AT the celebrated Oldport ball for the French officers, the merit of
each maiden was estimated by the number of foreigners with whom she
could talk at once, for there were more gentlemen than ladies, and not
more than half the ladies spoke French. Here Emilia was in her glory;
the ice being once broken, officers were to her but like so many
school-girls, and she rattled away to the admiral and the fleet captain
and two or three lieutenants at once, while others hovered behind the
circle of her immediate adorers, to pick up the stray shafts of what
passed for wit. Other girls again drove two-in-hand, at the most, in the
way of conversation; while those least gifted could only encounter one
small Frenchman in some safe corner, and converse chiefly by smiles and
signs.
On the whole, the evening opened gayly. Newly arrived Frenchmen are apt
to be so unused to the familiar society of unmarried girls, that the
most innocent share in it has for them the zest of forbidden fruit, and
the most blameless intercourse seems almost a bonne fortune. Most of
these officers were from the lower ranks of French society, but they all
had that good-breeding which their race wears with such ease, and can
unhappily put off with the same.
The admiral and the fleet captain were soon turned over to Hope, who
spoke French as she did English, with quiet grace. She found them
agreeable companions, while Emilia drifted among the elder midshipmen,
who were dazzling in gold lace if not in intellect. Kate fell to the
share of a vehement little surgeon, who danced her out of breath. Harry
officiated as interpreter between the governor of the State and a lively
young ensign, who yearned for the society of dignitaries. The governor
was quite aware that he himself could not speak French; the Frenchman
was quite unaware that he himself could not speak English; but with
Harry’s aid they plunged boldly into conversation. Their talk happened
to fall on steam-engines, English, French, American; their comparative
cost, comparative power, comparative cost per horse power,--until Harry,
who was not very strong upon the steam-engine in his own tongue, and was
quite helpless on that point in any other, got a good deal astray among
the numerals, and implanted some rather wild statistics in the mind of
each. The young Frenchman was far more definite, when requested by the
governor to state in English the precise number of men engaged on board
the corvette. With the accuracy of his nation, he beamingly replied,
“Seeshundredtousand.”
As is apt to be the case in Oldport, other European nationalities beside
the French were represented, though the most marked foreign accent was
of course to be found among Americans just returned. There were European
diplomatists who spoke English perfectly; there were travellers who
spoke no English at all; and as usual each guest sought to practise
himself in the tongue he knew least. There was the usual eagerness among
the fashionable vulgar to make acquaintance with anything that combined
broken English and a title; and two minutes after a Russian prince had
seated himself comfortably on a sofa beside Kate, he was vehemently
tapped on the shoulder by Mrs. Courtenay Brash with the endearing
summons: “Why! Prince, I didn’t see as you was here. Do you set
comfortable where you be? Come over to this window, and tell all you
know!”
The prince might have felt that his summons was abrupt, but knew not
that it was ungrammatical, and so was led away in triumph. He had been
but a month or two in this country, and so spoke our language no more
correctly than Mrs. Brash, but only with more grace. There was no great
harm in Mrs. Brash; like most loquacious people, she was kind-hearted,
with a tendency to corpulence and good works. She was also afflicted
with a high color, and a chronic eruption of diamonds. Her husband
had an eye for them, having begun life as a jeweller’s apprentice, and
having developed sufficient sharpness of vision in other directions to
become a millionnaire, and a Congressman, and to let his wife do as she
pleased.
What goes forth from the lips may vary in dialect, but wine and oysters
speak the universal language. The supper-table brought our party
together, and they compared notes.
“Parties are very confusing,” philosophized Hope,--“especially when
waiters and partners dress so much alike. Just now I saw an ill-looking
man elbowing his way up to Mrs. Meredith, and I thought he was bringing
her something on a plate. Instead of that, it was his hand he held out,
and she put hers into it; and I was told that he was one of the leaders
of society. There are very few gentlemen here whom I could positively
tell from the waiters by their faces, and yet Harry says the fast set
are not here.”
