What was the use of "looking," unless things were looked at? Mrs.
Ledwith found at the end of the winter that she ought to give a
party. Not a general one; Mrs. Ledwith always said "not a general
one," as if it were an exception, whereas she knew better than ever
to undertake a general party; her list would be _too_ general, and
heterogeneous. It would simply be a physical, as well as a social,
impossibility. She knew quantities of people separately and very
cordially, in her easy have-a-good-time-when-you-can style, that she
could by no means mix, or even gather together. She picked up
acquaintances on summer journeys, she accepted civilities wherever
she might be, she asked everybody to her house who took a fancy to
her, or would admire her establishment, and if she had had a spring
cleaning or a new carpeting, or a furbishing up in any way, the next
thing was always to light up and play it off,--to try it on to
somebody. What were houses for? And there was always somebody who
ought to be paid attention to; somebody staying with a friend, or a
couple just engaged, or if nothing else, it was her turn to have the
sewing-society; and so her rooms got aired. Of course she had to air
them now! The drawing-room, with its apricot and coffee-brown
furnishings, was lovely in the evening, and the crimson and garnet
in the dining-room was rich and cozy, and set off brilliantly her
show of silver and cut-glass; and then, there was the new, real,
sea-green China.
So the party was had. There were some people in town from New York;
she invited them and about a hundred more. The house lit up
beautifully; the only pity was that Mrs. Ledwith could not wear her
favorite and most becoming colors, buff and chestnut, because she
had taken that family of tints for her furniture; but she found a
lovely shade of violet that would hold by gas-light, and she wore
black Fayal lace with it, and white roses upon her hair. Mrs.
Treweek was enchanted with the brown and apricot drawing-room, and
wondered where on earth they had got that particular shade, for "my
dear! she had ransacked Paris for hangings in just that perfect,
soft, ripe color that she had in her mind and never could hit upon."
Mrs. MacMichael had pushed the grapes back upon her plate to examine
the pattern of the bit of china, and had said how lovely the
coloring was, with the purple and pale green of the fruit. And these
things, and a few more like them, were the residuum of the whole,
and Laura Ledwith was satisfied.
Afterward, "while they were in the way of it," Florence had a little
_musicale_; and the first season in Shubarton Place was over.
It turned out, however, as it did in the old rhyme,--they shod the
horse, and shod the mare, and let the little colt go bare. Helena
was disgusted because she could not have a "German."
"We shall have to be careful, now that we have fairly settled down,"
said Laura to her sister; "for every bit of Grant's salary will have
been taken up with this winter's expenses. But one wants to begin
right, and after that one can go on moderately. I'm good at
contriving, Frank; only give me something to contrive with."
"Isn't it a responsibility," Frank ventured, "to think what we shall
contrive _for_?"
"Of course," returned Mrs. Ledwith, glibly. "And my first duty is
to my children. I don't mean to encourage them to reckless
extravagance; as Mrs. Megilp says, there's always a limit; but it's
one's duty to make life beautiful, and one can't do too much for
home. I want my children to be satisfied with theirs, and I want to
cultivate their tastes and accustom them to society. I can't do
_everything_ for them; they will dress on three hundred a year
apiece, Agatha and Florence; and I can assure you it needs
management to accomplish that, in these days!"
Mrs. Ripwinkley laughed, gently.
"It would require management with us to get rid of that, upon
ourselves."
"O, my dear, don't I tell you continually, you haven't waked up yet?
Just rub your eyes a while longer,--or let the girls do it for
you,--and you'll see! Why, I know of girls,--girls whose mothers
have limited incomes, too,--who have been kept plain, actually
_plain_, all their school days, but who must have now six and eight
hundred a year to go into society with. And really I wouldn't
undertake it for less, myself, if I expected to keep up with
everything. But I must treat mine all alike, and we must be
contented with what we have. There's Helena, now, crazy for a young
party; but I couldn't think of it. Young parties are ten times worse
than old ones; there's really no _end_ to the expense, with the
German, and everything. Helena will have to wait; and yet,--of
course, if I could, it is desirable, almost necessary; acquaintances
begin in the school-room,--society, indeed; and a great deal would
depend upon it. The truth is, you're no sooner born, now-a-days,
than you have to begin to keep up; or else--you're dropped out."
"O, Laura! do you remember the dear little parties our mother used
to make for us? From four till half-past eight, with games, and tea
at six, and the fathers looking in?"
"And cockles, and mottoes, and printed cambric dresses, and milk and
water! Where are the children, do you suppose, you dear old Frau Van
Winkle, that would come to such a party now?"
"Children must be born simple, as they were then. There's nothing my
girls would like better, even at their age, than to help at just
such a party. It is a dream of theirs. Why shouldn't somebody do it,
just to show how good it is?"
"You can lead a horse to water, you know, Frank, but you can't make
him drink. And the colts are forty times worse. I believe you might
get some of the mothers together for an ancient tea-drink, just in
the name of old association; but the _babies_ would all turn up
their new-fashioned little noses."
