It was as Mr. Joseph had said. His brother, George Albert Dacre Foxley,
of Foxley Manor, Notts, was indeed contemplating marriage with Milly,
niece of Mrs. Cox, landlady of the Ipswich Inn. If it seem strange,
remember that he had passed the meridian of his years, health was gone,
life rapidly passing away and it was impossible now for him to make any
new departure in his life or habits. He had become firmly attached
to Mrs. Cox's comfortable _ménage_ and wanted nothing more. Never in
England, even while in the enjoyment of fairly good health and luxurious
surroundings had he ever felt so completely at rest, satisfied with
himself and his small immediate world, every want cared for, every wish
guessed at, and the best of company to his idea--company that called
for nothing but pure naturalness. He could smoke for hours in Mrs. Cox's
kitchen, or in her neat yard or even in the chintz-hung drawing-room
and no one would interrupt him with dissertations on politics, art or
literature. Like all Englishmen of the quiet country-loving stamp, he
cared little about politics except when some general crisis assented
itself, and knew less about art or literature. He thought Wilkie and
Landseer about the summit of the one and Byron the chief modern pillar
of the other. Twenty years ago, Tennyson had not made a very deep
impression on a mind of his calibre. Yet this handsome, quiet, delicate
gentleman when he did choose to talk had such an audience as is not
given to many men, for Mrs. Cox would leave her work (if she dared) and
Milly would listen with her young eyes fastened in a kind of ecstasy
on the dark ones turned to hers, and Squires would come along with his
hands in his trousers pockets and his fiddle under his arm, and Bess
would put her paws upon her master's knees and devour him with her own
dark eyes--a quintette of friends unsurpassed in the world for loyal
attachment and generous devotion. What if what he had to tell was but
some simple story of hunting England, or some bald description of London
life seen under the surveillance of a tutor fifteen or twenty years
previous to the time of narration--he was their oracle, prophet, God,
what you will, and they were his dearest, yes, his very dearest friends.
When Mr. Joseph appeared as one of this happy circle, it became more
boisterous of course though not necessarily any happier, for it
was already as happy as it could be. But the news from town and the
occasional English mail, flowers and a cheap new novel--these were some
of the simple delights that Mr. Joseph used to bring with him. During
the first couple of years, both the brothers would saunter out to the
Miss Dexters' or to the Rectory, Mr. Joseph in particular, never failing
to appear on Saturday nights at choir-practice and Sunday evening
service--but Mr. George gradually discontinued his visits as I have
hinted and towards the fourth year of his stay hardly ever went beyond
the Inn. For at the back the small terraced garden met the orchard, and
the orchard sloping down met a small pebbly brook, and the brook flowing
along in sweet rippling fashion met the most charming of wheat covered
golden meadows in which it was pleasant and good to stroll and which
moreover all belonged to that matchless paragon among landladies, Mrs.
Cox. In those days people grew their own kitchen stuff, and their own
fruit and their own grain, fed their own live stock, made their own
butter and cheese, cured their own hams, laid their own eggs, even
brewed their own beer. Now, everything is different, and let no
confiding Englishman, allured by my tempting picture come out to Canada
today in search of such a Utopia for he will not find it. Moreover all
this pleasant prospect of wood and stream and meadow and orchard lay
well _behind_ the Inn, let it be understood, and it was perfectly
possible for Mr. George Foxley to have all the air, walking and
exploration he desired and even a little shooting and fishing if he
wanted them without, as I have said, going beyond it. When he grew
really weak, he was obliged to give up both the latter occupations of
course, but he still walked or strolled a great deal, generally with
Milly by his side. She would leave anything she was at when he called
her and opening the little gate by the one hawthorn tree leading into
the orchard, see him safe down the slope to the side of the little brook
where she would give him her arm, and thus their walk would commence in
earnest. Four years had brought a great change in Milly. New ideas, new
habits, association with such thorough and high-bred gentleman and
the natural desire to improve and grow worthy of such dearly esteemed
company, had altered her completely. Where before she had been pink,
now she was pale; thin, where she had been plump; her features actually
aquiline from the girlish snub of the rounded contour four years back,
her hair, three shades darker, her dress, almost that of a lady. The
most perfect sympathy appeared to exist, and really did, between these
two strangely met natures.
One day, they had sat down at the side of the brook as a couple of
children would have done to cast in sticks and leaves and watch them
float by. Sometimes these would get caught in the numberless little
eddies that such a stream possesses and be whirled round and round until
it was necessary to dislodge them and send them on their way after the
others. One fine yellow leaf on this November day attracted Mr. Foxley's
attention particularly, for it was obstinate in returning again and
again to a cosy little bay formed by a couple of large stones. Often
as he poked it out, back it came into the bay and anchored itself
contentedly on the calm water.
Milly laughed.
“He has found a haven,” said Mr. George. “Yes, without doubt he has
found his haven. What do you think, Milly?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Don't call me sir, child. What makes you do so?”
“There is nothing else I can call you, is there,--sir.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Foxley. He lay back at full length on the grass and put
his hands over his eyes. The river rippled on and Milly watched him
anxiously. “Is the leaf there still, Milly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now!” said Mr. Foxley in a warning tone. “I tell you I won't have it.”
“No, sir--I beg your pardon, Mr. George.”
“Nor that either,” said Mr. Foxley, slowly rising into a sitting posture
again. He had another poke at the yellow leaf. “Call me Dacre, my child,
will you?” Milly no longer watched him with those loving, anxious, eyes.
She was trembling from head to foot and had she spoken, she must have
wept. Mr. Foxley's voice was of itself enough to make any woman weep, it
was so soft, so tender, so subdued and indrawn. Once more he said, “Call
me Dacre, my child!” That pleading voice, so low, so musical, and that
it should plead to her? They were so close together that he could
feel her tremble. Weak as he was, he was the stronger of the two for
a moment, and turning slightly towards her met her rapturous eyes, and
heard her call him the name he wanted to hear. The same instant they
kissed, a long thrilling dark-enfolding kiss that was the first Milly
had ever known from a man and might have been, for its purity and
restraint, the first also that he had ever given to a woman.
“Have I found my haven too, like the wise leaf of autumn? Have I! Tell
me, my child, my darling!”
“O sir, dearest sir--I mean, dear Dacre, it is I who have found mine. If
indeed you care for me, sir!”
Mr. Foxley laid his head just on her shoulder, then let it slide into
her lap, taking her trembling hands and putting them over his eyes.
