A Maid and Her Money/Chapter 6
VI.
And what would these good friends of Jerry’s have thought, if they could have seen him the next day?
He was sauntering homeward, after a game of rackets at his club, when his eye fell on Marie Louise’s carriage standing before the door of a celebrated jeweler’s. The carriage was perfectly unmistakable even to one less interested than Orvice. It was a black brougham, as much and as brilliantly picked out in white as it could be, with white cushions. It needed, as Prixley had observed, only a pair of zebras in the pole and a pair of convicts on the box. Marie Louise, however, had contented herself with two enormous white horses, which showed blue-white between the bands of heavy black harness; her liveries were almost white, braided in black. She herself admired the result enormously, and never doubted that the numbers of her fellow creatures who turned to stare after her equipage were actuated by admiration and envy.
Seeing this remarkable vehicle, Orvice at once turned into the shop, and stood for some seconds at Miss Carman’s elbow, before she raised her eyes from a tray of jewels spread out before her and saw him. Her manner was as cheerful as ever, but Orvice observed that she had been crying.
“Who do you think is engaged?” she began, at once, shoving all the jewels back at the salesman, as if they had been pebbles. “Bobby Peters!”
“What, not the only man who Not really?”
She nodded. “He is going to marry one of my best friends, and I am going on to the wedding. I’m going to take a large party in a private car. Will you come?”
“I don’t know that I ought to lend myself to any such scheme,” said Orvice. “I believe you are just going in order to catch his eye at the altar and make him regret his choice. The best women are so revengeful.”
“How can you think me so spiteful?” she returned. “Anyhow, I don’t believe I could. He probably thinks her much nicer, and so she is. No, I’m just going for the fun of showing Stonehurst what I can do. Of course, I should like to make the president of the Institute, and all the Park Slope people, feel badly, if I could.”
“And you think I shall contribute to that effect. How very flattering!”
“Oh, I know you will,” she returned, now turning her back to the counter and resting her elbows on the edge of it, so that the salesman, discouraged, moved a little away. “They never saw anything in the least like you in Stonehurst. Will you come?”
Jerry looked at her gravely. “I will,” he said, “if you will assure me that it is not for Bobby Peters that you have been shedding tears.”
“For Bobby Peters?” she retorted, coloring slowly. “How absurd! Wait until you see him. Oh, no, but it is a lot of care and worry—having money.”
“My tradespeople tell me the same thing about not having it.”
She seemed eager to change the subject, and invited his attention to a wedding-present.
She wanted, she said, to give them something really handsome, but she was afraid that if she gave the bride jewels it would look as if she had left Bobby out on purpose. She did not want any one to think she was piqued. Of course, there was always silver, but that was so ordinary.
Ordinary, Orvice returned, trying to put his mind on the problem, and for people who kept few servants, hard to keep clean, or so his mother was always telling him.
Marie Louise doubted if the Peterses would keep any servants.
In view of this fact, Orvice could not feel that her final choice of a tall silver and gold cup, set with white and yellow topazes, was the most appropriate, but Marie Louise scorned his criticism.
“Oh, no, of course it won't be useful,” she said; “and I don’t mean it to be. I think it is horrid because people are poor that every one always gives them ugly things—well, useful things, then. It is just like getting school-books for a Christmas present. Now she'll have one pretty thing in the house, and, let me tell you, she'll get a good deal more pleasure out of it than if | had furnished the kitchen for her.”
He declined her offer of a lift home, and went on his way chuckling internally. Marie Louise was always a new experience to him. He never saw her without experiencing a profound and affectionate amusement; a sort of tenderness and mirth that put him in excellent temper with the world.
He and his mother lunched very cheerfully together, until, toward the end of lunch, he remarked casually:
“Well, mother, I’m going on a triumph before long.”
“I am very glad to hear you have anything to feel triumphant about,” Mrs. Orvice replied genially.
