Lily says it does not do him justice."
The photograph won the hearts of all the female friends of the family,
who saw it in confidence, and increased their desire to see the
original. But Mr. Ponsonby was not able, as had been expected, to come
over in the summer. Violent rains and consequent floods in the
Australian sheep-runs inflicted so much damage upon his stock that the
marriage was again postponed, at least for a year, in which time he
hoped to get things on a better basis. Lily kept up her spirits bravely.
She did not go to Mount Desert with her mother and sisters, but stayed
at home, wrote her letters, hemstitched her linen, declaring that she
was glad of the time to get up a proper outfit, and went to bed early,
keeping a pleasant home for her father and the boys as they went and
came, to their huge satisfaction, and gaining in bloom and freshness; so
that she was in fine condition in the fall to nurse her mother through a
low fever caught at a Bar Harbor hotel, also to wait upon Susan, nervous
and worn down with late hours and perpetual racket, and Eleanor, laid up
with a sprained ankle from an overturn in a buckboard.
Eleanor, though not yet eighteen, was to come out next winter, Lily
declaring that she should give up balls--what was the use when one was
engaged? She stayed at home and saw that her sisters were kept in
ball-gowns and gloves, no light task, taking the part of Cinderella _con
amore_. She certainly looked younger than Susan at least, who since she
had taken up the Harvard Annex course, besides going out, began to grow
worn and thin.
One February morning Eleanor's voice rose above the usual babble at the
Carey breakfast-table.
"Can't I go, mamma?"
"Where, dear?"
"Why, to the Racket Club german at Eliot Hall, next Tuesday. It's going
to be so nice, you know, only fifty couples, and we ought to answer
directly; and I have just had notes from Harry Foster and Julian Jervis
asking me for it."
"And which shall you dance with?" asked Lily.
"Why, Harry, of course."
"I would not have any _of course_ about it," said Lily, rather sharply.
Harry Foster was now repeating Jack Allston's late role in the Carey
family, with Eleanor for his ostensible object. "My advice is, dance
with Julian; and I suppose I must see that your pink net is in order, if
Miss Macalister cannot be induced to hurry up your new lilac."
"Shall we not go, mamma?"
"Why, mamma, how can we?" broke in Susan, who had her own game in
another quarter. "It's the 'Old Men of Menottomy' night, and we missed
the last, you know."
"Those old Cambridge parties are the dullest affairs going," said
Eleanor; "I'd rather stay at home than go to them."
"That is very ungrateful of you," said Lily, laughing, "when I gave up
my place in the 'Misses Carey' to you, for of course I don't go to
either."
"Can't I go to Eliot Hall with Roland, mamma? He is asked, and Mrs.
Thorne is a patroness; she will chaperon me after I get there."
"Roland will want to go right back to Cambridge, I know--the middle of
the week and everything! He'll be late enough without coming here."
"Then can't I take Margaret, and depend on Mrs. Thorne?" went on
Eleanor, with the persistence of the youngest pet. "Half the girls go
with their maids that way."
"Oh, I don't know, my dear," said poor Mrs. Carey, looking helplessly
from Eleanor, flushed and eager, to Susan, silent, but with a tightly
shut look on her pretty mouth, that betokened no sign of yielding. "I
never liked it--in a hired carriage--and you can't expect _me_ to go
over the Cambridge bridges without James. And I hate asking Mrs. Thorne
anything, she always makes such a favour of it, and the less trouble it
is the more fuss she gets up about it. Do you and Susan settle it
somehow between you, and let me know when it is decided."
"Let me go with Eleanor, mamma," said Lily. "Mrs. Freeman will probably
go with Emmeline and Bessie, and she will let me sit with her. I will
wear my old black silk and look the chaperon all over--as good a one, I
will wager, as any there. It will be good fun to act the part, and I
have been engaged so long that I should think I might really begin to
appear in it."
Mr. Carey was heard to growl, as he pushed back his chair and threw his
pile of newspapers on to the floor, that he wished Lily would stop that
nonsensical talk about her engagement once for all; but the girls did
not pause in their chatter, and Mrs. Carey was too much relieved to
argue the point.