“I do more than care for you, my child. I love you. Stoop and kiss me.
There. Don't take your head away again like that. Leave it. Your face
against mine. Your lips on mine. Is it a haven, child? Truly, yes or
no?”
“Dear Dacre!”
“Well!”
“You know it is. And I have always wanted so much to--to--care for you,
but I did not dare.”
“Dare! There is no dare about it my child. If you will give me your
young life--how old are you now, love?”
“Nineteen,” whispered Milly into his ear.
“Only nineteen, and such a tall girl, with such long hair--if you will
give it to me and be happy in giving it, child, that must be thought of,
there is no one else--”
“You know there is not, sir.”
“Then I will do all I can to deserve it. And nobody must call you Milly
any more. You are Mildred now. Miss Mildred if you like and soon, very
soon, to bear another name, mine. It is a good one, child.”
“I am sure of it, dear Dacre, and too good--far too good--for me.”
“Do you know how old I am, my child?”
“I heard your brother say.”
“And did he dare? What did he say it was, my age?”
“He said--you were forty-one.”
“Then he was out. It is more than that I am exactly forty-three; I say
exactly, for, Milly, this is my birthday, and--I cannot hope--neither of
as must dare to hope, child--that I shall see many more. You will marry
me whenever I say, my love?”
The girl bent over him in a passion of weeping.
“There is nothing I would not do for you, dear sir--”
“Except call me by my dearly-beloved third name!”
It began to turn cold as they sat by the stream and Milly or Mildred as
she is henceforth to be called, drying her eyes, fell into a fever over
her lover and besought him to return to the house.
Standing face to face, he put her arms around his neck.
“Before we go, dear child, you are sure you love me?”
“O do not ask me again, dear Dacre!”
“That is right. And you know how old I am?”
Another assent.
“And that you are to marry me whenever I say?”
“If I can.”
“Of course you can. And that you are to give me all the love you
possibly have to give and more and more. I shall be exacting!”
“Dear Dacre!”
“Very well. Remember all those clauses, and now take me back to the
house. And some day, my child, I will tell you all my life and what it
was--or rather who it was--that sent me out of England, dear England--”
“Ah! you love it still,” murmured Mildred, looking at the ground.
“I shall always love it _now_, since I have found my happiness in
Canada, but once I hated it, Milly, yes, I hated it!”
So was accomplished the wooing of Mr. George Foxley. He was earnestly
and sincerely in love. The girl had grown up under his eye as it
were and was in fact almost a part of himself already. Marriage would
complete the refining and gilding process. The tones of her voice,
her accent, her pronunciation, her habits of sitting, of standing, of
walking were all more or less unconsciously imitated from him, she had
modelled herself upon him, she was indeed his “child” as he loved to
call her. For a month these two people enjoyed as pure and perfect and
isolated an happiness as can be experienced on earth. Then it became
necessary to inform Mr. Joseph and worthy Mrs. Cox. As if Mr. Joseph and
Mrs. Cox didn't know! There are two things that nothing can hide in
this life. One is, the light in the eyes of a girl who has found herself
loved by the man she adores, and the other is, the unutterable content
in the mien of that man himself. And there is no phase of passion
sweeter, nor purer, nor warmer, nor more satisfying, than that which is
the result of a young girl's affection for a man many years older than
herself.
As for the telling, Mr. George, though he could talk fast enough and
fluently enough to Mildred, hated much talk or fuss about anything and
so made everything the easier by informing his brother, Mr. Joseph, by
note. A few lines sufficed as preparation for the news and he ended
by requesting him to purchase some small and inexpensive gift as from
himself in appreciation of the occasion. Mr. Joseph with characteristic
good taste and delicate feeling, concluded that flowers, though
perishable, were the most appropriate purchase he could light upon, and
consequently walked out from town a certain Saturday afternoon late in
November with a monster affair in smilax and roses in his hand. When
it was placed, though not by himself, in Mildred's hands she felt a
disappointment she could not altogether conceal.
“Never mind,” said Mr. George at full length on a sofa with Milly beside
him on a chair. He did indeed prove a most exacting lover. For a long
time her share of daily work in the Inn and out of it, had been growing
less and less, until now she hardly did anything at all besides wait on
her master, lover and friend, prepare what he eat, read to him, and
sit by him for hours, never leaving him in the evenings till long after
twelve and then it was understood that in case of night attacks of the
dreadful pleurisy and asthma combined that were slowing killing him, she
would always be at hand to come at the sound of his bell--or indeed his
voice, for Milly, sleeping in the room opposite his own, always left
both doors open and would lie fully dressed on her bed night after
night, listening in the dark, with wide open eyes and strained ears, for
the slightest cough or sigh that came from that worshipped one across
the narrow hall.
“Never mind,” said he on that Saturday night “My brother _is_ busy just
now. Don't you remember, he found it difficult to come out last week.
It's an awful grind for Joseph, poor Joseph! But he enjoys life, I
think; at the present moment I expect he is flirting audaciously in town
with some charming girl. Or some fearfully plain one. You never know who
next, with my brother. He'll turn up on Monday.”
And Mr. Joseph did turn up on Monday. Farmer Wise had fetched some
doctor from Orangetown on Sunday, who after examining his injury,
pronounced it incurable. Mr. Joseph was as stoical as Englishmen are
generally expected to be and saw that it was absolutely imperative to
tell his brother.
“I brought it on myself” he said to the farmer, “At least I try to
believe I did. By Jove! to think--to think of some men! Well, I _must_
tell my brother.”
When he did tell him late on Monday night, having been driven over by
Farmer Wise himself, with his poor eyes bandaged and the sturdy farmer's
hand to guide him into the little back parlor where Mr. George and
Mildred sat alone, for Mrs. Cox had been ordered out by that exacting
gentleman as early as eight o'clock. Nothing but the presence of Mildred
herself and the love divine and human that filled Mr. George's breast to
overflowing could have saved him from succumbing to the painful shock.
“Well, I should think you are cured now, my poor Joseph!” said his
brother presently.
“Of what, in heaven's name?” said poor Mr. Joseph. “By Jove to think--to
think of some men, George! What had I done, what had I done?”
“I do think of them,” said Mr. Foxley gravely. “I do think of them.
And but for my happiness here,” touching Mildred's dress reverently,
“I could wish--” wistfully, “That we had never come here--'twas I who
brought you my poor Joseph, 'twas I, 'twas I.”
“Oh! that's rubbish!” pronounced Mr. Joseph energetically. “The main
point is now, how am I to get my living. God! I am perfectly useless!
