CHAPTER X.

THE long storm in August set in next day. A fine, close drizzle veiled

the world by 7 o’clock. At 8.30, the twins and Fanny needed their

waterproof cloaks for the walk to school. By noon the patter on the

piazza roof and falling floods upon lawn and garden and streets were

slow, but abundant. It was scrubbing day and closet day, and, as Hester

fretted sometimes to methodical Mary Ann on Friday, “all the rest of

the week,” below stairs. Hetty had to prepare a dessert and to set the

lunch table. Before going down she made up a little fire in the sewing

room, and put out Hester’s color-box, glass of water, stretching board,

paper, and easel within easy reach, should she decide to use them.

Silently, and not too suggestively, she set upon the table near by a

vase containing some fine specimens of the moccasin flower sent in

by May Gilchrist, with a note addressed to “Queen Mab.” Hester hated

hints, but if she lacked a study she would not have to look far for it.

It was “a bad day” with her. Her mother attributed it partly to her

disappointment at not seeing her crony teacher.

Hetty, who had put the excited child to bed as soon as she got into the

house the night before, held her peace. Mrs. Wayt, hovering from the

nursery and her husband’s chamber to the sewing room, saw that in her

taciturn daughter’s countenance that warned and kept her aloof. Another

of Hester’s biting sayings was that her mother, on the day succeeding

one of her spouse’s “seizures” was “betwixt the devil and the deep

sea.” She never admitted, even to her sister, that “dear Percy” was

more than “unfortunate,” yet read Hetty’s disapprobation in averted

looks and studiously commonplace talk.

Wan and limp the cripple reclined among the cushions Hetty packed about

her in her wheeled chair. Blue shadows ringed mouth and eyes, and

stretched themselves in the hollowed temples; the deft fingers were

nerveless. Most of the time she seemed to watch the rain under drooping

eyelids, so transparent as to show the dark irides beneath.

At half past eleven her mother stole in like a bit of drifted down.

“Dear, I have promised papa to go up to your room and lie down for half

an hour. Annie is with him. She amuses him, and will be very good, she

says. I told her to let you know if she wanted anything. May I leave

the door open? She cannot turn this stiff bolt.”

Annie was one of Hester’s weak points. “Baby” never made her nervous

or impatient, and much of the little one’s precocity was due to

intimate companionship with the disabled sister, whose plaything she

was.

“Yes. All right!” murmured Hester, closing her eyes entirely.

She was deathly pallid in the uncolored gloom of a rainy noon.

“Or—if you feel like taking a nap, yourself?” hesitated Mrs. Wayt.

Tactful with her husband, and tender with all her household, she

yet had the misfortune often to rub Hester’s fur the wrong way. The

delicately pencilled brows met over frowning eyes.

“No! no! you know I never sleep in the day! If you would never bother

yourself with my peace and comfort, mamma, we should be on better

terms. I am not a baby, or a—husband!”

She was not sorry for her ill humor or for the long gap between the

last article and noun, when left to herself.

She lay upon a bed of thorns, each of which was endued with intelligent

vitality. Earth was a waste. Heaven had never been. Hate herself for

it as she might she had never, in all her rueful existence, known

suffering comparable to that condensed into the three little minutes

she had lived twelve hours ago.

When Hetty had come up to bed her face was beautiful with a strange

white peace, at sight of which Hester held her breath. Coming swiftly,

but without bustle, across the room, she kneeled by the bed and

gathered the frail form in the dear, strong arms that had cradled it

a thousand times. Her eyes sparkled, her lips were parted by quick

breaths, but she tried to speak quietly.

“Precious child! you should be asleep. But I am glad you are not, for I

have a message for you. We—you and I—are to take no anxious thought for

to-morrow, or for any more of the to-morrows we are to spend together.

March told me to say that and to give you this!” laying a kiss upon her

lips. “For he loves me, Hester, darling, and you are to live with us!

Just as we planned, ever and ever so long ago! But what day dream was

ever so beautiful as this?”

For one of the three awful minutes Hester thought and hoped she was

dying. The frightened blood ebbed back with turbulence that threw her

into a spasm of trembling and weeping. She recollected pushing Hetty

away, then clutching her frantically to pull her down for a storm of

passionate kisses given between tearless sobs. Then she gave way to

wheezing shrieks of laughter, which Hetty tried to check. She would not

let her move or speak after that.

“How thoughtless in me not to know that you were too much unnerved to

bear another shock—even of happiness!” said the loving nurse. “No!

don’t try to offer so much as a word of congratulation. It will

keep! All we have to do to-night is to obey the order of our superior

officer, and not think—only trust!”

In the morning there was no opportunity for speech-making. A night of

suffering had beaten Hester dumb.

“Nobody could be surprised at that!” cooed Hetty, as she rubbed and

bathed the throbbing spine. “If I could but pour down this aching

column some of my redundant vitality!”

Hester detested herself in acknowledging the fervent sincerity of the

wish. Hetty would willingly divide her life with her, as she had said

yesterday that she meant to divide her fortune.

“Half for you while I live! All for you when I am gone!”

The sad sweetness of the smile accompanying the words was as

little like the wonderful white shining of last night as the lot

cast for Hetty was like that of the deformed dwarf whose height of

grotesque folly was attained when she loved—first, in dreams and

in “drifting”—then, all unconsciously, in actual scenes and waking

moments—one whose whole heart belonged to the woman who had “made her

over,” to whom she owed life, brain, and soul!

She was to live with them! Hetty must make her partaker of her every

good. By force of long habit, Hester fell to planning the house the

three would inhabit. She was herself—always helpless, never less a

burden than now—a piece of rubbish in the pretty rooms, a clog upon

domestic machinery—a barrier to social pleasure—the inadmissible third

in the married _tête-à-tête_.

She writhed impotently. More useless than a toy; more troublesome than

a baby—uglier than the meanest insect that crawls—she must yet submit

to the fate that fastened her upon the young lives of her custodians.

“I doubt if I could even take my own life!” she meditated darkly. “In

my fits of rage and despair, I used to threaten to roll my chair down

the stairs and break my neck to ‘finish the job.’ I said it once to

mamma. I wonder sometimes if that is the reason Tony puts up gates

across the top of the stairs wherever we go? He says it is to keep baby

Annie from tumbling down. I haven’t cared to die lately, but to-day

I wish my soul had floated clean out of my body in that five minute

make-believe under the pink tent of the apple tree, three months ago.

“I suppose he will be coming here constantly, now. Hetty won’t belong

to me anymore. I am very wicked! I am jealous of her with him, and of

him with her! I am a spiteful, malicious, broken-backed toad! Oh, how I

despise Hester Wayt! And I owe it all to _him_!”

She glowered revengefully at the door her mother had left unclosed.

Baby Annie was having a lovely hour with “dee papa.” He had not left

his bed, but the nausea and sense of goneness with which he had

awakened, were yielding to the administration of minute potions of

opium by his wife, at stated intervals. A fit of delirium tremens,

induced by the failure to “cool him off” _secundum artem_, had brought

about Homer’s introduction to his nominal employer. Routed from his

secret lodgings under the roof-tree at one o’clock of a winter morning,

Hetty’s waif had first run for a doctor, and, pending his arrival,

pinioned the raving patient with his sinewy arms until the man of

intelligent measures took charge of the case. Mrs. Wayt had run no such

risks since.

Her lord never confessed that he took opium or ardent spirits. Indeed,

he made capital of his total abstinence even from tobacco. There was

always a cause, natural or violent, for his attacks. The Chicago

seizure followed upon his rashness in swallowing, “mistaking it for

mineral water,” a pint of spirits of wine, bought for cleaning his

Sunday suit. Other turns he attributed, severally, to dyspepsia, to

vertigo, to over-study, and to extreme heat. A sunstroke, suffered when

he was in college, rendered him peculiarly sensitive to hot weather.

His wife never gainsaid his elaborate explanations. He was her Percy,

her conscience, her king. She not only went backward with the cloak of

love to conceal his shame, but she affected to forget the degradation

when he became sober.

Many women in a thousand, and about one man in twenty millions, are

“built so.” The policy—or principle—may be humane. It is not Godlike.

The All-Merciful calls sinners to repentance before offering pardon.

The Church insists upon conviction as a preliminary to conversion. Mrs.

Wayt was a Christian and a churchwoman, but she clung pathetically to

belief in the efficacy of her plan for the reclamation of her husband.

In life, or in death, she would not have upon her soul the weight of

a reproach addressed to him whom she had sworn to “honor.” Love was

omnipotent. In time he would learn the depth of hers and be lured back

to the right way.

He was plaintive this forenoon, but not peevish. His eyes were

bloodshot; his tongue was furry; there was a gnawing in the pit of his

stomach and an unaccountable ache at the base of the brain.

“I have missed another sunstroke by a hair’s breadth,” he informed his

wife. “I almost regret that we did not go to the seashore. My summer

labors are exhausting the reserves of vital energy.”

