VIII

Susan Bates drove homeward, filled with a vague dissatisfaction. "I

expected too much," she said to herself, as she half opened the door

again to free the skirt that Bingham had fastened there. "I ought to have

chosen a different time and place. I might have known that he would be

deep in his business--I ought not to have taken him with the harness

actually on his back."

She sighed as she thought of all the things she had meant to say, but had

come away without saying--the thousand and one minor reminiscences of

those early days in the straggling and struggling prairie town. She had

imagined a mutual evocation of the past, and it had not been

accomplished. But presently consolation came: she realized all at once

that her present mood was but one of those early reminiscences made

modern. She recalled now how many times he had taken his departure from

that little parlor, leaving her to feel just as she felt now--piqued,

balked, impatient over his slow, taciturn, unresponsive ways. But her

impatience and her pique had always passed off in due time, and he had

always returned, his same kindly and inscrutable self. "I believe he

meant to do the best he could. Anyway, I shall follow things up, all the

same," she declared to the opposite cushions. Her thought deflected in

the direction of Belden. "I wonder how they get along together. He is not

at all the man that I should think of David being associated with--as a

matter of choice. I never heard how the partnership began. I never

understood why it kept up so long as it has."

The partnership, as a matter of fact, dated back twenty years, and had

originated through a kind of crisis in the affairs of Marshall & Co.--the

only weak spot in the history of the firm. After several years of

unbroken prosperity, David Marshall (with thousands of others) had been

overtaken by fire. A year or two later fire was followed by panic, and

Marshall felt himself crowded towards the brink of ruin. In a moment of

weakness he permitted himself a course to which only so great an

emergency could have prompted him. The situation was saved by a species

of legerdemain--of card-shuffling, so to speak--which was quite outside

the lines of mercantile morality, and barely inside the lines of legality

itself. An instrument willing to lend itself to this feat of juggling was

needed, and was found in a pushing young fellow who left a rival house to

play discreetly and shrewdly the rôle of figure-head that the juncture

required. Marshall had long ago made full amends to the men whose

welfare he had temporarily sacrificed to his own salvation, but he had

never shaken off Belden, who remained constantly as a reminder of his

early and only lapse from rectitude. In moments when conscience became

tender under the quickening touch of reminiscence, Belden was upon him

not only as a punishment, but as an incubus.

Belden had never yielded a single inch of the foothold gained by his

sudden intrusion upon the affairs of the concern. His first demand was

for the headship of a department; he had required, next, an interest as a

partner; he had exacted, more lately, the presence of his name in the

style and title of the firm; and to-day he was moving towards the making

of the firm over into a stock company. He was younger than Marshall,

stronger, more aggressive, more ambitious, more adventuresome; nor was it

difficult to imagine him as fundamentally insolent and selfish.

His standard of mercantile morality was never higher than at the

beginning, and his standard of social propriety was felt to leave much to

desire. His first entry into the firm seemed to have been accompanied by

a clairvoyant confidence and assurance and ambition. He was understood to

have divorced his first wife, an amiable, faithful, but limited little

creature, under circumstances of some cruelty, and even barbarity, to

form a second union more in harmony with his mounting ideas for the

future. A subtle atmosphere of distaste and disapproval had enveloped him

and his for many years, and the social advances of himself and his wife

had been, however determined, but slow--almost imperceptible.

Finally, what could not be accomplished in the West was accomplished, to

some extent, in the East. Statira Belden was of New England origin; her

family had resided for years in a small town which the taste of a few

Boston families of consideration was turning into a summer resort. They

contrived their cottages, and she contrived hers. She discreetly

renovated the old "homestead," as she called it, and arranged to reside

in eastern Massachusetts through the summer season. She made a few

careful acquaintances among her neighbors, and presently found it

possible to spend a profitable and distinguished winter month in the Back

Bay. One step more brought her to her goal. Social exchange between

Boston and New York being practically at par, she passed from one town to

the other with an unimpaired currency. In Manhattan she was received with

sufficient frequency by people sufficiently distinguished, and

announcements in correspondence with the facts were borne westward by

various metropolitan dailies and weeklies. She herself followed, in due

course; she had now conquered a certain foothold at home, and her

progress there was distinctly perceptible.