They won't take me back in town there.”
“Dear Mr. Joseph,” said Mildred, with her eyes shining on the brother of
her lover. “You will live with us of course, with--Dacre, Dacre and me,
and my aunt. We all love you--see,” and Milly rose, first pressing Mr.
George's fingers as they touched her dress in passing and giving him a
look which was meant to keep him in order for a few moments, “no one can
nurse you as well as I can--ask Dacre--let me take off that bandage and
put it on again more comfortably for you! Will you, dear Mr. Joseph?”
Mr. Joseph groaned and hid his face against Milly's heaving breast.
“She is to be your angel as well as mine, perhaps,” murmured his
brother.
“I have always been so active,” groaned poor Mr. Joseph, “What is to
become of me? To live here with you would have been beautiful, but
now--the simple thought of existence at all anywhere is unbearable! And
the money--good God, George, how can I Help giving way!”
Some few other such scenes had naturally to be gone through before any
course could be suggested to Mr. Joseph. Mrs. Cox had been taken into
confidence, and Farmer Wise made to understand that nothing must be said
about the unhappy affair. Mr. Joseph wrote into town explaining in some
way his resignation of the rather important clerkship he had but just
begun to fill creditably, and sending for all his belongings took to
Mrs. Cox's remaining little room under the roof in the character of an
invalid. The secret was admirably kept, even by the doctor who had been
written to and who had seen a similar case some years ago.
“A jealous devil, I suppose,” said he, when he read Mr. George Foxley's
note.
“Well, he might have come off worse. But I should like to know who the
country lass was that he'd been sparkin', and who revenged herself like
that.”
A few weeks afterwards Mildred was married to George Albert Dacre
Foxley, of Foxley Manor, Notts, by the Rev. Mr. Higgs in the village
church. Her lover looked wonderfully well and strong on the occasion
and was so happy that he was actually mischievously inclined during the
ceremony, nearly causing his bride to laugh out audibly. Handsome and
distinguished and aristocratic a gentleman as he looked, Mildred was not
unworthy of him, as a straighter, firmer, more composed and more smiling
a bride never entered a church. The girl was too happy to know what
nervousness meant nor self-consciousness. She sat with her lover after
he was dressed and had lain down a few moments to rest, until it
was time to start in the carriage which Mr. Rattray had in the most
unexpected manner offered them and which Mr. George accepted with the
easy languid grace that characterized his acceptance of most things in
this world excepting Milly. He had plenty of force and passion and to
spare concerning _that_ gift. Stipulating that “Squires” must sit on
the box seat, he and Milly and Mrs. Cox, an ideal little wedding party,
drove off in actually high glee, laughing and chatting and joking
immoderately to the amazement of the villagers, prominent among whom
were Mrs. Woods and “Woods” himself, rescued in a dazed condition from
the back premises of the “Temperance Hotel” according to popular local
tradition, and Mrs. Lyman, B. Rattray, _née_ Maria Higgs. Mr. Joseph
alas! could not be present.
In the year that followed this remarkable marriage, the relative
positions of the Mr. Foxleys underwent a great change. So much love and
so much care lightened the elder brother's existence so materially,
that his health actually improved, and by the end of the sixth month
of marriage he was able to shoot and fish once more, and walk with his
adoring wife without the help of her strong arm and shoulder. Indeed it
was she who about this time began to need his assistance during those
long strolls by the side of the brook or through the tall grain
grown meadows--a matter which astonished them both to the extent of
stupefaction. Mr. George took his trouble to Mrs. Cox.
“I don't know what you expected, Mr. George, I don't indeed,” said she,
secretly amused at his simplicity. “You went and got married, as was
only natural, and now you are frightened at the results, as is only
natural.”
“But, my dear lady,” expostulated the perplexed gentleman, “it involves
so many things, all manner of complications. For instance, money. I
shall have--I really believe, my dear good Mrs. Cox--I shall have to
make some money.”
“You!” ejaculated Mrs. Cox.
“I know. It appears hopeless. I never turned a penny, honest or
otherwise in my life. Joseph you see--ah! poor Joseph!”
Poor Joseph indeed, darkness for light, solitude for society, enforced
idleness for long-continued habits of activity, who could enjoy life
under these circumstances--and careful of him as Mildred was, and
sympathetic as his brother was, these two were too intensely absorbed
in each other to give him all the amusement and attention he craved.
He grew thin and weak and slightly perverse and seemed to care more for
Mrs. Cox's company than for his brother's. And yet there was nothing
wrong with him except his terrible affliction. Mrs. Cox was sure he
had something on his mind, and one day she ventured to tell him so. He
flushed all over his pale freckled skin, and feeling for her motherly
hands took them in his own.
“There is,” he said. “I wonder no one has ever guessed it. Miss Dexter,
where is she? Does anyone ever see her?”
“My poor boy, my dear Mr. Joseph,” cried Mrs. Cox. “You did not really
care for her, did you? Surely! You did not care for her!”
“No,” said he decidedly. “No, I did not care for her--I didn't, never
could have cared for her as George cares for Mildred, say--but she was
a lady and kind to me, and I liked to go there, and the fact is--I miss
her--and I am so sorry for her! and yet, you know, I am half frightened
of her too and afraid to go out, thinking she may meet me and I wouldn't
see her coming, you know! Yet she wouldn't do it again, I think!”
“Heaven save us, no, Mr. Joseph! And you so forgiving! Mercy me, and
people say men make all the trouble!”
“It's half-and-half, Mrs. Cox, dear old soul,” muttered Mr. Joseph,
leaning back on his cushions. “I suppose we were both to blame. I can't,
for the life of me, fall to talking of it as a judgment, for before
heaven, I had done nothing. Yet I forgot how lonely she was and how
proud, and I forgot too, that Ellen--that Ellen--”
“Ay, Mr. Joseph. It was Ellen too. Poor Ellen, that passed away out of
it all!”
“And she--Miss Dexter--is still here, still living by herself in the
cottage by the oak! I remember so well, Mrs. Cox, the first time my
brother and I ever saw that oak!”
“I daresay, Mr. Joseph, I daresay. Yes, she is still there, living in
her cottage unloved and unheeded, Mr. Joseph. And may she ever continue
so!”
“Oh! don't say that, dear old soul! Don't say that! Do you know, I
should like to see her--I mean--meet her once again!”
Mrs. Cox was certain he was not in “his right head” as she said to
herself.
