"Randolph!" hissed Cornelius Jordan in his son's ear, as they met in a vacant doorway not long after. "You're a fool!--a pig-headed young fool. There are plenty young duffers around to tend the children and the wall-flowers, and yet you have done nothing else the whole evening. Dancing three times running with a little girl, and then towing round a curiosity, just as if you wanted to tell your mother's guests that you didn't mind any of them, and would as soon dance with a stitcher. What do you mean, sir?" and he shook the young man's arm to rouse him.
The young man moved his eyes lazily round to the other's face and said, "Yes, sir;" whereat the other stamped his foot.
"Well for me, father, is it not, that I'm too big to whip, or I'd catch it now?"
"You'll catch worse than whipping if you don't mind. You'll ruin your prospects for life! If I'd whipped you better when it was in my power, you'd be more sensible now."
"Don't blame yourself, sir; you did your best in that way. I believe I got more lickings than the five other boys on our street all put together. You have nothing to reproach yourself with on that score. You made me squirm, and perhaps it did good, relievingyourfeelings if it lacerated mine, but it's over now--forgotten and forgiven, I suppose, as it has left no marks or effects behind it; for I fancy the other fellows' fathers have more influence with them than we can flatter ourselves you have with me."
"You can come to my study to-morrow morning when I am shaving if you want me to hear the rest of your discourse upon the evil of harshness in bringing up a supersensitive boy; though my own belief is that it was your mother who spoiled you. Meanwhile, use your common sense for once, if you have any; hear me out, and then do as I say.
"You think yourself talented, and for myself I should be pleased to think so too, but you hate work, and will not drudge at the routine of our profession, without which success cannot come. You think you have a turn for politics, and could make your mark that way; and for myself, I am bound to say I think you might become a good speaker with practice; but success in politics wants either industry and application at the beginning, qualities which you do not possess or will not exercise, or else a connection with some influential interest. This last you have not either, but with very moderate assiduity any young man, who is also my son, may at this moment acquire and retain it for life. Mlle. Rouget is of an age to marry--just the right age for you. Her granduncle is archbishop, her uncle a cabinet minister. She is an only child, and her father is seignior of La Hache. I have been able to be useful to the old man, and he will consider your pretensions favourably if you will only declare yourself. In fact, I have in a manner declared on your behalf, and a very moderate degree of attention on your part, in confirmation, is all that is necessary. You see she is French, and well reared--willing to let her parents bestow her hand where they see fit. So you will not be compelled to such lavish demonstrations as I have seen you make elsewhere, where nothing was to be got by it; only of course, it will be good taste to discontinue the attentions in other quarters while you are a pretender to mademoiselle's hand!
"Why, man! with the church and the government at your back there is not a constituency in the country you may not aspire to represent; and with experience and my advice--which is worth more, my son, than you in your sapiency can very well make out--there is no position whatever which you may not rise to. Now don't be pig-headed! I see the obstinate look gathering; but do not let us have a public row for the entertainment of our friends. Go and dance with Mdlle. Rouget, and be civil to her; and take in her or her mother to supper. That will not compromise you either way, and it will save me for the present from the false position in which my zeal for your prospects, and your own indifference to them, seem like to land me."
Jordan and his son were scarcely good friends, though both were inclined to do their family duty. Like the positive poles of two magnets, they never met without repelling each other. Jordan was naturally diplomatic, with a pronounced turn for management, which generally ended in his getting his own way, and therefore made him disinclined to yield. In town he was liked for his pleasant ways, and generally he was yielded to; but at home, his consort, whom the rest of the world found charming, had, for him, what charming women so often possess for the enlivenment of their nearest and dearest, and without which, perhaps, they would soon cease to be charming at all, a will of her own. She had an inconvenient turn for epigram, and with a verb, or even with a laugh, could prick a bubble or a wind-bag in its weakest place, bringing the poor high-flyer flapping to the ground; and Jordan, doubtless, like other Benedicts, though moderate in his flights abroad, would at times adventure to soar a little by his own fireside. Amelia permitted no soaring there except her own--is not home the woman's kingdom?--and perhaps it was thus that her boy learned a disregard for paternal advice and reproof which could not but irritate a man accustomed to guide and control in the outer world. A boy! and his own. It would have been too humiliating to stoop to management there, especially with mischief-loving Amelia looking on; so he fell into a habit of commanding, and beating the boy when he transgressed.
The stick, however, is a sceptre little suited to the nineteenth century or the Western Continent. For the subjects of the Khedive it is manifestly just the thing. The people understand it, and the more vigorously it is applied the happier are the results--for the State at least. But then His Highness is generous even to prodigality in administering the State medicine, without stint or exception, and on every occasion. It isThoroughwhich succeeds in Government. James II. was perfectly correct when he said that it was yielding which cost King Charles his head. Itwasyielding, yielding after having attempted "thorough" without the strength or the daring to work it out. When the bad rider, inexpert with spur, whip, and bridle, strokes the steed's neck and says "poor fellow," softly and soothingly, depend upon it the horse understands the situation as well as his so-called master, and goes his own way. Conciliation, reparation--what you will--to noisy discontent, is a mistake of the same kind; the rider may borrow a handsome name for it from the doctrinaire, but he will not persuade the steed that anything but weakness or fright has wrung from him his pretty behaviour. So much we may gather from recent British history.
