CHAPTER III.FLOSSIE STARBUCK ATTAINS.
TLEVISON GOWER,Jr., the Perseus to our Andromeda, that angel who was to take Flossie’s hand and lift her with him to a higher sphere, was a pallid young man with a long nose, a short forehead, a thin neck, and a prominent Adam’s apple. Large noses are aristocratic; and Gower valued his as typical of his pure Dutch blood. It was disappointing, though, after so fine a beginning, to find his brow retreat in a rapid little slope; and then, taking a quick round curve, to find your eye resting on the nape of his neck almost before you knew it. Horizontally lying across his forehead was a deep crease, perhaps three inches long, running half an inch below the line of the hair and half an inch above the abutment of his nose; this line did duty for determination and thought. The mouth and chin were large again. With this kind of face, Gower at twenty-two looked virile and worldly, and at five-and-thirty he looked twenty-two. What more can be said of him? His trousers never showed the impression of his knees, though his legs were long and thin; and there was more definite expression in the pattern of his colored shirt than of his face. This was before the fashion of scarf-pins; but he nowwears—and would then have worn—a glass head of a bull-dog in a light-checked satin scarf. Gower’s ideas hardly ever change, which is fortunate for his peace of mind, and his tastes never, which is fortunate for his wife. Yet, were you to introduce young Gower anywhere (in American society, of course), the answer would be wreathed in smiles—Mr. Gower, of New York, I suppose? And in Flossie Starbuck’s mind these three words would have been fit climax for anything, from the caption of a tomb to a Newport hotel-register—Levison Gower, of New York. It was as Randolph of Roanoke. Crude as Flossie Starbuck’s notions were, she was fortunate enough to aim high the first time.
Gower first knew her brother in Eighteenth Street, where they used to play games together Saturday afternoons. Si was physically stronger than young Gower, and, from the first, inspired him with respect. Gower had not at this time learned his own advantages, and Starbuck used to treat him quite cavalierly. This rough patronage produced a respectful affection which years could not efface; and when they next were thrown together, owing to a similarity of tastes in roads and equipages, Si was still fortunate enough to remain the passive member in the friendship. This intimacy was further cemented in ways before indicated; and very soon, Gower, finding Starbuck a pleasant companion at wine-suppers and popular at public balls, bethought himself of bringing him home to dinner and introducing him to his sisters. Si was too stolid to show embarrassment, and his physicalpresence carried him through anything. The Misses Gower rather liked him; here was a man who was rich and manly, and yet made them feel their own superiority. Even the great Killian van Kull, Gower’s popular and accomplished cousin, took a fancy for Si. “Buck†Starbuck, as he dubbed him, began to be popular. Here was a man who could gamble and fight, who was ready for anything at night, and never ill-natured nor headachy the day after. Both Kill van Kull and Si had health, animal spirits, and a taste for dissipation; and little Lucie, as they were accustomed to call Levison in the intimacy of the trio, soon became their very admiring and submissive dependent. Thus Si had the luck to start in life with two of the most valuable friends a young man could have had; for Kill van Kull represented fashion and popularity, and Gower position and wealth. So he passed his first five years after leaving school, when he was supposed to be in business, and not wasting his time and money in college. Old Starbuck would have winced, had he known Si’s true courses, had he even known as much as Flossie did; but, after all, young Starbuck was building better (in this world’s way) than even his sister knew.
For it often became necessary to send someone home to bring Si’s clothes, or bear his excuses—he had gone up the Hudson to spend Sunday with the Duvals, or on a yachting-trip with Kill van Kull; and it was often inconvenient for him to leave Kill himself. No one was so convenient in these times as Lucie Gower; and he was good-natured, and couldeasily run back for an hour or two. Besides, if Si had gone, he might sometimes have met his father, and have been detained peremptorily. Thus Gower became a sort of male Iris, a messenger between pleasure and duty; and he was soon familiar with the high, empty house on Eighteenth Street. He usually saw Flossie at these times. There grew to be a sort of understanding between the two. She was so much cleverer than Gower was; and she knew exactly how to face old Mr. Starbuck. And Gower learned to have confidence in her, and often told “Buck†that his sister was a brick.
“Starbuck’s pretty sister†was getting to be a little better known among the young men now, though not unpleasantly talked of. She kept very quiet; and the one or two girls that knew anything about her—Miss Brevier, for instance—spoke well of her. Meantime, Si was getting on with the fast set, that set which the Duvals and old Jake Einstein were timidly forming before they dared dominate—the set which carried the tastes of the French shopkeeper into society. They spent much money, and a few fashionable hangers-on, like Van Kull, found it pleasant to stand under the golden shower.