“See her again! Meet her, talk to her! The woman who served ye like
this! what can you be thinking of? Let me call your brother. There he is
coming along the road, brown and bonny, with his wife on his arm, bless
them both?”
“Did you say he was brown, Mrs. Cox? My brother brown! What a change! He
looks so well then, dear old soul!”
“If you could but see him, Mr. Joseph, you would see how well.”
“Well and brown! And Mildred, she is pale, I suppose, and with her
eyes turned up to his and her lips brushing his shoulder every now and
then--O I can see them--I suppose they go on a worse than ever.”
“Indeed and they do, Mr. Joseph. After, breakfast this morning I sent
them up into the drawing-room to be out of the way of the drover's
meeting to be held in the bar, and when I went up to ask them about the
lunch they would take with them on the river this afternoon I heard no
sound like and just whispered at the door a bit if I might come in. When
I went in, there was your brother standing behind her in a chair, with
all her hair down, and a brush in his hand and his wife fast asleep!
He looked frightened for a minute when he saw me and I besought him to
bring her to, thinking he'd mesmerized her. He'd been brushing it and
playing with it and the morning over warm--she had fallen asleep. And
I left them, Mr. Joseph, I left them, for they love each other so. And
when I think of the honor he has done my girl, and how particular he is
that she shall be called Mrs. Foxley--it--”
“Well, well, Mrs. Cox, ours is a good name, and I do not think my
brother would have ever allowed any but a good girl to bear it. And if
a girl is lovely and gentle and pure-minded, and innocent, and neat, and
clean, and refined as your niece was, it matters not about her birth.
Birth! O my dear old soul, I am sick of the word! Miss Dexter now, is a
lady, you know.”
“Ay.”
“And I must see her again,” enforced Mr. Joseph, brought back to his one
idea. “I must see her again.”
Mrs. Cox communicated this intelligence to her niece, Mrs. Foxley.
“I think I can understand why,” said she, lying back in her husband's
arms one hot summer night under the trees at the back of the blouse. “It
seems a hard wish to understand and a harder one to comply with, but it
may have to be done. Dacre--”
“What my darling!”
“When are you going to tell me about your life in England
and--and--about the woman who sent you out of it?”
“The woman! I never told you about a woman, child!”
“No. But I guessed. It is sure to have been a woman, Dacre.”
“Well, I don't mind when I tell you. Nothing of all that time is
anything to me now. Shall I tell you now?”
“If you please, dearest Dacre. For I must be close to you when I listen
to that, and must not have you see me, for I know I shall cry.”
“Dearest child! Well then, it shall be now, for you could scarcely be
closer to me than you are now? And if you cry, as you must try not to
do, you shall be allowed to cry here upon my breast and I will not look.
I can hardly see you as it is, it is so dark. Let me think, how I shall
begin. You know Joseph--our poor Joseph--is my only brother and I never
had any sisters. My father--you know this too--is an English country
gentleman living in one of the most beautiful seats in England. If I
were to describe the old place to you, you would want to go, and I
could not spare you, so I will only say--well, you have seen those
photographs?”
“Yes, dearest Dacre.”
“They only give you a faint idea of what it is. It is Tudor you know--do
you know what Tudor is, Mrs. Foxley--and all red brick, weathered all
colors, and terraced, with lots of little windows and some big ones with
stained glass in them, and urns on the terrace, and a rookery, and an
old avenue of poplars, haunted too, and so on, and so on--there's no end
to it, Mildred! Yes, it's a fine old place, without doubt Well, that
is where I was born. I don't remember my mother. I wish I did. She died
when Joseph was born, he is just four years younger than I am. Our youth
was passed there--at the Manor, of course, and we had the usual small
college education not extending to a university career that gentleman's
sons have in England, you know. I didn't make many friends at school,
and where we lived, there was no one to visit, and we had very few
relations. It is quite unusual I believe for two boys to grow up as we
did, in comparative isolation. My father was a kind of Dombey--you know
Dombey, Mildred--wrapped up in his old place and the associations of
his youth and in his family pride. The Foxleys are better born I believe
than half of the aristocracy; we go back to the Conquest on my father's
side--a thing which he never permits himself to forget for an instant.
Well, Milly, it was a dull life for two lively, affectionate lads like
Joseph and me, wasn't it, and had it not been for all this, child,
nature, you know, and the trees and the streams and the out-door sports
I love so well, I could never have got on at all. Then when I was
nineteen--just your age, love--came a change. I, being the elder and
heir to the estate was sent off to town--I mean, London, my dear--and
the Continent, with a tutor. Joseph--well, I believe I have never fully
understood what became of Joseph during the four years I was away, but
I suppose he amused himself. He has a knack of doing that I never had,
except when I am in the country. Well, this tutor wasn't a bad sort of
a fellow and at first we got on splendidly, living in town in chambers,
going to the plays and the opera, and dining all over, just wherever
I liked or he knew, and excursions oat of London, you know--oh! jolly
enough for a little while! Then we went across to Paris--”
“Yes, dearest Dacre?”
Mr. Foxley stopped a moment to lift his wife's face closer to his own.
He kissed it--a long long kiss that entranced them both to the degree of
forgetting the story.
“If you would rather not go on--” said Mildred.
“Oh! I must now. Well, we did Paris, and then the other capitals and
Nice--Nice was just then coming into vogue, and ran down into Italy--I
remember I liked Genoa so much--and then we came back to Paris, for
Harfleur--that was the tutor's name, and it doesn't sound like a real
one, does it--preferred Paris to any other European town and of course
so did I. About this time, his true character began to show itself. He
went out frequently without me, smoked quite freely, would order in
wine and get me to drink with him, and was very much given to calling
me fresh, green, and all that you know. I began to think he was right. I
was past twenty-one, and I had never even had a glimpse into the
inside of life. Women, now and all that kind of thing--I was positively
ignorant of--but to be sure, one quickly learns in Paris.”
For one night, Harfleur asked me in his usual sneering tone how I was
going to spend my evening.
“I am going out to a charming _soirée_ at the house of Madame de
L'Estarre, the most charming woman in Paris,” said he.
“'Then I shall accompany you,' I said, fired by his insulting tone. And
I went, Mildred. I suppose I was good-looking, eh, my child--and had
sufficient air of distinction about me to impress Madame de L'Estarre,
for she left the crowd of waxed and perfumed Frenchmen and devoted
herself entirely to me. Although she was--beautiful--she was not tall,
and I, standing at her side all that evening, never took my eyes off her
dazzling face and her white uncovered bosom. In a week, my child, I had
learnt to know and love every feature in that dazzling face and began
to dream of the day when I should be allowed to kiss that bosom. Yes, I
certainly loved her.”
