Annie, who signed herself "Anne Melrose von Behrens," was the real
dictator in the various circles of the allied families, and had a
fashion of finding herself supreme in larger circles, as well. Annie was
thirty-seven or eight, tall, thin, ash-blonde, superb in manner and
bearing. Nature had been generous to her, but she had done far more for
herself than Nature had. Her matchless skin, her figure, her hands, her
voice, were all the result of painstaking and intelligent care. Annie
had been a headstrong, undisciplined girl twenty years ago. She had come
back from a European visit, at twenty-three, with a vague if general
reputation of being "a terror." But Annie was clever, and she had real
charm. She spoke familiarly of European courts, had been presented even
in inaccessible Vienna. She spoke languages, quoted poets, had great
writers and painters for her friends, and rippled through songs that had
been indisputably dedicated, in flowing foreign hands, to the beautiful
Mademoiselle Melrose. Society bowed before Annie; she was the sensation
of her winter, and the marriage she promptly made was the most brilliant
in many winters.
Annie proceeded to bear her sober, fine, dull, and devoted Hendrick two
splendid sons, and thus riveted to herself his lasting devotion and
trust. The old name was safe, the millions would descend duly to young
Hendrick and Piet. The family had been rich, conspicuous, and respected
in the city, since its sturdy Holstein cattle had browsed along the
fields of lower Broadway, but under Annie's hands it began to shine.
Annie's handsome motor-cars bore the family arms, her china had been
made in the ancestral village, two miles from Rotterdam, and also
carried the shield. Her city home, in Fifth Avenue, was so magnificent,
so chastely restrained and sober, so sternly dignified, that it set the
cue for half the other homes of the ultra-aristocratic set. Annie's
servants had been in the Von Behrens family for years; there was nothing
in the Avenue house, or the Newport summer home, that was not as
handsome, as old, as solid, as carven, as richly dull, or as purely
shining, as human ingenuity could contrive to have it. Collectors saved
their choicest discoveries for Annie; and there was no painter in the
new world who would not have been proud to have Annie place a canvas of
his among her treasures from the old.
If family relics were worth preserving, what could be more remarkable
than Annie's Washington letter, her Jefferson tray, her Gainsboroughs of
the Murisons who had been the only Americans so honoured by the painter?
Melrose and Von Behrens honours crowded each other--here was the thin
old silver "shepherdess" cup awarded that Johanna von Behrens who had
won a prize with her sheep, while Washington was yet a boy; and here the
quaint tortoise-shell snuff-box that a great prince, homeless and
unknown, had given the American family that took him in; and the silver
buttons from Lafayette's waistcoat that the great Frenchman had
presented Colonel Horace Murison of the "Continentals."
These things were not thrust at the visitor, nor indeed were they
conspicuous among the thousand other priceless souvenirs that Annie had
gathered about her.
"Rather nice, isn't it?" Annie would say, abstractedly, when some
enthusiastic girl pored over the colonial letters or the old portraits.
"See here, Margaret," she might add, casually, "do you see the inside of
this little slipper, my dear? Read what's written there: 'In these
slippers Deborah Murison danced with Governor Winthrop, on the night of
her fifteenth birthday, July 1st, 1742.' Isn't that rather quaint?"
Annie could afford to be casual, to be abstracted. In her all the pride
of the Melrose and Murison families was gathered; hers was an arrogance
so sure of itself, a self-confidence so supreme, that the world
questioned it no more than it questioned the heat of the sun. The old
silver, the Copleys, and the colonial china, the Knickerbocker "court
chests" with their great locks of Dutch silver, and the laces that had
been shown at the Hague two hundred years before, were all confirmed,
all reinforced, as it were, by the power and prosperity of to-day. It
was no by-gone glory that made brilliant the lives of Hendrick and Anne
Melrose von Behrens. Hendrick's cousins and uncles, magnificent persons
of title, were prominent in Holland to-day, their names associated with
that of royalty, and their gracious friendship extended to the American
branch of the family whenever Hendrick chose to claim it. Old maps of
New York bore the boundary lines of the Von Behrens farm; early
histories of the city mingled the names of Melrose and Von Behrens among
those of the men who had served the public need.