"Only tell me what to do and I will do it," was this poor lady's
favourite form of speech. She set off with a clear conscience on Tuesday
evening with Susan for the assembly at Cambridge, where a promisingly
learned post-graduate of good fortune and family was wont to unbend
himself by sitting out the dances and explaining the theory of evolution
to Miss Susan Carey, who was as mildly scientific as was considered
proper for a young lady of her position. Lily accompanied Eleanor to
more frivolous spheres, where chaperonage was an easier if less exciting
task; for once having touched up her sister's dress in the ante-room,
and handed her over to Julian Jervis, she bade her farewell for the
evening, and herself took the arm of Harry Foster, who, gloomily cynical
at the sight of Eleanor, radiant in her new lilac, with another partner,
had hardly a word to say as he settled her on a bench on the raised
platform where the chaperons congregated, except to ask her sulkily if
she would not "take a turn," which she declined without mincing matters,
and took the only seat left, next to Mrs. Jack Allston, who was
matronising a cousin.
"What, Lily! you here?" asked Mrs. Thorne.
"Oh, yes; mamma has gone to Cambridge with Susan, and said I might come
over with Eleanor, and she was sure Mrs. Freeman,"--with a smile at that
lady--"would look after us if we needed it."
"With the greatest pleasure," said Miss Morgan, who sat by her sister.
"Here have Elizabeth and I both come to take care of our girls, as
half-a-dozen elders sometimes hang on to one child at a circus. We both
of us had set our hearts on seeing _this_ german and would not give up,
so you see there is an extra chaperon at your service."
"Doesn't your mother find it very troublesome to have three girls out at
once?" asked Mrs. Allston of Lily, bluntly.
"Hardly three; I am not out this winter, you know."
"I don't see any need of staying in because one is engaged, unless,
indeed, it were a very short one, like mine."
Mrs. Allston cast a rapid and deprecatory glance at the "old black
silk," which had seen its best days, and then a still swifter one at her
own gown, from Worth, but so unbecoming to her that it was easy for Lily
to smile serenely back, though her heart sank within her at her
prospects for the evening.
At the close of the first figure of the german, a slight flutter seemed
to run through the crowd, tending toward the entrance.
"Who is that standing in the doorway--just come in?" asked Lily, in the
very lowest tone, of Miss Morgan. Miss Morgan looked, shook her head
decidedly, and then passed the inquiry on to Mrs. Thorne, who hesitated
and hemmed.
"He spoke to me when he first came--but--I really don't recollect--it
must be Mr.--Mr.----"
"Arend Van Voorst," crushingly put in Mrs. Allston, with somewhat the
effect of a garden-roller. Both of the older ladies looked interested.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Thorne, "I sent him a card when I heard he was in
Boston. I have not seen him--at least since he was very young--but his
mother--of course I know Mrs. Van Voorst--a little."
"I don't know them at all," said Miss Morgan; "but if that's young Van
Voorst, he is better looking than there is any occasion for."
"He was a classmate and intimate friend of Jack's," said Mrs. Allston,
loftily.
"I never saw him before," said Lily, incautiously.
"He only went out in a very small set in Boston," said Mrs. Allston. "I
met him often, of course."
"You were too young, Lily, to meet any one when he was in college," said
Miss Morgan, who liked "putting down Julia Allston."
"It's too bad the girls are all engaged," said the simple-minded Mrs.
Freeman; "he won't have any partner."
"_He_ wouldn't dance!" said Julia, too tough to feel Miss Morgan's light
touches. "Very likely, as you asked him, Mrs. Thorne, he may feel that
he _must_ take a turn with Ada; and when he knows that Kitty Bradstreet
is with me, very likely he will ask her out of compliment to me. He will
hardly ask me to dance at such a very young party as this; I don't see
any of the young married set here but myself."
Mr. Van Voorst stood quietly in the doorway, hardly appearing to notice
anything, but when Ada Thorne's partner was called out, and she was left
sitting alone, he walked across the room and sat down by her. He did not
ask her to dance, but it was perhaps as great an honour to have the Van
Voorst of New York sitting by her, holding her bouquet and bending over
her in an attitude of devotion; and if what he said did not flatter her
vanity, it touched another sentiment equally strong in Ada even at that
early period of life.
"Who is that girl in black, sitting with the chaperons?"
"Oh, that is Lily Carey."
"Why is she there?"