“I am sure you loved her, Dacre my darling. And how could she help
loving you, dear, in return?”
“Oh that is another thing entirely, quite another thing. After that
night, Harfleur showed me more respect than he had done for some time
previously and we began to hit it off again better. I went to her
_hotel_--her house you know, every day. At first she would always
receive me alone, sending anybody away who happened to be there and
refusing to admit anybody who came while we were together.--It is
difficult, even to my wife, to explain what kind of a woman she was. All
that first time, when we would be alone, she would--make love, I suppose
it must be called--with her eyes and her hands, and her very skirts
and her fan, and the cushion, and the footstool. The room was always
beautiful and always dim, and she would greet me with outstretched hands
and a shy smile, making room for me beside her on the sofa--she always
sat on a sofa. We would talk of nothing at all perhaps but look into
each other's eyes, until the force of her look would draw me close,
close to her till we were almost in one another's arms, and I could feel
her breath coming faster every moment when just as I imagined she would
sink upon my shoulder--she would draw herself up with a laugh and push
me away, declaring somebody was coming. Then, if nobody came, she would
go through the same farce again. This would happen perhaps two or three
times a day. In the evening, I was again at her side, night after night
regarding her with a devotion that amazed even my friend Harfleur.
“She treats you like a dog. It will kill you yet, George. Come away.”
But of course I would not go. I accompanied her to the theatre, to the
Bois, to the shops, to church--yes, even to church, Mildred, think of
that--and she was very careful and circumspect and all that. I even
believe as far as direct actions go, she may have been a virtuous woman,
for she certainly, had no other lover when I knew her. She was a widow,
enormously rich and nothing to do. Therefore, I suppose she went in for
the torturing business as a profession. Her Frenchmen did not mind; that
was the secret of her charm with them--so clever, they called her, but
it nearly killed me, her cleverness. I grew pale and worn--sleep--I
never slept. All my life I had lived without natural affection, and
now I was pouring forth upon this woman the love I might have rendered
friends, sister, brother, mother, as well as the passion of a young man.
I say to you now, Mildred, my wife, that the woman who tramples on the
passion of a young man is as bad as the man who slays the innocence of a
young girl. And that's what she did. Finally, when this had lasted for a
year and a half, and Harfleur had gone back to England, one day, when I
was perfectly desperate and could have killed her, Milly, as she lay at
full length on her damned sofa--pardon, my dear, no, don't kiss my hand,
child, don't--dressed in some rose-colored stuff all trailing about
her and her hands clasped under her head, I fell by her on my knees and
besought her to tell me what she meant and if she ever could care for
me. I give you my word, my dear, and with my hand over your innocent
heart, you know I dare not lie--in all that year and a half I had not
even touched her lips. You cannot, happily imagine the torture of such a
position.
Well, that day, she bent over to me on her side and said “What do you
want, is it to kiss me? Chut! wait for that till we are married.”
“Do you mean to marry me?” I gasped out. “She said 'yes,' Mildred, and
brushed my cheek with her lips. What do you think I did then, Mildred?”
“How can I tell, dearest Dacre!”
“I fainted, dearest. Think of it. But I believed her, you see, and the
revulsion was too great. In a moment or two I came to myself with
the sounds of laughter in my ears. I was on her sofa--that damned
sofa--pardon again, my dear--and she was standing with three of her
cursed Frenchmen around her all laughing fit to kill themselves. I
saw through it all in a moment. They had been on the other side of the
curtains. I went straight up to her and said 'Did you say that you were
ready to become my wife?' She only laughed and the men too with her.
Then I struck her--on her white breast, Milly--and struck the three
Frenchmen on the face one after the other. They were so astonished that
not one of them moved, and I parted the curtains, and left the house.”
“Did you never see her again?”
“Never. I left Paris considerably wiser than I had entered it and
avoided society generally. I had one year's life in London, and was
considered no end of a catch by the mammas, I believe, but you can
imagine I did not easily fall a victim. No. That is all my story, my
dear, all at least that has been unguessed at by you. My health was very
bad at home and beyond my love of sport I cared for nothing. I grew to
hate my life in England, even England, though she had done me no harm.
Finally, I quarrelled with my father who married again, a woman we both
disliked, Joseph and I, and so we turned our backs on the Old World and
came out to Canada and to--you.”
Mildred still lay, crying softly, in her husband's arms. “I had
sometimes dreamt,” continued Mr. Foxley, “of meeting some young girl who
could love me and on whose innocence and sweetness I could rest and whom
besides I should really love. It did not dawn upon me when I first saw
you, that _you_ were the one I wanted, for we must confess, dear, that
you were very plump and rather pink and spoke--”
“Why, Dacre, how can you? I was only fifteen! Cruel!”
“Yes, I know. And how you changed! Now, you are so different that it is
not the same Mildred at all. Such is the power of a true love, my child,
and we must always be happy,--ours is one of those marriages.”
Theirs was indeed one of those marriages. Mr. Foxley took to farming and
enriched his purse as well as his health. Mr. Joseph had an interview
with Miss Dexter the nature of which I am not going to reveal, but which
resulted in a placid intimacy between the two to the surprise of all
save Milly who always said that “she thought she knew why.” Miss Dexter
frequently accompanied blind Mr. Joseph on his lonely walks or would
sit with him when the others were out, as none but he cared to meet her.
Towards his death which occurred in about four years time, she was with
him constantly, and died herself in a fortnight after, having left in
her will, all her maiden belongings to her “good friend, Farmer
Wise.” The farmer was not much moved when informed of this fact, so
incomprehensible to the rest of the village. He had always kept the
little bottle with its cruel label, and had always feared and avoided
poor, proud, foolish, wicked Charlotte Dexter since that Saturday night.
As for Mr. George and his wife, I see a vision of a successful and happy
husband and father in the prime of early old age (which means, that at
fifty-three one is not old with a young wife and three sweet children)
and of Mildred, who is always a little pale, has her eyes constantly
turned up to her husband's with her lips brushing her shoulder every now
and then.
Still?
Ay, still and forever. And so ends my sketch of how the Mr. Foxleys
came, stayed and never went away.
The Gilded Hammock.
