The dowager's chiding laugh, low and musical, at that festive gathering
of little Sue's, was at once rebuke and pardon for the past. It
inspired the music: the deft fiddler touched the speaking strings with
firmer bow, and the clashing violins, tinkling triangle and the shrill
bubbling of the quill pipe rolled mellowing through the halls and under
arches of cedar and rosebush where lovers strolled among the shrubbery.
The dowager sat gossiping in the broad hall. Such talk, too! with a
flavor of old bellehood in it, when Mr. Clay's graceful form visited the
saloons and Prentice and Wallace were young and dashing poets of
society. She quoted with quaint accentuation mellow old-fashioned verses
inscribed to her at those old merry meetings, and Time rolled up his
curtain to feelings and fashions of thought like the faint musk of old
pressed rose-leaves. Ah me! I wrote some verses myself t'other
day--little verses indeed, and for a very little girl. But I think when
the brain that thought and the heart that felt so are long dust, some
old, old grandam shall take them from her reticule and say to
great-grandchildren, "He wrote them for me when I was but a little
girl," and across the ashes of three quarters of a century the dead lips
shall speak again to hearts as kind and tender. The seed sowed in thorny
labor may be choked up, and, barren of tears, the dry rocks of time
wither the sweet old fancies I have written, but this little seed by the
wayside shall lift its tiny sheaf, and I too shall have my small harvest
of immortality.
I think of it as I picture the dowager to myself, so fearfully and
wonderfully made, and I confess to a chaste admiration for those old
belles of society and their nepenthe of cosmetics, bringing down to us a
sort of Hallow-e'en summer dressed in the quaint phraseology of an elder
period. I do protest against those jejune satirists who hold them up to
ridicule, forsooth! because unique and like themselves, and true,
because always like themselves, to the latest lapse of affectation. Let
us be sure, however quaintly the lacquer be laid on, there is real
porcelain below in these reserves of old china, which we affectedly call
sham only because it differs in texture and ornament from the delft
cast in a common mould.
The dowager was all vivacity, looking lightly on those limber heels age
is so wont to decry, but alert, sensitively conscious of that pedestal
of affected juvenescence, and bold with that old pioneer blood of hers
that needs but a scratch to show the cruel, revengeful Indian fighter
below.
Silly Bob Nettles was romping by with Sudie--promenade all, around the
porches, through the hall, and back to their places. The dowager had but
time to intimate, "The young gentleman with Sue--Mr. Nettles, is
it?--isn't he rather free?" and Mr. Brown to feel it rather, when they
came by. Sue's hair was down, her eyes bright, cheeks flushed, her lips
bubbling with laughter; and that unlucky Bob was singing,
"When we are young we are careless and happy,
But when we get old we are hairless and cappy."
One flash of those awful eyes told him the dowager had made an
application of his silly and thoughtless words. Relieved from his
partner, he stole off to the dressing-room to think.
He found Warrener and Wylde Payne there, and presently he began to tell
"what a confounded mess he had made of it down stairs."
Mason had been charged by the angry woman with the disagreeable duty of
ordering Bob Nettles to leave the house. Selfish, but good-natured,
Mason by no means liked the task, and on a favorable opportunity would
have softened it probably into a warning. But the temptation to vapor a
little when he found his rival down was too much for him. "I call it
confounded shabby," said he--"a lady of Aunt Fanny's age and character!"
"You are a relation," said Bob anxiously and not at all offended. "I
wish you'd just say to Mrs. Brown I meant nothing. It was just chaff and
nonsense, and I never meant anything."
"Chaff, indeed!" said Mason, egged on by Payne's and Warrener's open
grins. "I think it confounded blackguardly, and you ought to be kicked
out," ruffling like a cock-turkey with trailed wings.
"Go for him, Lind!" laughed Payne, "but remember the four Dutchmen and
be merciful."
Thus adjured, Mason made a gesture with his open palm. Bob let out two
little fists, hard as bats, one of which caught Mason in the eye, the
other on the nose, and then went whirling among the tipping chairs and
tables, rolling his fists over each other, as if grinding up for another
blow, as he cried, "Come on, ye dog-goned gas-bag! I'll knock the socks
off'n ye."
Wrath carried little Bob back to the playground. It was superbly
ridiculous, but Aunt Fanny's champion was clearly discomfited; his fine
lawn front was dabbled with blood, and a discoloration promised a
southerly wind and a cloudy eye by morning. He withdrew, followed by
Payne, who snuffed frolic mischief in the wind.
"This is not the last of it," said Mason, as he went out, in a
threatening tone.