But the teller of this story may well leave British history to run its own course, and he craves pardon for his trespass. What he would testify against, in his small way, is historical inconsistency and hysterical interference, however well meant, with the sequence of events. See how a ship has to tack and turn when the wind changes, if she would continue her voyage; if the ship of state is merely to turn her helm and scud before an altered wind of popular feeling, without regard to whence she comes or whither she is bound, sooner or later she will find herself among the breakers, and on a lee shore.
Jordan had attempted thefortiter in rewith his son, but not consistently, and especially not persistently. Indeed, like many another, he would have let the brat alone during his growing years, merely sending him out of the room when he was noisy, or tossing him silver in moments of paternal pride, for his thoughts were kept busy on other things; but the whelp acquired a trick of ensconsing himself behind his mother's gown and bidding defiance to the rightful lord of the manor, and then the latent savage, which is said still to survive in the most cultured, would break out, and nothing but blows and howls would appease him. On these occasions it was the lad's mother who brought fuel to inflame the father's wrath. It pleased her so much that her boy should come to her for protection in his troubles, and she was so pleasing a person herself--or the world said so, and she had got to think it--with her vivacity, her brightness, and her satiric smile, wherewith she could goad old Slow-coach to fury; and he being man enough, at least, to respect his wife, the fury glanced harmless past her and fell in stinging whacks on the poor little adventurer behind her, who had raised the storm. Yet even at his worst, Jordan could find nothing soul-satisfying in beating a small boy, and after a clout or two he would desist, with no harm done except to the young one's personal dignity and the resentment bred therefrom, and that was an evil not to be measured by the severity of the assault, but rather inversely. The lighter the correction the heavier the resentment and offence.
"If youwillwhip a child," as I once heard an American lecturess say--she was a superior person who knew all about it, and had left her own seven lambs at home under the care of a hired help, while she went out into the world with her evangel of nursery tactics--"If youwillwhip a child,be sure you really hurt it!" There must be tingle enough to overbear the indignation and resentment which the violence you are doing to its person will naturally arouse; you must whip enough to make it forget the outrage in the solid pain which it suffers. It is only then that you need expect to super-impose your own will upon that of the patient.
I suppose Jordan had never listened to the American lecturess, if he had, he did not lay the homily to heart. At any rate, he struck, when he might have managed quite as well without; and striking, he struck only enough to arouse in his son feelings of deeper rebellion than those which he undertook to quell; and thereafter a grudge and a suspicion came between the old man and the young, which perhaps the mother without any evil intent, but merely from loving to be first with her own son, his councillor and his friend, did more to aggravate than any one else.
Randolph went in search of Miss Rouget to secure his dance, but the young lady's card was filled up. She had kept a vacancy for him some time, but at length her mother sitting by, displeased at the young man's neglect, had made her fill it up with some one else, and now glanced at the offender with a somewhat stony reserve, which softened, however, when he approached herself, and prayed the honour of leading her to supper. On glancing round the company she could see no good reason why her host had not come forward in person to perform the office. "But then those English," as she told herself, "are so ignorant of theconvenances." Again, the young man might be diffident in pursuit of his matrimonial aspirations, which was to his credit; and also, she was getting very tired where she sat. Her English was not fluent, and the French of the others was so indifferent, that few dared use the little they had, whence she had not been entertained with much conversation, and the smiling bows had grown monotonous. Supper was the one recreation open to her, and as she looked, behold, her husband was leading the way with his hostess. So after all there was no ground of offence, and her features relaxed into their wonted graciousness as she joined the procession. The younger people continued to dance, and Randolph felt a little twinge of jealousy to see Muriel again dancing with Gerald. He was able to whisper to her in passing, however, which was something, begging her to linger and let him take her to supper by-and-by. Madame ceased speaking just then, to some one on her other side, and claimed his attention by an observation, so that he failed to catch what Muriel said in reply.
Madame enjoyed her supper, as was fitting. She had earned it by hours of conscientiouschaperonage, which had declined even the allurements of the neighbouring card-room. She was so fortunate too as to be placed near a gentleman who spoke French well, and now indemnified herself for the enforced silence under which she had been yawning so wearily. In the comings and goings, the risings and sittings down, of some going back to dance and others coming in to sup, a little circle of her intimates gathered round madame, and Randolph, no way averse, found himself merely a supernumerary on its outskirts. It was his opportunity; he availed himself of it, and stole back to look for Muriel among the dancers. He came upon her as she rested at the end of a dance, with still that same too constant Gerald in attendance.
"Now then, Miss Muriel," he cried; "if you are ready we will go at once. The dowagers are leaving the supper-room, and after this dance the musicians will take a rest, and there will be a crush of all the dancers coming in at once. If you are ready we will go."
Muriel looked up.
"Thanks for the information. Miss Muriel is going presently. We will get in ahead of those who are dancing now," said Gerald with a suppressed smile.
Randolph drew himself up just a little, and strove to look dignified while he ignored the last speaker. "Of course there is no need to hurry if you prefer to rest; but it is so much cooler in the supper-room; do you not think you will be better to come at once, Muriel?"
"I was just rising to go with Gerald Herkimer when you spoke."
"But I spoke some time ago--when I passed you with Madame Rouget. You were dancing at the time."
"That was my dance, Muriel," interjected Gerald; "you promised then to let me take you to supper."