"She is chaperoning Eleanor, her youngest sister, that girl in lilac who
is on the floor now. They look alike, don't they?"
"Why, she is not married?"
"No, only engaged. She has been engaged a great while, and never goes to
balls or anything now--only she came here with Eleanor because Mrs.
Carey wanted to go to Cambridge with Susan. There are three of the
Careys out; it must be a dreadful bother, don't you think so?"
"To whom is she engaged?"
"To a Mr. Reginald Ponsonby--an Englishman settled in Australia
somewhere. They were to have been married last summer, but he had
business losses. She is perfectly devoted to him. He wrote and offered
to release her, but she would not hear of it. She was very much admired;
don't you think her pretty?"
"Will you introduce me to Miss Carey? I see Mr. Freeman is coming to ask
you for a turn--will you be so kind as to present me first?"
There was a sort of cool determination about this young man which Ada,
or any other girl, would have found it hard to resist. She did as she
was bid, not ill-pleased at the general stir she excited as she crossed
the floor with her two satellites and walked up the platform steps.
"Mrs. Freeman, Miss Morgan, allow me to introduce Mr. Van Voorst. Miss
Carey, Mr. Van Voorst;--I think you know my mother and Mrs. Allston."
And having touched off her train, she whirled away with Robert Freeman,
her observation still on the alert.
Mrs. Thorne and Mr. Van Voorst exchanged civilities; Mrs. Allston said
Jack was coming soon and would be glad to see him, making room for him
at her side.
"No, thank you, Mrs. Allston. Miss Carey, may I have the pleasure of a
turn with you?"
"Oh, Mr. Van Voorst! You are quite out of rule--tempting away our
chaperons--you should ask some of the young ladies; we did not come here
to dance."
"I shall not dare to ask you, then, Mrs. Allston," he said, smiling, and
offered his arm without another word to Lily. She rose without looking
at him, with a quick furtive motion pulled off her left-hand glove--the
right was off already--got out of the crowd about her and down the
steps, she hardly knew how, and in a moment his arm was around her and
they were floating down the long hall. The quartette left behind looked
rather blankly at each other.
"Well," said Mrs. Thorne at last, "it really is too bad for Lily Carey
to come and say she did not mean to dance, and then walk off with Arend
Van Voorst, who has not asked another girl here----"
"And in that old gown!" chimed in Mrs. Allston.
"It is certainly very unkind in her to look so well in an old gown,"
said Aunt Sophia; "it is a dangerous precedent."
"Oh, auntie!" said Emmeline, who had come up to have her dress adjusted.
"Poor Lily! She has been so very quiet all the winter, never going to
anything, it would be too bad if she could not have a little pleasure."
"Very kind in you, my dear; but I don't see the force of your 'poor
Lily.' I shall reserve my pity for poor Mr. Ponsonby--he needs it most."
It was long since Lily had danced, and as for Mr. Van Voorst, he was, as
we have seen, supposed to be above it on so youthful an occasion; but
perhaps it was this that gave such a zest, as if they were boy and girl
together, to the pleasure of harmonious motion. Round and round again
they went, till the dancing ranks grew thinner, and just as the music
gave signs of drawing to a close, they passed, drawing all eyes, by the
doorway. The line of men looking on opened and closed behind them. They
had actually gone out to sit on the stairs, leaving a fruitful topic
behind them for the buzz of talk between the figures. Eleanor Carey, a
pretty girl, and not unlike her sister, bloomed out with added
importance from her connection with one who might turn out to be the
heroine of a drawing-room scandal.
Meanwhile the two who were the theme of comment sat silent under the
palms and ferns. No one knew better when to speak or not to speak than
Lily, and her companion was looking at her with a curiously steady and
absorbed gaze, to which any words would have been an interruption. It
was not "the old black silk" which attracted his attention, except,
perhaps, so far as it formed a background for the beautiful hands that
lay folded together on her lap, too carelessly for coquetry. No such
motive had influenced Lily when she had pulled off her gloves; it was
only that they were not fresh enough to bear close scrutiny; but their
absence showed conspicuous on the third finger of her left hand her only
ring, a heavy one of rough beaten gold with an odd-looking dark-red
stone in it. Not the flutter of a finger betrayed any consciousness as
his eye lingered on it; but as he looked abruptly up he caught a glance
from under her eyelashes which showed that she had on her part been
looking at him. An irresistible flash of merriment was reflected back
from face to face.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I--I beg your pardon, I thought you said something."