“Why not run down to the beach for a day or two next week?” suggested

Mrs. Wayt. “Now that your wife is an heiress, you can afford a change

of air, now and then.”

A dull red arose in the sallow cheek. He pulled her down to kiss her.

“The best, sweetest wife ever given to man!” he said.

After that he bade her get a little rest. She must have slept little

the night before. Annie would keep him company. While his head was so

light and his tongue so thick Annie’s was the best society for him. She

made no demand upon intellectual forces. He sent the best wife ever

given to man off lightened in spirit, and grateful for the effort he

made to appease her anxiety and to affect the gayety he could not be

supposed to feel. She looked back at the door to exchange affectionate

smiles with the dear, unselfish fellow.

He watched the baby’s pretty, quaint pretense of “being mamma,” and

hearkened to the drip and plash of the rain until the gnawing in his

stomach re-asserted itself importunately. He knew what it meant. It

was the demand of the devil-appetite he had created long ago—his

Frankenstein, his Old Man of the Sea, his body of death, lashed fast to

him, lying down when he lay down, rising up at his awakening, keeping

step with him, however he might try to flee. The lust he had courted

rashly—now become flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.

His wife had carried off the phial of opium. But he had secreted a

supply of the drug for such emergencies since she had found out the

phosphate device and privately confiscated the stout blue bottle. He

always carried a small Greek Testament in his hip pocket. Mrs. Wayt’s

furtive search of his clothes every night, after making sure that he

was asleep, had not extended to the removal of the sacred volume.

He arose stealthily, steadied his reeling head by holding hard to the

back of his neck with one hand, while the other caught at the chairs

and bed-foot; tiptoed to the closet, found his black cloth pantaloons,

drew out the Testament, and extracted from the depths beneath a wad of

silken, rustleless paper. Within was a lump of dark brown paste.

“Tan’y! tan’y!” twittered Annie’s sweet, small pipe. “Give baby a

piece! p’ease, dee papa!”

He hurried back into bed. If the child were overheard Hetty might look

in. And Hester’s sharp ears were across the hall.

“No, baby; papa has no candy.” He was so startled and unmanned that he

had to wet his lips with a tongue almost as parched before he could

articulate. “Papa’s head aches badly. Will Annie sing him to sleep?”

Hester heard, through her stupor of misery, the weak little voice and

the thump of the low rocking chair as baby crooned to the dolly cuddled

in her arms and to “dee papa,” the song learned from Hester’s self:

“S’eep, baby, s’eep.

The angels watch ’y s’eep.

The fairies s’ake ’e d’eamland t’ee,

An’ all’e d’eams ’ey fall ow’ee.

S’eep, baby, s’eep!”

The rain fell straight and strong. The heavy pour had beaten all motion

out of the air, but the gurgling of water pipes and the resonance of

the tinned roof gave the impression of a tumultuous storm. Through the

register and chimney arose a far-off humming from the cellar, where

Homer was “redding up.” Hester’s acute ears divided the sound into

notes and words:

“An’ we buried her deep, yes! deep among the rocks.

On the banks of the Oma-ha!”

Annie stopped singing. “Dolly mus’ lie down in her twadle, an’ mamma

mate her some tea!” Hester heard her say. At another time she would

have speculated, perhaps anxiously, as to the processes going on when

the clatter of metal and the tinkle of china arose, accompanied by the

fitful bursts of song and a monologue of exclamations.

“Oh! oh! _tate tare_, dee papa!” came presently in a frightened tone.

Then louder: “Papa! dee papa! wate up! you’ll det afire!”

Wee feet raced across the hall, a round face, red and scared, appeared

in the doorway.

“Hetter! Hetter! tum, wate up dee papa! ’E bed is on fire!”

Through the doors left open behind her Hester saw a lurid glare, a

column of smoke.

Shrieking for help at the top of her feeble lungs she plied the levers

of her chair and rolled rapidly into the burning room. Upon the table

at the foot of the bed had stood the spirit lamp and copper teakettle

used by Mrs. Wayt in heating her husband’s phosphate draughts at night.

Annie had lighted the lamp and contrived to knock it over upon the bed.

The alcohol had ignited and poured over the counterpane.

Mr. Wayt lay, unstirring, amid the running flames. Hester made straight

for him, leaned far out of her chair, to pull off the blazing covers,

“Papa! papa! papa!”

He had not heard the word from her in ten years. He was not to hear it

now.

Mrs. Wayt, Hetty, March Gilchrist, and the servants, rushing to the

spot, found father and child enwrapped in the same scorching pall.

* * * * *

“Mr. Wayt died at midnight,” reported the Fairhill papers. “He never

regained consciousness. The heroic daughter who lost her life in

attempting to rescue a beloved parent lived until daybreak.

“‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths

they were not divided.’”

* * * * *

“I must be going, dear heart!” whispered Hetty’s namechild, as the

August dawn, made faint by showers, glimmered through the windows. “I

cannot see you. Would Mr. March mind kissing me ‘good-by’?”

“Mind?” He could not restrain the great sob. A tear fell with the kiss.

“Dear little friend! my sweet sister!”

The glorious eyes, darkened by death and almost sightless, widened in

turning toward him. She smiled radiantly.

“Thank you for calling me _that_. Now, Miss May! And poor mamma! I wish

I had been a better child to you! Hetty, dearest! hold me fast and kiss

me last of all! You will be very happy, darling! But you won’t forget

me—will you? I heard the doctors say”—a gleam of the old fantastic

humor playing about her mouth—“that I had swallowed the flame. I think

they were right—for the—_bitterness is all—burned—out—of my heart_!”

A SOCIAL SUCCESS.

PART I.

“I KNOW it is _horrid_ to swoop down upon you at this barbarously early

hour, but I couldn’t help coming the minute I received your card. We

get our mail at the breakfast table, and I fairly screamed with joy

when I opened the envelope. ‘Jack!’ I said, ‘_who_ do you think has

come to New York to live?’

“‘The Picanninnies and the Joblillies and the Garyulies, and probably

the grand Panjandrum himself,’ said my gentleman.

“You know what a tease he is. Oh, no, you don’t! for you never met

him. But you will before long! ‘Better than all of them put together,

with the little round button on top,’ said I. (You see I am used to

his chaff!) ‘My very dearest school friend, of whom you have heard me

talk ten thousand times—Susie Barnes, now Mrs. Cornell. She has been

living five years in Brooklyn (and I’ve always declared I’d rather go

to Canada than to Brooklyn) and here’s her card telling me that she

has returned to civilization. Mrs. Arthur Hayward Cornell, No. — West

Sixty-seventh St.’ At that he pricked up his ears.

“‘That’s the new cashier in the Pin and Needle Bank,’ says he.

‘Somebody was talking of him at the Club last night.’ And nothing would

do but I must tell him all about you. In going over the story and

thinking of the dear old times, my heart got so warm and full that I

rushed off by the time he was out of the house.”

Mrs. John Hitt, a well-dressed, prettyish woman, whom the cold morning

light showed to be also a trifle society-worn, embraced her hostess

anew, and then held her off at arm’s length for inspection.

“You _sweet_ old girl! what sort of life have you led that you have

kept your roses, your dimples, and the sparkle in your eyes all these

years? Do you know that you are absolutely bewitching?”

The lately recovered friend smiled, coloring as a woman of Mrs. Hitt’s

world could not have done.

“You are the same impulsive Kitty!” she said affectionately. “I have

had a quiet, busy, happy life with Arthur and the children. Three

babies in five years do not give a housekeeper much time for anything

but domestic duties.”

“I should think not, indeed!” The shiver of shoulders was

well-executed, the heavenward cast of eyes and hands dramatic. “I

wonder you live to tell it! One child in six years has been enough to

unsettle _my_ wits. Now that you are once more within my reach (Oh,

you _darling_!) we must make up for lost time and see a great deal

of each other! Do you ever sing nowadays? Or have you let your music

go to the dogs? I suppose so, if Providence _has_ interfered to save

your wild-rose complexion. I was _raving_ to Jack this morning over

the voice you used to have, and your genius for theatricals and all

that. ‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘there was nothing that girl _couldn’t_ do.’ To

think of wasting such an organ, or wearing it thin in crooning nursery

ditties.”

Mrs. Cornell laughed a soft, merry burst of amusement, at which the

other eyed her curiously.

“You behave less like an exhumed corpse than anybody could imagine who

knew of your five years in Brooklyn, and the three younglings. What

amuses you?”

“Nothing, except your determination to regard me as dead, buried,

and resurrected. So far from giving up my music, I have practiced

more steadily than if I had spent more evenings abroad. You know I

studied vocal and instrumental music with the intention of making it

my profession. Arthur agrees with me that what is once learned should

never be lost. Then, when my little girls are ready to be taught,

I can instruct them myself. We had a number of musical friends in

Brooklyn, and a pleasant circle of acquaintances. We have not lived

in—_Hoboken_,” cried the hostess in whimsical vexation. “I don’t see

why New Yorkers always talk of Brooklyn as if it were as far off and as

much a _terra incognita_ as the moon. We are inhabitants of the same

planet as yourselves.”

