THE READER IS PRESENTED TO TWO CHARMING GIRLS, AND SO IS MAJOR GRANBY
And now while a certain Peter Skerrett, stupendous wag, who is in town
for a day or two and has been presented to Mr. Waddy by old Budlong,
is showing the returned nabob through streets of deserted houses and
telling him the necessary protective scandals about their owners:----
And while at Newport, in the society of De Châteaunéant, Tim Budlong is
subscribing more freely than ever, and the Budlong ladies are quivering
through the _ter-diurnal_ shift of toilets resplendent:----
And while Sally Bishop, who has heard from her father how he had sold
the black to a Mr. Ira Waddy, just returned from India, is dying with
something on her mind which she dare not yet reveal:----
And while Horace Belden is beating his bolting horse and training
another, to which he naturally gives the name of Knockknees, to run,
and no doubt to win purses, and is nursing his finances for an August
at Newport with its possible heiress:----
And while Miss Sullivan, at her lovely cottage opposite Belden’s, is
singing duets with Mrs. Cecilia Tootler, to whom, though that lady has
often spoken of the delightful visit of Mr. Waddy, her friend, she
has never yet mentioned her share in the rescue of a person of that
name:----
While all our acquaintances are busied thus, Major Granby, at Halifax,
boards a Cunarder, embarked for Boston. As he mounted the plank, a
young excessively English man defended the gangway with open fist. The
major won his entrance by grasping the fist in amicable guise.
“Why, how d’ye do, Ambient?” he said to his compatriot, a
pleasant-faced pinkling. “So you have really started on your travels.”
“Aw! Gwanby, I’m vewy glad to see you,” replied Sir Comeguys Ambient,
generally called briefly Sir Com. “Yes, I’ve begun my jowney wound the
wowuld. It’s lownger than I thought.”
“You’ve had some pleasant company, anyway,” said the major, examining
discreetly two young ladies who stood near the rail, and who,
seemingly, found much to interest them in the shoreward view.
“Yes; doosed handsome gerwuls,” agreed Sir Com, “and vewy agweeable,
but know too much.”
“Not exactly in your line then, eh?”
“I’m weelly a little afwaid of them,” admitted the valiant youth.
“But the dark one is a wegular stunner for eyes and hair. The fair
one is Miss Clara Waddie. The bwunette is her friend, Diana,” and the
pinkling’s cheeks became all suffused with his ingenuous heart’s blood.
“Ah,” said Granby, observing the suffusion, “so that goddess--and she
is a goddess--has transfixed you! Beware how you trifle with her;
these American ladies do not hesitate to call a man out. Your Diana is
divine, but your Clara is angelic. Waddy? I have a friend of that name.
I’m going now to meet him in Boston.”
In the course of the day, Major Granby, who had a soldier-like
impetuosity in assaulting new opportunities, was presented to Waddie
_père_ and by him to the ladies.
Mr. Waddie of New York was a tall, slender gentleman, clean-shaven
and high-cravatted. A bit of white collar on each side narrowed his
range of chin movement. Dignity required that his head should not
gyrate, hence sidelong glances were only effected by a painful twist
of his eyes. He wore a blue frock, buttoned, and remarkably perfect
boots. His manner was a little stiff, but entirely well-bred, and had
a certain careful courtesy very attractive. Altogether, you would say,
a man of limited, but not narrow mind, gentle and amiable. His passion
was genealogy, and if he was ever querulous, it was when inevitable
antiquaries connected him with the first Waddy, well known to all
American pedigrees, cook of the _Mayflower_ and victim of Miles
Standish.
“Do I look,” he would say, “like the son of a sea-cook, even in the
sixth generation?”
And, indeed, he did not resemble a descendant of the caboose, but
rather a marquis of the Émigration, such as we behold him at the
Théâtre Français. This somewhat faded _élégant_ had another passion: it
was for his lovely daughter; nor was he the only man thus affected.
Mrs. Waddie was wifely, motherly, and a little over-energetic, as
became the spouse of so mild and unpractical a gentleman. It was she
who devised and carried out that purchase of real estate by which
their comfortable property became a handsome fortune. It was she who
officered the campaign which ended in giving him the civic crown of
Member of Congress, and when the bad cookery of the American snob’s
paradise had impaired his health and compelled his resignation, it
was again his energetic wife who suggested to General Taylor that she
wished the embassy to Florence. It was obtained, of course, and was
one of the most creditable acts of that President’s brief career.
