Kindelon found Pauline in a very lightsome and animated state of mind
when he called at her house that evening. She had a touch of positive
excitement in her way of referring to the proposed visit. He thought he
had never seen her look more attractive than when she received him,
already wrapped in a fleecy white over-garment and drawing on her
gloves, while a piquant smile played at the corners of her mouth and a
vivacious glitter filled her gray eyes.
"You are here before the carriage," she said to him, "though we shan't
have to wait long for that.--Hark--there is the bell, now; my men would
not presume to be a minute late this evening. The footman must have
detected in my manner a great seriousness when I gave him my order; I
felt very serious, I can assure you, as I did so. It meant the first
step in a totally new career."
"Upon my word, you look fluttered," said Kindelon, in his mellow, jocose
voice.
"Naturally I do!" exclaimed Pauline, as she nodded to the servant who
now announced that the carriage was in readiness. "I am going to have a
fresh, genuine sensation. I am going to emancipate myself--to break my
tether, as it were. I've been a prisoner for life; I don't know how the
sunshine looks, or how it feels to take a gulp of good, free air."
He watched her puzzledly until the outer darkness obscured her face, and
they entered the carriage together. She mystified him while she talked
on, buoyant enough, yet always in the same key. He was not sure whether
or no her sparkling manner had a certain sincere trepidation behind it.
Now and then it seemed to him as if her voluble professions of anxiety
rang false--as if she were making sport of herself, of him, or of the
projected diversion.
"Do you really take the whole matter so much to heart," he presently
said, while the vehicle rolled them along the wintry, lamplit streets,
"or is this only some bit of dainty and graceful masquerading?"
"Masquerading?" she echoed, with a shocked accent.
"Oh, well, you are accustomed to meeting all sorts of people. You can't
think that any human classes are so sharply divided that to cross a new
threshold means to enter a new world."
She was silent, and he could see her face only vaguely for some little
time; but when a passing light cast an evanescent gleam upon it he
thought that he detected something like a look of delicate mischief
there. Her next words, rather promptly spoken, bore with them an
explanatory bluntness.
"I am convinced that if everybody else disappoints me Miss Dares will
not."
"Miss Dares?" he almost faltered, in the tone of one thrown off his
guard.
"Miss Cora Dares," Pauline continued, with a self-correcting precision.
"The younger of the two daughters, the one who paints. Oh, you see," she
continued, after a little laugh that was merry, though faint, "I have
forgotten nothing. I've a great curiosity to see this young artist. You
had not half so much to tell me about her as about her mother, and yet
you have somehow contrived to make her quite as interesting."
"Why?" Kindelon asked, with a soft abruptness to which the fact of his
almost invisible face lent a greater force. "Is it because you think
that I like Cora Dares? I should like to think that was your reason for
being interested in her."
Another brief silence on Pauline's part followed his words, and then she
suddenly responded, with the most non-committal innocence of tone:
"Why, what other reason could I possibly have? Of course I suppose that
you like her. And of course that is why I am anxious to meet her."
There was a repelling pleasantry in these three short sentences. If
Kindelon had been inclined to slip any further into the realm of
sentiment, the very reverse of encouragement had now met him. Pauline's
matter-of-course complacency had a distinct chill under its superficial
warmth. "Don't misunderstand me, please," she went on, with so altered a
voice that her listener felt as if she had indeed been masquerading
through some caprice best known to herself, and now chose once and for
all to drop masque and cloak. "I really expect a most novel and
entertaining experience to-night. You say that I have met all sorts of
people. I have by no means done so. It strikes me that our acquaintance
is not so young that I should tell you this. It is true that I made a
few pleasant and even valuable friendships in Europe; but these have
been exceptional in my life, and I now return to my native city to
disapprove everybody whom I once approved."
"And you expect to approve all the people whom you shall meet to-night?"
"You ask that in a tone of positive alarm."
"I can't help betraying some nervous fear. Your expectations are so
exorbitant."
Pauline tossed her head in the dimness. "Oh, you will find me more
easily suited than you suppose."
Kindelon gave a kind of dubious laugh. "I'm not so sure that you will be
easily suited," he said. "You are very pessimistic in your judgments of
the fashionable throng. It strikes me that you are a rigid critic of
nearly everybody. How can I tell that you will not denounce me, in an
hour or so, as the worst of impostors, for having presumed to introduce
you among a lot of objectionable bores?"
"I think you will admit," said Pauline, in offended reply, "that most of
Mrs. Dares's friends have brains."
"Brains? Oh, yes, all sorts of brains."
"That is just what I want to meet," she rapidly exclaimed--"all sorts of
brains. I am accustomed, at present, to only two or three sorts.--Oh,
you need not be afraid that I shall become bored. No, indeed! On the
contrary, I expect to be exhilarated. I shall fraternize with most of
them--I shall be one of them almost immediately. Wait until you see!"
"I shan't see that," said Kindelon, with an amused _brusquerie_.
"What do you mean?" she questioned, once more offendedly.
He began to speak, with his old glib fleetness. "Why, my dear lady,
because you are _not_ one of them, and never can be. You are a
patrician, reared differently, and you will carry your stamp with you
wherever you go. Your very voice will betray you in ten seconds. You may
show them that you want to be their good friend, but you can't convince
them that you and they are of the same stock. Some of them will envy
you, others may secretly presume to despise you, and still others may
very cordially like you. I don't think it has ever dawned upon me until
lately how different you are from these persons whom you wish to make
your allies and supporters. That night, when I went into your aunt's
opera-box, I had a very slight understanding of the matter. I've always
scoffed at the idea of a New York aristocracy. It seemed so absurd, so
self-contradictory. And if it existed at all, I've always told myself,
it must be the merest nonsensical sham. But now I begin to recognize it
as an undeniable fact. There's a sort of irony, too, in my finding it
out so late--after I have knocked about as a journalist in a city which
I believed to be democratic if it was anything. However, you've made the
whole matter plain to me. You didn't intend to open my plebeian eyes,
but you have done so. It is really wonderful how you have set me
thinking. I've often told myself that America was a political failure as
a republic, but I never realized that it was a social one."
Just then the carriage stopped. "I am sorry," said Pauline, "to have
unconsciously made you think ill of the literary society of New York."
She paused for a moment, and there was a rebuking solemnity in her voice
as she added: "I believe--I insist upon believing till I see
otherwise--that it does not deserve to be condemned."