The visitor patted the back of her companion’s hand, soothingly. “You

are a New Yorker _now_—one of us!” she purred. “In six months you would

as soon cross the Styx as the East River, even on that overgrown,

preposterous Bridge the Brooklynites give themselves such airs over.

How prettily settled you are!” staring, rather than glancing about the

apartment. “These are nice drawing rooms and furnished in excellent

taste.”

Mrs. Cornell had regarded them as “parlors,” but her first concession

to Mrs. Hitt’s better knowledge was to look accustomed to the new term.

She fought down with equal success the impulse to classify Kitty’s open

admiration with the amiable patronage of which Brooklyn people are

inclined to suspect New Yorkers. She plumed herself modestly upon her

taste in house-furnishing and upon the ability to make cheap things

look as if they had cost a good deal. She had withheld the fact of the

change of residence from metropolitan acquaintances until her house was

in order that might defy unfavorable criticism. It was kind in Kitty to

run in so unceremoniously and to be glad of the chance to renew their

early intimacy. In spite of Arthur and the children, she had begun to

be somewhat homesick in the great whirling world about her.

“Like a chip in the Atlantic Ocean!” Thus she had described her

sensations to her husband that very morning. “I suppose I shall get

used to it after a while, especially as Brooklyn and New York are, to

all intents and purposes, one and the same city.”

She asserted it stoutly, knowing all the while that Moscow and New

Orleans were as nearly homogeneous.

Yes! Kitty was heartily welcome to the stranger in an unknown

territory. Mrs. Hitt was not intellectual, and judged by standards

Arthur Cornell’s wife had come to revere sincerely, she was not

especially refined in speech and bearing. Or were Susie’s tastes too

quiet and her ideas old-fashioned, that her interlocutor’s crisp

sayings sounded pert, and the bright brown eyes and fixed flush upon

the cheekbones were artificially aggressive? Her former chum had

always been warm-hearted, if inconveniently outspoken. And she was

a New Yorker, and fashionable. Susie’s cherished ambition, unavowed

even to Arthur while it was expedient for them to live simply, was to

be fashionable, brilliant, and courted—a member in good and regular

standing in the Society of which Mrs. Sherwood lectured, and Ellen

Olney Kirk wrote, and to which Jenkyns Knickerbocker was _au fait_.

A certain something that was not air or tone, deportment or attire,

and yet partook of all these as pot-pourri of rose-breath, spices,

and perfumed oils—marked Kitty Hitt as an _habituée_ of the charmed

Reserve. She was not, perhaps, one of the Four Hundred selected from

the Upper Ten Thousand by processes as arbitrary, to human judgment, as

those by which Gideon’s three hundred were picked out from the hosts

of Israel. Susie was no simpleton, albeit ambitious. Mr. Hitt was a

stockbroker; hence manifestly in the line of promotion, but there were

degrees of elevation upon even Olympus. Her imagination durst not lift

eyes to the cloud-wreathed summit where chief gods held revel, guarded

from vulgar intrusion by Gabriel Macallister. The climate and manner

of life a few leagues lower down would, as she felt, suit her better

than the rarified atmosphere of the extremest heights. She had always

meant to climb, and successfully, when time and opportunity should

serve. From the moment the passage of the river was determined upon as

a business necessity, she felt intuitively that both of these were near.

“We think them cozy!” she assented quietly to the visitor’s praise of

her rooms.

“Cozy! they are _lovely_!”

While she talked she raised her eye-glasses to make note of some

fine etchings upon the walls and a choice water-color upon an easel,

and took in, in passing, the circumstance that the rugs laid upon

the polished floor were of prime quality, although neither large nor

numerous.

“I do hope you don’t mean to shut yourself up in your pretty cage as so

many pattern wives and mothers—particularly Brooklyn women” (roguishly)

“do? That’s the reason American society is so crude and colorless.

With your face and figure and accomplishments (I haven’t forgotten how

divinely you recite) you ought to become a Social Success—a star in

the world of Society. You ought indeed!” drowning the feeble murmur of

dissent. “There’s many a so-named leader of the gay world who doesn’t

hold, and who never did hold such a card. Just trust yourself to me,

and I will prove all I promise.”

“But, my dear Kitty, I lack the Open Sesame to the Gotham

Innermost—Money! Only the repeatedly-millionaired can pass the outer

courts.”

“There it is! Epigrams and bon-mots drop from your lips as pearls

and diamonds used to tumble out whenever the good little girl in the

Fairy-tale opened her mouth. As to millions of money—bah!” with a

gesture of royal disdain. “Our best people are not the richest. The

true New Yorker knows that. Of course one must live and dress well,

but your husband’s means amply warrant _that_. Jack says cashiers get

from ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year. Your face, your manner,

and your talents are all the passport you require when once you are

introduced. I claim the privilege of doing it. And, as an initial

step, I want you and Mr. Cornell to dine with us to-morrow evening.

I’ll ask six or eight of the nicest people I know to meet you. They’ll

excuse the shortness of the notice when they see what a reason I

have for calling them together. Put on a pretty gown and look your

loveliest and bring along some music. I mean that you shall capture all

hearts. I shall be grieved to the quick if you don’t. The hour will

be seven—_sharp_. Punctuality is the soul of good humor in a dinner

company. I must run away. I have an appointment with a tyrannical

dressmaker at half-past ten; Mr. Lincoln’s Literature Class at eleven;

a luncheon at half-past one; and afternoon tea, anywhere from four to

six; a dinner party, and after that the opera. Such a whirl! Yet, as I

say to Jack when he grumbles that we never have a quiet home evening—it

is the only life worth living, as you’ll own when you’ve had a taste

of it! (You _dear_ thing! it rests my tired eyes just to look at you!)

Here’s Jack’s card for Mr. Cornell. I’m just dying to see him and if he

is good enough for you.”

“A great deal too good!” ejaculated Susie, earnestly, through this

accidental gap in the monologue. “The dearest, most generous fellow!”

“_Cela va sans dire_—with the Brooklyn model! I’m so happy that you

are one of us, and no longer a pattern article. Good-by!”

“There! I let her go without showing her the children,” reflected Mrs.

Cornell, when she got back her breath. “But we had so much to talk

of it is no wonder we forgot them. There are no friends like the old

friends. How unjust we are sometimes! I came near not sending her my

card because she had never been over to Brooklyn to see me all the

while I was there. And Arthur advised me against doing it. He would

have it that it is no further from New York to Brooklyn than from

Brooklyn to New York. He predicted, too, that she would never come to

see me here. He says there’s no other memory so short as that of a

woman who has risen fast upon the social ladder. This ought to be a

lesson in Christian charity to us both. Kitty’s heart is always in the

right place.”

With a becoming mantling of rose-pink in her cheeks, she went singing

about her “drawing” rooms, altering the angle of chairs and sofas,

and the arrangement of bric-a-brac, already viewing her appointments

through Kitty’s eye-glasses. Her thoughts were running upon the

projected dinner party. She was the proud owner of a black velvet

gown with a trained skirt, and a V-shaped front, and of dainty

laces wherewith to fill the triangle. She had a diamond pin and

earrings—wedding gifts from the wealthy aunt for whom she was named.

The same generous relative had bestowed upon her, at different holiday

seasons, the rugs and pictures that adorned her house. Aunt Susan might

always be depended upon to do the handsome thing, and she was fond of

this niece and her “steady” husband. The home of Susie’s girlhood had

been more plainly furnished, as Kitty had known and must recollect. It

was natural that the elegant grace characterizing Mrs. Cornell’s abode

should mislead the shrewd observer in the estimate of the cashier’s

income. Without surmising what had suggested the remark, or that it was

a “feeler,” Mrs. Cornell smiled, yet a little uneasily, in recalling it.

“Kitty is so used to hearing of big sums that her ideas are vague on

the subject of salaries,” meditated the better informed wife. “She

doesn’t dream how handsomely people can live on six thousand dollars.

Or that we got along on one-half that much in Brooklyn and laid aside

something yearly. It is none of my business to set her right. Arthur

doesn’t care to have his money affairs discussed.”

It did not occur to her as a possibility that from the pardonable

disingenuousness any serious trouble could ever arise, yet she knew

what Arthur would say. She heard, in imagination, his warning:

“Never sail under false colors, Susie!”

Therefore, in her animated description of call and conversation, she

omitted all mention of Kitty’s tentative allusion to their income.

Not knowing his wife’s old comrade, he might think her prying and

impertinent in touching upon such a subject at all. Poor, dear Kitty!

there were disadvantages in being so impetuously frank. A clear-headed

cool reasoner like Arthur, for instance, was almost sure to misread her.

