THE WALRAVEN BALL.
A dark November afternoon--wet, and windy, and wild. The New York
streets were at their worst--sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky
lowering over those murky streets one uniform pall of inky gloom. A bad,
desolate, blood-chilling November afternoon.
And yet Mrs. Walraven's ball was to come off to-night, and it was rather
hard upon Mrs. Walraven that the elements should make a dead set at her
after this fashion.
The ball was to be one of the most brilliant affairs of the season, and
all Fifth Avenue was to be there in its glory.
Fifth Avenue was above caring for anything so commonplace as the
weather, of course; but still it would have been pleasanter, and only
a handsome thing in the clerk of the weather, considering Mrs. Walraven
had not given a ball for twenty years before, to have burnished up the
sun, and brushed away the clouds, and shut up that icy army of winter
winds, and turned out as neat an article of weather as it is possible
in the nature of November to turn out.
Of course, Mrs. Walraven dwelt on New York's stateliest avenue, in a big
brown-stone palace that was like a palace in an Eastern story, with its
velvet carpets, its arabesques, its filigree work, its chairs, and
tables, and sofas touched up and inlaid with gold, and cushioned in
silks of gorgeous dyes.
And in all Fifth Avenue, and in all New York City, there were not half
a dozen old women of sixty half so rich, half so arrogant, or half so
ill-tempered as Mrs. Ferdinand Walraven.
On this bad November afternoon, while the rain and sleet lashed the
lofty windows, and the shrill winds whistled around the gables, Mrs.
Ferdinand Walraven's only son sat in his chamber, staring out of the
window, and smoking no end of cigars.
Fifth Avenue, in the raw and rainy twilight, is not the sprightliest
spot on earth, and there was very little for Mr. Walraven to gaze at
except the stages rattling up the pave, and some belated newsboys crying
their wares.
Perhaps these same little ill-clad newsboys, looking up through the
slanting rain, and seeing the well-dressed gentleman behind the rich
draperies, thought it must be a fine thing to be Mr. Carl Walraven, heir
to a half a million of money and the handsomest house in New York.
Perhaps you might have thought so, too, glancing into that lofty
chamber, with its glowing hangings of ruby and gold, its exquisite
pictures, its inlaid tables, its twinkling chandelier, its perfumed
warmth, and glitter, and luxury.
But Carl Walraven, lying back in a big easy-chair, in slippers and
dressing-gown, smoking his costly cheroots, looked out at the dismal
evening with the blackest of bitter, black scowls.
"Confound the weather!" muttered Mr. Walraven, between strong, white
teeth. "Why the deuce does it always rain on the twenty-fifth of
November? Seventeen years ago, on the twenty-fifth of this horrible
month, I was in Paris, and Miriam was--Miriam be hanged!" He stopped
abruptly, and pitched his cigar out of the window. "You've turned over a
new leaf, Carl Walraven, and what the demon do you mean by going back to
the old leaves? You've come home from foreign parts to your old and
doting mother--I thought she would be in her dotage by this time--and
you're a responsible citizen, and an eminently rich and respectable man.
Carl, my boy, forget the past, and behave yourself for the future; as
the copy-books say: 'Be virtuous and you will be happy.'"
He laughed to himself, a laugh unpleasant to hear, and taking up another
cigar, went on smoking.
He had been away twenty years, this Carl Walraven, over the world,
nobody knew where. A reckless, self-willed, headstrong boy, he had
broken wild and run away from home at nineteen, abruptly and without
warning. Abruptly and without warning he had returned home, one fine
morning, twenty years after, and walking up the palatial steps, shabby,
and grizzled, and weather-beaten, had strode straight to the majestic
presence of the mistress of the house, with outstretched hand and a cool
"How are you, mother?"
And Mrs. Walraven knew her son. He had left her a fiery, handsome,
bright-faced lad, and this man before her was gray and black-bearded and
weather-beaten and brown, but she knew him. She had risen with a shrill
cry of joy, and held open her arms.
"I've come back, you see, mother," Mr. Carl said, easily, "like the
proverbial bad shilling. I've grown tired knocking about this big world,
and now, at nine-and-thirty, with an empty purse, a light heart, a
spotless conscience, and a sound digestion, I'm going to settle down and
walk in the way I should go. You are glad to have your ne'er-do-well
back again, I hope, mother?"
Glad! A widowed mother, lonely and old, glad to have an only son back!
Mrs. Walraven had tightened those withered arms about him closer and
closer, with only that one shrill cry:
"Oh, Carl--my son! my son!"