"O, dear!" sighed Frau Van Winkle. "I wish I knew people!"
"By the time you do, you'll know the reason why, and be like all the
rest."
Hazel Ripwinkley went to Mrs. Hilman's school, with her cousin
Helena. That was because the school was a thoroughly good one; the
best her mother could learn of; not because it was kept in parlors
in Dorset Street, and there were girls there who came from palaces
west of the Common, in the grand avenues and the ABC streets; nor
did Hazel wear her best gray and black velvet suit for every day,
though the rich colored poplins with their over-skirts and sashes,
and the gay ribbons for hair and neck made the long green baize
covered tables look like gardenplots with beds of bloom, and quite
extinguished with their brilliancy the quiet, one skirted brown
merino that she brushed and folded every night, and put on with
fresh linen cuffs and collar every morning.
"It is an idiosyncrasy of Aunt Frances," Helena explained, with the
grandest phrase she could pick out of her "Synonymes," to cow down
those who "wondered."
Privately, Helena held long lamentations with Hazel, going to and
fro, about the party that she could not have.
"I'm actually ashamed to go to school. There isn't a girl there, who
can pretend to have anything, that hasn't had some kind of a company
this winter. I've been to them all, and I feel real mean,--sneaky.
What's 'next year?' Mamma puts me off with that. Poh? Next year
they'll all begin again. You can't skip birthdays."
"I'll tell you what!" said Hazel, suddenly, inspired by much the
same idea that had occurred to Mrs. Ripwinkley; "I mean to ask my
mother to let _me_ have a party!"
"You! Down in Aspen Street! Don't, for pity's sake, Hazel!"
"I don't believe but what it could be done over again!" said Hazel,
irrelevantly, intent upon her own thought.
"It couldn't be done _once_! For gracious grandmother's sake, don't
think of it!" cried the little world-woman of thirteen.
"It's gracious grandmother's sake that made me think of it," said
Hazel, laughing. "The way she used to do."
"Why don't you ask them to help you hunt up old Noah, and all get
back into the ark, pigeons and all?"
"Well, I guess they had pretty nice times there, any how; and if
another big rain comes, perhaps they'll have to!"
Hazel did not intend her full meaning; but there is many a faint,
small prophecy hid under a clover-leaf.
Hazel did not let go things; her little witch-wand, once pointed,
held its divining angle with the might of magic until somebody broke
ground.
"It's awful!" Helena declared to her mother and sisters, with tears
of consternation. "And she wants me to go round with her and carry
'compliments!' It'll never be got over,--never! I wish I could go
away to boarding-school!"
For Mrs. Ripwinkley had made up her unsophisticated mind to try this
thing; to put this grain of a pure, potent salt, right into the
seethe and glitter of little Boston, and find out what it would
decompose or precipitate. For was not she a mother, testing the
world's chalice for her children? What did she care for the hiss and
the bubble, if they came?
She was wider awake than Mrs. Ledwith knew; perhaps they who come
down from the mountain heights of long seclusion can measure the
world's paces and changes better than they who have been hurried in
the midst of them, on and on, or round and round.
Worst of all, old Uncle Titus took it up.
It was funny,--or it would have been funny, reader, if anybody but
you and I and Rachel Froke knew exactly how,--to watch Uncle Titus
as he kept his quiet eye on all these things,--the things that he
had set going,--and read their revelations; sheltered, disguised,
under a character that the world had chosen to put upon him, like
Haroun Alraschid in the merchant's cloak.
They took their tea with him,--the two families,--every Sunday
night. Agatha Ledwith "filled him in" a pair of slippers that very
first Christmas; he sat there in the corner with his old leather
ones on, when they came, and left them, for the most part, to their
own mutual entertainment, until the tea was ready. It was a sort of
family exchange; all the plans and topics came up, particularly on
the Ledwith side, for Mrs. Ripwinkley was a good listener, and Laura
a good talker; and the fun,--that you and I and Rachel Froke could
guess,--yes, and a good deal of unsuspected earnest, also,--was all
there behind the old gentleman's "Christian Age," as over brief
mentions of sermons, or words about books, or little brevities of
family inquiries and household news, broke small floods of
excitement like water over pebbles, as Laura and her daughters
discussed and argued volubly the matching and the flouncing of a
silk, or the new flowering and higher pitching of a bonnet,--since
"they are wearing everything all on the top, you know, and mine
looks terribly meek;" or else descanted diffusely on the
unaccountableness of the somebodies not having called, or the bother
and forwardness of the some-other-bodies who had, and the
eighty-three visits that were left on the list to be paid, and
"never being able to take a day to sit down for anything."
"What is it all for?" Mrs. Ripwinkley would ask, over again, the
same old burden of the world's weariness falling upon her from her
sister's life, and making her feel as if it were her business to
clear it away somehow.
"Why, to live!" Mrs. Ledwith would reply. "You've got it all to do,
you see."