As our heroine had told Kitty, her married life had been quiet. Her

vivacious friend would have called it “stupid.” The circle of congenial

friends had been circumscribed and most of them were people of

moderate means and desires. Brooklyn might be called a segregation of

neighborhoods, each district having manners, customs, and social code

peculiar to the village that was its germ. As one settlement ran into

another, a city grew that claims the respect of the mightier sister

across the river. The Cornells had lived in a pleasant house in a

pleasant street, and Susie had spoken truly in saying that they lived

well. With no pretense of entertaining, they were cordially hospitable,

“having” friends to supper, or to pass the evening, whenever fair

occasion offered. For the children’s sake the mother took her principal

meal with them at one o’clock, but the hearty tea prepared for the

father who had lunched frugally in town was invariably appetizing,

being well cooked and daintily served. He had the privilege not always

accorded to richer men who sit down daily to late “course dinners”—that

of bringing a crony home with him whenever he pleased. It was like

Arthur Cornell to choose as chance guests men who had not such homes as

his—bank clerks from the country, Bohemian artists of good character

and light purses, and the like. Such were the honored recipients of the

hostess’ smile and warm handshake. She had won the admiring reverence

of more than one homeless bachelor by her skill in delicate and savory

cookery and the gracious friendliness of her welcome, and these,

oftener than any other class, composed the delighted audience of the

music Arthur called for every evening.

Once or twice a month husband and wife went to the theater or a

concert, and twice or at the most three times a year to the opera.

They were pretty sure to have complimentary tickets to the water-color

exhibition and other displays of paintings in Brooklyn or New York.

Of receptions, they knew comparatively little except such as followed

weddings among their acquaintances. Neither had ever attended a regular

dinner party gotten up by a professional caterer, and the ladies’

luncheon of eight, ten, or a dozen courses was unknown by the seeing

of the eyes and the tasting of the palate to the bright woman whose

social successes in a new arena were foretold by the sanguine admirer

who craved the pleasure of bringing her out. There are still in fast

growing American cities tens of thousands of such people who live

honestly, comfortably, and beneficently, and whose homes are refined

centers of happiness and goodness.

There was, then, cause for the wife’s pleasurable flutter of spirits

and the doubtful satisfaction expressed, against his intention, in the

husband’s visage at the close prospect of a state banquet given in

honor of their undistinguished selves, at which anonymous edibles would

be washed down with foreign wines, and spicy _entrées_ be punctuated by

spicy hors _d’œuvres_. Arthur’s predominant quality was sound sense,

and as his spouse had anticipated, his first emotion after hearing

her tale was wonder at the sudden and violent increase of friendship

consequent upon their change of residence, in one who had apparently

forgotten the unimportant fact of her favorite schoolfellow’s existence

for more than five years.

“I can’t imagine why she should care to take us up now,” he demurred.

Susie’s ready flush testified to the hurt he had dealt her pride or

affections. She thought to the latter.

“If you would only not let your prejudice master your reason!” she

sighed. “All New York women hate and dread ferries.”

“There is the Bridge!” put in the Brooklyn-born literalist.

“Which would have taken visitors _miles_ away from us. I was afraid you

would wet-blanket the whole affair. I really dreaded to tell you of

what I was silly enough to look forward to with pleasure. You see you

don’t know what a fine, genuine creature Kitty is. But we won’t dispute

over her or her dinner party. I can write to her and say that we regret

our inability to accept the invitation.”

Arthur closed his teeth upon another struggling sentence. Although

even less of a society man than she was of a society woman, he had

a definite impression that invitations to dinner were usually sent

out some days in advance of the “occasion.” Less distinct, because

intuitive, was the idea that gay young women, already laden with social

obligations, did not press attentions upon everyday folk from Brooklyn,

E. D., unless they hoped to gain something by it, or were addicted to

patronage. The former hypothesis being, as he conceived, untenable, it

followed that Mrs. Hitt, a good-natured rattle, must have said more

than she meant of her intentions toward the strangers, or that she had

a native fondness for playing the lady patroness.

Loving and admiring his wife from the full depths of a quiet heart,

he held all this back. Susie was vivacious, ready of wit and speech,

and he was not. She dearly enjoyed excitement and new acquaintances.

Give him dressing jacket, slippers, and an interesting book, or his

wife’s music and his own fireside, and he would not have exchanged

places with Ward Macallister at his complacent best. Susie would shine

anywhere; she was born to it! He was not even a first-class reflector

of her rays. Yet this noblest of women had stood by him with cheerful

gallantry in their less prosperous days. He had told her over and over

that she had hidden her light under a bushel in becoming the mistress

of such a home as he had to give her, but she had loyally denied this,

and borne her part bravely in the struggle to lap the non-elastic ends

of their common income. To her capital management he owed much of their

present comfort.

Arthur Cornell reasoned slowly, but always in a straight line.

“I am a selfish, brutal fellow, darling,” he said at this point of his

cogitations. “I am afraid I am a little tired to-night. We have had

a busy day at the Bank. You mustn’t mind my growls. When we have had

sup—dinner, I would say!—you’ll find me more than willing to listen and

sympathize.”

Her satisfactory answer was to come over and kiss him silently, taking

his head between her hands and laying her cheek upon it. The hair

was getting thin on the top, and the gaslight brought into gleaming

conspicuousness a few gray hairs. He was older than she by nine years.

It would not be surprising if, for a long time yet, he continued to

say “supper” instead of “dinner.” She was certain he would never learn

to talk of the “drawing room.” But he was her very own, and dearly

beloved, and the kindest, noblest fellow in the world. Whatever he

might do or say, she could never be angry with or ashamed of him.

PART II.

THE evening meal—an excellent one, to which Mr. Cornell did ample

justice—was over. Father and mother, as was their custom, had visited

the nursery in company, heard the children’s prayers, and kissed them

“good-night.” The orderly household had settled down into cheerful

quiet that fell like dew upon weary nerves. Susie went to the piano

presently and played a pensive _nocturne_, then sang softly a couple of

Arthur’s favorite ballads. The night was blustering, and in the silence

succeeding the music, the wedded pair, seated before the soft-coal fire

in the back parlor, heard the hurrying tread of passers-by echoing

sharply from the frozen stones.

Arthur ended the restful pause. His choice of a theme and the lightness

of his tone were heroic.

“Low neck and short sleeves for me to-morrow night, I suppose, old

lady? That is to say, claw-hammer, and low-cut vest. It’s lucky I had

them made for Lou Wilson’s wedding last winter. There wouldn’t be time

to get up the proper rig, and regrets based upon ‘No dress-coat’ would

be rather awkward.”

“Decidedly! No man of whatever age should be without one,” rejoined

the nascent fashionist. “Some men never sit down to dinner except in

evening dress. It must be very nice to live in that way. I like such

graceful ceremony in everyday customs.”

Arthur cast about for something neater to say than the dismayed

ejaculation bitten off just in time.

“It must help a fellow to feel altogether at his ease in his company

accouterments”—inspiration coming in the nick of time. “Most men look,

and, judging by myself, feel like newly imported restaurant waiters

when decked out in their swallow-tails.”

The conventional “dress coat” is a shrewd test of innate gentlehood. A

thoroughbred is never more truly one than when thus appareled. The best

it can do for the plebeian, who would prefer to eat his dinner in his

shirt-sleeves, is to bring him up to the level of a hotel waiter.

Arthur looked like an unassuming gentleman on the following evening,

when he joined his wife below-stairs. If he had not an air of fashion,

he had not a touch of the vulgarian. Susie’s mien was, as he assured

her, that of a queen. Her head was set well above a pair of graceful

shoulders, she carried herself and managed her train cleverly. Arthur

had brought her a cluster of pink roses, all of which she wore in her

corsage except one bud which she pinned in his buttonhole. He put a

careful finger under her chin, and lifted her face to let the full

light of the chandelier rain upon it.

“It would have been a pity to keep you all to myself to-night,” he said.

The weather was raw, with menace of rain or snow, but neither of

them thought of the extravagance of a carriage. As she had done upon

previous festal occasions, the wife looped up the trailing breadths

of velvet, and secured them into a “walking length” of skirt with

safety pins. Over her gala attire she cast a voluminous waterproof,

buttoned all the way down the front. A bonnet would have deranged her

_coiffure_, and she wore, instead, a black Spanish lace scarf knotted

under her chin. Slippers and light gloves went in a reticule slung upon

her arm.

It lacked five minutes of seven when they alighted from a street-car

within a block of the Hitts’ abode. Four carriages were in line before

the door, and from these stepped men swathed in long, light ulsters,

who assisted to alight and ascend the stone steps apparitions in

furred and embroidered opera cloaks that ravished Susie’s wits, in the

swift transit of the gorgeous beings from curbstone to the hospitable

entrance. A dizzying sensation of unreality, such as one experiences

in finding himself unexpectedly upon a great height, seized upon her.

Could these people be collected to meet _her_? Humbled, yet elated,

she entered the house, and obeying the directions of the footman at the

foot of the stairs, mounted to the dressing room.