His successor did not venture to recall Mr. Waddie, although he knew
the scorn with which that gentleman, usually so amiable, regarded
those ridiculously unsuccessful makeshifts and cowardly compromises
of 1850. Mr. Waddie’s fortune, high social position, formidable
wife, his serene worth and merited popularity, made him a person whom
an accidental President could not presume to offend; and if he were
already an enemy, at least it were wiser to keep him in a foreign land.
So his wife and the ambassador remained at Florence, where her balls
crushed the Grand Duke’s. She instituted a subscription for fronting
the Duomo and introduced into Florentine life Buckwheat Cakes,
Veracity, and Sewing Machines--of which only the first-named are still
popular in that beautiful city.
It was the last year of the embassy when they thought proper to send
for Miss Clara, who, with Diana, Mr. Waddie’s ward, had been in charge
of Miss Sullivan at home. This was the first year of Mr. Pierce’s
administration, and while he was hesitating whom to appoint in Mr.
Waddie’s place. He did appoint, in time, a tobacconist from the
South-west, who viewed the world only as a spittoon.
Everybody has been in Florence or will go. It is not necessary,
therefore, here to describe what Clara and Diana saw under the
superintendence of Miss Sullivan, instinctive discoverer of the best.
They were devout beneath the dome of Brunelleschi, rapt beside the
tower of Giotto, critical in the galleries, gay in the Cascine. The
Florentines adored Clara, the fair. Strangers worshipped Diana, the
dark. This was not Diana, pale queen of night, but the huntress deity,
bold and clear of eye, of colours rich and warm, with vigorous, fiery
blood, hastening, almost fevering, a living life of passionateness.
An Amazonian queen was Diana, who could do the dashing deeds of an
Amazon with fanciful freedom. The Actæons dreaded her. No man of feeble
manhood was permitted in her presence. Soldierly men and travellers
she liked, and deep-sea fishermen, and blacksmiths and architects
and heroes and lyric poets. And when any of these told her of his
ambitions, large as life, or the dangers he had passed, and while he
told, looked in her unblenching eyes and saw through them a soul that
could comprehend any great ambition, or dare any danger; he, the strong
man, always loved her madly. But she, the strong woman, the master-hero
of her own soul, could not find her hero. There were ideal men in
history for her to adore--at least, they seemed so, as history painted
them--and as she read of them, she felt that strange thrill of despair
for their absence that later she knew to be the passion of love--the
passion of the woman longing for the fit, appointed mate.
The friendship of Clara and Diana was fore-ordained. Its historic
beginning dates back to the college intimacy between young Waddie,
refined, timid, studious, and Diana’s father, a bold and ardent youth
of southern blood and foreign race. This gentleman, being afterward
unhappy in his home, wandered away into Texas. There he acquired
immense estates by the purchase of old Spanish grants, and dying
early, bequeathed his only child to his friend, Mr. Waddie, for care
and nurture. The two girls grew up as sisters, and it was not until
Diana’s womanhood that the serious consideration of her orphanage was
forced upon her. Mrs. Waddie, the kindest of mothers, was immersed in
business, speculating for her husband, urging him forward to posts of
responsibility he shrank from. She was therefore ready to yield her two
daughters entirely into the hands of Miss Sullivan.
It was to Miss Sullivan that the task fell of telling Diana the sad
history of her father and her mother, and how the mother, after a
life worse than death, was now in a madhouse. It was a terrible
revelation for this pure and brave young girl. In an agony of tears,
she threw herself into Miss Sullivan’s arms and prayed her to be
a mother to the orphan. Miss Sullivan must have been of a nature
singularly sympathetic, or herself have felt the loneliness of bitter
grief, so deeply did she know the only consolations--endurance, and
long-suffering faith, and hope in other lives, eternal ones.
Clara was present at this interview, and, after this, the relations
between the elder and the younger women were closely sisterly. The
elder sister, hardly older in appearance, except of paler and more
thoughtful beauty, formed the younger minds.
Clara Waddie had inherited all her father’s grace and refinement of
face, form, mien, manner, and thought, and withal had gained from her
mother judgment and strength of character, which underlay without
diminishing her delicate sweetness. You might have known this fair
young person for months and have given only a mental assent to her
reputation of exquisite beauty; but one day, when some changing charm
of emotion cast an evanescent flush upon her cheek and your sudden
inspiration of eloquence had roused a look of interest in her lambent
listening eyes, you would become conscious of more than mental assent
to her unclaimed claim of perfect loveliness; your soul itself would
thenceforth be cognisant of her beauty.