"But I don't really see, Laura, where the living comes in."
Laura opens her eyes.
"_Slang_?" says she. "Where did you get hold of that?"
"Is it slang? I'm sure I don't know. I mean it."
"Well, you _are_ the funniest! You don't _catch_ anything. Even a
by-word must come first-hand from you, and mean something!"
"It seems to me such a hard-working, getting-ready-to-be, and then
not being. There's no place left for it,--because it's all place."
"Gracious me, Frank! If you are going to sift everything so, and get
back of everything! I can't live in metaphysics: I have to live in
the things themselves, amongst other people."
"But isn't it scene and costume, a good deal of it, without the
play? It may be that I don't understand, because I have not got into
the heart of your city life; but what comes of the parties, for
instance? The grand question, beforehand, is about wearing, and then
there's a retrospection of what was worn, and how people looked. It
seems to be all surface. I should think they might almost send in
their best gowns, or perhaps a photograph,--if photographs ever were
becoming,--as they do visiting cards."
"Aunt Frank," said Desire, "I don't believe the 'heart of city life'
is in the parties, or the parlors. I believe there's a great lot of
us knocking round amongst the dry goods and the furniture that never
get any further. People must be _living_, somewhere, _behind_ the
fixings. But there are so many people, nowadays, that have never
quite got fixed!"
"You might live all your days here," said Mrs. Ledwith to her
sister, passing over Desire, "and never get into the heart of it,
for that matter, unless you were born into it. I don't care so much,
for my part. I know plenty of nice people, and I like to have things
nice about me, and to have a pleasant time, and to let my children
enjoy themselves. The 'heart,' if the truth was known, is a
dreadful still place. I'm satisfied."
Uncle Titus's paper was folded across the middle; just then he
reversed the lower half; that brought the printing upside down; but
he went on reading all the same.
"_I_'m going to have a real party," said Hazel, "a real,
gracious-grandmother party; just such as you and mother had, Aunt
Laura, when you were little."
Her Aunt Laura laughed good-naturedly.
"I guess you'll have to go round and knock up the grandmothers to
come to it, then," said she. "You'd better make it a fancy dress
affair at once, and then it will be accounted for."
"No; I'm going round to invite; and they are to come at four, and
take tea at six; and they're just to wear their afternoon dresses;
and Miss Craydocke is coming at any rate; and she knows all the old
plays, and lots of new ones; and she is going to show how."
"I'm coming, too," said Uncle Titus, over his newspaper, with his
eyes over his glasses.
"That's good," said Hazel, simply, least surprised of any of the
conclave.
"And you'll have to play the muffin man. 'O, don't you know,'"--she
began to sing, and danced two little steps toward Mr. Oldways. "O, I
forgot it was Sunday!" she said, suddenly stopping.
"Not much wonder," said Uncle Titus. "And not much matter. _Your_
Sunday's good enough."
And then he turned his paper right side up; but, before he began
really to read again, he swung half round toward them in his
swivel-chair, and said,--
"Leave the sugar-plums to me, Hazel; I'll come early and bring 'em
in my pocket."
"It's the first thing he's taken the slightest notice of, or
interest in, that any one of us has been doing," said Agatha
Ledwith, with a spice of momentary indignation, as they walked along
Bridgeley Street to take the car.
For Uncle Titus had not come to the Ledwith party. "He never went
visiting, and he hadn't any best coat," he told Laura, in verbal
reply to the invitation that had come written on a square satin
sheet, once folded, in an envelope with a big monogram.
"It's of no consequence," said Mrs. Ledwith, "any way. Only a
child's play."
"But it will be, mother; you don't know," said Helena. "She's going
right in everywhere, with that ridiculous little invitation; to the
Ashburnes and the Geoffreys, and all! She hasn't the least idea of
any difference; and just think what the girls will say, and how they
will stare, and laugh! I wish she wasn't my cousin!"
"Helena!"
Mrs. Ledwith spoke with real displeasure; for she was good-natured
and affectionate in her way; and her worldly ambitions were rather
wide than high, as we have seen.
"Well, I can't help it; you don't know, mother," Helena repeated.
"It's horrid to go to school with all those stiffies, that don't
care a snap for you, and only laugh."
"Laughing is vulgar," said Agatha. If any indirect question were
ever thrown upon the family position, Agatha immediately began
expounding the ethics of high breeding, as one who had attained.
"It is only half-way people who laugh," she said. "Ada Geoffrey and
Lilian Ashburne never laugh--_at_ anybody--I am sure."
"No, they don't; not right out. They're awfully polite. But you can
feel it, underneath. They have a way of keeping so still, when you
know they would laugh if they did anything."
"Well, they'll neither laugh nor keep still, about this. You need
not be concerned. They'll just not go, and that will be the end of
it."
Agatha Ledwith was mistaken. She had been mistaken about two things
to-night. The other was when she had said that this was the first
time Uncle Oldways had noticed or been interested in anything they
did.