Randolph drew himself up to his tallest--he was two inches taller than Gerald--and turned his flushed face with all the dignity he could muster in it upon his offending friend. "I have only Miss Stanley to deal with in this matter, and I prefer to settle it with herself."
"Bosh! man. What is the use of your putting on grand airs with me? Haven't we gone to school together? It isn't a bit of good your trying to play Don Fandango. If you like, we can go down to your back yard, take off our coats, and have it out with lists in the old way; but the people will be sure to laugh, and we shall look rather rumpled when we get back here. We are getting old for that sort of thing, besides. Don't you see you have made a mistake somehow, and the young lady is engaged for supper to me?"
"I don't! and I won't! and I do----"
"Law, now! Mr. Jordan, ain't this just splendid? You are making up a party for supper, I see, and I am a hungry party that will be most pleased to join you;" and Randolph felt a fat arm slip through that arm of his own which he had been offering so pressingly to Muriel. There was a vision of geranium-coloured poplin flapping against him, and when he looked round, behold, Miss Betsey had him in possession. There was nothing for it but to submit and lead the way while the other two followed; even though a smothered "haw, haw," which he could hear behind him, filled his heart with fury, and made him long to face about and brain the offender on the spot. The natural man is a savage still, especially when his inclination to the fair is crossed; culture, good-manners, and white kid gloves notwithstanding.
Betsey was exuberant. Thanks to Muriel's efforts, she had danced and eaten ice with Randolph, and Gerald, and a good many more--danced almost continuously, and quite energetically--having, in her own words, "a real good time." And now she was a little hungry, but in overflowing spirits, as she trotted beside her tall cavalier, with her chin pressed into the dimpling redundancy of her short thick neck, where every line and crease seemed to vie with the parted lips in smiling content.
Randolph stalked gloomily by her side, realizing his helplessness, and resenting the amused glances which met him as he proceeded. But what could he do? He could only submit, and get through with the interlude as quickly as possible. He was lucky enough to find a small table vacant in a retired corner of the supper-room, where he placed himself and his little companion, ignoring tugs and nods and pointings to more conspicuous places, where the lights would have shone brighter on her beauty and her revelry--which were just the things he wished to keep out of sight. Betsey had the best of everything to eat, however, which was compensatory, and her companion had at least the satisfaction of sitting opposite Muriel. He had secured them for the rest of his own table, and if he was unable to say much to her himself, it was something to have prevented atête-à-têtewith his rival.
Randolph's disturbed feelings were subsiding into sullen calm. He was eating his supper. He had filled his companion's glass and his own; and Betsey, smiling to pledge him, held her foaming goblet in her hand awaiting his answering glance, when a sombre body--the back and shoulders of a man's coat--interposed itself between them.
"Jordan! Here you are at last," it said. It was only a man's coat, so far as Betsey could see, intruding most impertinently between herself and herbeau. "I have been looking for you everywhere. Now I have found you. Madame Rouget has done supper, and is waiting for you to go back to the dancing-room."
Betsey made a little gulp of indignation; but no one perceived it, or seemed to heed her. Randolph rose like a truant returning to school, led away by the man in the coat; and she, poor Betsey! was left--lamenting? No--finishing her supper. She held her glass across to Gerald for a little more champagne, and thereby tacitly placed herself under his protection for the rest of the meal. There was much natural adaptability to circumstances in Betsey, notwithstanding her too evident lack of polish. Like the celebrated brook, she went tranquilly forward, however "men might come, or men might go," in a consistent following out of what seemed the attainably best for herself. With opportunity and culture Betsey might have gone far.
Madame Rouget rose at Randolph's approach, and took his arm to leave the room. She showed no displeasure or cognisance of his desertion, but there was a distinct refrigeration of the graciousness with which she had accepted his escort to the supper-table half-an-hour before. In leaving the room they were stopped for an instant in front of the little table which Randolph had risen from. Madame lifted her eye-glass just where geranium-coloured poplin made the feature of the view, and its wearer in much comfort held a wine-glass to her lips, smiling across to Gerald Herkimer, a modernized suggestion of one of Jourdain's carousing beauties, though with the flesh tints far less delicately rendered. She dropped the eye-glass with a click, and a French shrug, and that accompanying rise of the eyebrows so infinitely more expressive of scorn and contempt than any word.
"I amdesolée, to have take Mistaire Jordain from ze plaisirs of his soopaire. But ze demoiselle aippears herself to console ver well. Wich rassure me ver much."
Madame must certainly have been indignant when she used these words, for, when quite herself, her English was grammatically correct enough if the vocabulary was restricted and a word was sometimes used in a wrong sense. It is a woman's right to take offence at theformam spretamby a suitor, and if the form despised be her daughter's instead of her own, she can resent it with even better grace.
Not long after, Mr. Jordan senior came upon Mr. Rouget leaving the card-room, and expressed a hope that he had been able to amuse himself.
"I have not the good fortunes at cards this evening," that gentleman replied; "I have won nothing; lost, rather, I fear."
"So sorry; come have a glass of wine, and perhaps the luck may turn."
"N'importe, I shall play no more to-night. The fortunes are notpropices. Mysystèmedoes not conform to the play of Mistaire--what you call?--Constantine."
"Considine. Probably not. He generally plays euchre. You were playing whist. Liable to trump his partner's best card. I know his weakness. Let me find you some one else."