At the end of that delightful year in Florence, now rich with memories
of the art and poetry of Italy, Diana was suddenly summoned to America.
A most favourable change had come over her mother’s malady, and with
sanity returning, she was praying for kindly companionship and love.
Her life, at best, was to be but brief, but it was thought that a
residence in the dry, elevated regions of the interior might prolong it
and allay the pangs of her desperate disease. Diana did not hesitate;
she saw her duty clearly and accepted it, rejoicing.
Mr. Waddie went over with Diana. She found a mother with the saddened
relics of a feeble beauty. Married hastily, out of silly school, she
had been ignorantly, in her husband’s absence, bewildered in the
toils of a great villainy, which death to the villain and madness to
the victim had sufficiently avenged. Rejecting Mr. Waddie’s kind offer
of escort, Diana took her mother to their estates in the up-country
of Texas. In that most beautiful region, the Amazon could carry out
her huntress fancies. She could gallop with her Mexican master of the
horse over vast reaches of prairie, all her own. She could encamp in
those belts of timber that sweep like rivers across boundless plains
of Western wildness. At noon, when the deer she chased were hid in
forest court, she, too, could seek such sylvan shelter, and lying
there beneath an oak, all grey with mossy drapery, could take delight
of dreamy contrast, and, with closed eyes, narrow her horizon with
remembered palaces and rebuild under broad blue heavens the wonderful
domes of Italy. Then she would study in some shady pool of the forest
her face nut-browned to warm and healthy hues and fancy Clara, more
palely beautiful, suddenly appearing, like Una from the ancient grove,
and standing beside her at this softening mirror, as they had often
stood in loving sisterhood before. In this existence, free and fresh,
she learnt what so few women ever know, the pure physical joy of living.
The Texas postmaster was puzzled with strange stamps on Diana’s
constant letters from Europe; she was as constant in her replies.
At last, she had sadly to tell her friend how her mother, after a
sudden and fearful access of madness, had died. If there were any
circumstances accompanying this death that made it doubly painful, and
if, far away from the civilisation of towns, she had made other friends
from whom this death was the cause of bitter parting, of this she said
nothing to Clara. There are some secrets which honourable women do
not impart to anyone more distant from their hearts than God. As to
Endymion, it was certainly not probable that she had found him among
Santa Fé traders, or Dutch emigrants, or rude cattle drovers whose best
hope was a week of debauch in San Antonio.
She rejoined the Waddies and they did Europe. Mankind stared, and
jealous women scoffed wherever Clara and Diana, charming pair, were
seen. Diana was in mourning and very sad--sadder than seemed wholly
natural for her mother’s relieving death. The only gentleman to whom
she allowed any intimacy was Belden. She told Miss Sullivan that she
distrusted him and was displeased with the little she heard of his
deeds, but that he was a bad imitation of an old friend of hers and
she liked to be reminded of a favourite, even by a poor copy. I think
upon this there must have been some very close confidence between these
ladies; there certainly was a long interview, with tearfulness.
Are the Waddies of New York sufficiently introduced? We certainly know
them better historically than Major Granby could, when, presented by
Ambient, he had passed his first afternoon in their society. Not so
well personally; one look of a practised eye discovers more than all
description or all history can reveal.
Granby was a wide-worldling of the best type, and the ladies and Mr.
Waddie found him charming. Sir Com Ambient, that pleasant pinkling
of hesitant utterance, was also a favourite; indeed, Diana had quite
petted him on the voyage, for she liked travellers, even verdant ones.
Freshmen, when they are honest and ardent, are pleasant to meet. So
she had petted him--poor Sir Com! He was not at all blasé, a fresh and
susceptible youth; and of course he lost his heart utterly.
Granby spoke of his friend Ira. Mr. Ambassador Waddie had heard of this
gentleman; in fact, who had not?
“We suppose Mr. Ira Waddy to belong to a younger branch of our somewhat
ancient family,” he explained. “Indeed, I have already written him to
inquire our relationship. We shall be happy to meet him as a kinsman
and as a friend of Major Granby.”
The young ladies were interested in the major’s account of his friend.
He was not, Granby said, a misogynist, though he always avoided women
if he could. He was a cynic of the kindest heart. Utterly careless of
money, but possessed of a Pactolian genius for making it, he dashed
at a speculation as a desperate man rides through a front of opposing
battle. It seemed that he valued success so little that the Fates were
willing to give it him.