"All right, mother! And now, if there's anything in this house to eat,
I'll eat it, because I've been fasting since yesterday, and haven't a
stiver between me and eternity. By George! this isn't such a bad harbor
for a shipwrecked mariner to cast anchor in. I've been over the world,
mother, from Dan to--What's-her-name! I've been rich and I've been poor;
I've been loved and I've been hated; I've had my fling at everything
good and bad under the shining sun, and I come home from it all,
subscribing to the doctrine: 'There's nothing new and nothing true.' And
it don't signify; it's empty as egg-shells, the whole of it."
That was the story of the prodigal son. Mrs. Walraven asked no
questions. She was a wise old woman; she took her son and was thankful.
It had happened late in October, this sudden arrival, and now, late in
November, the fatted calf was killed, and Mrs. Walraven's dear five
hundred friends bidden to the feast.
And they came. They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long
lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in
his ancestral halls. He was a very hero of romance--a wealthy hero,
too--and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and
roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling
prize.
The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and
darkness, were one blaze of light at last. Flowers bloomed everywhere;
musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was
a conservatory where alabaster lamps made a silver moonlight in a
modern Garden of Eden; there was a supper-table spread and waiting, a
feast for the gods and Sybarites; and there was Mrs. Walraven, in black
velvet and point lace, upright and stately, despite her sixty years,
with a diamond star of fabulous price ablaze on her breast. And there by
her side, tall, and dark, and dignified, stood her only son, the
prodigal, the repentant, the wealthy Carl Walraven.
"Not handsome," said Miss Blanche Oleander, raising her glass, "but
eminently interesting. He looks like the hero of a sensation novel, or
a modern melodrama, or one of Lord Byron's poems. Does he dance, and will
he ask me, I wonder?"
Yes, the dusky hero of the night did dance, and did ask Miss Blanche
Oleander. A tall, gray-eyed, imperious sort of beauty, this Miss
Blanche, seven-and-twenty years of age, and frightfully _passée_, more
youthful belles said.
Mr. Walraven danced the very first dance with Miss Oleander, to her
infinite but perfectly concealed delight.
"If you can imagine the Corsair, whirling in a rapid redowa with
Medora," Miss Oleander afterward said, "you have Mr. Walraven and
myself. There were about eighty Guinares gazing enviously on, ready to
poniard me, every one of them, if they dared, and if they were not such
miserable little fools and cowards. When they cease to smell of bread
and butter, Mr. Walraven may possibly deign to look at them."
It seemed as if the dashing Blanche had waltzed herself straight into
the affections of the new-found heir, for he devoted himself to her in
the most _prononcé_ manner for the first three hours, and afterward led
her in to supper.
Miss Blanche sailed along serene, uplifted, splendidly calm; the little
belles in lace, and roses, and pearls, fluttered and twittered like
angry doves; and Mme. Walraven, from the heights of her hostess-throne,
looked aslant at her velvet and diamonds with uneasy old eyes.
"The last of all you should have selected," she said, waylaying her son
after supper. "A woman without a heart, Carl--a modern Minerva. I have
no wish to interfere with you, my son; I shall call the day happy that
brings me your wife, but not Blanche Oleander--not that cold-blooded,
bold-faced, overgrown grenadier."
Madame hissed out the words between a set of spiteful, false teeth,
and glared, as women do glare, upon the gray-eyed Blanche. And Carl
listened, and laughed sardonically.
"A woman without a heart. So much the better, mother; the less heart
the more head; and I like your clever, dashing women, who are big and
buxom, and able to take care of themselves. Don't forget, mother mine,
I haven't proposed to the sparkling Blanche, and I don't think I
shall--to-night. You wouldn't have me fall at the feet of those
mealy-winged moths fluttering around us, with heads softer than their
poor little hearts--you wouldn't, I hope?"
With which Mr. Walraven went straight back to Miss Oleander and asked
her to dance the lancers.
Miss Oleander, turning with ineffable calm from a bevy of rose-robed and
white-robed young ladies, said, "Yes," as if Mr. Walraven was no more
than any other man, and stood up to take his arm.
But there is many a slip. Miss Oleander and Mr. Walraven never danced
that particular set, for just then there came a ring at the door-bell
so pealing and imperious that it sounded sharply even through the noisy
ball-room.
"The Marble Guest, surely," Blanche said, "and very determined to be
heard."