“Talk of the angels!” said Philip. “There come the Inglesides.”
Through the door of the supper-room they saw entering the drawing-room
one of those pretty, fair-haired women who grow older up to twenty-five
and then remain unchanged till sixty. She was dressed in the loveliest
pale blue silk, very low in the neck, and she seemed to smile on all
with her white teeth and her white shoulders. This was Mrs. Ingleside.
With her came her daughter Blanche, a pretty blonde, whose bearing
seemed at first as innocent and pastoral as her name. Her dress was of
spotless white, what there was of it; and her skin was so snowy, you
could hardly tell where the dress ended. Her complexion was exquisite,
her eyes of the softest blue; at twenty-three she did not look more
than seventeen; and yet there was such a contrast between these virginal
traits, and the worn, faithless, hopeless expression, that she looked,
as Philip said, like a depraved lamb. Does it show the higher nature
of woman, that, while “fast young men” are content to look like
well-dressed stable boys and billiard-markers, one may observe that
girls of the corresponding type are apt to addict themselves to white
and rosebuds, and pose themselves for falling angels?
Mrs. Ingleside was a stray widow (from New Orleans via Paris), into
whose antecedents it was best not to inquire too closely. After many
ups and downs, she was at present up. It was difficult to state with
certainty what bad deed she had ever done, or what good deed. She simply
lived by her wits, and perhaps by some want of that article in her
male friends. Her house was a sort of gentlemanly clubhouse, where the
presence of two women offered a shade less restraint than if there had
been men alone. She was amiable and unscrupulous, went regularly to
church, and needed only money to be the most respectable and fastidious
of women. It was always rather a mystery who paid for her charming
little dinners; indeed, several things in her demeanor were
questionable, but as the questions were never answered, no harm was
done, and everybody invited her because everybody else did. Had she
committed some graceful forgery tomorrow, or some mild murder the next
day, nobody would have been surprised, and all her intimate friends
would have said it was what they had always expected.
Meantime the entertainment went on.
“I shall not have scalloped oysters in heaven,” lamented Kate, as she
finished with healthy appetite her first instalment.
“Are you sure you shall not?” said the sympathetic Hope, who would have
eagerly followed Kate into Paradise with a supply of whatever she liked
best.
“I suppose you will, darling,” responded Kate, “but what will you care?
It seems hard that those who are bad enough to long for them should not
be good enough to earn them.”
At this moment Blanche Ingleside and her train swept into the
supper-room; the girls cleared a passage, their attendant youths
collected chairs. Blanche tilted hers slightly against a wall, professed
utter exhaustion, and demanded a fresh bottle of champagne in a voice
that showed no signs of weakness. Presently a sheepish youth drew near
the noisy circle.
“Here comes that Talbot van Alsted,” said Blanche, bursting at last into
a loud whisper. “What a goose he is, to be sure! Dear baby, it promised
its mother it wouldn’t drink wine for two months. Let’s all drink with
him. Talbot, my boy, just in time! Fill your glass. Stosst an!”
And Blanche and her attendant spirits in white muslin thronged around
the weak boy, saw him charged with the three glasses that were all his
head could stand, and sent him reeling home to his mother. Then they
looked round for fresh worlds to conquer.
“There are the Maxwells!” said Miss Ingleside, without lowering
her voice. “Who is that party in the high-necked dress? Is she the
schoolmistress? Why do they have such people here? Society is getting so
common, there is no bearing it. That Emily who is with her is too
good for that slow set. She’s the school-girl we heard of at Nice, or
somewhere; she wanted to elope with somebody, and Phil Malbone stopped
her, worse luck. She will be for eloping with us, before long.”
Emilia colored scarlet, and gave a furtive glance at Hope, half of
shame, half of triumph. Hope looked at Blanche with surprise, made
a movement forward, but was restrained by the crowd, while the noisy
damsel broke out in a different direction.
“How fiendishly hot it is here, though! Jones junior, put your elbow
through that window! This champagne is boiling. What a tiresome time we
shall have to-morrow, when the Frenchmen are gone! Ah, Count, there you
are at last! Ready for the German? Come for me? Just primed and up to
anything, and so I tell you!”