Four women in such elaborate toilets that our heroine felt forthwith

like a crow among birds-of-paradise, glanced carelessly over their

shoulders at her without suspending their chatter to one another, and

went on talking and shaking out their draperies. Each, in resigning her

wraps to the maids in waiting, stepped forth ready for drawing-room

parade. Susie retreated to a corner and began hurriedly to disembarrass

herself of her waterproof and to let down her skirt. A maid followed

her presently.

“Can I help you?” professionally supercilious.

“Thank you. If you would be so good as to take off my boots, I should

be obliged.”

The formula was ill-advised and justified the heightened hauteur of

the smart Abigail. With pursed mouth and disdainful finger-tips, she

removed the evidences that the wearer had trudged over muddy streets

to get here, and as gingerly fitted on the dry slippers. The heat in

Susie’s cheeks scorched the delicate skin when she found that the

time consumed in her preparations had detained her above-stairs after

everybody else had gone down. And Kitty had enjoined punctuality! She

met her husband in the upper hall with a distressed look.

“We are _horribly_ late,” she whispered.

“I don’t suppose it makes any difference,” responded he to comfort her.

“It’s fashionable to be late, isn’t it?”

“Not at dinners,” she had barely time to admonish him when they crossed

the threshold of the drawing room.

Kitty advanced with _empressement_ to meet them, but that they were

behind time was manifest from the celerity with which she introduced

her husband, and without the interval of a second, the man who was to

take Mrs. Cornell in to dinner. Then she whisked Mr. Cornell up to a

dried-up little woman in pearl-colored velvet, presented him, asked

him to take charge of her into the dining room, herself laid hold of

another man’s arm, and signaled her husband to lead the way.

Arthur seldom lost his perceptive and reasoning faculties, and having

read descriptions of state dinners and breakfasts, bethought himself

that had his wife and himself been in truth chief guests, they would

have been paired off with host and hostess. Moreover, although there

was a vast deal of talking at table and he did his conscientious

best to make conversation with the velvet-clad mummy consigned to

him, he had all the time the feeling of being left out in the cold.

Nobody addressed him directly in word, or indirectly by glance, and

at length, in gentlemanly despair of diverting the attention of his

fair companion from her plate to himself, he let her eat in peace and

pleased himself by comparing the rosy, piquant face of his wife with

the bismuth-and-rouge-powdered visages to the right, left, and front

of her. Susie seemed to be getting on swimmingly. The man next to her

was chatting gayly, and evidently recognized a responsive spirit in

his fair companion. How easily and naturally she met his advances, and

how gracefully she fitted into her novel position! What were pomps

and vanities to him accorded with her tastes. Again he thought how

niggardly would have been the refusal to allow her to take the place

she so adorned.

Not even love’s eye penetrated the doughty visor she kept jealously

closed throughout the meal. To begin with, she _took the wrong fork

for the raw oysters_! As course succeeded course, the dreadful

implement, in style so unlike those left beside other plates, actually

_grinned_ at her with every prong. Everybody must be aware of the

solecism and deduce the truth that this was her first dinner party.

She was sure that she caught the waiters exchanging winks over the

fork, and that out of sheer malice, they allowed the tell-tale to

lie in full sight. The apprehension that she would eventually be

compelled to use the frail absurdity or leave untouched something—meat

or game, perhaps—assailed her. While she hearkened to the flippant

nothings her escort mistook for elegant small-talk, and plucked up

heart for repartee, hot and cold sweats broke out all over her. Had

she obeyed inclination that approximated frenzy at times, she would

have crept under the table and rolled over on the floor in anguished

mortification. If her sleight-of-hand had been equal to the rash

adventure, she would have pocketed the wretched bugbear in desperation

akin to that which makes the murderer fling far from him the weapon

with which the deed was done.

When the ghastly petty torture was ended by the removal of the

obnoxious article, and the substitution of one larger, plainer, and

less obvious, the poor woman could have kissed the perfunctory hand

that lifted the incubus from her soul.

She made other blunders, but none that were so glaring as this. Each

was a lesson and a stimulus to perfect herself in the _minutiæ_ of

social etiquette. Before long, she would need no schooling; would

lead, instead of following. She would know better another time, too,

how to dress herself. Kitty’s gown of cream-colored _faille_, flounced

with lace; the pale blue brocade of one woman, and the pink-and-silver

bravery of a third, the maize velvet and black lace of the dowager

across the table, and the mauve-and-white marvel of still another

toilet, threw her apparel into blackest shade. She caught herself

hoping people would think that she was in slight mourning. Besides her

allotted attendant nobody at table spoke a word to her, but Kitty

shot many a smile at her during the feast, and nodded several times in

significance that might be approval or reassurance. Mr. Hitt, a rather

handsome man with big, bold eyes, looked hard at her now and then, but

did not accost her, even after he grew talkative under the faster flow

of wine. His glasses were filled so often and emptied so quickly that

Susie wondered to see his wife’s smiling unconcern. Perhaps she had

faith in the strength of his brain.

Arthur did not touch one of the five chalices of different shapes and

colors flanking his plate, and Susie was weak enough, perceiving that

his conduct in this respect was exceptional, to feel mortified by his

eccentricity. It was in bad taste, she thought, to offer tacit censure

of the practice of host and fellow-guests. To nullify the unfavorable

impression of her husband’s singularity, she sipped from each of her

glasses, and dipped so deeply into the iced champagne which cooled

thirst excited by highly seasoned viands, the heated room and agitation

of spirits, that her bloom was more vivid when she arose from dinner

than when she sat down. She was quite at ease now, and enjoying, with

the zest of an artistic nature, the features of the novel scene.

The tempered light streaming over and repeated by silver, china, and

cut-glass; the flower-borders that criss-crossed the lace table-cover

laid over rose-colored satin, the superb costumes of the women and the

faultless garments of the men; the rapid, noiseless exchange of one

delicacy for another, some of the dishes being as new to her as would

have been an _entrée_ of peacocks’ brains or a _salmi_ of nightingales’

tongues—were fascinating to one whose love of the picturesque and

beautiful was a passion. This was the sort of thing she had read of in

English novels and American newspapers, the enchanting mode of life for

which she had yearned secretly, the atmosphere in which she should have

been born.

The return in feminine file to the drawing room of part of the company

was a stage of the pageant with which _Jane Eyre’s_ life at Thornhill,

and Annie Edwards’ and Ouida’s stories of hospitality at English

country houses had made her familiar. She hoped nobody else noticed

Arthur’s surprised stare, as the men arose and remained standing, with

no movement in the direction of the escaping fair ones. With flutter

and buzz and silken rustle, the dames swept through the hall back

into the drawing room and disposed themselves upon couches and in

easy-chairs, where tiny glasses of perfumed liqueur were handed to them.

“Exactly like a story of Oriental life,” mused entranced Susie.

Now, for the first time, Kitty had the opportunity to show to her

school-friend the pointed and peculiar attentions the rhapsodies of

yesterday had authorized her to expect. Up to this moment nobody had

been introduced to her except the man who took her to dinner.

“I must have you know all these friends of mine,” she purred, taking

Susie’s hand in both of hers, and leading her with engaging “gush” up

to the mauve-and-white marvel.

“Mrs. Vansittart, this is my _dear_ old school-fellow, Mrs. Cornell,

who is going to play something for us now, and after a while, to sing

several somethings, and when our audience is enlarged by the return

of the men to us lorn women, she will, if properly entreated, give us

some of her charming recitations. Ah! you may well look surprised. It

is granted to few women to combine so many talents, but when you have

heard her, you will see that I do not promise too much.

“Mrs. Roberts!” to the symphony in pink-and-silver—“I bespeak your

admiration for my friend and school-crony”—etc., etc., until the

blushing _débutante_ was the focus of six pairs of eyes, critical,

indifferent, and amiable, and wished that dear Kitty were not so

incorrigibly enthusiastic in praising those she loved.

Anyone but a refined novice would have divined at once that the act

of passing her around, like a plate of hot cakes, argued one of two

things—either that she was a “professional” of some sort, or that her

hostess was lamentably ignorant of the law demanding that the one to

be honored by an introduction should stand still and have the other

party to the ceremony brought to her. Kitty, at least, was no novice,

and everybody except her “school-crony” comprehended exactly what the

scene meant. Although she did not suspect it, she was on trial when

she sat down to the piano, the show-woman beside her, as the guileless

guest supposed, to give her affectionate encouragement. The first flash

of her fingers across the keys was the signal for general silence,

and the clapping of gloved hands at the conclusion of the brilliant

overture attested intelligent appreciation. She was not allowed to

leave the music stool for half an hour, one piece after another being

called for, and the choice of selections putting her on her mettle. Her

auditors were used to good music, and the assumption that she would

gratify them was a delicate compliment.

Kitty came to her elbow at length with a glass of clear liquid,

sparkling with pounded ice.

“Only lime-juice and water,” she whispered, “to clear your voice. I

have praised your singing until everybody is _wild_ to hear you.”