"I thank you. No. It grows late. I go in search of madame.M'sieurhimself does not succeed well in the little plan he did me the honour to propose--to ally our families. I observe M'sieur Randolphe withholds the--what you say?--thepetits soinswhich aire of custom when a gentleman pretends to the hand of a demoiselle.N'importe, I accept the excuses of m'sieur without saying. One knows the authority of father counts for nothing with you English; but the more should have been an understanding before to approach me."
"My dear sir," Jordan began deprecatingly; but the other raised his hand in dignified protest.
"Enough. I make no reproach--N'importe. My good brother, the ministre, has views. We will forget."
"My dear Mr. Rouget--I beg!--I will even admit that you have ground of offence, but pray take into account the waywardness of a head-strong youth who resents being dictated to, and fancies he should decide his own movements. Still, I must say for him, the boy really is steady, and a good lad; and that, you will allow, is a qualification not always to be met with among the eligible young men of the present day. The mortgage upon La Hache would be a nice provision for the young people, would save you from the possibility of instalments falling due at inconvenient times, and I think--though perhaps I am too nearly related to be an impartial judge--the lad has parts, and would not discredit the Honourable the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation either in politics or the public service. He has been bred to the law, as perhaps you know, and passed his examinations with distinction."
M. Rouget bowed his head and allowed the look of displeasure to relax upon his countenance. He was most willing to push forward the matrimonial scheme, though naturally, as being the weaker party, it behoved him to keep that fact to himself, and to be ready, at the first sign of backwardness on the other side, to feign offended dignity, that he might be able to withdraw from the fruitless negotiation with the honours of war.
They were now leaving the supper-room together, and Considine approached just as the Frenchman walked forward alone in search of his ladies.
"At last," thought Considine, "I shall catch Jordan alone, and get over that talk I have been so long wanting to have with him;" and he pressed his breast pocket to make sure of the documents he had carried about so long, in hopes of catching the busy man in a moment of leisure. Jordan noticed the movement, and was defensively on the alert at once.
"Considine, old fellow! Not dancing?"
"My dancing days are over. But I say, Jordan, I wish you would give me just a few minutes quiet----"
"Over? What an idea! The springiest man of our set! Without the first sign of either gout or rheumatism! And you would give up dancing, and ticket yourself a fogy before your time? No! no! Couldn't think of it. Yonder are a score of ladies, all your friends, sitting down after supper, and waiting to be asked to dance. Every woman likes to be danced with after supper, if only to show the world that men don't look upon her as too old. Come along! Let me find you a partner, though you know every one here."
"But I never valse."
"It is Lancers this time. I am going to dance myself. Mrs. Martindale. A very old friend. Knew her before either of us were married. We always have a dance when we meet. Come along!--Miss Stanley! Here is a gentleman so desirous of dancing with you, and too modest to ask. Pray take pity on him."
Miss Matilda looked up in a little surprise, but smiled on seeing Considine.
"You are a sad wag, Mr. Jordan. It seems scarcely fair that we grown-up people should crowd out the young ones. However, as Mr. Considine is so kind----" and she rose, and taking his arm they joined the dancers.
Age is not a question to be decided by almanacs or the comparison of dates. How many generations of roses have bloomed and disappeared since the aloe was sown, a hundred years ago, which now is only opening its flower. The willow has fallen into battered decrepitude, while the oak, its slow-growing contemporary hard by, has barely reached his prime. Life should not be measured by the tale of years, but by itself--by the measure of oil unburnt, which remains within the lamp. There be some, who, making bonfire of their store--lighting the candle at both ends in the gusty weather--have consumed it mostly ere the seventh lustrum has run out, and go darkling thenceforth with nothing but a smoky wick and a guttering remnant; and there are others who have dwelt where the winds were still, and have shaded their lamps and trimmed them, like prudent virgins, whose light grows clearer as they pass along, and accompanies them with a tranquil radiance far down into the valley where the shadows are, and the inevitable end. It is the excitements and the cares which devour our strength, the unsatisfied greeds which eat inward, the ill-regulated pleasures which exhaust. Work never killed a man; or, if it did, he was a weakling, or he had mistaken his trade.
"Only look!" cried Amelia Jordan, touching her neighbour, Martha Herkimer, with her fan, "I think I may flatter myself that my juvenile party is a success, when the contagious gaiety has caught even that superannuated couple. I should feel flattered, but I confess I am not fond of frisky grey beards. There is a time for everything, even for sitting still and watching the young ones. I wonder at Considine; and really Matilda might have had more sense than yield to his absurdity."
"Do you mean the gineral and Matildy Stanley? Well now, 'pears to me, they're about the likeliest couple on the floor. If they're old it's their own business, their bones will ache the worse and the sooner; but as far as looks go, I will say there ain't man or boy of them all looks as spry as the gineral. And, as for Matildy, she looks well. I always liked Matildy, and I admire her."
"Oh, certainly, my dear, I quite agree with you. I am fond of Matilda--good simple soul--I cannot think how she missed getting married. So many worse, have established themselves well, since she was young. But really you know it is just a little ridiculous, at her time of life, to see her disporting herself. Why, there are her niece and your own boy in the same set!"
"So are Mr. Jordan and Mrs. Martindale."