“Perhaps,” said Diana, “the Fates took an antecedent revenge. Perhaps
they are lavishly compensating him with what he does not value for the
fatal loss of what he did.”
Granby looked hard at her, studying the hieroglyphs of her expressive
face. What experience had this young person had, enabling her to divine
such secrets of his own life and what he had divined in his friend’s
history? A sham Champollion would have given his interpretation that
she was generalising from some disappointment of the wrong man and not
the right one having offered her a bouquet. Granby, looking deeper,
perceived that to this maiden, whom the gods loved, they had given some
early sorrow, which she was endeavouring to explain to herself.
Granby went on with the character of Mr. Waddy. He was a man who
concerned himself not much with books. Having his own thoughts, he did
not hungrily need those of other men. He could exhaust the books by a
question or two from those who took the trouble to read them. But if
generally not a believer in the works of men or the words of women, he
was a child of nature.
“During the long and excursive pilgrimage from India to London,”
explained Granby, “which we have made together, there is hardly one
oddity, one beauty, one fact or phenomenon in nature, not human, that
we have not investigated. We’ve shot and bagged everything; we’ve
fished and fished up everything.”
And then, the major, who liked to talk--and who does not?--to beautiful
women, told them snake stories and tales of crocodiles, and how, in
the primary sense, he and his friend had seen the elephant and fought
the tiger. Then he passed to the Crimean campaign, where Mr. Waddy had
joined him and gone about recklessly to see the fun of fighting and
relieve its after agony. On the side of fun, there was a story how Mr.
Waddy and Chin Chin had surrounded a picket-guard of a Russian officer
and four men and brought them in prisoners at the point of their own
bayonets--a pardonable violation of the neutrality laws. On the other
side, was the account of Major Granby’s own rescue by his friend.
Granby told this last with an enthusiasm that showed the earnestness of
his friendship.
The two girls, who would have given up life or a lover, one for the
other, felt a romantic interest in the alliance of these men, both
apparently isolated, and erratic for some good cause from tranquil
happiness. Diana’s interest was that of a comrade in these adventures;
Clara’s was an almost timorous sympathy. Ambient listened and blushed
pinker with excitement. He was a little cut out by a man who had done
what he only hoped to do; but Sir Com was a good fellow, and while
the first fiddle played, he put up his pipe of tender wild oat in its
verdant case and applauded the solo heartily.
By Mr. Waddie’s invitation, Granby and Ambient joined his party at the
Tremont House. The ladies also suggested Newport, whither they were
all going. Granby mentioned his half-engagement with Mr. Waddy to drop
in at that watering-place on their tour, and said that the pleasure of
their society, etc., etc. In short, if he could persuade his friend,
they would drop in, and “we’ll give you a plunge, too, Ambient,” he
promised.
This conversation took place at the breakfast table, the morning
after they landed. The ladies presently disappeared and, when they
reappeared, were resplendent with results of unpacking. The proud and
brilliant Diana was still in half-mourning. I think this Amazon must
have beheld Clara’s loveliness with almost masculine admiration and
have expressed it with manly compliments, for Clara seemed a little
conscious as they stepped into a carriage, not quick enough to avoid
the two gentlemen. These knightly squires were eager for a glimpse at
brightened beauty. Granby assumed the privilege of handing them into
their go-cart, while the humbler Ambient defended skirt from wheel.
“We are going,” said Diana, “to pass the morning with our friend, Miss
Sullivan, in the country.”
“Adieu the eagle and the swan!” cried Granby, as they drove off. “By
Imperial Jove! Ambient, she is worthy to be the consort of a god. If
I was ambitious, as you are, I should aspire as you do and as much in
vain. I suppose this is your first love, eh? You’re luckier than most
men. A man’s first is generally either a grandmotherly old flirt become
_dévote_, or some bread-and-butter, sweet simplicity,--oh, bah!”
“Lucky!” echoed Ambient. “I’m confoundedly unlucky and unhappy. She’ll
never have anything to say to me--except in that infernal condescending
_de haut en bas_ style, as if I was a boy. I’d like to pwove it on
somebody that I’m not!” and Sir Com looked around with a quite fierce
expression upon his pleasant countenance.
“Well, I’m not at all sorry for you,” said Granby cheerfully. “It never
does anyone any harm to be desperately in love with a woman who is
worthy. You may be sure that Diana will never flirt with you.”