Susie smiled happily, glancing over her shoulder with an unconscious

and graceful gesture of gratitude; a bow, slight, but comprehensive,

she might have but had not copied from a popular prima donna. Another

rapid run of the nimble fingers over the responsive ivory, and she

glided into the prelude to Gounod’s never-trite song, “_Chantez! Riez!

Dormez!_”

She had sung but a few bars when her ear caught the muffled tread of

feet in the hall. A side-glance at the mirror showed her a picture

that might have been clipped from her British _contes de société_, the

grouping of manly faces and fashionable dress coats in the curtained

arch, all intent upon herself as the enchantress who held them mute and

eager. Electric fire streamed through her veins, her voice soared and

swelled as never before; her enunciation, exquisitely pure and clear,

carried each word up to the loftiest story of the stilled mansion:

“_Ah! riez, ma belle! riez! riez, toujours!_”

“Fine, by Jove, now!” cried a big mustached man at Arthur’s side, as

the last notes died upon ecstatic ears. “Patti couldn’t have done it

better!”

The husband repeated this with other encomiums to the songstress after

they got home. He made the tired but animated little woman sit down in

an armchair and pulled off her rubbers and unbuttoned her boots in far

different fashion from that in which the sleepy Abigail had put them on

the feet and helped truss up the train of “the woman who hadn’t come in

a carriage like decent folks.”

He had had a stupid evening. He couldn’t make the women talk to him.

He was not “a ladies’ man,” and every mother’s daughter of them took

in the truth at a glance. The men gabbled over their wine of what did

not interest him, of clubs and horse races, and the fluctuations of

fancy stocks. He neither smoked nor drank, and was the only man there

who did not do both. His wife’s music was to him the only redeeming

feature of the occasion, and he would have enjoyed that more in his own

parlor. But she was enraptured with everything and full of delightful

anticipations. “Everybody had been so nice and kind, and what did

ill-natured people mean by saying there was no real sociability among

fashionable people? For her part, she believed that the higher one

mounted in the social scale the more genuine goodness and refined

feeling she would find.” Several of the ladies had promised to call

upon her, and, as one said, “to take her in with them.”

Arthur hearkened silently. He had never been able to give her such

pleasures, a fact that smote him hard when he saw how zestfully she

drank of the newly opened spring. He would not “wet-blanket” her

enthusiasm, so did not hint at a discovery made to him by a chance

remark of a guest to the host. Invitations for this particular dinner

party had been out for ten days.

“Then Susie and I were second fiddles,” inferred the sensible cashier.

“I wonder why she asked us at all!”

PART III.

MR. CORNELL’S unspoken suspicion that Mrs. Hitt would drop her

school-friend as suddenly as she had picked her up was in a way to be

falsified, if the events of the next few months were to be taken as

testimony.

The two matrons were nearly inseparable—shopping, driving, walking, and

visiting together. For Susie had a New York visiting list speedily,

and almost every name stood for an introduction by her indefatigable

“trainer.” The epithet was the taciturn husband’s, and, as may be

surmised, was never uttered audibly. Susie’s wardrobe, furniture,

table—her very modes of speech—sustained variations that amazed

old friends and confounded him who knew her best. The cherished

black velvet she had thought “handsome enough for any occasion”

was pronounced “quaintly becoming, but too old for the wearer by

twenty-five years.” Slashed and dashed and lashed with gold-color,

it did duty as a house evening gown. For small luncheons, she had a

tailor-made costume of fawn-colored cloth embroidered and combined

with silk; for “swell” luncheons, a rich silk—black ground relieved by

narrow crimson stripes, and made en _demi-train_.

For at-home afternoons were two tea gowns; before she received her

second dinner invitation, she had made by Mrs. Hitt’s dressmaker—(“a

Frenchwoman who doesn’t know enough yet to charge American prices, my

dear, and I hold it to be a sin to _throw_ money away!”) a robe of

white brocade and sea-green velvet, in which garb she showed like a

moss-rose bud, according to her dear friend and trumpeter.

These strides into the realm of fashion, if at first startling to the

_débutante_, were quickly acknowledged to be imperatively necessary if

one would really live. Kitty’s taste in dress approximated genius. Even

she was hardly prepared for the ready following of her neophyte.

Had she needed corroborative evidence of the cashier’s liberal income,

his wife’s command of considerable sums supplied it. With all her

frankness, Mrs. Cornell did not confide to her bosom-friend where she

obtained the ready money that gained her credit with new tradespeople.

Now and then an uneasy qualm stirred the would-be comfortable soul

of the wife as to how much or how little Arthur speculated within

his sober soul upon the probable cost of her new outfit. There were

two thousand dollars deposited in her name, and drawing interest

in a Brooklyn Savings Bank. The rich aunt had given her namechild

three-quarters of it from time to time. The young couple had saved

the rest, and it was tacitly understood that it should not be touched

except of necessity. No landmark in her new career was more pronounced

than Susie’s resort to this fund for the equipment without which her

dawning social success would, she felt, lapse into obscurity more

ignominious than that from which she had emerged. She must have the

things represented by the money, and intoxicated though she was, she

had still too much sense and conscience to deplete her husband’s purse

to the extent demanded by the exigency. He would have opened an artery

to gratify her, had heart’s blood been coin, but she knew he would look

grave and pained did he suspect her visits to the Bank and their result.

He was sober enough, nowadays, without additional cause of discomfort.

When questioned, he averred that all was going right at the Bank, and

that he was well. Nor would he confess to loneliness on the evenings

when she was obliged to leave him in obedience to Kitty’s summons to

rehearsal or consultation in some of the countless schemes of amusement

the two were all the while concocting.

“Don’t trouble yourself to come for me or to sit up for me, dear,” the

pleasure-monger would entreat in bidding him “good-by.” “I’ll have one

of the maids call for me,” or “I have a carriage,” or—and after a time

this was most frequent of all—“Jack Hitt is always very obliging about

bringing me home.”

With a smile upon his lips and gravity she did not read in his eyes,

he would hand her to the carriage, or commit her to the spruce maid,

hoping that she would have a pleasant evening, and having stood upon

the steps until she was no longer in sight, would go back—as she

supposed—to sitting room or book. Whereas, it grew to be more and

more a habit with him to turn into the nursery instead, and sit there

in the dark until he heard the bustle of her return below-stairs.

He invariably sat up for her—she never asked why or where. The fire

burned cheerily to welcome her, and the offices of maid, assumed, in

the beginning in loverly supererogation, half jest, half caress, were

now duty and habit. Upon one point he was resolute. If she went to bed

late, she must sleep late next morning. This was a matter of health, a

concession she owed those to whom her health was all-important.

The two older children had breakfasted with their parents for a year,

and he made much of their company when their mother was not the fourth

of the party. Sometimes he sent for the baby as well, holding her on

his knee with one hand, while the other managed coffee cup and toast.

Susie surprised him thus one morning, having awakened unsummoned, and

dressed hastily that she might see him before he went out.

“Arthur Cornell!” The ejaculation was the first intimation he had of

her presence. “You spoil the children and make a slave of yourself!

Where is their nurse?”

“Don’t blame Ellen, dear!” checking her motion toward the bell. “I sent

for the children. They are very good, and I enjoy their company.”

Mrs. Cornell flushed hotly; her lips were compressed.

“I understand! After this, I will make a point of giving you your

breakfast. It was never _my_ wish to lie in bed until this hour.”

“It was—and is mine!” rejoined her husband, steadily, unmoved by her

unwonted petulance. “As it is, you are pale and heavy-eyed. You have

had but five hours of sleep.”

“My head aches!” passing her hand over her forehead. “That will go off,

by-and-by. Baby! come to mamma, and let dear papa get his breakfast in

peace. Let me pour out a cup of hot coffee for you, first.”

Her softened tone and fond smile cleared the atmosphere for them all.

Arthur sunned himself in her presence as a half-torpid bird on an early

spring day. The children prattled merrily in answer to the pretty

mother’s blandishments; the baby stood up in her lap to make her fat

arms meet behind her neck. She looked pleadingly into the proud face

bent over mother and child. He was startled to see that the sweet eyes

were misty.

“Dear! can’t you go with me to-night?”

He fairly staggered at the unexpected appeal.

“If I had known——” he began.

“Yes, I know! I ought to have spoken before you made your engagement. I

was careless—forgetful—silly! I do nothing but silly things nowadays.

But I _wish_ you could go, darling!”

“I’m afraid it’s impossible,” said Arthur regretfully. “The president

made a point of my attending the meeting. I am sorrier than you can be,

little wife.”

She shook her head and tried to laugh.

“That shows how little you know about it! Don’t make any more

engagements without consulting me. ‘I’m ower young’—not ‘to leave my

mammy yet’—but to be running about the world without my dear, old,

steady-going husband—and I’m not willing to do it any longer.”

He carried the memory of words and glance with him all day. Coming home

at evening, he found a note from her, stating that Kitty had sent for

her.

“There is a dress rehearsal at seven,” she wrote. “I wish you could be

there and see how ravishing I can be! If your business meeting is over

by ten o’clock, won’t you slip into society toggery and come around in

season to see ‘the old lady’ home?”