Who does not know the beautiful Miss De Grammont? Isabel De Grammont,
who lives by herself and is sole mistress of the brown-stone mansion in
Fifth Avenue, the old family estate on the Hudson, the villa at Cannes,
the first floor of a magnificently decayed palace at Naples, who has
been everywhere, seen everything and--cared for nobody?
She reclines now in her latest craze--a hammock made of pure gold wire,
fine and strong and dazzling as the late October sun shines upon it
stretched from corner to corner of her regally-furnished drawing-room.
Two gilded tripods securely fastened to the floor hold the ends of the
hammock in which she lies. The rage for yellow holds her as it holds
everyone who loves beauty and light and sunshine. Cushions of yellow
damask support her head, and a yellow tiger-skin is under her feet.
The windows are entirely hidden with thick amber draperies, and her own
attire is a clinging gown of some soft silk of a deep creamy tint that
as she sways to and fro in the hammock is slightly lifted, displaying
a petticoat of darker tint, and Russian slippers of bronzed kid. Amber,
large clear and priceless, gleams in its soft waxy glow in her hair, on
her neck, round her waist, where it clasps a belt of thick gold cloth
and makes a chain for a fan of yellow feathers.
Because you see, although it is autumn, it is very warm all through Miss
De Grammont's mansion, as she insists on fires, huge bonfires, you may
call them, of wood and peat in every room and on every hearth. Out of
the fires grew the desire for the hammock.
“Why,” says Miss De Grammont, with a faint yawn, “why must I only lie in
a hammock in the Summer, and then, where nobody can see me? I will have
a hammock made for the winter, to lie in and watch my fires by.”
And so she did, for money is law and beauty creates duty, and one day,
when the fashionable stream, the professional cliques and the artistic
hangers-on called upon her “from three to six,” they were confronted
by the vision of an exquisitely beautiful woman dressed in faint yellow
with great bunches of primroses in brass bowls from Morocco on a table
by her side, who received them in a “gilded hammock,” with her feet on
a tiger-skin, and her chestnut hair catching a brighter tinge from the
flames of her roaring fire, and the sunlight as it came in through the
amber medium of the silken-draped windows.
The tea was Russian, like the slippers, and the butler who presented
it was a mysterious foreigner who spoke five languages. The guests all
wondered, as people always did, at De Grammont. Nobody knew quite what
she had done with herself since she had been left an orphan at the age
of nineteen. She suddenly shot up into a woman, beautiful, with that
patrician and clear-cut loveliness with yet a touch of the _bohémienne_
about it which only _les belles Américaines_ know. Then she took unto
herself a maid, two dogs, and three Saratoga trunks and went over to
Europe wandering about everywhere. At Cannes, she met and subjugated
the heir to the crown; of this friendship the tiger-skin remained as a
_souvenir_. The heir to the crown was not generous. Next came various
members of embassies, all proud, all poor, and all frantically in love.
She laid all manner of traps for her lovers and discovered in nearly
every case that these men were after her money. A certain Russian Grand
Duke, from whom had come some superb amber ornaments--he being a man of
more wealth than the others--never forgave her the insult she offered
him. He sent her these ornaments from the same shop in Paris that
he ordered--at the same time--a diamond star for a well-known ballet
dancer, and the two purchases were charged to his account. Through some
stupidity, the star came to her. She ordered her horses and drove the
same day to the jewelers, who was most humble and anxious to retrieve
his error. He showed her the amber. She examined it carefully. “It is
genuine, and very fine,” she said gravely. “I have lived in Russia and I
know. I am very fond of amber. I will buy this myself from you, and you
may inform His Highness of the fact.”
The delighted shop-keeper did not ask her very much more than its
genuine value and next day all Paris knew of the transaction and flocked
to the Opera to see her in the ornaments which had cost the Russian
Duke his friendship for the bearer. But though eccentric, impulsive and
domineering, no whisper had ever attached itself to her name. On her
return to her native New York, was she not welcomed, fêted, honored,
besieged with invitations everywhere? People felt she was different from
the girl who went away. _She_ had been undecided, emotional, a trifle
vain, self-conscious, guilty of moods--no small offence in society; this
glorious creature was a queen, a goddess, always calm, always serene,
always a trifle bored, always superbly the same. Her house she
re-furnished altogether. The three Saratoga trunks were now represented
by nine or ten English ones, dress baskets, large packing cases, and one
mysterious long box which when opened contained several panels of old
Florentine carved wood-work which interested all New York immensely.
Pictures and tapestries, armor and screens, and a gate of mediæval
wrought iron were all among her art treasures. The foreign butler was
her _chargé d'affaires_, and managed everything most wisely and
even economically. He engaged a few servants in New York, her maid,
housekeeper and the two housemaids she had brought out with her. Her
house was the perfect abode of the most faultless æstheticism. It was
perfection in every detail and in the _ensemble_ which greeted the eye,
the ear, every sense, and all mental endowments, from the vestibule in
marble and rugs to the inner boudoir and sanctum of the mistress of the
house, hung with pale rose and straw-color in mingled folds of stamped
Indian silks, priceless in color and quality. Two Persian cats adorned
the lounge and one of her great dogs--a superb mastiff--occupied the rug
before the door night and day, almost without rest.
Such were the general surroundings of Isabel de Grammont. Art and
letters, music and general culture were inseparable from the daily life
of such a woman as well as immediate beautiful presences, so that into
this faultless house came everything new that the world offered in
books, magazines, songs and new editions. Thanks to European travel,
there was no language she could not read, no modern work she had not
studied. Also came to her receptions the literary lions of New York.
Aspiring journalists, retiring editors, playrights and composers, a
few actors and crowds of would-be poets flocked to the exquisite
drawing-rooms hung with yellow, wherein the owner of so much
magnificence lounged in her golden hammock. Sonnets were written of
her descriptive of orioles flying in the golden west, and newspaper
paragraphs indited weekly in her praise referred to her as the
“Semiramus of a new and adoring society world.” Baskets of flowers, tubs
of flowers, barrels of flowers were sent weekly to her address, and
she was solicited--on charitable, fashionable, religious, communistic,
orthodox and socialistic grounds as lady patroness of this or member of
that and subscriber to the other. In short, she was a success, and as
nothing succeeds like success, we may take it that as the months rolled
on, and the great house still maintained its superb hospitality and Miss
De Grammont still appeared in her sumptuous carriage either smothered
in furs or laces according to the seasons, she still maintained in
like manner her position in society and her right to the homage and
admiration of all classes.
