THE STORY OF A QUIET SUNDAY EVENING.
Sunday was a long-looked-for day to Arthur. It was only the second
Sunday after his arrival in New York; but it was as if he had been many
months in the city already; and on the evening thereof he was to take
tea at the Livingstones’.
Tea is not a formal meal; and surely it could do no harm if he went
there early? It was almost six o’clock, and well on in the twilight
when he arrived at the house; Miss Holyoke was in the parlor, the
servant said; the other ladies were up-stairs. The low tones of a piano
reached his ear as the man was speaking; and Arthur recognized a soft
and serious Bach prelude, very quiet, very tender, very old in melody
and simple chords. It was a favorite piece of Gracie’s; and Arthur
stood at the door, unseen, and watched her play. Her black dress and
slender figure was just visible in the faint light that came in from
some other room; but her face, sweet and pale, was clearly outlined
against the long window and the last light of the November day; it
touched her chin and brow and her parted lips; and the look of these
was like the music she was playing. The prelude died away, in minor
modulations, like a low amen; and Gracie sat playing idly with the
ivory notes, her head drooping, and a dim shining from the firelight in
her dark hair.
When the others came down, they found these two sitting together,
like brother and sister, and talking in low voices to each other.
Arthur knew Mrs. Livingstone; but the others of the family were still
strangers to him. Mr. Livingstone was an old man, much bent, with
older manners and appearance than his years warranted; then there was
an only daughter, Mamie, and a favorite cousin of Mr. Livingstone’s,
Miss Brevier. Mamie Livingstone was a pretty young girl, with slightly
petulant manners, as if she had been a little spoiled; she had a
wonderfully mobile face, and quick intelligent eyes, and was evidently
warm-hearted and impulsive, and very fond already of her cousin Grace.
She regarded Arthur critically, and with some disapproval; in fact,
she snubbed him more completely than that young gentleman had yet been
snubbed--thanks to Mrs. Gower--in New York.
“Where is Mr. Townley, mamma?” said she, imperiously. “I want to see
Mr. Townley.”
“Hush, Mamie,” said Mrs. Livingstone, slightly shocked; and the old
gentleman looked at his daughter with a meek astonishment, as is so
often the way with contemporary parents. Charlie had been invited in
acknowledgment of his kindness to Arthur.
“Mr. Townley,” said Mr. Livingstone in a quavering voice, “is a very
old friend of mine, in whom I have always had the greatest confidence.
I have yet to make the acquaintance of his young--connection.”
“They say he waltzes like an angel,” said Mamie the irrepressible; and
just then the door-bell rang, and the subject of their conversation
appeared, with his usual irreproachable exterior. Arthur had never
seen him so subdued; he sat next to Miss Mamie, but treated her quite
_du haut en bas_, talking much to Mr. Livingstone. Arthur could see
that he was on his best behavior; and his best behavior was extremely
unobjectionable, though he came very near being caught in the middle
of some airy personality when Mr. Livingstone inaugurated the meal by
saying grace.
After tea was over, Miss Mamie manœuvred Charlie into a remote corner,
where he seemed to find her more worthy his attention. The evening was
very quiet; Mr. Livingstone gravely reading some review, and addressing
from time to time a solitary remark to his wife, who sat with her hands
folded, placidly. Gracie talked to Arthur of himself, and our hero told
her of all that had happened since he came to New York. Her life had,
of course, been a quiet one, divided between books, her music, and
charitable occupations. In all these Miss Brevier had encouraged and
assisted her; Gracie spoke very warmly of her, her intelligence and
character. This was after Miss Brevier, in the other room, had begun
reading aloud to the old couple, in a low and sweet, but very clearly
modulated voice.
“When can I come next?” said Arthur to Gracie as they rose to go. There
was a sweetness in her presence that had won his heart a thousand
times again; she seemed a rarer being, in this peopled city; he adored
her.
“You must not come often, dear Arthur--my aunt thinks it better for us
both. She thinks that we are both too young, and that you must try a
year or two in society to make sure that you really care for me--and I
for you,” she added, in a tone hardly audible. Arthur’s only answer was
to press her hand; and so they parted.
When they got into the street, Townley lit a large cigar, with a slight
sigh of relief. “Lively little girl, that Miss Livingstone,” said he;
“but I say, old man, what an evening! No wonder she wants to come out.”
“I am sorry you found it slow,” said Arthur, testily.
“Oh, well, I know it’s devilish respectable and all that sort of
thing,” said Charlie. “Good middle-class domestic life; they’re
just like our grandfathers, and our grandfathers were nothing but
_bourgeois_ after all; that little girl will sink all that, or I’m
mistaken. Come round by Sixth Avenue a minute, will you?”
