IN every town there is one young maiden who is the universal favorite,
who belongs to all sets and is made an exception to all family feuds,
who is the confidante of all girls and the adopted sister of all young
men, up to the time when they respectively offer themselves to her, and
again after they are rejected. This post was filled in Oldport, in those
days, by my cousin Kate.
Born into the world with many other gifts, this last and least definable
gift of popularity was added to complete them all. Nobody criticised
her, nobody was jealous of her, her very rivals lent her their new music
and their lovers; and her own discarded wooers always sought her to be a
bridesmaid when they married somebody else.
She was one of those persons who seem to have come into the world
well-dressed. There was an atmosphere of elegance around her, like a
costume; every attitude implied a presence-chamber or a ball-room. The
girls complained that in private theatricals no combination of disguises
could reduce Kate to the ranks, nor give her the “make-up” of a
waiting-maid. Yet as her father was a New York merchant of the
precarious or spasmodic description, she had been used from childhood
to the wildest fluctuations of wardrobe;--a year of Paris dresses,--then
another year spent in making over ancient finery, that never looked like
either finery or antiquity when it came from her magic hands. Without
a particle of vanity or fear, secure in health and good-nature and
invariable prettiness, she cared little whether the appointed means of
grace were ancient silk or modern muslin. In her periods of poverty,
she made no secret of the necessary devices; the other girls, of course,
guessed them, but her lovers never did, because she always told them.
There was one particular tarlatan dress of hers which was a sort of
local institution. It was known to all her companions, like the State
House. There was a report that she had first worn it at her christening;
the report originated with herself. The young men knew that she was
going to the party if she could turn that pink tarlatan once more; but
they had only the vaguest impression what a tarlatan was, and cared
little on which side it was worn, so long as Kate was inside.
During these epochs of privation her life, in respect to dress, was a
perpetual Christmas-tree of second-hand gifts. Wealthy aunts supplied
her with cast-off shoes of all sizes, from two and a half up to five,
and she used them all. She was reported to have worn one straw hat
through five changes of fashion. It was averred that, when square crowns
were in vogue, she flattened it over a tin pan, and that, when round
crowns returned, she bent it on the bedpost. There was such a charm in
her way of adapting these treasures, that the other girls liked to
test her with new problems in the way of millinery and dress-making;
millionnaire friends implored her to trim their hats, and lent her their
own things in order to learn how to wear them. This applied especially
to certain rich cousins, shy and studious girls, who adored her, and
to whom society only ceased to be alarming when the brilliant Kate
took them under her wing, and graciously accepted a few of their newest
feathers. Well might they acquiesce, for she stood by them superbly, and
her most favored partners found no way to her hand so sure as to dance
systematically through that staid sisterhood. Dear, sunshiny, gracious,
generous Kate!--who has ever done justice to the charm given to this
grave old world by the presence of one free-hearted and joyous girl?
At the time now to be described, however, Kate’s purse was well filled;
and if she wore only second-best finery, it was because she had lent her
very best to somebody else. All that her doting father asked was to pay
for her dresses, and to see her wear them; and if her friends wore a
part of them, it only made necessary a larger wardrobe, and more varied
and pleasurable shopping. She was as good a manager in wealth as in
poverty, wasted nothing, took exquisite care of everything, and saved
faithfully for some one else all that was not needed for her own pretty
person.
Pretty she was throughout, from the parting of her jet-black hair to the
high instep of her slender foot; a glancing, brilliant, brunette beauty,
with the piquant charm of perpetual spirits, and the equipoise of a
perfectly healthy nature. She was altogether graceful, yet she had not
the fresh, free grace of her cousin Hope, who was lithe and strong as a
hawthorne spray: Kate’s was the narrower grace of culture grown
hereditary, an in-door elegance that was born in her, and of which
dancing-school was but the natural development. You could not picture
Hope to your mind in one position more than in another; she had an
endless variety of easy motion. When you thought of Kate, you remembered
precisely how she sat, how she stood, and how she walked. That was all,
and it was always the same. But is not that enough? We do not ask of
Mary Stuart’s portrait that it should represent her in more than one
attitude, and why should a living beauty need more than two or three?
Kate was betrothed to her cousin Harry, Hope’s brother, and, though she
was barely twenty, they had seemed to appertain to each other for a time
so long that the memory of man or maiden aunt ran not to the contrary.
She always declared, indeed, that they were born married, and that
their wedding-day would seem like a silver wedding. Harry was quiet,
unobtrusive, and manly. He might seem commonplace at first beside the
brilliant Kate and his more gifted sister; but thorough manhood is never
commonplace, and he was a person to whom one could anchor. His strong,
steadfast physique was the type of his whole nature; when he came
into the room, you felt as if a good many people had been added to the
company. He made steady progress in his profession of the law, through
sheer worth; he never dazzled, but he led. His type was pure Saxon, with
short, curling hair, blue eyes, and thin, fair skin, to which the color
readily mounted. Up to a certain point he was imperturbably patient
and amiable, but, when overtaxed, was fiery and impetuous for a single
instant, and no more. It seemed as if a sudden flash of anger went
over him, like the flash that glides along the glutinous stem of the
fraxinella, when you touch it with a candle; the next moment it had
utterly vanished, and was forgotten as if it had never been.
