AUGUSTA returned home at six o’clock, not flushed with triumph,
for she was too tired, but with an elated spirit. She had stood
on a platform in an East Side hall surrounded by her friends,
and to two dozen bedraggled females had made the first speech of
her life. And it had been a good speech; she did not need assurance
of that. She had stood as well as Alexandra Maitland, but had used
certain little emphatic gestures (she was too independent to imitate
anyone); and she had, with well-bred lack of patronage, assured her
humble sisters, for three quarters of an hour, that they must sign the
petition for Woman Franchise, and make all the other women on the East
Side sign it: in order that they might be able to put down the liquor
trust, reform their husbands, secure good government, and be happy
ever after. She flattered herself that she had not used a single long
word--and she prided herself upon her vocabulary--that she had spoken
with the simplicity and directness which characterized great orators
and writers. Altogether, it was an experience to make any girl scorn
fatigue; and when she entered her boudoir and found Mabel Creighton,
she gave her a dazzling smile of welcome, and embraced her warmly.
Mabel responded with a nervous hug and shed a tear.
“He’s here!” she whispered ecstatically.
“Who?--Oh, your Duke. Did he propose right off? Do tell me.” And
she seated herself close beside her friend, and forgot that she was
reforming the United States.
“No, but he told me that he had come over on purpose to see me.”
“That’s equal to a proposal,” said Augusta decidedly. “Englishmen are
very cautious. They are much better brought up than ours. Which is only
another warning that we must take ours in hand. It is shocking the way
they frivol. I’d rather you married an American for this reason; but if
you love the Duke of Bosworth, I have nothing to say. Besides, you’re
the vine-and-tendril sort; I don’t know that you’d ever acquire any
influence over a man; so it doesn’t much matter. Now tell me about the
Duke, dearest; I am so glad that he has come.”
Mabel talked a steady stream for a half-hour, then hurried home to
dress for the evening.
Mr. Forbes was standing before the fire in the drawing-room when his
daughter entered, apparelled for the opera and subsequent ball. She
wore a smart French gown of pale blue satin, a turquoise comb in her
pale modishly dressed hair, and she carried herself with the spring and
grace of her kind; but she was very pale, and there were dark circles
about her eyes.
“You look worn out, my dear,” said her father, solicitously. “What have
you been doing?”
Miss Forbes sank into a chair. “I went to two meetings, one at Hal’s
and one in the slums. I spoke for the first time, and it has rather
taken it out of me.”
“Would the victory of your ‘cause’ compensate for crow’s feet?”
“Indeed it would. I really do not care. I am so glad that I have no
beauty to lose. I might not take life so seriously if I had. I am
beginning to have a suspicion that Mary Gallatin and several others
have merely taken up these great questions as a fad. Here comes mamma,
I am glad, for I am hungry. I had no time for tea to-day.”
A _portière_ was lifted aside by a servant, and Mrs. Forbes
entered the room. But for the majesty of her carriage she looked
younger than her daughter, so exquisitely chiselled were her features,
so fresh and vivid her colouring. Virginia Forbes was thirty-nine and
looked less than thirty. Her tall voluptuous figure had not outgrown a
line of its early womanhood, her neck and arms were Greek. A Virginian
by birth, she inherited her high-bred beauty from a line of ancestors
that had been fathered in America by one of Elizabeth’s courtiers.
Her eyes had the slight fullness peculiar to the Southern woman; the
colour, like that of the hair, was a dark brown warmed with a touch
of red. Her curved, scarlet mouth was not full, but the lips were
rarely without a pout, which lent its aid to the imperious charm of her
face. There were those who averred that upon the rare occasions when
this lovely mouth was off guard it showed a hint in its modelling of
self-will and cruelty. But few had seen it off guard.
She wore a tiara of diamonds, and on her neck three rows of large
stones depending lightly from fine gold chains. Her gown was of pale
green velvet, with a stomacher of diamonds. On her arm she carried an
opera cloak of emerald green velvet lined with blue fox.
