FLOSSIE ENJOYS HERSELF.
Flossie Gower lay idly upon her couch; it was her reception-day. She
was waiting for the monotonous round of callers; and, while she waited,
she gave herself to reminiscences. It was not usual for her to ply her
memory so hard; but to-day, thinking of her whole life, and planning
her campaign to Russia, all the events of her career passed in review
before her. Her dainty morning dress curled away from the throat, and
rippled gracefully, in a cascade of laces, over to the ground; simple
and pure as any Endymion might clothe his dream in. The neck was white
as ever; but the face had a wearied look the world had never seen, a
pout of unheroic discontent, like any other woman’s who was old and out
of humor. And yet our heroine was telling to herself her triumphs, like
beads.
She had early learned that she was rich, and thus had quickly found
that riches were, alone, unsatisfying. No pedant moralist was more sure
of this than she. But there they parted; while the moralist might prate
of other worlds, or the love of humanity, Flossie was a positivist. No
unknown world should drag her, Saturn-like, from her chosen orbit, and
bid her leave her balls, her troops of male admirers, for nunneries or
the domestic fireside. Unknowables might be disregarded: she knew no
other world than this; and as for the love of humanity, she sought it
for herself.
Of course we men do not understand the keen delight that Flossie took
in swaying from his balance every man she met. We are not pleased when
a pretty woman shows her sensibility to us. It may even rather shock
us; we do not expect that sort of thing; moreover, if obvious to us, it
is perhaps seen by others and that cheapens the conquest.
But it is a woman’s _carrière_ to work her will and worth through men.
And what else is her whole training, her education, the lessons we read
to her of history? You may talk, and raise statues, in your female
colleges, of Princess Idas and Corinnes; but it is Helen, Cleopatra,
Heloise, who have left their woman’s mark upon the world; and they are
women enough, yet, these Vassar girls, to know it.
Still, it was some years before Flossie took her natural course and
found in men’s admiration her own highest reward. She had seen so much
of men, her brother and his friends, in her early youth, that perhaps
she had a little contempt for an animal so easily tamed, so soon
domesticated. Whether she had yet found the king of the forest in her
Boston Paris, we must leave to the reader. He was the only lion she had.
Perhaps the earlier battles and campaigns, the Italys and Marengos,
were the best, after all. Yet they were so easy! Poor Lucie had been
such easy prey, even to a Nantucket neophyte! And to conquer the
world of New York scarce justified a Corsican lieutenant’s triumph. To
trample on the patrician matron, and dazzle the jewels from Cornelia
herself, was hardly harder. Then she even, in her wealthy way, had
tried to serve the Lord; but found that fruitless, too. A fashionable
ritual was all she had retained.
Then she had led, and they had followed. Thorough ditch, thorough
briar, from fad to folly. Was she not the high-priestess of that circle
_debonair_, known as well in Boston or in Philadelphia as in New York,
as the “married women’s set?” They pretended to be in love with one
another’s husbands, and they dazzled young girls; and led their Pauls
away from such Virginias as were “coming out.”
But all this was not the tithe of her triumph. Some had tumbled in the
ditches, or been torn and spotted in the briars. Surely the glory of
these was hers also? She set the pace; and some had failed, and some
had fled, and some had forged, and some had fallen through. But she had
always stayed at the head, indifferent, frivolous, successful. Then was
she not a patroness of art and literature? She dabbled in politics,
too, and went to Washington, and corrupted simple Congressmen, and made
herself a model to their wives.
Mrs. Gower was at home, this afternoon; and she rose and swept her
robes to the adjoining dressing-room for another gown; in this one
she was visible only to her maids, her maker, and her husband. It was
five or ten minutes when she came back; her pout was gone, and in its
place a smile--her _pas de fascination_ as it were. She graciously
beamed upon the two young girls who had come to make their dinner-call
upon her, and was graciously pleased even to apologize for keeping
them waiting. And their hearts were won by her at once--they were the
very poor descendants of one of the very oldest pre-revolutionary
families--and they talked enthusiastically about her, going home, and
wondered if it could really be true what the world said about her and
that Mr. Wemyss from Boston. They were stylishly dressed and poor, and
waiting to be married too.