Wherever there was needed that tone that only names of prominence and
wealth can bestow Annie's name was solicited. Wherever it appeared it
gave the instant stamp of dignity and integrity. She had seen this goal
dimly in the distance, when she stepped from her rather spoiled and
wilful girlhood into this splendid wifehood, but even Annie was
astonished at the rapidity with which it had come about. Mama, of
course, had known all the right people, even if she _had_ dropped all
social ties after Papa's death. And Hendrick's name was an open sesame.
But even so it was surprising, and it was gratifying.
In appearance Annie had no problem. If she was not a beauty she was near
enough to being one. She was smart enough, and blonde enough, and
splendidly dressed enough to be instantly identifiable, and that was all
she desired. Financially, Annie had no problem. Her own inheritance and
her husband's great wealth silenced all question there. The Murison
pearls and the famous diamond tiara that her father had given her mother
years ago had come to Annie, but they were eclipsed by the Von Behrens
family jewels, and these were all hers, with the laces, and the ivories,
and the brocades. Life could give nothing more to Annie, but not many
women would have made so much of what Annie had. There was, far down and
out of sight, a little streak of the adventuress in her, and she never
stopped halfway.
A young wife, Annie had dutifully considered her nursery.
"Hendrick's is the elder line, of course, although it is the colonial
one," Annie had said, superintending a princely layette. The child was a
son, his father's image, and nobody who knew Annie was in the least
surprised that fortune had fallen in with her plans. It was the
magnificent Annie who was quoted as telling Madame Modiste to give her a
fitter who would not talk; it was Annie who decided what should be done
in recognizing the principals of the Jacqmain divorce, and that old
Floyd Densmore's actress-wife should not be accepted. Annie's neat and
quiet answer to a certain social acquaintance who remarked, in Annie's
little gallery, "I have seen the original of that picture, in one of the
European galleries," was still quoted by Annie's friends. "This _is_ the
original!" Annie had said quite simply and truthfully.
Leslie admired her aunt more than any one else in the world. Grandma was
old-fashioned, and Aunt Alice insignificant, in Leslie's eyes, but
stunning, arrogant, fearless Aunt Annie was the model upon which she
would have based herself if she had known how. Annie's quick
positiveness with her servants, her cool friendliness with big men, and
clever men, her calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which
hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or
von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were
masterly in Leslie's eyes.
Annie might have been a strong royalist had she been born a few
generations earlier. But in Annie's day the ideal of social service had
been laid down by fashion, and she was consequently a tremendously
independent and energetic person, with small time for languishing airs.
She headed committees and boards, knew hundreds of working girls by
name, kept a secretary and a stenographer, and mentioned topics at big
dinners that would not have shocked either old Goodwife Melrose of
Boston, or Vrouw von Behrens of Nieu Amsterdam, for neither had the
faintest idea that such things, or their names, existed.
Withal, Annie was attractive, even her little affectations were
impressive, and as she went about from luncheons to meetings, swept up
to her model nursery to revel in her model boys, tossed aside regal furs
and tore off princely rings the better to play with them, wrapped her
beautiful figure in satins and jewels to descend to formal dinners, she
was almost as much admired and envied and copied as she might fondly
have hoped to be. She managed her life on modern lines of efficiency,
planned ahead what she wished, tutored herself not to think of anything
undesirable as being even in the range of possibility, trod lightly upon
the sensitive souls of others, and asked no quarter herself, aimed high,
and enjoyed her life and its countless successes to the full.
Of course there had been setbacks. Her brother Theodore, his most
unfortunate marriage to a servant, his intemperance, the general scandal
of his mother's violent detestation of his wife, all this was most
unpleasant. But Louison, the wife, upon sufficient pressure, had brought
her child to the Melroses, and had doubtfully disappeared, and Theodore
had returned from his wanderings to live, silent and unobtrusive, in his
mother's home, for several years, and to die with his daughter beside
him, and be duly laid in the Melrose plot at Woodlawn. And
Leslie--Leslie had repaid them all, for all of it.
Alice was another disappointment, or had been one, to Annie. For Alice,
after having achieved a most unexpectedly satisfactory marriage, and
having set up her household gods in the very shadow of her sister's
brilliant example, as it were, had met with that most unfortunate
accident. For a few years Annie had been utterly exasperated whenever
she thought of it. For Christopher was really an extraordinary husband
for Alice to hold, even in normal circumstances. He was so outrageously,
frightfully, irresistibly popular with women everywhere, his wife must
needs keep a very sharp, albeit loving, eye upon him. A sickly wife--a
wife who was a burden and a reproach, that would be fatal to them all!
