TRYING THINGS ON.
The stout woman who had brought on this conversation came up now, her
face beaming with curiosity and her dress fluttering ludicrously.
“Well Herman, don’t you think I have been kept waiting about long
enough? One gets out of patience, Miss, especially when one is used to
being studied and waited on by no end of servants, and such like. Now,
if you’ll just look out of the window, you’ll find my footman watching
the front entrance like a cat, with one hand on the carriage-door; for
he knows well enough there’d be a high breeze if I was kept waiting a
single minute; so you mustn’t wonder if I am just a trifle hard on shop
girls—I always keep them on the jump.”
“Oh, I am quite ready to wait on you,” said Eva smiling.
Mrs. Carter smiled also, for her genial nature was always ready to meet
cordiality half way, and she said blandly.
“Would you mind just stepping over among the lace shawls, they tell me
you’re hired to show such things off, and I might take one, if they’ve
got something a little superber than the shawl Mrs. Lambert just brought
home from Europe. She sits right before me in church, you know, and
wears it in the most aggravating way. Every time I kneel down, that
eternal pattern of morning-glory vines, creeping over her shoulder, is
before my eyes, daring me to get anything like it, if I can, for love or
money. I’m expected to feel meek and humble all the same. It isn’t in
human nature. That woman and I can’t be members of the same church if
she keeps this thing up. One’s moral character won’t stand such strains;
kneeling at the same altar with a woman who wears a fifteen hundred
dollar lace shawl, and mine only a thousand, and Carter fairly wallowing
in greenbacks, is more than I can stand.”
Eva listened till her amused smile deepened into a laugh, which the man
heard with a thrill of pain that ran through him like an arrow. Tilled
with recollections that made his blood stir like old wine in his heart,
he drew back and watched the girl narrowly, as she conversed with his
sister.
“Oh! if you want a fifteen hundred dollar shawl, it is an easy thing to
get. Shall I go with you to the lace counter?” said Eva, quite
unconscious of the stranger’s regard.
“But it must have a morning-glory vine running through it, leaves and
bells like hers, only more of ’em. I’m resolved that our church shall
see no costlier shawl than Richard Carter’s lady wears, while it sends
up a steeple. Now just tell that young man to show us the very best he’s
got. Nothing less than fifteen hundred, understand.”
The light-haired clerk heard all this conversation, and followed the
party up to the lace counter, where he became very officious in
exhibiting shawls, to which he affixed enormous prices with a solemn
gravity of countenance that impressed Mrs. Richard Carter greatly. This
helped her to fix upon a beautiful fabric, certainly, but one she would
not have deigned to purchase at its real value, which was just five
hundred dollars less than the depletion of that huge roll of greenbacks
with which the good lady went armed on her shopping excursions.
“There,” she said, crushing the money she had left into her
reticule-purse, and winding the chain about her wrist and little finger,
on which she wore a great diamond ring outside the glove, “I begin to
feel like myself again. You are sure that a higher-priced shawl than
that isn’t to be found in New York, young man?”
“Positive of it, madam: for I don’t believe there is another salesman in
New York that would have the courage to set that figure,” he muttered,
after the first brief reply. “Not another imported. Rest content that
you have _the_ shawl of the season, madam. Shall I send it to your
carriage?”
“Yes, give it to my footman, a tall fellow in maroon livery, with a gold
band. You’ll see Carter’s and my monogram on the carriage-door.”
The clerk went away with a droll look in his eyes, and a smile
struggling on his lip; for he was well acquainted with the class of
persons to which his customer belonged—a class that, like many other
strange things in social life, is an offshoot of a civil war, which has
served to vulgarize wealth attained by accident or fraud, until refined
people shrink from competition with it in sensitive shame.
“I’m ever so much obliged to you for showing off the patterns for me,”
said Mrs. Carter, turning toward Eva with cordial warmth. “The people
always are obliging in this establishment; know in an instant when a
lady carries the look of money in her face; but I must say, that you are
the most stylish girl that I’ve seen here yet; was struck with you the
first time, wasn’t I, Herman?”
Here Mrs. Carter turned in search of her brother, who had retreated out
of hearing.
“Oh! there he is, mousing off by himself; but he don’t take his eyes
from your face. No wonder, there is enough in it to strike anyone all in
a heap. He don’t seem to get over it, though. Awful sensitive! But we
all are that. Exquisite feelings, born with us. He’s my brother, you
know—my only brother. Left New York when he was a young man, and just
come back again. I shouldn’t have known him, he’s so altered. Do you
think we look alike? He used to be very handsome, and people took us for
twins.”
A smile quivered across Eva’s lip, and the lids drooped over her
laughing eyes; but both died out suddenly as her glance fell on the
strange man, who seemed to shrink away from her mirth as if it wounded
him.
“I must not laugh,” said Eva, in her thoughts. “Perhaps he feels how
ridiculous his relative makes herself, and is annoyed by it. But why
does he look at me with such sorrowful eyes. Yes, he is a handsome man,
and seems to be both sensible and sensitive; but _her_ brother—I don’t
believe it.”
The man came forward as these thoughts disturbed the girl, asked Mrs.
Carter if she was ready to return home, and, lifting his hat with grave
politeness, led the way down stairs.
The tall footman was at his post, shut the carriage-door with a lordly
bang, and climbed up to his place by the coachman, leaving the two
persons inside to themselves.
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Carter, eagerly, “did you ever see anything so
handsome? She quite took my breath away at first. As for you, Ross, well
the color hasn’t come back to your face yet. What _is_ the matter with
you?”
“Yes, I saw,” answered the man, dreamily, “I saw that she was
beautiful.”