Then came in Mrs. James De Witt, _née_ Duval, just made a matron and
fresh from a wedding-journey which had proved somewhat slow to her;
Strephon and Chloe did not go on wedding journeys, I suppose; it was
Helen and Paris began the fashion. Then Mrs. Malgam came in; and
Flossie had her usual velvet battle with her dear enemy and rival
friend. Mrs. Gower envied her her stupid youth, and silly round cheeks.
Shall I go and leave the field with her? she thought. But the field
would be hers, anyhow, in a few years.
Then there came in two prying matrons, of those whom Flossie had
defeated in the world’s esteem, so many years ago. They had lived to
see their fiats disregarded, and their reception-rooms depleted, and
their daughters put out and their sons dazzled, all by this little
Flossie Starbuck; and they loved her accordingly. Would their hour of
triumph never come again? Flossie wondered why they came to-day; they
had not been to see her, save in the most symbolical of paste-board
calls, since three months after her marriage. But they had never, since
that first triumphant season, dared to question her divine right, by
wit and beauty and style, to rule. Could it be that they really meant
to bury the hatchet and surrender unconditionally? Or did they scent,
like envious ravens, her coming overthrow? She was indifferently polite
to them; but made little effort to conceal that she was bored.
Dear me, will a man never come? Mrs. Gower rose, when they had gone,
and pressed her feverish brow against the mirror. How marked the
wrinkles were beneath the eyes! Men’s voices were heard at last, and
Flossie turned her back to the window. It was only a silly fellow, an
artist, whom Mrs. Gower had made, and who now presumed upon it; and
with him a dancing boy. The boy was nice enough at germans; and was at
least a gentleman, but the other was only a swell, which even Flossie
Gower realized to be a different thing. Genius soars above birth,
so Van Smeer disowned his mother; but he preferred to be known as a
gentleman rather than as an artist, and only painted the portraits of
his fair friends carelessly, à la Congreve, and by way of flirtation,
as it were.
It was fun for Flossie to snub this man, and see his color change. Mrs.
Wilton Hay had come in, the woman to whom Flossie had suspected Van
Smeer of transferring his incense. “I have been thinking for some time
of setting up an establishment in England,” said he to Mrs. Hay, who
was going back. “My friend Lord Footlight is by way of having a sort of
historical pageant in his theatre at his place in Surrey, and is very
keen to have me come.” To which Mrs. Hay made no reply, but Mrs. Gower
did. “Do, Mr. Van Smeer,” she said; “I should think her native air
would do your poor mother so much good.”
Van Smeer turned livid and ugly, but had to turn and smile to Kitty
Farnum, who entered then, for Kitty was said to be that season’s card.
“Who was his mother?” whispered Mrs. Hay. “An English ballet-girl,”
said Flossie in reply, and Van Smeer knew she did, and had to leave her
unavenged. But I know not what he said to Mrs. Hay, when those two left
together.
Mahlon Blewitt came in. He represented yet another period in Mrs.
Gower’s life, and she had been his Beatrice. But this Dante had been
born in Western Ohio, and she had taught him a profound disbelief in
all divine comedies, the Inferno even with the rest. He had come from
his father’s vast wheat-fields and the infinite prairies, to New York,
full of dreams of Shelley and of Chatterton; and Mrs. Gower had taken
him up. Then he had gone back from her to his dreams. But he had really
fancied him in love with her, and somehow her presence had remained
with him and made his dreams absurd. Now he was a man of fashion, and
turned his white ties more carefully than the sonnets he still peddled
in large quantities to all the magazines; and he cynically talked
about his country’s decadence like any Caryl Wemyss, whom he chiefly
envied, and of whose verses he wrote bitter reviews upon the sly. Had
he really loved his clever patroness, the Inferno at least might have
been left him to do; but he knew now that he had not loved her--only
his dreams had seemed a poorer thing since Flossie Gower had shared
them. The Polish minister came in; he knew his Flossie well and liked
her much; he had seen women something like her in continental courts,
but known none so bright, so good-natured, or half so free from danger.
With him was young Harvey Washburn, a civil-service-reformer who had
been sent to Congress to reform the world, and whom Von Hillersdorf
was forming for it. Flossie would have liked to go to Washington, and
have political power, and vulgarize that too; but there the mighty
middle class control, who did not understand her; by the time they do,
perhaps, the myriads who make no play of life will have their say, and
break her, with other butterflies. Poor Flossie! she does amount to
much, after all, in all America; and is angrily conscious of it.