But this was not the case. Even a worm will turn and public opinion is
very often a little vernacular, let us say. And it happened, that public
opinion in the case of Miss De Grammont, began to turn, to raise itself
up in fact and look a little about it and beyond it as we have all seen
worms do--both in cheeses and out of them--when the fact that she lay
most of the time in a gilded hammock swung in front of her drawing-room
fire was announced from the pulpits of society journals. It may have
been that her friends were devoid of imagination, that they were cold,
prudish, satirical, unpoetical, unaesthetic, anything we like to call
them, that will explain their action in the matter, for they clearly,
one and all, disliked the notion of the hammock. One spoke of it
disparagingly to another, who took it up and abused it to a third,
who described it to a friend who “wrote for the papers.” This gifted
gentleman who lodged with a lady of the same temper and edited a fashion
journal, concocted with her help a description of the thing which soon
found its way into his paper and was then copied into hers. The public
grew uneasy. It would swallow any story it was told about the Heir
Apparent, for instance and a Russian Grand Duke--is it not the sublime
prerogative of American women to dally with such small game as those
gentlemen--but it kicked against the probability of such an actual fact
as the hammock already described which seemed too ridiculous a whim
to possess any real existence. However, the tongues of the fashionable
callers, the professional cliques and the artistic hangers-on coincided
in the affair to that extent that soon the existence of the gilded
hammock was established and from that time Miss De Grammonts' popularity
was on the wane. Dowagers looked askance and matrons posed in a
patronizing manner, the flippant correspondents of society journals and
the compilers of sonnets in which that very hammock had been eulogized
and metaphored to distraction now waited upon her, if at all in an
entirely different manner. Strange how all classes began to recall the
many peculiar or unaccountable things she had done, the extraordinary
costumes she had worn, the fact that she lived alone, and the other fact
that she made so few friends. From aspersions cast on her house, her
equipage, her dresses, there came to be made strictures on her private
character, her love affairs, her friends and career in Europe, her
_ménage_ at present in New York and the members thereof. Finally public
opinion finding that all this made very little impression outwardly,
upon the regal disdain of Miss De Grammont in her carriage or in her
Opera-stall, however she might writhe and chafe when safely ensconced
within that rose and straw-colored boudoir, made up its mind that the
secret of the whole three volume novel, the key to the entire mystery
lay with the--butler.
That black-moustached functionary, they whispered, had his mistress in
his power. He had been a courier, and she had fallen in love with him
abroad. Or he had been a well-known conjurer and coerced her through
means little less than infernal to run away with him. He was a
mesmerist, so they said, and could send her into trances at will. Then
he had been the famous Man Milliner of Vienna, whose disappearance one
fine day with the entire trousseau of an Austrian Grand Duchess had been
a nine days' wonder. These dresses she wore, strange mixtures never seen
on earth before of violet and blue, pink and pea-green, rose and lemon,
were the identical ones prepared for the Grand Duchess. Finally, he was
an Italian Prince rescued from a novel of “Ouida's,” whom she had found
living in exile, having to suffer punishment for some fiendish crime
perpetrated in the days of his youth.
When the stories had reached this point, Miss De Grammont, to whom they
were conveyed through papers, notes from “confidential friends,” her
maid and others, wrote a letter one day directed to the:
REV. LUKE FIELDING,
Pastor, Congregational Church,
Phippsville, Vermont.
A week or ten days after, Miss De Grammont, seated--not, in the gilded
hammock though it still swung gracefully before the glowing fire--but in
the cushions which graced her window looking on the front of the house,
saw a gentleman arrive in a cab. She rose hastily and opened the door
of the room herself for her visitor. This was the Rev. Luke Fielding,
a gentleman of the severest Puritanical cut and a true New Englander
to boot. With his hat in his hand he advanced with an expression on his
face of the deepest amazement and dismay which increased momentarily as
he saw not only the gorgeous coloring and appointments of the room
but the fair figure of its occupant. To be sure, she had with infinite
difficulty selected the plainest dress she could find in her wardrobe to
receive him in, a gown of dark green velvet made very simply, and high
to the throat. But alas! there was no disguising the priceless lace at
her wrists, or the gems that glittered on her firm white hands.
“My dear cousin!” said the lady, giving him both her hands.
“My dear cousin Isabel,” returned the minister, laying his hat down on
a plush-covered chair on which it looked curiously out of place, and
taking her hands in his.
“My dear cousin Isabel, after so many years!”
“It is only eight years, cousin,” returned the lady.
“True,” replied the minister gravely. “Yet to one like myself that seems
a long time. You sent for me, cousin.” His gaze wandered round the room
and then fastened once more upon Miss De Grammont.
“Yes,” she said faintly. “I could not tell you all in my letter. I
wanted--I want still--somebody's help.”
“And it is very natural you should apply for mine, cousin, I will do
anything I can. I have”--the minister grew sensibly more severe, more
grave--“I have this day, on the train, seen a paper--a new kind of paper
to me, I confess,--a _Society Journal_ it calls itself, in which a name
is mentioned. Is your--trouble--connected with that?”
Miss De Grammont blushed deeply. “Yes. That is my name. I would not have
troubled you--but I must ask your advice, for you are the only one of
the family, of my mother's family--” Her voice broke.
“Yes, cousin, you are right.”
The minister rose and stood up before her, a stern though not
unsympathetic figure in his stiff black coat and iron gray hair. “I know
what you are going to ask me to do. You will ask me to see these people,
these editors, reviewers, whatever they are, to talk to them, to impress
upon them what you are and who you are, and who your mother was, and
what is the end of the base man who imagines lies and the end of all the
workers of iniquity. You will ask me to tell them that it is all false,
all abominable intrigue and treachery and I shall demand in your name
and in my own as your only near relative and a minister of the Gospel,
an apology. It is but jealousy, cousin. Forgive me, but you are too
beautiful and too young to live alone in such a house, in such a manner.
You must marry. Or else you must give up such a life. It maketh enemies
within your gates and behold! there shall be no man to say a good thing
of thee!”
The minister had lifted up his voice as if he had been in the pulpit and
for one instant laid his hand on his cousin's hair. Then he went back to
his seat.
Miss De Grammont was profoundly moved. Great tears coursed down her
cheeks and until they had stopped she could not trust herself to speak.
“The paper!” she said dismally. “You have seen a paper, you say,
with--my--my name in it! There is nothing new in that. I have been in
the papers for months past. I am never out of them. And this one says--”
The minister drew it out of his pocket.