Before the words were well uttered there was a sound of an altercation
in the hall--one of the tall footmen pathetically protesting, and a
shrill female voice refusing to listen to those plaintive protests. Then
there suddenly fell peace.
"After a storm there cometh a calm," Mr. Walraven said. "Miss Oleander,
shall we move on? Well, Johnson, what is it?"
For Johnson, the taller of the two tall footmen, stood before them
gazing beseechingly at his master.
"It's a woman, sir, all wet and dirty, and horrid to look at. She says
she will see you, and there she stands, and Wilson nor me we can't do
nothing with her. If you don't come she says she'll walk up here and
make you come. Them," said Johnson, plaintively, "were her own
language."
Blanche Oleander, gazing up at her companion's face, saw it changing to
a startled, dusky white.
"Some beggar--some troublesome tramp, I dare say." But he dropped her
arm abruptly as he said it. "Excuse me a moment, Miss Oleander. I had
better see her to prevent noise. Now, then, Johnson."
Mr. Johnson led the way down a grand, sweeping staircase, rich in
gilding and carving, through a paved and vaulted hall, and out into
a lofty vestibule.
There a woman stood, dripping wet and wretchedly clad, as
miserable-looking a creature as ever walked the bad city streets. The
flare of the gas-jets shone full upon her--upon a haggard face lighted
up with two blazing eyes.
"For God's sake! Miriam!"
Carl Walraven started back, as if struck by an iron hand. The woman took
a step forward and confronted him.
"Yes, Carl Walraven--Miriam! You did well to come at once. I have
something to say to you. Shall I say it here?"
That was all Messrs. Johnson and Wilson ever heard, for Mr. Walraven
opened the library door and waved her in, followed, and shut the door
again with a sounding slam.
"Now, then," he demanded, imperiously, "what do you want? I thought you
were dead and--"
"Don't say that other word, Mr. Walraven; it is too forcible. You only
hoped it. I am not dead. It's a great deal worse with me than that."
"What do you want?" Mr. Walraven repeated, steadily, though his swarth
face was dusky gray with rage or fear, or both. "What do you come here
for to-night? Has the master you serve helped you bodily, that you
follow and find me even here? Are you not afraid I will throttle you
for your pains?"
"Not the least."
She said it with a composure the best bred of his mother's guests could
not have surpassed, standing bolt upright before him, her dusky eyes of
fire burning on his face.
"I am not afraid of you, Mr. Walraven (that's your name, isn't it?--and
a very fine-sounding name it is), but you're afraid of me--afraid to the
core of your bitter, black heart. You stand there dressed like a king,
and I stand here in rags your kitchen scullions would scorn; but for all
that, Carl Walraven--for all that, you're my slave, and you know it!"
Her eyes blazed, her hands clinched, her gaunt form seemed to tower and
grow tall with the sense of her triumph and her power.
"Have you anything else to say?" inquired Mr. Walraven, sullenly,
"before I call my servants and have you turned out?"
"You dare not," retorted the woman, fiercely--"you dare not, coward!
boaster! and you know it! I have a great deal more to say, and I will
say it, and you will hear me before we part to-night. I know my power,
Mr. Carl Walraven, and I mean to use it. Do you think I need wear these
rags? Do you think I need tramp the black, bad streets, night after
night, a homeless, houseless wretch? No; not if I chose, not if I
ordered--do you hear?--_ordered_ my aristocratic friend, Mr. Walraven,
of Fifth Avenue, to empty his plethoric purse in my dirty pocket. Ah,
yes," with a shrill laugh, "Miriam knows her power!"
"Are you almost done?" Mr. Walraven replied, calmly. "Have you come here
for anything but talk? If so, for what?"
"Not your money--be sure of that. I would starve--I would die the death
of a dog in a kennel--before I would eat a mouthful of bread bought with
your gold. I come for justice!"
"Justice"--he lifted a pair of sullen, inquiring eyes--"justice! To
whom?"
"To one whom you have injured beyond reparation--Mary Dane!"
She hissed the name in a sharp, sibilant whisper, and the man recoiled
as if an adder had stung him.
"What do you mean?" he asked, with dry, parched lips. "Why do you come
here to torment me? Mary Dane is dead."
"Mary Dane's daughter lives not twenty miles from where we stand.
Justice to the dead is beyond the power of even the wealthy Carl
Walraven. Justice to the living can yet be rendered, and shall be
to the uttermost farthing."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to find Mary Dane, and bring her here, educate her, dress
her, treat as your own child."