“The fever has run its course!” thought the husband, with kindling

eyes. “I knew I should get her back some day.”

His dinner was less carefully served than in the olden supper days,

but he dined as with the gods, and ran briskly upstairs to send Ellen

down to her meal while he undressed the children and put them to bed.

He had done this often during the winter, pretending to make a joke of

the disrobing, but knowing it to be duty and vicarious. According to

his ideas the mother should see to it in person. No hireling, whose

own the bairns are not, can care for them as those in whose veins runs

answering kindred blood. Usually, the task was done in heaviness of

spirit. To-night, no effort was required to bring laughter to his lips,

lightness to his heart. To-morrow mamma would breakfast with them, and

resume her place in the home, so poorly filled by him or anybody else.

She had come back to them. He tried to sing one of her lullabies as

he rocked the baby to sleep, but failed by reason of a “catch in his

throat.” Mamma would warble it like a nightingale to them to-morrow

night.

The business meeting was unexpectedly brief—“Thanks,” as the president

was pleased to say, “to the admirable epitome of the matter in hand

prepared and presented by Mr. Cornell.”

At ten o’clock the husband was in his dressing room, hurrying the

process of “slipping into society toggery.” He repeated the phrase

aloud while tying his cravat with fingers uncertain from nervous haste.

He was thankful beyond expression that he had never cast the shadow

of his disapproval over Susie’s spirits, even when they threatened to

carry her out of the bounds of reason. She was young and pretty; so

affluent of vitality, so richly endowed with talents, that a humdrum

fellow like himself could not comprehend the stress of the temptation

to plunge into and riot in the mad vortex of social parade.

“If there were any one thing I could do as cleverly as she does

everything, I should be doing it all the time,” he confessed in

contrite candor.

Yesterday he had thanked Heaven that Lent was close upon the panting

racers over the pleasure grounds. Now, he was indifferent to the

advance and duration of the penitential season. His darling had

returned of her own right-headed, right-hearted self to the sanctuary

of home, having detected, unaided by his pessimistic strictures, the

miserable vanity and carking vexation of the hollow system. He sewed

two buttons upon his shirt before he could put it on, and when he

pushed the needle through a hole and the linen beneath into the ball of

his thumb, he began to whistle “Annie Laurie.”

Susie had practiced “Annie Laurie” for an hour before dinner yesterday.

He wondered if she had sung it last night at the Hitts’. She had been

overrun with business of late, getting ready for the chamber concert

and private theatricals, and mercy knew what else of frolic and folly

gotten up by Mrs. Hitt for the benefit of the “Industrial Home” which

was the latest charitable fad in her set. He had paid ten dollars for a

reserved seat last week at the behest of the volatile Lady Patroness.

She had let him have it “at a bargain because he had the good luck to

be Susie’s husband.”

“Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Peltry paid fifty apiece for theirs, and I

made Jack give me thirty for his. My rooms will seat comfortably just

one hundred and fifty people, and I won’t sell a ticket over that

number at any price. None will be for sale at the door, and none are

transferable. Of course, the rush for them is _fearful_!”

Before going Arthur peeped into the nursery, dropping the most cautious

of kisses upon the cheek and forehead of each sleeper. Three-year old

Sue made up her lips into a tempting knot as he touched her velvety

face.

“Dee’ mamma!” she murmured in her sleep.

He kissed her again for that, the “catch in his throat” in full

possession.

“I don’t wonder they love her!” he said brokenly. “Who could help it?”

The block on which the Hitt mansion stood was lined with waiting

carriages, and Mr. Cornell supposed that the entertainment, which he

called to himself “a show,” must be nearly over. For an instant, he

meditated waiting without until the crowd began to pour out, then,

making his way into the hall, to send word to his wife that he awaited

her pleasure. Something in the immobility of the doors changed his

plan. He did not care to lurk for an hour or more among the coachmen

who stamped and swore upon the pavement, reminding him of some verses

Susie had read to him in other days when she had time for books and the

talk over them after they were read. He recalled the first and last

verses, and smiled in going through the discontented ranks and up the

flight of stone steps:

“My coachman in the moonlight there

Looks through the side light of the door;

I hear him with his brethren swear,

As I could do—but only more.

* * * * *

Oh, could he have my share of din,

And I his quiet!—past a doubt,

’Twould still be one man bored within,

And just another bored without.”

A surge of hot and scented air enveloped him with the opening of the

door. The crowd in the hall contradicted the hostess’ declaration

that no more people would be admitted than could be comfortably

accommodated. Struggling up to the dressing room he got rid of hat and

overcoat, and struggled down again and to the door of the rear drawing

room. A curtain was rung up from a stage at the end of the apartment as

he gained a view of it.

The scene was the interior of an old-fashioned barn. Wreaths of

evergreen hung against the walls and depended from the rafters, and the

floor was cleared for dancing. From a door at the side a figure tripped

into the middle of the stage. Arthur looked twice before he recognized

the wearer of the colonial gown of old-gold brocade, brief of waist,

and allowing beneath the skirt glimpses of trim ankles in clocked

stockings. Her hair was piled over a cushion and powdered; eyebrows and

lashes were deftly darkened, and the carmine of cheek and mouth owed

brilliancy to rouge-pot and hare’s foot. She was the belle of the ball

to be held in the barn, and while waiting for the rest of the revelers,

she began to recite, in soliloquy, the old rhymes of _Money Musk_.

At the second line, from an unseen orchestra, issued low and faint,

like the echo of a spent strain, the popular dance tune. It stole so

insidiously upon the air as to suggest the musical thought of the

soliloquist, and was rather a background than an accompaniment to the

recitative. Gradually, as the story went on, the lithe figure began to

sway in perfect time to the phantom music; the eyes, smilingly eager,

seemed to look upon what the lips described; the feet stirred and

twinkled rhythmically; form and face were embodied melody. Vivified

by reverie, expectant and reminiscent, the radiant impersonation of

the poet’s picture floated airily through the enchanting measures. As

a morning paper put it, “she seemed to respire the music to which she

swayed and chanted.”

The audience, “though _blasé_ with much merrymaking and sight-seeing,

hung entranced upon every motion, until, wafted by gentle degrees

toward the side-scene opposite to that by which she had entered, she

vanished on the last word of the poem.”

Recalled by a tumult of applause, she courtesied in colonial fashion,

and kissed her hand brightly to her admirers, but instead of

vouchsafing a repetition of what had stirred the spectators out of

their _nil admirari_ mood, beckoned archly to the left and right. A

troop of young men and girls obeyed the summons and fell into place

in the country dance that went forward to the now ringing measures of

_Money Musk_.

The comedietta to which this was the prelude had been composed by a

well-known author, who was called out at the close of the second act,

and led forward the prima donna of the clever piece.

The interlude showed a moonlighted dell. On the distant hilltop was the

gleam of white tents; in the foreground stood a woman as colorless in

robe and visage as the moonbeams. Her voice, silvery and plaintive,

thrilled through the crowded rooms:

“Give us a song!” the soldiers cried,

The outer trenches guarding,

When the heated guns of the camps allied

Grew weary of bombarding.

And so, in distinct, unimpassioned narrative up to—

They sang of love and not of fame,

Forgot was Britain’s glory;

Each heart recalled a different name,

But all sang “Annie Laurie.”

Again the invisible orchestra bore up the uttered words; at first a

single cornet bringing down the air from the tented hilltop; then

deeper notes joining it, like men’s voices of varying tone and

strength, but all singing “Annie Laurie.”

“Something upon the _women’s_ cheeks

Washed off the stains of powder.”

said dissonant, derisive tones at Arthur Cornell’s back, as the

curtain fell. “Battered veterans of a dozen seasons are snivelling

like _ingenues_ of no season at all. What fools New Yorkers are to be

humbugged with their eyes open!”

“The fair manager hath a way of whistling the tin out of our pockets,”

replied a thin falsetto. “A wonderful creature, that same manager.”

A disagreeable, wheezing laugh finished the speech.

Arthur made an ineffectual effort to extricate himself from the packing

crowd, a movement unnoticed or uncared-for by the speakers.

“I admire—and despise—that woman!” continued the harsh voice. “As an

exhibition of colossal cheek she is unrivaled. For four years she has

preyed upon the majority that is up to her little ‘dodge,’ and the

minority that is _not_, pocketing her half of the profits of every

‘charitable’ show; borrowing from innocents that don’t know that she

pays not again, and actually—so I am told—receiving a commission for

introducing wild Westerners and provincial Easterners into what she

calls ‘our best circles.’ And we go on buying her tickets and accepting

her specimens, like the arrant asses we are.”

“Madame du Bois, upon a limited scale.”