“Oh, I don’t go in capacity of hero. I walk in the wheel-ruts. Miss Carman is shortly returning for a brief time to her native town, and I am going as a manacled savage—the proof of the prowess of her bow and spear.”
“I can’t imagine a better selection,” said his mother grimly. Her heart was bitter at the news.
“I am so glad you think so. I am picked out to impress a college president. I rather doubted my fitness, but perhaps you can help me out. Did you ever hear of the Stonehurst Institute?”
“I do not think I have ever heard of any of Miss Carman’s former friends.” And she could not resist adding: “I did not suppose that any one had.”
“Oh, these weren’t her friends,” said Jerry. “These were the tyrannical aristocracy of Stonehurst.” Then, seeing that his mother was becoming really irritated, he added, with a chuckle: “I do wish you could know Mrs. Carman.”
His mother’s countenance relaxed. “Yes, I am told she is quite beyond anything.”
“On the contrary, one of the most delightful of women. Capable of disapproving of her daughter without interfering, and convinced that she is a goose without telling her so—a reserve that all parents are not capable of, my dear mother.”
Mrs. Orvice did not pretend to misunderstand this. “I don’t think you a goose, Jerry.”
“A knave is worse, mother.”
She did not answer.
The fame of Marie Louise’s triumph soon got about, and must have reached even Stonehurst, for the day before she started she received a telegram from the president of the Institute urging her and all her party to dine with him the evening before the wedding.
Marie Louise was almost beside herself with delight. Not any one of her successes in the metropolis had given her as much satisfaction.
“To think,” she exclaimed, to Peale, who was sitting next her at a dinner, “he is actually giving a dinner in my honor! And, in old times, if he had asked me to come in to supper I should have been so proud! But his wife did not like me to come too often to the Institute hops. She thought I wasn’t a good influence, or so some one told me. Perhaps it wasn’t true.”
“Doubtless, you know,” said Peale, “that the capitalist who dines with a college president is in a parlous state.”
“Oh, do you think he will ask me for money? Oh, if he only would! I don’t know whether it would be most fun to give it or to refuse. To refuse President Andrews!”
Prixley, looking at her, thought he knew her well enough to know that in the end, giving would strike her as the pleasantest joke on her old enemy, but he did not say so, and she went on to tell him of the plans for her party.
He himself could not go, and, indeed, it was not easy to abstract New Yorkers from New York in the middle of the winter, even to go on a triumph. In the end Marie Louise could get only Jerry, the Emmonses, and a young Englishman, who was staying with them and had expressed a wish to see the “provinces.” This seemed an excellent opportunity of doing so.
So, one morning, these four started off with Mrs. Carman and her daughter in a private car. The girl was in the wildest spirits. The mere thought of her past at Stonehurst threw her present into the most brilliant relief, and the prospect of Jerry’s company for two uninterrupted days was enough in itself to make her perfectly happy.
They arrived in time to dress hurriedly for the president’s dinner. This function Mrs. Carman had declined attending from the first. She went out to supper with a maiden cousin. She said to Jerry that President Andrews had got on very well without her for fifty years, and she guessed he could make out a little longer.
Her demure, black-gowned presence might perhaps have broken the shock caused by the entrance of Marie Louise and her party into the Andrews’ drawing-room,
The president’s wife and most of the other ladies of Stonehurst were in high-neck dresses, though here and there a discreet collar-bone peeped over a chiffon frill. Now, Mrs. Emmons was thought, even in New York, to wear her dresses rather low. In contrast to Stonehurst, she now appeared, even to New York eyes, almost unclad; while Marie Louise, in a flame-colored velvet, which she had had made specially for this occasion, was in her own way almost as surprising.
The president, by the aid of a long professional experience, stepped forward to greet the party with more apparent composure than he inwardly felt.
“It is a great pleasure to see you here again, Miss Carman,” he began; and then added, for the stunned aristocracy of Stonehurst was incapable of supporting him: “Do you find Stonehurst very much changed?”