“That with you, in this house lives, in the character of a butler,
an exiled Italian Prince who committed grave personal and political
offences many years ago and was sent to prison. That you are married to
him. My dear cousin, it is monstrous!”
Miss De Grammont took out her handkerchief already wet through with her
tears and pressed it to her eyes.
“It is not monstrous,” she said, “but it is most extraordinary. He _is_
an Italian Prince, and I _am_ married to him.”
To use a hackneyed phrase, the room swam around Mr. Fielding for an
instant When he recovered he could only sit and gaze at the beautiful
woman before him. The details of village life, in Vermont had not
educated him up to exigencies of this sort. A fearful chasm seemed to
have opened under his feet, and he began to comprehend dimly that there
were other lives than his own and that of his estimable but commonplace
wife being daily lived out in this world.
“Yes,” said Miss De Grammont, a little more bravely now that the worst
shock was over. “That is quite true. And the extraordinary part of it is
that they can only have guessed at it; evolved it, as it were from the
depths of their inner consciousness, they can't possible have discovered
it. It isn't known anywhere, save perhaps to one or two in Italy.”
“In Italy,” murmured the Rev. Mr. Fielding. “You met him in Italy? And
why keep it secret? My dear cousin, you have made a great mistake. And
all this sad and singular story is true?”
“Very nearly true. All but the offences. They never happened.”
“Your husband is not a political character then?”
“Oh! not in the least. He knows nothing of politics. My José! he
couldn't hurt anything, moreover!”
“José is a Spanish name, surely,” said Mr. Fielding.
“His mother was a Castilian, fair and proud as only a Castilian can
be. She named him José--But he has other names, three, all
Italian--Antonio--”
“I see,” said the minister dryly. “I am sorry that I cannot give you all
the sympathy in this matter that you may desire, but you have entered on
a course of action which is perplexing at least, to say no more. I feel,
my dear cousin, that as a--married woman--your confidences are--ill
placed and I must ask you to withdraw them. You must settle this matter
with your--ahem--husband.” Mr. Fielding took up his hat and in another
moment would have been gone forever, but that turning at the door he saw
such intense supplication in his cousin's eyes that his orthodox heart
melted.
“Forgive me cousin,” he said coming back. “There may be still a way
out of it. Will you tell me all?” Miss De Grammont then related her
different heart episodes abroad, entanglements, half-engagements,
desperate flirtations and all the rest of it to this sober, black-coated
gentleman. Such a revelation poured forth in truly feminine style
nearly drove him away the second time, but true to his word, he remained
nevertheless, sitting bolt upright in a padded chair only meant for
lounging. Finally, she told him of her snares to catch lovers and how
one day she was caught herself by the dark-browed, eloquent Prince
Corunna.
She fell in love herself for the first time in her life, and he with
her, so he declared. But he was miserably poor and with the pride of a
Castilian would not woo her because of her money. She hated it, yet she
could not live without it.
The minister smiled pityingly.
However she made him marry her, and then proposed as a test, in which
he joyfully acquiesced, that he should make himself of use to her, be
in fact, her major-domo, steward, butler, amanuensis, anything and
everything.
“It is most unprecedented,” sighed the minister. “That a man with
Castilian blood in his veins--”
Miss De Grammont interrupted him. “He was happier so, dear cousin. But
I--I grew most unhappy. And since I have been here, I have been very
unhappy still. We are both in a false position and now--thanks to that
unlucky hammock--our secret has become common property.”
“The hammock!” said Mr. Fielding. “What has that got to do with it? It
is a pretty idea.”
“So I think,” said Miss De Grammont, delighted beyond measure. Then
she told him about the paragraphs, large and small, the confidential
friends, the small beginnings that had lead insensibly up to the
culminating point--that of scandal.
“I am being dropped gradually,” she said.
“Of course you are,” said the minister. “Of course you are. Soon you
will be--forgive me--a dead letter. There is only one thing to be done
and that I can do at once. A letter must be written to this paper,
stating calmly in as few words as possible that this paragraph is true,
that you _are_ married to Prince--ah--Corunna, that he _is_ a political
offender and for that reason the marriage _was_ kept secret, but that
now of course as informers must already have given the secret away, you
are obliged to endorse it yourself.”
“But José is not a political offender! Never did anything wrong in his
life!”
“Of course not,” said the minister. “Some of us others, even clergymen,
are not so fortunate. Now that must be included, else there is no good
reason for having kept your marriage secret. Other explanations will not
be taken. Besides this will entitle you to sympathy at once. Will you
write the letter and I can leave it at the office for you? There is time
for me to do that before my train starts.”
Miss De Grammont wrote her letter as dictated by her cousin. He put it
in his pocket and rose to go.
“Will you not stay and see my husband?” she said timidly.
“Thank you, no.” returned Mr. Fielding. “I haven't met many foreigners.
I don't think, perhaps, we should get on. Down in Phippsville--well, my
circle is so different from yours, Isabel. It is the fashion I hear to
live abroad now, and desert America--at least to depreciate it, and
not to care about its opinion--but that hasn't spread yet to our little
village. It seems as if it might have been better for instance, had you
stayed in Europe. You see, having married an Italian, all this trouble
would have been avoided--I mean--it could have gone on over there--but
now--well, riches are a snare, my dear cousin, as you have by this time
found. Good-bye, dear cousin, and God be with you.”
When a letter addressed to the editor of the Society Journal appeared
the next day signed Isabel Corunna (née De Grammont) with its paralysing
statement in a few concise words, New York was startled to its
foundation. Public opinion which for a week had been at the culminating
point of distrust, malevolence and resentment, turned the corner in a
moment and for the moment believed implicitly in the faith of the lady
it had abandoned. The greatest sympathy was shown Madame La Princesse
Corunna, or Princess Corunna, or Miss De Grammont that was, or whatever
her friends chose to call her. The butler disappeared for ever and the
Prince came in. It was a transformation scene equal to Beauty and the
Beast. Dark-browed and eloquent as ever, the Prince was a social success
whenever he chose to be, but as time went on, he and his wife became
more and more absorbed in each other and the world saw little of either
of them. For a time he posed as a political offender which gave his wife
no end of amusement. They were so far reinstated into public favor that
the hammock--source of mingled joy and woe--was again considered as
a thing of beauty and a thing to be imitated. There are a dozen such
hammocks now in New York City.
But there are still a few ill-natured people, dowagers, matrons, an old
love or two, and a handful of shrivelled spinsters who declare that the
Prince is no Prince at all, but a Pastrycook.