"Oh, yes, but that is nothing. Jordan must make himself useful in his own house; and every one knows Louisa is a fool, who would like to be thought gay, giddy, and dangerous. I would bet a box of gloves, now, she thinks she is breaking my heart with jealousy. Just look how she wriggles about, and how the chandelier so nearly over her head brings out the crowsfeet and wrinkles round her eyes. I would not, for fifty dollars, walk down the centre of the room when that thing is lighted, if anybody were looking.
"You don't see no crowsfeet around Matildy's eyes, I guess. She's a fine woman, is Matildy Stanley. I wonder where the man's eyes have been that she should have stayed Matildy Stanley so long. See how she walks! As upright as a broomstick, and as springy as a cane."
"Men like other things along with looks," said Amelia bridling. "Though really Matilda looks quite nice--considering. One can scarcely claim to be in one's first youth now-a-days, and we all came out the same year, so our ages cannot be very far apart, Louisa Martindale, Matilda, and I; and Louisa and I have grown up children."
"You don't say that Mrs. Martindale is one age with Matildy? She looks nigh on twenty years older.You'redifferent," she added quickly, as the gathering of a look on her friend's face, which did not betoken satisfaction, became apparent.
"Perhaps Louisa does wear a little badly," she answered, in returning good humour. "That light betrays everything. Louisa has so much vivacity, and perhaps she is just the least bit in the world affected, I believe it must be that has made her go off so. So much simpering and smiling, when one doesn't feel so very pleased, and makes believe a good deal, must naturally wear creases in the face. Do you not think so? Matilda, on the other hand, as you know, is so calm and tranquil; her face has not half the tear and wear of Louisa's, and therefore it lasts ever so much better. But, somehow, Louisa, I should say, has got more good out of her life. She has got more bad, too, I grant, for she has been in the thick of everything; but I think I prefer that. Matilda seemed never just to hit it off with the men. I do not recollect her ever receiving any marked attentions, and she did not betray any strong preferences to her. There are no little vignettes, that I ever heard of, to illustrate her biography. You know what I mean.Passages, people call them, which most of us like to bring out of our memories and look at, when we feel low and a little sentimental; just as we open the old box where our bridal wreath is laid away, and wonder as we wrap the thing up again in its tissue papers, if the gingerbread has really been worth all the gilding we overlaid it with."
Martha sniffed. It did not become an honest married woman to talk that way, she thought; but she said nothing, and the sniff proved enough to modulate Amelia's tone down to the narrational key again.
"When the officers were quartered here, of course it made society lively; and they paid a great deal of attention to us all,"--with just a suspicion of bridling, as she said it, as though she had "vignettes" of her own to remember, if it were worth while to count the scalps won in such old-world encounters. "Matilda was in the thick of it all, and got plenty of attention, but it never came to anything; and I am bound to say she betrayed no anxiety that it should. Her father was an Englishman, you see, and she has travelled; and she has money, and a sister; so I suppose it comes natural to them to take things easily and be comfortable in their own cool-blooded and retired sort of way. Very nice women, I must admit, and always the same wherever you meet them; but one cannot make free with them as we do amongst ourselves. Really it is quite like long ago, to see Matilda dancing out there with Considine. She is little changed. Fuller in the figure, perhaps, but that is becoming as one gets up in life. Her hair is in the same old way she always wore it--in streaming side curls. 'Books of Beauty,' when I was a little girl, displayed ladies with hair-dressing like that; but, except Matilda, I never saw a living woman wear it. Though it becomes her."
"Splendid hair! So long and thick; and not one white thread in it. Now, what colour was Mrs. Martindale's originally? It's dun-duckety mud colour now, or what you please," and her eyes involuntarily rested on Amelia's head-dress, eliciting an angry red spot upon either cheek, which was answered by a flush of ashamed confusion on her own, at the inadvertence, and brought the conversation to an abrupt conclusion.
The unconscious subject of her friend's criticism swam here and there through the figures of her dance in sympathy with the music, borne up and carried forward, like a well-trimmed yacht, upon the current of sound. She had danced little, if at all, for years; but it came naturally to her to dance. There was no heart-heaviness or carking care, no malice, envy, or uncharitableness--the unadjustable ballast which makes so many a hull roll heavily. Her health was good, as it had always been, her nerves as well strung, and her ear as sensitive to the spirit of sound. She looked well, and she knew it, with the mature and realized beauty of a summer afternoon--a lady such as the late King George admired. There was not the dewy promise of morning, but neither were there evening's pensive shadows pointing backward in regret--a handsome woman who had shed her girlhood, but showed no other sign by which to count the years. It was pleasant to be brought down off the shelf where matrons and old ladies sit and contemplate the gambols of the young, and made her think of her first ball, and how nice it had been, but without regret, for it was nice even now; and there was her own little Muriel whom she had reared, almost grown up, and marching before her just like another woman in the evolutions of the dance. And really it was very nice to have a gentleman so attentive, and all to one's self; like long ago, before her married friends got their establishments, and put on their absurdly patronizing airs, which were sometimes so provoking, though always so ridiculous--"as if one could not have done everythingtheysucceeded in doing if one had cared to try."
That reflection brought perhaps a trifle more colour in her face, and made her shake out the ringlets just a little, till she looked at her partner before her, carefully executing with conscientious precision a gyration in her honour. She could not but smile as she gave him her hand to turn round, and the man looked positively grateful as he received it. Grateful, but was it for the smile or the hand? Yet surely he gave the hand a little squeeze. The man must be growing audacious. And yet he was so respectful. But Mr. Considine she knew was always respectful, and really very nice.