The last stronghold of the opposition existed, much to her mortification,

in her own immediate neighborhood, where a stubborn little clique (as she

called it) continued, under the leadership of Susan Bates, to ignore her.

The Belden carriage-block, measuring diagonally across the street, was

three hundred feet from that of the Bateses, but the distance might as

well have been three hundred miles. Mrs. Bates, who, on some occasion or

other, had met her face to face, continued to hold sturdily the

impression that her eyes were at once too furtive and too bold, and that

her hair was too yellow for a woman of her age; "or, for that matter, too

yellow for a woman of _any_ age."

In view of these considerations and others, Mrs. Bates was the reverse of

pleased when Jane, one morning, came up to her little room, sat down on

the foot of the bed, and announced that Mrs. Belden, among others, was

likely to be bidden to Rosy's coming-out.

"Ma doesn't like her so extra well," Jane admitted, candidly; "she thinks

they might have done something for Rosy this past summer. But it would

seem awful to pa if his own partner's wife wasn't asked; and, besides, we

don't know so very many people _to_ ask, anyway."

Mrs. Bates had made her advances in due form to the women of the Marshall

family. Throughout the call the talk had been frankly, inevitably

personal, and Susan Bates had treated Eliza Marshall, whose difficult and

captious character she at once apprehended, with the most elaborate and

ingenious simplicity. Rosy was passed in review and then dexterously

dispensed with, after having aroused the caller's interest and approval;

and the subsequent talk ran along quite freely on the child's deserts and

prospects. Mrs. Bates was quite direct and unadorned; and, though Rosy's

future was the only common ground upon which the two women could meet,

yet she handled this material with such a sympathetic persistence that

Eliza Marshall was fain to believe that she and her caller had been knit

in a close community of interests from time immemorial.

Mrs. Bates divined readily enough that nothing would be more galling to

Eliza Marshall than a betrayal of her own social ignorance. "How glad we

ought to be," she said, in an innocent, left-handed fashion, "that girls

are no longer brought out at a crush. Imagine, once more, that crowd of

people surging up and down your stairs, and trampling each other

underfoot as they try to dance in a room not a quarter big enough, and

ten times too many poor flowers wilting all over the house, and a big

band of music going it for dear life, and fifty or a hundred carnages

tangled up in a noisy crowd outside;--why go through all that for the

sake of getting a new little girl acquainted with a few of her mother's

friends?"

Eliza Marshall fastened her intent but inexpressive gaze upon her

caller's face and said never a word. The function thus sketched by Mrs.

Bates was the precise function that for the past fortnight she had been

imagining and dreading. She had filled her secluded old parlors with the

squeak and the blare of music; alien draperies in their swift gyrations

had whisked her immemorial ornaments from her immemorial old "whatnot";

in the dining-room a squad of custard-colored waiters had opposed a firm

front to the hungry hordes that assaulted the various viands on the

table; and a thousand teasing points of form and usage had afflicted her

with worry, uncertainty, and possible mortification and despair. She saw

now that nothing like her imagined entertainment was desirable, or even

tolerable, to-day, and she gave unconsciously a little sigh of relief.

Mrs. Bates divined further that, having instructed ignorance, she must

now allay timidity. She must represent the coming function as a mere

bagatelle for simplicity and informality.

"Isn't it pleasant to think that things are being made so much easier

for us than they used to be? Otherwise, I should have been dead long

before this. Nothing to do but for our little girl to stand up with her

mother and two or three of her mother's friends in one room, and for two

or three other people to look after the tea and other things in some

other room off behind somewhere or other." Mrs. Bates waved her hand

genially towards the rear rooms. "When Lottie came out I said to Mrs.