“Well, I find it a good deal more friendly,” returned Marie Louise, with an irrepressible smile, that quickly degenerated into a chuckle.
Feeling the retort had been good, she tried to catch Jerry’s eye, but tried in vain. Jerry, with that instinctive love of ease and pleasantness and social peace, was already at work trying to counteract the turmoil occasioned by their entrance, and did not propose to recognize any such hostile move as Marie Louise’s last speech.
He soon found out that the demure little woman next him, the wife of the Methodist clergyman, was the daughter of a missionary in India, and there was nothing feigned in the interest he showed in her conversation.
Dinner had not been going on for many minutes before it was evident to every one that the only complete failure was Mrs. Bill, hitherto so uniformly successful. Indeed, so accustomed was she to being thought pretty and charming, that she had grown to think that any effort on her part was unnecessary—almost undignified. She believed, though perhaps she did not know how firmly she believed it, that her presence was a sufficient compliment to any gathering, which must then stand on its own merits as to whether or not it could be fortunate enough to amuse her. It was a great many years since Mrs. Bill had had to consider whether she were contributing anything to the general amusement.
But here it became clear at once that she was not. “Better than pretty,” her friends were in the habit of describing her fresh, smart looks. But in Stonehurst freshness of appearance was not at all uncommon, and a smartness that cut its dresses so very low was not particularly admired. For the first time in her life, Mrs. Bill sat wondering if, after all, she were good-looking. The cold eye of the professor of botany, turned, as it was, very rarely upon her, seemed to say: “You are ugly, you are indecently dressed, your face does not express intelligence, but I shall do my duty; I shall address a remark to you.”
And he did. He asked her if she had attended the lecture of an Antarctic explorer who had been recently in New York. Try as she would, Mrs. Bill could not conceal the fact that she had never heard of the explorer, and was very hazy about the Antarctic. The professor could think of nothing else, and so they sat staring blankly before them, in mutual terror and disgust.
Marie Louise was not at a loss for conversation. She was soon giving the president her first impressions of the New York social world. The president was politely interested, but it was not for this that he had arranged a banquet in her honor. He tried once or twice without success to mold the conversation to his own uses, but Marie Louise’s fluency swept him away again and again.
At last, however, her attention was drawn to Jerry, and, seeing his unaffected interest in his little neighbor, her spirits at once began to wane. Not that she was jealous—oh, dear, no. But what was the compliment of being a friend to a person who liked every one—even little flat-headed women in high-neck dresses? She allowed a pause to fall between her and her host, and, in the interval, the president inquired whether she had as yet decided upon the form of memorial she intended to erect to her father.
It is to be feared that the idea had never occurred to Marie Louise. Or perhaps she thought that her own social success was the most conspicuous memorial the old man could have. She showed herself open to suggestions, however, and was not surprised to hear that Mr. Andrews had thought of a new school of mines for the Institute—Carman Hall. Marie Louise tried to harden her heart, yet the words had a flattering sound in her ears.
After dinner, while the men smoking, further hostilities were avoided by the simplest of devices. After a few minutes’ apparent mingling, and a few remarks on both sides about old times and the changes in Stonehurst, Mrs. Bill and Marie Louise retired to one end of the president’s large drawing-room, where, from the delighted giggles that they emitted, it is to be supposed that they entertained each other, and probably at the expense of their fellow guests. The fellow guests supposed so, at all events, and it is to be doubted if the conversation that ran about the larger group of ladies was any more friendly in spirit.
Finding that as soon as the men came in Jerry returned to the little lady from India, Marie Louise did not linger very long.
She thanked Mrs. Andrews for a delightful evening, and took her departure.
Mrs. Emmons expressed her feelings as soon as she was safely in the carriage.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t wonder you came to New York as soon as you had the price of the fare.”
And perhaps Stonehurst expressed itself even more fully in the temperate, but appreciative, smile that ran round the assemblage, as soon as the door had closed behind the New Yorkers.