“Exactly! Madame is her model. Her aping is more like monkeying, but

the resemblance is not lost. New Yorkers rather enjoy the sublime

audacity of Madame’s fleecing, and she _does_ have the _entrée_ of

uppertendom, sham though she is, with her drawing-room readings,

where geniuses are trotted out at big prices to ticket buyers, and no

price at all to Madame, and ranchmen’s daughters are provided with

blue-blooded Knickerbocker husbands. Her schemes are on a large scale.

She engineers benevolent pow-wows, clears her one thousand dollars

a night, and nobody dare charge her with pocketing a penny. You can

see where Kit learned her trade. To my certain knowledge she dresses

herself and pays for all her hospitable entertainments by these tricks.”

“Her latest investment isn’t a bad notion, but Kit is working the

scheme for all it’s worth. Anybody but the newest of the new would see

through the game.”

The other laughed gratingly.

“‘New’ is a mild way of putting it. We call her ‘Kit’s windfall’ at our

Club. Madame’s disciple had, as she fondly imagined, netted a couple

of veritable musical lions, and ten people were invited to hear their

after-dinner roar. The very day before the feast the male lion fell

sick, and the lioness wouldn’t or couldn’t leave her mate. Kitty was

tearing her false bang over the note apprising her of the disaster when

a card was brought in, telling her that an old schoolmate who had been

educated as a music-teacher, and had a niceish talent for recitation,

had removed to the city. Kit caught at the straw; raced around to

inspect her, judged her to be more than eligible, and roped her in.

Delorme was at the dinner and told me the story, which his wife had

from Kit’s own lips. The new ‘find’ had beauty as well as a voice and

a taste for theatricals, and a neat income, so Kit says—some thirty

thousand a year. Moreover, she is tremendously grateful for the lift in

the world, and so daft with enjoyment of her first glimpse of _le bon

ton_ that she would send Kit ten out of the thirty thousand sooner than

lose her social standing. She doesn’t guess that she will be tossed

aside like a squeezed orange next year, poor thing!”

Arthur leaned against the door-frame, too giddy and sick to move, had

action been practicable in such a press. One of the tedious “waits”

inseparable from amateur performances gave every woman there a chance

to outscream her neighbor. It might be dishonorable not to make himself

known to the gossips who considered themselves absolved by the payment

of an entrance fee from the obligation to speak well, or not at all, of

their hosts. He did not put the question to himself whether or not he

should continue to listen. In a judicial mood he would have weighed the

_pros_ and _cons_ of fact or fiction in the tale he had heard. Every

word had, to his consciousness, the stamp of authenticity. In the shock

of the confirmation of his worst misgivings with regard to his wife’s

chosen intimate, his ruling thought was of the anguish the truth would

cause her. How best to lessen the shock to her tender, loving heart,

how to mitigate her mortification, began already to put his deliberate

faculties upon the strain.

The wiry falsetto and wheezy laugh struck in from his very elbow.

“Kit’s exemplary spouse may not share her pecuniary profits, but he has

an eye to innings of another sort. I met him at the Club last night,

and saw that he had about six champagnes and four cocktails more than

his brain could balance. An hour later, I was passing the house of our

pretty prima donna when a carriage drew up and out stepped Jack and

turned to help out his wife’s favorite. And, by Jove! the way he did it

was to put his arm about her waist, swing her to the side-walk and try

to kiss her! She espied me, I suppose, for she broke away from him with

a little screech, and flew up her steps like a lapwing. She must have

had her latchkey all ready, for she got the door open in a twinkling,

and slammed it. I guffawed outright, and didn’t Jack swear!”

“What a beastly cad he is!” said the deep voice disgustfully.

Few men in the circumstances would have kept so forcibly in mind the

shame to wife and children that would follow a blow and quarrel then

and there, as the commonplace husband upon whose ear and heart every

vile word had fallen like liquid fire. He rent a path through the

throng, got his hat and coat and went out of the abhorrent place. He

had seen to it that Susie’s hired carriage was always driven by the

same man—a steady, middle-aged American—and recognizing him upon the

box, signaled him to draw up to the sidewalk, stepped into the vehicle,

and prepared to wait as patiently as might be until the man’s number

should be called by the attendant policeman.

The “show” was not over for an hour longer, and his carriage was the

last called. The fair manager had detained her lieutenant to exchange

felicitations over the triumph of the evening. Susie appeared, finally,

running down the steps so fast that her attendant only overtook her at

the curbstone. He had come out bareheaded, and without other protection

against the bitter March wind than his evening dress and thin shoes.

Mrs. Cornell’s hand was on the handle of the carriage door, and he

covered it with his own.

“Are you cruel or coquettish, sweet Annie Laurie?” he asked in accents

thickened by liquor and laughter.

By the electric light Arthur saw the pale terror of her face, as she

tried to wrest her fingers from the ruffianly grasp. Without a second’s

hesitation the husband leaped out through the other door, passed behind

the carriage, lifted the man, taller and heavier than himself, by the

nape of the neck, and laid him in the gutter.

“The fellow is drunk!” he remarked contemptuously to the policeman who

hastened up, imagining that the gentleman had tripped and fallen. “It

is lucky you are here to look after him.”

He handed his trembling wife into the carriage, swung himself in after

her, and bade the coachman drive home.

Then—for as I have expressly affirmed, this man was heroic in naught

save his love for wife and children—he put strong tender arms about

the sinking woman, who clung to his neck, convulsed by sobs, as one

snatched from destruction might hang upon the saving hand.

“There, my darling! It is all over! I ought to have taken better care

of you. The old account is closed. We’ll begin another upon a clean

page.”

He was only a bank cashier, you see, and familiar with no figures

except such as he used every day.

THE ARTICLES OF SEPARATION.

BEFORE and since the day when a certain man—idling while Israel and

Syria warred—drew a bow at a venture (the margin has it, “in his

simplicity,”) that let a king’s life out, the air has vibrated to the

twang of other bowstrings, and millions of barbs, as idly sent, have

been dyed with life-blood.

In every 50,000 cases of this sort of manslaughter, 49,999 fall by the

tongue.

The Hon. Simeon Barton, radiating prosperity from every pore of his

snug person, and clothed with complacency as with a garment, rolled

about the soon-to-be-vacated bachelor quarters of his nephew-namesake,

thumbs in armholes, and chin in air, while he discoursed:

“You’re a pluckier fellow than your uncle, me boy! Of course, it is on

the cards that your head may be level. There are literary women _and_

literary women, no doubt, and this must be a favorable specimen of the

tribe, or you wouldn’t have been in your present fix, but none of the

lot in mine, if you please. When my turn comes—and I aint sure that I

shan’t look out for a match some day, when I am too stiff to trot well

in single harness, I shall hold the reins. No inside seat for me.”

The nephew laughed in a hearty, whole-souled way. He was not touched

yet.

“You mix your figures as you do your cobblers—after you get hold of

the sherry bottle—with a swing. Wait until you see my ‘match.’ She is

a glorious woman, Uncle Sim. The wonder is that she ever got her eyes

down to my level.”

The forty-year-old celibate continued to roll and harangue. His dress

coat was new and a close fit to his rotund dapperness; with one

lavender glove he smote the palm of his gloved left hand; the rose

in his buttonhole was paler than the hard red spots on cheeks like

underglazed pottery for smoothness and polish, his mustache curled

upward and wriggled at animated periods.

“Quite the thing, me dear boy, altogether proper. For me part, I

wouldn’t care to be under obligations to a woman when she _had_ worked

down to my level, but tastes differ, and a man of twenty-six who has a

living to make ought to cast an anchor to windward, in case of squalls.

A woman who can chop a stick, at a pinch, to set the pot to boiling

is a convenience. Literature’s a better trade now than it used to be,

I suppose. Jones of Illinois was telling me last night of the prices

paid to good selling authors, and by George! I was surprised. All the

same, I’d fight shy of the Guild if I were contemplating matrimony. If

you could see some of the many objects that hang about the Capitol in

wait for Tom, Dick, or Harry to pick up a ‘personal,’ or lobby a bill,

or get subscriptions to a book or magazine, you wouldn’t wonder at my

‘prejudice,’ as you are pleased to style it. Pah!”

To rid his mouth of the taste he caught up a tumbler of sherry cobbler,

filmy without and icy amber within, and drained it.

The expectant bridegroom glanced at the clock. His best man was to call

for him at a quarter-past seven. It was exactly seven now, and the

minutes drove heavily.

“But Uncle Sim,”—still good-humoredly,—“Miss Welles is not a newspaper

reporter, nor a lobbyist, nor yet a penny-a-liner. She wrote to please

herself and her friends until her father’s death, six years ago. He

was considered fairly wealthy, but something went wrong somewhere, and

his widow would have suffered for the want of much to which she had

been accustomed but for the talents and courage of her young daughter.

I am afraid the poor girl worked harder than her mother suspected for

a while, although the public received her favorably from the outset.

Mrs. Welles survived her husband three years. Agnes then went to live

with her only sister, Mrs. Ryder, the wife of my partner. I first met

her at his house. She has continued to write and has supported herself

handsomely in this way. She is as heroic as she is sweet—a thorough

woman.”