Considine thought it very nice too--did not know, in fact, how long it was since he had enjoyed anything so much. "Amazing fine woman," is how some of his compeers would have expressed their feelings; but Considine did not even pretend to be aroué, and he was not a fogy, though quite old enough to have been one, if that had been a necessary phase of existence to pass through. He felt happy with a respectful enjoyment, such as he might have known thirty years earlier, in the recognized season for such things, and he only regretted that it was to end so soon. He wondered if he might venture to ask her to dance again, and that smile we have mentioned, met him, and he thought he would risk it; but alas, the programme had been arranged to suit the younger talent, and this proved to be the last square dance. Then he bethought him of the subscription assemblies, and wondered if Miss Stanley attended them, and then the evolutions of the next figure brought him back to the business in hand.
Muriel and her partner watched him carefully solemnizing the rite with a good deal of amusement. Youth is so graspingly exclusive, and so intolerant. It engrosses the present and claims the future for itself, and accords as little place to its quite recent predecessors, the have beens, as would be given to the ancient kings at Westminster, if they should leave their vaults in the abbey and walk across the street to the hall or the palace over the way.
M. Rouget de la Hache was hard up. He was a "swell," in a small way, after the mild colonial fashion, with a seigniory whose ancient privileges had been curtailed by advancing civilization; but civilization had paid him a good round sum when it abolished his rights over the persons and property of his humble neighbours--rights which were becoming an anachronism, and always more difficult to exercise. Being a swell, he did not work, but he was closely related to many who did, and who exercised the most important functions in the country, while they still looked up to him as in some sort their chief; though, in reason, the deference should have been all the other way. M. Rouget did not work, and therefore, not being a vegetable, it was necessary that he should play. When circumstances, in mistaken kindness, lay no burden on a man's shoulders, he fits one on himself--il faut s'amuser--and one which often proves hard to carry. There is a taskmaster, as the nursery saw tells us, still ready to find occupation for idle hands, occupation in which they too often burn their fingers.
Guns and dogs answer well enough at a time, so do trotting horses; but by-and-by there must be other men's horses to trot with, and give the interest of emulation. A man cannot continue to amuse himself on his own land; and in colonial cities people are too busy making their fortunes to be amusing company for an idle man. However, Saratoga, in its season, was not far away, and there was New York beyond, which lasts all the year round--more or less. Rouget had been used to be "of the best" at home--a personage, in a small way, wherever he appeared--and abroad it did not occur to him to abate his pretentions. Measured by the golden foot-rule of New York, he would have found himself on a far back bench, and even then his neighbours would have been able to lay down a dollar for every dime which he could produce; but the idea of applying such a standard did not occur to him. He believed himself a notability, and looked among the foremost for his peers. Was he not related to several of those old French governors who traded beads for peltry in the wake of a Jesuit Missionary, chaffering with the simple children of the wilderness beneath the forest shade, ere ever a vulgar common-place Englishman had arrived to cut timber, open a shop, or make money? And the foremost accepted him at his own valuation, as something "romantic, and quite beyond." He was ready to put down his stakes alongside theirs, and it would not be "manners" to ask the size of the pile from whence the stakes were drawn. Wherefore the American heart opened genially to receive him, just as it opens to the Lord Toms and Sir Harrys who each year enter its hospitable gates, and remain while their money lasts, or till they are found out.
It is hard upon the pipkin who adventures to sail down stream with the brazen bowls. There are eddies on the smoothest streams, and among the eddies there will be bumping. Only the pipkins need mind that, it is they alone who suffer. They inevitably get cracked in a collision, while the brass goes bumping and ringing along for very sport. It can come to no harm. Mr. Rouget got cracked--badly cracked--at last; but the wonder is that it had not befallen him long before. His friends did what they could for him--friends always do, when the subject is a worthless one, while virtue gets leave to shift for itself in its disasters, virtue being essentially prosaic, uninteresting and unpicturesque--but even his friends ran dry at last, and he had to mortgage his land. That occurred when Jordan began first to invest moneys for the Herkimer estate, and it was he who had bought the mortgage. It was a fairly profitable operation for Jordan, and had been the beginning of a useful intimacy; but it seemed to him, ere long, after the accruing advantages were well secured, that to sink so large a sum in so long-winded a transaction had been a mistake, and he might have done better in short loans, money on call, and general usury. There was the idea, to be sure, of engrafting his son effectually upon the dominant French interest by marriage, and if that could be compassed, it might turn out that the money had been well invested; but the boy was so head-strong and contrary, so like the Irishman's pig, which insists on going the other way, in what way soever he may be desired to go, that there was no certainty of working out the scheme, however compliant they of the other side might be.
Jordan was sitting in his office one day, in the week following his wife's party, examining his diary of bills coming due, considering where renewals might be granted, and how much he might extort in consideration of his forebearance, what sums would be paid him, and how they were to be employed. Rouget, overbearing the clerk who kept the sanctum door--it was an inner room, lined with tin boxes, but free from the professional lumber which garnished that wherein he received his clients, the spider-hole, in fact, where he sat to devour his flies, and very private--appeared before him.
"Jordain! Your clerk ees notrespectueux. I must complain. He tell me you were gone out. Yen vid dis ear I hear you cough my ownself. Everee body know Jordain's cough. Yet hedéfendmy entry."