But as Count Posen, kissing his hand to her, squeezed his way through
the crowd with Hal, to be presented to Hope, there came over Blanche’s
young face such a mingled look of hatred and weariness and chagrin, that
even her unobserving friends saw it, and asked with tender commiseration
what was up.
The dancing recommenced. There was the usual array of partners,
distributed by mysterious discrepancies, like soldiers’ uniforms, so
that all the tall drew short, and all the short had tall. There were the
timid couples, who danced with trembling knees and eyes cast over their
shoulders; the feeble couples, who meandered aimlessly and got tangled
in corners; the rash couples, who tore breathlessly through the
rooms and brought up at last against the large white waistcoat of the
violon-cello. There was the professional lady-killer, too supreme and
indolent to dance, but sitting amid an admiring bevy of fair women,
where he reared his head of raven curls, and pulled ceaselessly
his black mustache. And there were certain young girls who, having
astonished the community for a month by the lowness of their dresses,
now brought to bear their only remaining art, and struck everybody dumb
by appearing clothed. All these came and went and came again, and had
their day or their night, and danced until the robust Hope went home
exhausted and left her more fragile cousins to dance on till morning.
Indeed, it was no easy thing for them to tear themselves away; Kate was
always in demand; Philip knew everybody, and had that latest aroma of
Paris which the soul of fashion covets; Harry had the tried endurance
which befits brothers and lovers at balls; while Emilia’s foreign court
held out till morning, and one handsome young midshipman, in special,
kept revolving back to her after each long orbit of separation, like a
gold-laced comet.
The young people lingered extravagantly late at that ball, for the
corvette was to sail next day, and the girls were willing to make the
most of it. As they came to the outer door, the dawn was inexpressibly
beautiful,--deep rose melting into saffron, beneath a tremulous morning
star. With a sudden impulse, they agreed to walk home, the fresh air
seemed so delicious. Philip and Emilia went first, outstripping the
others.
Passing the Jewish cemetery, Kate and Harry paused a moment. The sky was
almost cloudless, the air was full of a thousand scents and songs, the
rose-tints in the sky were deepening, the star paling, while a few vague
clouds went wandering upward, and dreamed themselves away.
“There is a grave in that cemetery,” said Kate, gently, “where lovers
should always be sitting. It lies behind that tall monument; I cannot
see it for the blossoming boughs. There were two young cousins who loved
each other from childhood, but were separated, because Jews do not allow
such unions. Neither of them was ever married; and they lived to be
very old, the one in New Orleans, the other at the North. In their last
illnesses each dreamed of walking in the fields with the other, as in
their early days; and the telegraphic despatches that told their deaths
crossed each other on the way. That is his monument, and her grave was
made behind it; there was no room for a stone.”
Kate moved a step or two, that she might see the graves. The branches
opened clear. What living lovers had met there, at this strange hour,
above the dust of lovers dead? She saw with amazement, and walked on
quickly that Harry might not also see.
It was Emilia who sat beside the grave, her dark hair drooping and
dishevelled, her carnation cheek still brilliant after the night’s
excitement; and he who sat at her feet, grasping her hand in both of
his, while his lips poured out passionate words to which she eagerly
listened, was Philip Malbone.
Here, upon the soil of a new nation, lay a spot whose associations
seemed already as old as time could make them,--the last footprint of
a tribe now vanished from this island forever,--the resting-place of a
race whose very funerals would soon be no more. Each April the robins
built their nests around these crumbling stones, each May they reared
their broods, each June the clover blossomed, each July the wild
strawberries grew cool and red; all around was youth and life and
ecstasy, and yet the stones bore inscriptions in an unknown language,
and the very graves seemed dead.
And lovelier than all the youth of Nature, little Emilia sat there
in the early light, her girlish existence gliding into that drama of
passion which is older than the buried nations, older than time, than
death, than all things save life and God.