There was a certain incongruity in Charlie’s words, as it seemed to
Arthur; it might have been Wemyss who was speaking, instead of this
careless young Epicurean, who usually troubled himself little with
abstractions and general categories, but occupied his understanding
with perceiving the most practical sort of causes and effects. The fact
was that Townley had used the current slang of his set, word-counters
for thought, and his mind was already far from the subject, and his
lips framed to the whistle of an air from “Iolanthe.” They turned into
Sixth Avenue (which is a strange, conglomerate street--insolently
disreputable at times, elsewhere commercially prosperous, or even
given to small tradesmen and other healthy citizenship, but always, in
its earlier days, at least, rakishly indifferent to brown-stone-front
respectability) and stopped at a little shop in a tiny two-story brick
block. On the left was a little glass door, with the simple legend
_Rose Marie_ upon the panel; and in front of them a toy staircase,
leading to the imminent upper regions. Through the glass of the door
Arthur could see one or two bonnets on pegs in the window, and he
divined that the shop was a milliner’s. “Is Miss Starbuck in?” said
Charlie to a child who appeared with a candle. The child (who was
either deformed or very old-looking for her age) looked keenly at
Arthur, whose eyes fell helplessly before her searching gaze.
“She has gone to a concert at the Garden,” said the child. As they
spoke, there was a murmur of men’s voices from an adjoining room, and a
rough clatter of applause, with knocking of heels and sticks.
“All right,” said Townley. “Good-night.” And after this somewhat
inexplicable call the two young men went back to their Fifth Avenue
lodgings. Here they found John Haviland, largely reposing himself on
two chairs before Arthur’s hospitable hearth.
Haviland and Arthur had met many times since the Farnum ball; and
Arthur was more pleased than surprised at finding him in his
rooms to-night. “I’m so glad you waited--I’ve just come from the
Livingstones,” said he. “Charlie, let me introduce my friend Mr.
Haviland--Mr. Townley. Have a cigar--oh, you’ve got a pipe, have you?”
The others already had cigars; and disposing themselves in attitudes of
permanent equilibrium, all plunged into the divine cloud of vapor until
such times as the genius of the place should move them to speech.
“Is the Miss Holyoke who is staying at the Livingstones’ your cousin?”
asked Haviland, finally.
“Yes,” said Arthur. “Don’t you know her?”
“What a queer old thing that Miss Brevier is,” said Charlie. “Can you
believe it, she used to be a bosom-friend of Mrs. Levison G.!”
“Pity Miss Brevier dropped her,” said Haviland, dryly.
“Miss Brevier drop her?” said Charlie, whose sense of humor was
sometimes, at a critical moment, deficient. “You are chaffing.”
“Mrs. Gower,” said Haviland, gravely, “does more harm than any woman in
New York.”
“She is a person of European reputation,” suggested Townley.
“She is unquestionably proficient in the latest and silliest vices of
the aristocracies we came over here to escape from,” retorted John.
Townley laughed a little, while Haviland puffed vigorously at his pipe.
“I say, Arthur?” said the former, “speaking of Mrs. G., have they
asked you to join the Four-in-Hand Club?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a club organized for the purpose of driving twice a year up to
Yonkers with string teams and liveries, and showing your most esteemed
young ladies in flaring light-colored dresses to all the sidewalk
population of New York,” broke in Haviland, “and paying four thousand a
year for the privilege!”
“What rot,” laughed Charlie. “In the first place, it needn’t cost you
one thousand a year, for one wheel apiece. Four fellows can own a drag
together, you know. And it’s great fun. Mrs. Gower got it up, and all
the boys belong. Why, old Mosenthal came to me the other day with tears
in his eyes, and offered to keep two full-rigged drags, if we’d only
let him come in--and lend me one of ’em, he meant,” added Charlie with
a grin.
“How cheap for him,” growled the other, “if he could buy the envy and
consideration of the society of this great republic for the price of a
few horses!”
Townley’s good-nature never forsook him; but he looked at Haviland as
if puzzled; and the latter rose to go. “I called on the Livingstones
last week,” said he to Arthur, “and met your cousin. Good-night, Mr.
Townley.”
“What a prig he is,” said Charlie, with a sigh of relief when Haviland
had gone. “I always supposed it, from his looks. I knew that he
refused to join the Four-in-Hand Club; and you hardly ever meet him in
society--except at some queer place like the Farnums’ for instance.
He mugs down-town at his office all the day, and improves his mind in
the evening, I suppose, or reads goody-goody stories to little Italian
children, down on Baxter Street! He’s good as gold, you know.”
“Don’t you ever mean to work yourself?” asked Arthur.