Jordan laid down his pen testily, but composed himself at once. "M. Rouget de la Hache, eh? The young man has orders to let no one in here. He should have said I was engaged. Those were his orders."
"He deed say so; but I shust look heem in ze eye--so!--vit a grandsévérité; and he fail of his word, and growconfus; and zen he tell me you were gone out. And so--behold me."
"Sim should stick to his orders. The first lie is always the best and safest. Not that this was a lie--he had his orders to say I was engaged, and admit no one.Youwould have been an exception, of course, had I expected to see you. But how should I? Nevertheless, most pleased to see you; though really I am very busy. Pray sit down. How can I serve you?"
Rouget sat down, looking vacantly about him. To attempt to hurry him, shook up his muddy wits, which needed all their accustomed rest to clarify themselves in any measure.
It was a bare little room, all but its wall covering of shelves, supporting tin boxes, which were all brown japanned alike, and garnished with gold letters and numbers enough to give one headache. There were three chairs, on one of which he was sitting, while Jordan had another, and the third stood waiting--for whom? It disturbed him, this foolish question, for it was impossible to answer it. The table was covered with black leather, and there was a book open--a big fat book--wonder what it was about?--and a bit of paper with names and figures, which Jordan was noting down with a pencil. Wonder what he meant by it? Had it anything to do with him, Jean Vincent de Paul Rouget? But yet the pencil and slip of paper looked unimportant enough, and so, with the bold assurance of ignorance Rouget concluded that they could not possibly be of much consequence, and Jordan was only making believe--a humbug, in fact, as all peoplelà basmostly were. It takes a transatlantic "swell," who has never seen one of the acknowledged great ones of the earth, to fully realize the vast inferiority of the "lower orders" to his own ineffable mightiness.
And yet it was easier to make the grand entrance he had achieved, and even to seat himself with dignity, than to plunge at oncein medias res. He shuddered a little, like a bather on the brink, and looked round the room again, but it was so bare it would not suggest anything; and he wanted an idea--some neutral subject of talk which could be steered and edged about, whither he would; like a boat to waft him round the cliffs on the opposing shore, to some unguarded inlet with sloping banks, where he could land in good order and deploy at will toward the point he sought to gain. But this fellow was so abrupt. Thebrusqueriewas not in good taste, and at another time he would have let him see it; but now----
"How can I serve you?" said the spider again. He knew the value of directness and dispatch. A fly must be well inmeshed in the web to be there present. It is mercy to the poor things to come to the point with a bound, and bleed or devour. To prolong the preliminaries is but adding gratuitous pain. The victim will but flutter the more wildly, and what usurer would make rich if he heeded the remonstrance of impotence? In prolonged palaver, too, and the frantic flutterings, may not the captive burst a gossamer bond, and be free? The bonds are all gossamer, at first, like the rainbow-coloured rays of a sea anemone, but they thicken and grow tense when the prey gets among them, and do it so quietly that he is partly swallowed before he realizes his danger, and then his struggles are apt to be in vain. Still, there are chances, and vigour and dispatch are best.
"How can I serve you?" and Jordan glanced into the book before him, and then made a cross with his pencil at a name and some failures on the list he seemed to be making out. It was manifest that he guessed already what was going to be said. It was mortifying, and still it was a relief to see that preliminaries were unnecessary and the subject already opened.
"I find I cannot meet all the interest due the day after to-morrow."
A mere bow of the head from the spider. Not a motion of an eyebrow, even, in token of surprise. This composure hurt M. Rouget much. Was he not an important person, and looked upon as rich? And was it not the duty of ordinary people to expect him to pay up? He felt almost insulted that anybody should thus take his inability as a matter of course. He coloured, and looked an interrogation.
"Yes?" said Jordan.
"I vill give a cheque for two tousand dollars. You must hold over the rest for the present."
"Make it three, and I will take your note for the rest at thirty days--Sim!" touching the hand-bell at his elbow.
"That vill not do! I shall not be able to pay so soon," said Rouget more disturbed. What did the man mean by calling in his clerk so quickly to increase his embarrassment?
"Never mind, Sim! a mistake," and the door closed again.
"Tirty days would be no use. You mus give me time. I have had looses, and want time to retrieve myself."
"But how? Mr. Rouget. You will say I have no right to ask such a question, perhaps, and I dare say I appear discourteous; but in business it is essential to understand the case clearly, and our transactions are for such large sums that you must excuse seeming intrusiveness. Will sixty days suit you?"
"No. I want time! and freedom from all anxieties. I have asystèmewich is infallible in the end, and must make me rich, but it demands time, watchfulness, and money."
"Phew!"--Jordan whistled slowly, lying back in his chair and burying his hands in his pockets. "That is--Well, we will not wrangle over spilt milk, and I do not question your right to do as you choose with your own money; but it seems to me, when you granted those large mortgages, you made use of that same expression--referred to something, something or other under the name of a system."
"And what then?" said Rouget flushing. A little indignation would help him, conversationally at least, he began to think. Not being in trade, he was unfamiliar with the liberties which money will empower a lender to take with the man who would borrow, or worse, who would be excused when the time comes round for repayment.
"Oh! nothing. Only if it has cost $150,000 already before the system begins to work favourably, it may take as much more yet, and where is the money to come from?"