And now comes in our hero, Arthur Holyoke; no one, even Von
Hillersdorf, is more perfect a man of the world than he. Well he places
his bow and smile, his outspoken compliment here, his whispered word
of adoration there; his coat is as well cut as Jimmy De Witt’s, who
has also come, some time later than his bride. But no one of these is
earnest, thinks Flossie, and is bored again, and glad when they all
go, and Mr. Killian Van Kull appears. Here at last is her peer, one
who can understand her. Van Kull is a frank libertine; and she likes
him for it; he does not play with foils; he is a _viveur_, like the
puissant Guy Livingstone who was the hero that her youth adored. Mamie
Livingstone, by the way, has come in too, and gone out with Charlie
Townley. Charlie has come to present to Flossie his partner’s lady,
Mrs. Tamms, and her marriageable daughters; and Mrs. Gower will have a
new pleasure to-morrow, when she meets and cuts them, driving in the
Park.
Killian stays some time; there is a dark devil in his eye to-day, and
Mrs. Gower thinks his pale face never looked so handsome. When Mr.
Wemyss is announced, he rises with a slight smile, and he too goes away.
Mrs. Gower is rude to Wemyss; she throws herself upon a sofa, and has
the migraine; he assumes his devotional manner and makes bold to take
her hand. She draws it away impatiently.
“Have you a headache?” says he. “I hoped you would let me go to drive
with you.”
The carriage is ordered; the pony-carriage that Mrs. Gower drives
herself. He gets into it, and she after him and takes the reins. It
is her whim to have no footman behind them; and Caryl does not dare
remonstrate, though he thinks of it. He supposes she is going to the
Park; but she turns down Thirty-fourth Street and drives toward the
East River. They come to the ferry; and she sends Wemyss out to get the
ticket. “Wherever are you going?” says he, returning.
“Why? Do you think I am going to elope with you?” She says it with a
slight contemptuous smile; and he is silent.
They come to the Long Island shore; and she rattles up the hill and
drives familiarly through some narrow, squalid streets, where the air
is not pleasant to breathe and the dank entries of the close brick
houses swarm with half-naked children.
Ahead of them now is the group of high chimneys and great tanks of
rusty iron; the scorching sky is a veil of brick-red smoke, chemical,
unnatural in color. The stench of oil is almost overpowering; but
Flossie drives rapidly into the gate as if it were her own park avenue
at _La Lisière_.
“Why have you come in here?” says Caryl Wemyss at last, looking, for
the once, surprised. Mrs. Gower has dropped the reins, and seems
suddenly listless.
“It was my favorite playground when I was a girl,” she answers,
finally. “It was a whim of mine to see the place again. Perhaps you did
not know that here we made our money?”
Wemyss struggles with some speech about his indifference to the
birthplace of the rose he wears; but Flossie is not hearing him; her
eyes wander over the arid, unsightly factory-yard, the blue pyramids of
barrels, and up to the tramways high in the air, and the masts of the
iron ships.
“Come,” she says; “give the reins to that man there.”
Wemyss does as he is bid, and leaves the man with a silver dollar,
wondering; and, wondering no less himself, he follows Flossie through
the iron maze she seems to know so well.
They go up the foul ladder to the summit of the great storage-tank,
Wemyss caring for his fine overcoat, and almost sickened with the heavy
smell of the crude petroleum, while Flossie’s delicate nostrils dilate
as she breathes it in once more. She guides him to the “tail-house,”
where the first run of naphtha has just begun, mobile, metallic, with
its evil shine. Flossie looks at it closely, and notes, with an adept’s
eye, the hour of the run. A few hours more and it will be standard,
water-white, as she has made herself; but she with gold, not tested
yet with fire. Then she takes him to the spraying-house, where the
tested oil lies lazily, girdled by the sun with brilliant rings, fair
to look upon as any sylvan spring. This finest oil shall burn in quiet
household lamps; it is the naphtha, surface oil, that flies to gas and
fire.
Mrs. Gower was obstinately silent, going home, while Mr. Wemyss still
wondered. They dined together and went to the play; and it was after
midnight when he got to his rooms.
He had his valet pull his boots off and bring his smoking-jacket; and
then, dismissing him, began to cut the pages of the last French novel.
“She is capable of anything,” he said to himself, before he had read
the first page of his book.
“She is a devil,” he added, under his breath, somewhat flattered,
somewhat frightened at the thought.