"Where shall I find her?"
"At K----, twenty miles from here."
"Who is she? What is she?"
"An actress, traveling about with a strolling troupe; an actress
since her sixth year--on the stage eleven years to-night. This is her
seventeenth birthday, as you know."
"Is this all?"
"All at present. Are you prepared to obey, or shall I--"
"There!" interrupted Mr. Walraven, "that will do. There is no need of
threats, Miriam--I am very willing to obey you in this. If I had known
Mary Dane--why the deuce did you give her that name?--was on this
continent, I would have hunted her up of my own accord. I would, upon
my honor!"
"Swear by something you possess," the woman said, with a sneer; "honor
you never had since I first knew you."
"Come, come, Miriam," said Mr. Walraven, uneasily, "don't be
cantankerous. Let by-gones be by-gones. I'm sorry for the past--I am
indeed, and am willing to do well for the future. Sit down and be
sociable, and tell me all about it. How came you to let the little
one go on the stage first?"
Miriam spurned away the proffered chair.
"I spurn it as I would your dead body if it lay before me, Carl
Walraven! Sit down with you? Never, if my life depended on it! The child
became an actress because I could keep her no longer--I couldn't keep
myself--and because she had the voice and face of an angel--poor little
wretch! The manager of a band of strolling players, passing through our
village, heard her baby voice singing some baby song, and pounced upon
her on the instant. We struck a bargain, and I sold her, Mr.
Walraven--yes, sold her."
"You wretch! Well?"
"Well, I went to see her occasionally afterward, but not often, for the
strolling troupe were here, there, and everywhere--from pillar to post.
But I never lost sight of her, and I saw her grow up a pretty, slender,
bright-eyed lass, well dressed, well fed, and happy--perfectly happy in
her wandering life. Her great-grandmother--old Peter Dane's wife--was a
gypsy, Mr. Walraven, and I dare say the wild blood broke out. She liked
the life, and became the star of the little band--the queen of the
troupe. I kept her in view even when she crossed the Atlantic last year,
and paid her a visit a week ago to-night."
"Humph!" was Carl Walraven's comment. "Well, Mistress Miriam, it might
have been worse; no thanks to you, though. And now--what does she know
of her own story?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"Nothing, I tell you. Her name is Mary Dane, and she is seventeen
years old on the twenty-fifth of November. Her father and mother are
dead--poor but honest people, of course--and I am Aunt Miriam, earning
a respectable living by washing clothes and scrubbing floors. That is
what she knows. How much of that is true, Mr. Walraven?"
"Then she never heard of me?"
"She has never had that misfortune yet; it has been reserved for
yourself. You are a rich man, and you will go to K----, and you will see
her play, and will take a fancy to her, and adopt her as your daughter.
There is the skeleton for you to clothe with flesh."
"And suppose she refuses?"
"She will not refuse. She likes handsome dresses and jewelry as well as
any other little fool of seventeen. You make her the offer, and my word
for it, it will be accepted."
"I will go, Miriam. Upon my word I feel curious to see the witch. Who is
she like, Miriam--mamma or me?"
The woman's eyes flashed fire.
"Not like you, you son of Satan! If she was I would have strangled her
in her cradle! Let me go, for the air you breathe chokes me! Dare to
disobey at your peril!"
"I will start for K---- to-morrow. She will be here--my adopted
daughter--before the week ends."
"Good! And this old mother of yours, will she be kind to the girl? I
won't have her treated badly, you understand."
"My mother will do whatever her son wishes. She would be kind to a young
gorilla if I said so. Don't fear for your niece--she will be treated
well."
"Let it be so, or beware! A blood-hound on your track would be less
deadly than I! I will be here again, and yet again, to see for myself
that you keep your word."
She strode to the door, opened it, and stood in the illuminated ball.
Johnson just had time to vanish from the key-hole and no more. Down the
stair-way pealed the wild, melancholy music of a German waltz; from the
dining-room came the clink and jingle of silver, and china, and glass.
The woman's haggard face filled with scorn and bitterness as she gave
one fleeting, backward glance.
"They say there is a just and avenging Heaven, yet Carl Walraven is
master of all this. Wealth, love, and honor for him, and a nameless
grave for her; the streets, foul and deadly, for me. The mill of the
gods may grind sure, but it grinds fearfully slow--fearfully slow!"
They were the last words Carl Walraven heard her utter. She opened
the house door, gathered her threadbare shawl closer around her, and
fluttered away in the wild, wet night.