Mr. Forbes’ cold brilliant eyes softened and smiled as she came toward
him, flirting her lashes and lifting her chin. For this man, whose
eyes were steel during all the hours of light, who controlled the
destinies of railroads and other stupendous enterprises and was the
back-bone of his political party, who had piled up millions as a
child piles up blocks, and who had three times refused the nomination
of his party for the highest gift of the nation, had worshipped his
wife for twenty-two years. He turned toward his home at the close of
each day with a pleasure that never lost its edge, exulting in the
thought that ambition, love of admiration, and the onerous duties
of the social leader could not tempt his wife to neglect him for an
hour. He lavished fortunes upon her. She had an immense allowance to
squander without record, a palace at Newport and another in the North
Carolina mountains, a yacht, and jewels to the value of a million
dollars. In all the years of their married life he had refused her
but one dear desire--to live abroad in the glitter of courts, and
receive the homage of princes. He had declined foreign missions again
and again. “The very breath of life for me is in America,” he had
said with final decision. “And if I wanted office I should prefer the
large responsibilities of the Presidency to the nagging worries of an
Ambassador’s life. The absurdities of foreign etiquette irritate me
now when I can come and go as I like. If they were my daily portion I
should end in a lunatic asylum. They are a lot of tin gods, anyhow,
my dear. As for you, it is much more notable to shine as a particular
star in a country of beauties, than to walk away from a lot of women
who look as if they had been run through the same mould, and are only
beauties by main strength.” And on this point she was forced to submit.
She did it with the better grace because she loved her husband with the
depth and tenacity of a strong and passionate nature. His brain and
will, the nobility and generosity of his character, had never ceased
to exercise their enchantment, despite the men that paid her increasing
court. Moreover, although the hard relentless pursuit of gold had aged
his hair and skin, Mr. Forbes was a man of superb appearance. His
head and features had great distinction; his face, when the hours of
concentration were passed, was full of magnetism and life, his eyes
of good-will and fire. His slender powerful figure betrayed little
more than half of his fifty-one years. He was a splendid specimen of
the American of the higher civilisation: with all the vitality and
enthusiasm of youth, the wide knowledge and intelligence of more than
his years, and a manner that could be polished and cold, or warm and
spontaneous, at will.
For her daughter, Mrs. Forbes cared less. She had not the order of
vanity which would have dispensed with a walking advertisement of her
years, but she resented having borne an ugly duckling, one, moreover,
that had tiresome fads. She had been her husband’s confidante in
all his gigantic schemes, financial and political, and Augusta’s
intellectual kinks bored her.
She crossed the room and gave her husband’s necktie a little twist. Mr.
Forbes sustained the reputation of being the best-groomed man in New
York, but it pleased her to think that she could improve him. Then she
fluttered her eyelashes again.
“Do I look very beautiful?” she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her.
“When you two get through spooning,” remarked Miss Forbes in a tired
voice, “suppose we go in to dinner.”
“Don’t flatter yourself that it is all for you,” Mrs. Forbes said to
her husband, “I am to meet an English peer to-night.”
“Indeed,” replied Mr. Forbes, smiling, “Have we another on the market?
What is his price? Does he only want a roof? or will he take the whole
castle, barring the name and the outside walls?”
“You are such an old cynic. This is the Duke of Bosworth, a very
charming man, I am told. I don’t know whether he is poverty-stricken or
not. I believe he paid Mabel Creighton a good deal of attention in the
autumn, when she was visiting in England.”
“He wouldn’t get much with her: Creighton is in a tight place. He may
pull out, but he has three children besides Mabel. However, there are
plenty of others to snap at this titled fish, no doubt.”
“I hope not,” said Augusta. “Dear Mabel is very fond of him; I am sure
of that. He only arrived to-day, and is going with them to the opera
to-night. How are you to meet him?”
“Fletcher Cuyler will bring him to my box, of course. Are not all
distinguished foreigners brought to my shrine at once?”
“True,” said Miss Forbes. “But _are_ we going in to dinner? I have
never heard Maurel in _Don Giovanni_, and I don’t want to lose
more than the first act.”
“There is plenty of it. But let us go in to dinner, by all means.”