Both laughed like a couple of children; then he rose and offered his arm
again, and they turned back to the ballroom.
"Good evening, Jack," said Miss Lily brightly, holding out her hand to
Mr. Allston, who had just come in, and was standing in the doorway.
Jack, taken by surprise, as we all are by the sudden appearance of two
people together whom we have never associated in our minds, looked shy
and confused, but made a gallant effort to rally, and got through the
proper civilities well enough, till just as the couple were again
whirling into the ranks, he spoiled it all by asking with an awkward
stammer in his voice:
"How's--how's Mr. Ponsonby?"
"Very well, when I last heard," Lily flung back over her shoulder, in
her clearest tone and with a laugh, soft, but heard by both men.
"What are you laughing at?" asked her partner.
"At the recollection of my copy-book--was not yours amusing?"
"I dare say it was, if it was the same as yours."
"Oh, they are all alike. What I was thinking of was the page with 'Evil
communications corrupt good manners.'"
"Yes--Jack was a very good fellow when we were in college
together--but----"
But "what" was left unsaid. On and on they went, and only stopped with
the music. Lily, having broken the ice, was besieged by every man in the
room for a turn. One or two she did favour with a very short one, but it
was Mr. Van Voorst to whom she gave every other one, and those the
longest, and with whom she walked between the figures; and finally it
was Mr. Van Voorst who took her down to supper. Eleanor and she had all
the best men in the room crowding round them.
"Come and sit with us, Emmie," she asked, as Emmeline Freeman passed
with her partner; and Emmeline came, half frightened at finding herself
in the midst of what seemed to her a chapter from a novel. Never had the
even tenor of her social experiences,--and they were of as unvarying and
business-like a nature as the "day's work" of humbler maidens--been
disturbed by such an upheaval of fixed ideas; one of which was that Lily
Carey could do no wrong, and another, that there was something "fast"
and improper in having more than one man waiting upon you at a time.
"Do you mind going now, Eleanor?" asked Lily of her sister, as the
crowd surged back to the ballroom. Eleanor looked rather blank at the
thought of missing the after-supper dance, and such an after-supper
dance; no mamma to get sleepy on the platform; no old James waiting out
in the cold to lay up rheumatism for the future and to look respectfully
reproachful at "Miss Ellis"; no horses whose wrongs might excite papa's
wrath; nothing but that wretched impersonal slave, "a man from the
livery stable" and his automatic beasts. But the Careys were a very
amiable family, the one who spoke first generally getting her own way.
The after-supper dance at the Racket Club german was rather a falling
off from the brilliancy at the commencement, as Arend Van Voorst left
after putting his partner into her carriage, and Julian Jervis and
others of the men thought it the thing to follow his example.
Two days after the german, "Richards's Pond," set in snowy shores, was
hard and blue as steel under a cloudless sky, while a delicious breath
of spring in the air gave warning that this was but for a day. The rare
union of perfect comfort and the fascination that comes of transient
pleasure irresistibly called out the skaters, and "everybody" was there;
that is, about fifty young men and women were disporting themselves on
the pond, and one or two ladies stood on the shore looking on. Miss
Morgan, who was always willing to chaperon any number of girls to any
amusement, stood warmly wrapped up in her fur-lined cloak and
snow-boots, talking to a Mrs. Rhodes, a mild little new-comer in
Brookline, who had come with her girls, who did not know many people,
and whom she now had the satisfaction of seeing happily mingled with the
proper "set"; for Eleanor Carey, who had good-naturedly asked them to
come, had introduced them to some of the extra young men, of whom there
were plenty; and that there might be no lack of excitement, Mr. Van
Voorst and Miss Lily Carey were to be seen skating together, with hardly
a word or a look for anyone else--a sight worth seeing.
No record exists of the skating of the goddess Diana, but had she
skated, Lily might have served as her model. Just so might she have
swept over the ice with mazy motion, ever and ever throwing herself off
her balance, just as surely to regain it. As for Arend Van Voorst, he
skated like Harold Hardrada, of whose performances in that line we have
not been left in ignorance. "It must be his Dutch blood," commented Miss
Morgan.