Kate’s love for her lover was one of those healthy and assured ties
that often outlast the ardors of more passionate natures. For other
temperaments it might have been inadequate; but theirs matched
perfectly, and it was all sufficient for them. If there was within
Kate’s range a more heroic and ardent emotion than that inspired by
Harry, it was put forth toward Hope. This was her idolatry; she always
said that it was fortunate Hope was Hal’s sister, or she should have
felt it her duty to give them to each other, and not die till the
wedding was accomplished. Harry shared this adoration to quite a
reasonable extent, for a brother; but his admiration for Philip Malbone
was one that Kate did not quite share. Harry’s quieter mood had been
dazzled from childhood by Philip, who had always been a privileged guest
in the household. Kate’s clear, penetrating, buoyant nature had divined
Phil’s weaknesses, and had sometimes laughed at them, even from her
childhood; though she did not dislike him, for she did not dislike
anybody. But Harry was magnetized by him very much as women were;
believed him true, because he was tender, and called him only fastidious
where Kate called him lazy.
Kate was spending that summer with her aunt Jane, whose especial pet and
pride she was. Hope was spending there the summer vacation of a Normal
School in which she had just become a teacher. Her father had shared in
the family ups and downs, but had finally stayed down, while the rest
had remained up. Fortunately, his elder children were indifferent to
this, and indeed rather preferred it; it was a tradition that Hope
had expressed the wish, when a child, that her father might lose
his property, so that she could become a teacher. As for Harry, he
infinitely preferred the drudgery of a law office to that of a gentleman
of leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned out, when she was
left a widow, that she had secured for herself and Emilia whatever
property remained, so that she suffered only the delightful need of
living in Europe for economy.
The elder brother and sister had alike that fine physical vigor which
New England is now developing, just in time to save it from decay. Hope
was of Saxon type, though a shade less blonde than her brother; she
was a little taller, and of more commanding presence, with a peculiarly
noble carriage of the shoulders. Her brow was sometimes criticised as
being a little too full for a woman; but her nose was straight,
her mouth and teeth beautiful, and her profile almost perfect. Her
complexion had lost by out-door life something of its delicacy, but had
gained a freshness and firmness that no sunlight could impair. She had
that wealth of hair which young girls find the most enviable point of
beauty in each other. Hers reached below her knees, when loosened, or
else lay coiled, in munificent braids of gold, full of sparkling lights
and contrasted shadows, upon her queenly head.
Her eyes were much darker than her hair, and had a way of opening
naively and suddenly, with a perfectly infantine expression, as if she
at that moment saw the sunlight for the first time. Her long lashes were
somewhat like Emilia’s, and she had the same deeply curved eyebrows;
in no other point was there a shade of resemblance between the
half-sisters. As compared with Kate, Hope showed a more abundant
physical life; there was more blood in her; she had ampler outlines, and
health more absolutely unvaried, for she had yet to know the experience
of a day’s illness. Kate seemed born to tread upon a Brussels carpet,
and Hope on the softer luxury of the forest floor. Out of doors her
vigor became a sort of ecstasy, and she walked the earth with a jubilee
of the senses, such as Browning attributes to his Saul.
This inexhaustible freshness of physical organization seemed to open the
windows of her soul, and make for her a new heaven and earth every day.
It gave also a peculiar and almost embarrassing directness to her mental
processes, and suggested in them a sort of final and absolute value, as
if truth had for the first time found a perfectly translucent medium.
It was not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was
eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in it
a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty
sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home in daily life, and
in a democratic society. To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of
existence, like light or air. Kate’s nature was limited; part of
her graceful equipoise was narrowness. Hope was capable of far more
self-abandonment to a controlling emotion, and, if she ever erred,
would err more widely, for it would be because the whole power of her
conscience was misdirected. “Once let her take wrong for right,” said
Aunt Jane, “and stop her if you can; these born saints give a great deal
more trouble than children of this world, like my Kate.” Yet in daily
life Hope yielded to her cousin nine times out of ten; but the tenth
time was the key to the situation. Hope loved Kate devotedly; but Kate
believed in her as the hunted fugitive believes in the north star.
To these maidens, thus united, came Emilia home from Europe. The father
of Harry and Hope had been lured into a second marriage with Emilia’s
mother, a charming and unscrupulous woman, born with an American body
and a French soul. She having once won him to Paris, held him there
life-long, and kept her step-children at a safe distance. She arranged
that, even after her own death, her daughter should still remain abroad
for education; nor was Emilia ordered back until she brought down some
scandal by a romantic attempt to elope from boarding-school with a Swiss
servant. It was by weaning her heart from this man that Philip Malbone
had earned the thanks of the whole household during his hasty flight
through Europe. He possessed some skill in withdrawing the female
heart from an undesirable attachment, though it was apt to be done by
substituting another. It was fortunate that, in this case, no fears
could be entertained. Since his engagement Philip had not permitted
himself so much as a flirtation; he and Hope were to be married soon; he
loved and admired her heartily, and had an indifference to her want of
fortune that was quite amazing, when we consider that he had a fortune
of his own.