“She fluriot!--she would never care enough for anyone’s admiration to
twy to gain it. I only wish she would fluriot with me; then I could be
angwy--now I’m only wetched.”
“It will not help you to know that everybody must go through it,” said
Granby, his face grave again--even a little bitter. “I have, my dear
fellow--and worse. For my part, I admire the goddess immensely; but
I think I could love her friend more--that heavenly mildness gently
soothes my soul. The nose,” continued the major, waxing eloquent, “is
man’s most available feature--it may be tweaked. The mouth in woman
is delicately expressive and available when we are allowed to”--and
he raised his fingers with courteous reverence to his lips. “But the
mouth is external merely. Who wishes to look down it, even though heart
may be in throat and panting at the parted lips? It is the eyes--eyes
like Clara’s, where there is soul beneath the surface and down in the
deep profound of those wells of lightsome lustre is truth--these we may
dreamily gaze in for life-long peacefulness.”
Ambient stared at this rhapsody, not quite certain whether his
companion was in earnest. But before he could decide, a carriage drove
up, and Granby gave a distant view-halloo as Mr. Waddy stepped out.
“Punctual to a tick,” said Ira, holding up his watch and producing the
rhinoceros-horn match-box and his case of cheroots.
Granby took one, presented Sir Com, and they entered the hotel together.
* * * * *
Horace Belden was out that morning exercising his race-horse
Knockknees. As he descended the same slope where he had fouled with
Tootler’s buggy, he saw approaching a carriage with two ladies.
He recognised them instantly, with a leap of the heart. He drew
up by their side with polite commonplaces of welcome, dashed with
more meaning when he addressed Diana. They told him whence and
whither--to-day to Miss Sullivan, to-morrow to Newport.
“How can you like that man?” asked Clara, as they drove on. “He seems
to me a Sansfoy.”
“I do not like or trust him,” replied Diana. “I tolerate him because
he rides well and is agreeable, and because he reminds me of an old
friend.”
She stooped to pick up a broken-winged butterfly that had fluttered
feebly into the carriage. Stooping sent the blood into her face. While
they cherished the poor insect, she grew of a sudden deadly pale, and
putting her hand to her side, shuddered slightly. Clara did not observe
the motion, which was not repeated.
There is no need to describe the meeting between pupils and
preceptress; but in the late twilight Clara returned without Diana,
who had consented to stay a day or two with Miss Sullivan. She wished
to keep both the friends, but Mrs. Waddie would need her daughter in
arranging their house.
Mr. Ira Waddy lionised Boston with Granby and Ambient. They looked in
for a moment on Mr. Tootler. He was composing an air to a Frémont song
which he had just written, and which Mrs. Tootler would revise--and
perhaps infuse with even sharper ginger. He played it for them on the
flute. Sir Com listened with astonishment. Mr. Tootler figures in the
chapter entitled, “An Hour with a Musical Wool-Merchant,” in that young
gentleman’s book, “Pork and Beans; or, Tracks in the Trail of the Bear
and the Buffalo.”
In the evening, Waddy and Waddie became acquainted. The ambassador
accepted the relationship, which was now fully established by relics
and traditions. The Great Tradition, however, of the _Mayflower_,
the caboose, Miles Standish, the pepper-pot--this he laughed at as
legendary. Ira clung to it vigorously; he liked to have come in with
the Pilgrims, even at the expense of humble ancestry and an inherited
curse.
The serene Waddie, whose life was happy gentleness, whose toil had been
done for him by fortune and by feminine energy, had no occasion to
look to the past for causes of present exasperating characteristics.
He had inherited the family mildness, and though he decorated his
social station, he was not one to have assumed it. He acknowledged his
obligations to his wife. He had thus ignorantly fulfilled the destiny
of his race.
Clara gave the legend her full adhesion; but nothing was said in this
conclave of the Tory sutler, or the Revolutionary sergeant.
Diana was missed, but the name of her hostess was not mentioned. There
was no reason why Miss Sullivan should be talked of among strangers; no
one knew of that incident of Mr. Waddy’s Return where she had appeared
and played so important a part, nor that he would be pleased to see and
thank his preserver.
In the morning, the whole party went to Newport. Thither all the actors
of our drama are centering. It is strange by what delicate links of
influence life is bound to life--what chances of seemingly casual
meetings and partings determine history!
Pallid went with his master; also a fast pair that Tootler had
purchased for Mr. Waddy, who meant to be both charioteer and cavalier.