Ingles, 'Now you must just take the tea part of it off my hands. Get

some girls for me--you know about the ones I want--and see that their

gowns are right; and then I shall be at peace, knowing that people are

nibbling their biscuits'--or crackers" (this in a tone unconsciously

expository)--"'dawdling with their spoons, as they ought to.' A few, of

course, really drank tea; but the others--well, they had had tea

somewhere half an hour before, or expected to have it somewhere half an

hour after. How tired we all get of this old rigmarole, don't we?"

Eliza Marshall bowed gravely. For her this tiresome old rigmarole was a

complete novelty. "Lyddy's niece," she said, turning to Jane; "that girl

from Madison--she could pour for one, couldn't she?"

"Sure," assented Jane. "_Our_ niece, too--sort o'," she added,

correctively; for Eliza Marshall made little of certain vague ties to a

half-brother.

Mrs. Bates cast her eye round the dim, old-fashioned room. One might have

fancied her as exploring for the portraits of two or three mature female

relations of the Marshalls.

"I don't know whether I am right in asking it," she began, with a

fetching pretence of hesitancy; "but I am an old friend of the family--in

a sense--and so interested in Rosy, too. If I might help you receive--"

Mrs. Marshall heard this proposal with a second little sigh of relief,

and accepted as a matter of course. Indeed, outside of Mrs. Rhodes--and

possibly Mrs. Belden--she had absolutely no one to whom she could turn.

"And Aunt Lyddy for another," said Jane.

"Yes," assented Mrs. Bates, in the tone of indorsement. "Mrs. Rhodes and

I are acquainted"--with a sly look towards Jane; "and there--with your

other sister, perhaps--our little party is made up."

"And about the people to be invited," Eliza Marshall proceeded, with some

little show of initiative. Her task was becoming less and less

formidable; she felt herself approaching this supposed ordeal with

something almost like buoyancy.

"Let's have it nice and little and cosey," suggested Mrs. Bates, with a

cosey little air of her own. "Twenty-five or thirty at the outside." She

wondered inwardly where even so small a number could be got. "Why, _six_

would do--if they were the right six! And why should we want more than

three carriages before the house at any one time?--not to have a man

shouting numbers, I hope!"

She drew her wraps together and rose to go. "If I might ask for cards for

one or two of my own friends?--nice, pleasant people, who would be glad

to become acquainted among the old families," she added, diplomatically.

"If she can only be kept from suspecting how swell they really are, till

it's all over!" was the good creature's inner thought. "Of course Rosy's

appearance here isn't public, nor any equivalent for it; that will come

later. I myself shall want to do something for her on the South side, and

there will be one or two good houses for her on the North side--oh, our

little duck will swim, when once put into the pond, as you shall see.

After _that_, we shall want only a kind papa to pay the bills and a

patient maid to sit up until three or four in the morning."

Mrs. Bates got herself away in great good-humor and kept that humor until

the following day, when Jane came to announce the participation of Mrs.

Belden.

"Have her pour tea!" cried Susan Bates, without a moment's hesitation.

"Let her come early, and let her stay late, and pour and pour and pour

until the last cup is drunk. I can't promise your mother that I shall be

there throughout, but I will be there for half an hour--during the

middle, perhaps. And tea--well, I never drink it, even at home."

Jane looked at her in some surprise.

"And don't let your mother change her rooms any," Mrs. Bates went on,

rapidly. "They're right as they are--in perfect agreement. They have a

quiet tone; and a low, quiet tone, after all, is the best thing--and the

hardest thing to get. And not too many flowers."

"Never fear," said Jane, grimly. "She won't change anything."

"And don't let her have too much on the table. Give them tea and

chocolate and sandwiches and Albert biscuits--that's plenty. And if your

second girl shows, a cap would do no harm. Put a slice of lemon in every

cup--that discourages lots of people."