“Not that way,” laughed Charlie. “It’s not in my line. Books and things
are played out, I tell you.” But the full account of his plans of life
Charlie was too canny to impart, perhaps even to admit to himself.
For Charlie had not always been thus. There was a time when he was
fresh from Princeton College, and he used to fill his table with
English and foreign reviews, and could talk intelligently of their
contents. He had begun his business life with enthusiasm, and was only
known as a promising athlete outside of it. He showed great industry at
the office, and some ability, and had been referred to by his elders as
a well-informed young man.
But Charlie was a smart fellow, wide awake, and it did not take him
long to get, as he fancied, _désorienté_. Suddenly, the second or third
autumn of his business career, he had given up his reading, dropped
his industry and early hours, and, for reasons well known to himself,
he became the Charlie Townley known to us and the world. He had almost
abandoned Wall Street for the Piccadilly Club and the Park; he dropped
out of sight, on ’Change, and reappeared smiling in “society.” And so
well did he play his cards, that he, a poor and almost friendless
stranger, without money or influence, with but one solitary advantage,
that of a name not unknown in New York, had become--it would be
premature to say what he had become, or why he did it; like all great
generals, he had his strategy, not to be fathomed by the enemy, still
less by emulous friends. Let us stick to the what, nor pry into the why
or wherefore.
What he did, then, was to become the most ineffable dandy in all New
York. With perfect clothing and fine linen, the exactly new thing
in sticks and hats, and a single eye-glass decorously veiling his
intellect and dangerously wide-awake eye, Charlie had become that thing
of which the name may change from dandy to _lion_, from buck to swell,
from blood to dude, but the nature endureth forever. But this was but
dressing the part, it was merely the transformation of the exterior,
the _travesti_; it was here that Charlie’s career began. He only spoke
to those whom others spoke to, and said only those things that others
thought; he preferred married women to the society of maidens, even
to the charm of blushing buds; though he selected one or two virgin
beauties every season to whom he royally threw an occasional sunbeam
of his society. These were always faultless either in family, or in
beauty, or in fashion--for Charlie was catholic in his recognition of
merit--and they appreciated the word or look he grudgingly accorded
them and were duly grateful. Soon, his approval would give a _cachet_
to almost any girl; but careless Charlie was all unconscious; girls
were slow, he said. Mrs. Gower, Mrs. Malgam, Mrs. Jacob Einstein,
formed his court. With these he reigned; by them he was taken up and
formed, and later, by them adored, as the heathen worship the brass or
wooden idol they themselves have made. This was at the time when Mrs.
G. had gone in for _belles-lettres_; she and Townley read de Musset and
Balzac together, and Theophile Gautier’s poems. Who would have supposed
that Charlie had ever read de Musset! It was at the same period that
Levison Gower, Senior, died, and Mrs. G. adopted the hyphen; there was
an English titled family of that name, and she fancied the difference
of one vowel would only lend a _vraisemblance_ to the descent; but
society saw the joke and called her Lady Levison for all one season.
There never had been any Levison in the Gower family; Gower senior’s
father had come from Connecticut, and his first name was John Lewis.
The family estate consisted of an old farm-house and a few acres near
Windsor Locks; the house is now burned down, and upon the ancestral
acres grows rank tobacco.
What precious humbug is all this! Well, well, let us not despise
humbug; _nihil humani alienum_. Let us rather see this humbug; let
us put it on a pin, and examine this insect. You may be sure Charlie
found his account therein. Frivolity is a word for dullards; I wish the
ministers could enforce their precepts half as well as the dressmakers.
Fashion is a marvellous potency, the public opinion of small things;
in a democracy who can despise it? As I write, fashion tells our
womankind, Put birds upon thy bonnet; and lo! four hundred thousand
women in New York alone wear fowls. How many years ago was it, now,
that someone said, Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor? And
four hundred thousand in the world have done it, not yet.
As for Charlie--in Mrs. Edgeworth, or in “Sandford and Merton,” or
other book of our childhood I once read a fable: how Honesty, Industry,
and Ability formed a partnership for the acquirement of ambergris from
whales. And Ability caught a hundred whales in the first year, and
Industry carefully separated from all these whales a few ounces of
ambergris, and Honesty sold this ambergris for a large sum of money.
And Rapacity, who had been lying by, laughing, all this time, signed
the check and took the ambergris; and lo! the check was worthless. And
Society looked on and laughed, and said Rapacity was a smart fellow;
and in the next year there were many worthless checks, but no ambergris.
Now Charlie was not Rapacity; but he was a clever fellow and could
see this and other fables as they were enacted before his eyes. And
he would not steal; nor would he go to the North Pole and search for
whales. But he was in search of _les moyens de parvenir_.