But Alice had showed unsuspected courage and pride in this hard trial.
She had made herself beautiful, well-informed, tactful; she had made
herself a magnet to her husband's friends, and his home the centre of a
real social group. Annie respected her for it, and helped her by
flashing into her rooms not less often than every alternate day, with
gossip, with books, with hints that showed Alice just where her course
in this or that matter must lie.
So Alice had come to be an actual asset, and now to her Aunt Annie's
tremendous satisfaction, Leslie promised to add one more feather to the
family cap by announcing her engagement to Acton Liggett. Annie smiled
to herself whenever she thought of it. When this was consummated she
would have nothing left but the selection of suitable wives for Hendrick
Junior, now aged ten, and Piet, who was four years younger.
Two or three days after the ending of the big snow-storm, and the
beginning of that domestic storm that was destined strangely to change
some of the lives nearest her, Annie went in to have luncheon with her
sister. It was a brilliant sunshiny winter day, with crossings swimming
in melting snow and roofs steaming brightly into the clear air.
Annie went straight upstairs to Alice's room, with the usual apology for
lateness. She kissed Alice lightly on the forehead, and while Freda was
coming and going with their meal, they discussed the little boys, books,
politics, and the difficulties of the city in the snow.
But when they were alone Annie asked immediately:
"What on earth is the matter with Mama, Alice?"
"You mean about----? Did she tell you?"
"No; she didn't have to. Leslie ran in yesterday afternoon, and told me
that Mama has been in bed since Saturday! I telephoned Sunday morning,
but Hendrick and I were taking the boys up to his uncle's house, in
Westchester, and--as she didn't say one word about being ill--I didn't
see her that day, nor yesterday, as it happened, for we didn't come down
until noon. When Leslie came in, there were other people there for tea,
and I didn't have a chance to speak to her alone. But I went over to
Mama this morning, and she seems all broken up!"
"What did she tell you?" Alice asked, anxiously.
"Oh, my dear, you know Mama! She wept, and patted my hand, and said that
it was sad to be the last of your own generation, and she hoped you and
I would always have each other, and that she had always loved us, and
tried to do her best for us----"
Alice laughed.
"Poor Mama! She gets so worked up!" she said.
"But what do you make of it?" demanded Annie. "She talked of this Kate
Sheridan--I remember her perfectly, she came to Paris when I was so
ill, years ago. Poor Mama cried, and said that she wished to do
something for Kate. Now you know, Alice," Annie went on reasonably,
"nobody is tying Mama's hands! If she wants to educate this young
girl--this Norma person--to please Kate, or all her children for that
matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee.
She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate
some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous--she never looked
better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you
always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make of it?"
"Well, I'll tell you what we've done," Alice smiled. "Chris went to see
her Sunday, and they had a long talk. He tells me that she was just as
vague and unsatisfactory as ever, but calmer, and she finally admitted
that all she really wanted to do was to befriend this niece of Kate
Sheridan. Of course Chris and I think Mama has one of her funny notions
about it, but if the child's mother had befriended Mama, for example, a
thousand years ago, or if Mama had borrowed five dollars from Kate, and
forgotten to return it, you know that would be enough to account for all
this excitement."
"Yes, I know!" Annie admitted, with her favourite look of intolerant,
yet indulgent, scorn.
"Well, it seems the girl is in Biretta's Bookshop, and Chris has often
bought books of her. So to quiet Mama he promised that he would bring
her out here to have tea with me some day soon. Mama was delighted, and
I think she hopes that a friendship will come of it." Alice threw
herself back into the pillows, and drew a great breath as if she were
weary. "I only want to please Mama!" she finished.
"You're an angel," Annie said, absently. "I suppose I could get the
truth out of Mama in five seconds," she mused. "It looks to me rather
like blackmail!"
"No; she said not!" Alice contradicted, quickly.
"Well, it's all so silly," the elder sister said, impatiently. "And
coming just now----" she added, significantly.
"Yes. I know!" Alice agreed, with a comprehending look. And in lowered
tones they began to talk of Leslie's possible engagement.