"It vill not! Itcannottake so much. It mus' be propice ver soon. I have confidence. I have considered. There is certainty!"
"And the first of the three repayments of $50,000 comes due in six months."
"I know it, and I want you to add dese few tousands to the new mortgage you will draw--wid interests and commissions, all to be sure, widout question;" and the poor man rallied his waning pomposity to make one little shrug in naming the gains and perquisites of theroturier; before whom, his heart misgave him, he might yet have to quake.
"But, my dear sir, the operation is not a profitable one, and I did not contemplate renewing the mortgage. I can do much better with the money on the street."
"Mon Dieu!Jourdain. What do I hear? Increase ze interests if so mus' be--and ze security is good. Ze ministre,mon frère, say zey are firs class, and zat I paytrop--too much."
"Quite so, Mr. Rouget, that is just where it is. I have my feelings and my reputation like another man. Why should I place myself in such a position that the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation should look on me as a usurer? I can command better terms for my money on the street, with nothing said, than I could charge you on your mortgage even with the loss of reputation involved in that word usurer."
"My dear sair! But ze mortgages were to be for fortune to M. Randolphe, in heemself marrying to Adeline, who would have thesurvivanceof La Hashe fordot."
"But if receiving interest on the mortgages is to be contingent on the success of a 'system'--and of course a son-in-law must grant indulgence if his wife's father gets behind--the young people might not have much to live on. In any case, there are still the other instalments--a very fair provision--if the young lady should condescend, and the young man can be brought to the point--which, with the unruly youth of the present day, is, I confess, doubtful; and the more difficult to accomplish, the less ground of dissatisfaction there may be, beyond mere aversion to be dictated to. Business arrangements cannot be left open, in waiting, to accommodate the whims of boys and girls."
"Would you buy La Hache? How much would you give?"
"Are you in earnest? Do you propose to hand it over in settlement of the mortgages?"
"How much more would you give--'to boot,' as you say in buying a horse."
"I didn't contemplate buying. It would not suit me to have so large a sum tied up in unremunerative acres. If I were to buy, it could only be that I might sell again, and that involves delays, expenses, uncertainties, loss of interest. No! Mr. Rouget, it is not to be thought of. If there is a default in payment all the mortgages fall due at once, and in our small market the sum involved in the foreclosure is as large as any buyer would be likely to bid on one property."
"But, my friend! Ze securities aire ample. You had it valued four years ago."
"Certainly. It seemed safe for the money at that time. But you were then supposed to be well off, independently of the property; today you have explained that you are so no longer, and cannot even attend to the regular interest."
"Lend me anoder fifty tousand on de property."
"Not to be thought of."
"Tirty----"
"Could not do it."
"Tventy----"
"Sorry it cannot be."
"Ze lands aire rich."
"Realize them, then, Mr. Rouget. I will promise to place no unnecessary impediments in your way."
"Zere is vealth in ze ground itself. Richesses of minerals. See! Behold," and he drew from under his fur gloves, cap, and muffler, which he had thrown upon the table in a heap on entering, a small box which he proceeded to open, and displaying a number of mineralogical specimens, handed across to the other. There was a green incrustation on the stones where they had been long exposed to the weather, but the new faces made by recent hammer-fracture, shone red and metallic like a beetle's back.
"Ah," said Jordan. "Really very nice. I am no judge of such things, but to my ignorant eye some of these must be nearly pure copper. Were they found at La Hache, and does the deposit appear extensive?"
"Dey were in de swamp, a mile back from the river, last fall. We were shooting, I, that is, and a youngsavantof my friend's, who studies wit Professor Hammerstone. The professor has examined, himself, since den, and he finds the indications ver rich and abundant. He says zere is a fortune there beyond compute. Now! What say you? You know the Professor Hammerstone is of great reputation. Wat you say now?"
"Say? For one thing, Mr. Rouget, I congratulate you, and I would say that your prospects look infinitely more hopeful from this point of view than in connection with your 'system,' which--you must forgive my saying it--was leading you to destruction. In heaven's name let the 'system' slide, and apply yourself to develop your property."
"But ze money? my friend. You cannot develop wid notting. Lend me money, and I vill give my vor d'honneur"--and he patted his palms outstretched on the bosom of his greatcoat--"to abandon de système."
"Mining matters are outside of my field; I do not understand them. You should call on some of our leading capitalists and speculators with your specimens. They will look into the affair, and if there is anything in it, will make you a proposal. On one point only let me offer a word of advice. Do not insist upon too much money down to begin with. You cannot expect them to subscribe a capital merely to hand it over to you. Show your willingness to take the bulk of your price in shares and you will get something very handsome indeed. So soon as the stock is all taken up, the shares become saleable, rising and falling in sympathy with public talk, long before any of the ore has been got to market, and you may be able to sell out at good prices very soon, if the scheme happens to strike the general fancy. For myself, as I have said, mining is not in my line, but I will do what I can not to embarrass you. I will take your note at ninety days for that unpaid interest, and as for the mortgage due next summer, we will talk of it when the time comes, and, meanwhile, we shall have time to see how the mining enterprise will prosper--Sim!"
Sim appeared, received orders to draw a promissory note for Mr. Rouget to sign, and withdrew, followed by that gentleman seemingly let down from the self-satisfied attitude of feeling in which he had entered--meeker, much meeker, but yet more hopeful for his own future than he would have felt, perhaps, if his demands had been complied with.