"Of course not," said Payne. "A blow has passed. But you have a soft
thing of it: I don't think the other cocktail will fight. But didn't he
hit out, though?" and he burst into shouts of laughter at the late
scene.
Mason could not join in it very heartily: his comb was cut terribly. He
had got on amazingly as Hector with the nodding plume to his little
cousin that evening; but Hector with his eye blacked and his nose
bloodied! He heard Bob crow, as he would have crowed had the victory
been his, and he felt there must be something done.
Bob would have withdrawn too, but Warrener said, "No: you said all that
was sufficient. Don't let that old griffin think you have been hectored
off the place."
So Bob stayed, distrait, uneasy. Presently, little Sue, who had heard
nothing, came to him, looking very pretty in her fluttering ribbons and
flower-trimmed skirts. "I am going into town to-morrow--shopping," she
said slyly.
"Yes," said Bob, distrait, uncomfortable, for he saw Patsey Warrener
whispering to the dowager and looking at him.
"Shopping," repeated Sue, "all day, but--"
Bob was not even looking at her: he was looking at the two women.
"Is it your set next?" asked the little girl, filling up.
"Yes, I believe so," said Bob, trying to get back.
"No it ain't: I won't! I won't! There! I'm going to dance with Cousin
Lind. I ain't going to dance with you no more--never! There!" And she
whirled off, pettish, provoked, leaving the poor little fellow in his
nervous state, lost in a sort of half-conscious misery. He had not the
courage to seek her out and try to appease her: he took his hat and left
without a word.
But little Sue was to pay dearly for her innocent little burst of
temper. Two gentlemen behind her were commenting on our friend Major
Johnstone: "What makes the major wabble so? I saw him dancing a while
ago as light as the pen-feathers of a gander."
"Don't you know?" asked the other. "There was a row in the dressing-room
between Short-stop Nettles and Bully Mason; and it always makes old
Johnstone limp on that wounded leg to scent a duel."
They laughed and passed on, but poor little Sue, bred in the theory of
the right of personal redress, felt her heart stop. That was what had
made her lover so absent! What would she give to recall her words and
manner--the last words she might ever have to say to him? But it was too
late: he was gone.
After the party she said to the dowager, "Aunty, will there be any more
trouble between Cousin Lind and Mr. Nettles?"
"There must not be," said the dowager: "I shall send for your cousin in
the morning."
"In the morning?" hesitated little Sue.
"What has made you so wise?" asked the dame, seizing her niece with
those bold questioning eyes. "You have never kissed a brother, put a
rose in his buttonhole, and had him brought back to you stark and cold,
with the rosebud unwithered. But you are right. I shall send for him at
once."
Though Sue believed, yet all that night the strange fancy possessed her
of seeing her playmate lover laid out in the room below, with the
withering immortelles faintly scenting the awful dusk about his still
cold face.
Bob Nettles's reception of the challenge by the hand of Wylde Payne was
rather informal. He was just roused in the attic over the
counting-house, and said after reading, "I can't promise not to visit in
my employer's house if he asks me, but I'm mighty sorry."
"I'm afraid that will not do," said Payne coldly, "but you might give up
your situation."
"Me give up my place?" said Bob, touched on the business edge. "If
that's your biz, you'd better trot."
"Your friend will find me there," said Payne coldly, laying down his
card and going.
But when Bob sought a second, all his business intimates refused, like
Joe Skinner, mud clerk--_i. e._ receiving clerk--at the wharf: "I don't
mind knocking a man over with a dray-pin in the way of business," said
he, "but this ain't in my line. If anybody wants anything out o' Joe
Skinner, he gets it then and there. If he wants more, the shop ain't
shut: he can get it served hot at all hours. But this cold-luncheon
style o' fightin' ain't in my line."
Bob succeeded in finding a second, however, with pluck enough to meet
the whole Brown clan. Below is the correspondence:
MASON'S NOTE.
SIR: You will sign the enclosed apology, and pledge yourself not to
visit in the family whose hospitality you have abused, or give me
the usual satisfaction.
L.B. MASON.
To R. NETTLES, ESQ., _Main Street._
REPLY OF NETTLES.
SIR: My relations with Mr. Brown's family have nothing to do with
this difference, nor will I have them drawn into it. For yourself,
I am sorry a necessary defence of my person resulted so seriously
to you, but I have no apologies to make for injuries you brought
upon yourself.
This will be conveyed to you by Captain Deane Lee, who is
authorized to act in the premises.
R. NETTLES.
To CAPTAIN L.B. MASON, _Galt House._
EXCHANGED CARDS OF THE SECONDS.
WYLDE PAYNE, ESQ.,
_Galt House._
DEANE LEE,
_Conductor Street Railroad._