Now came a great event in Si’s life. Van Kull and Gower found it tiresome to always go to a bar-room and sit on hard chairs with Si, when they wanted to drink and smoke after a theatre or a dance. It was proposed that Si should become a member of their club—the Piccadilly, of Madison Square. And in a few months or so Si had the pleasure of seeing hisname, S. Howland Starbuck, printed in the blue book of that fashionable refuge for would-be solitary males.
It was a great event for Si, and possibly, also, for his father. Old Starbuck knew very well that, although old Mr. Gower was a member and colleague of his in church matters—affairs of the other world—he never would have gone sponsor for him, as he had for his son Silas, in a club election in this. Yet this knowledge did not offend him; he was glad to see his son Silas rise in the world, and bore no malice. Perhaps he was even pleased that his son could go where he could not. It was right that Si should make friends, and perhaps just as well that he had not gone much into the business, after all. For about this time the oil from Oil Creek began to attract attention in the markets. Long before—centuries before—the Indians had been used to dip their blankets along the creek’s still surface until they were thoroughly saturated, and then to obtain the oil by the simple process of squeezing; for the oil was known to be “great medicine†and good for rheumatism, sores, and troubled souls. In the salt-wells near Pittsburg, on Saturday nights, when the brine was well pumped away, the miners were annoyed by the increasing flow of the green, bad-smelling stuff, which by Monday would have disappeared, pressed back by the new flow of brine into its deep crevices in the subterranean rock. But no one had thought of value for the stuff—except the few quack doctors or credulous ones who, trusting to the old Indian legend, skimmed a little oil from wooden cribs about the creek and sold it as a medicineof nature’s patent, in the Philadelphia drug-stores, for one dollar the ounce. At this price the fluid was not a dangerous competitor with Mr. Starbuck’s product; and even when one of these same Philadelphia druggists analyzed the oil, found its value, and made a contract for the output of one of the salt-wells, the only effect of his enterprise was to ruin its value as a medicine by making it free to anyone (like those other medicines of water, air, and out-doors), without rendering it as cheap as the coal-oil already made from cannel-coal. Still, the flow, once begun, did not cease; wells were sunk whose daily flow exceeded the capacity of many a whale; already, refining whale and sperm was not what it had been; and there was more competition in petroleum, and he was not so well situated for the raw material. Old Starbuck began to think it was time he sold out; the works had been very profitable, and the expense and hazard of changing machinery andclientèlemade the future risky. Few of his competitors had the energy to make the change, the process of refining being so different, but went on filtering the diminished catch of whale and sperm, until the divine law of the survival of the fittest put a quietus to their struggles. By all this Starbuck profited, as was to be expected. The S. Starbuck Oil Company was formed; capital, Two Millions; Starbuck himself remaining one of the directors. The business and works were then supposed to be worth about $800,000. One-half the capital was paid up, and $800,000 of it paid to S. Starbuck, Esq., for the works, machinery, business, and good-will; besidesthis cash, Starbuck received $800,000 in stock of the new company at its face value. The stock was then considered worth par, and he was shrewd enough to keep it always well above eighty; in fact, he continued to manage the concern for a year or two, and was even so clever as to get it back to a healthy basis, although he had first watered and then milked it to the tune of a million and a quarter. When he had succeeded in this, he sold half of his remaining stock, all he could safely get rid of, and retired absolutely from business. Eight months after this, his work being satisfactorily finished, to himself, in this world, he left it, in October, 1872. In April, 1873, the engagement of Miss Starbuck and Mr. T. Levison Gower, Jr., was formally announced.
People were much surprised, but less so than if Lucie Gower had married someone of whom they knew something. Now they commonly knew nothing of Flossie, except that she was “Buck†Starbuck’s sister. Things have changed since; and Si is Mrs. Levison Gower’s brother now. Miss Brevier was delighted, and went about telling her friends that Flossie was a perfectly sweet girl. Silas Starbuck’s friends commonly said “By Jove!†among themselves, and nothing when Si was present. Flossie was already twenty-four, and had been generally supposed, as much on account of this as of her retired life, not to be about to marry. Still, there were few ill-natured comments about it. Her modesty did her a good turn here. And no one much envied her young Gower, except for his wealth; and she had plenty of that.
The Gowers themselves looked more askance at the match. After all, it was their family that she was going to marry into. And she might have many relations. Only old Gower, seeing that she had the essentials, had the sense to accept the thing from the first. He knew that his social position was a rock on which a fair structure might be built with her money. Old Gower had come to New York about 1830 from one of the hill-towns in Northwestern Connecticut; and had first been known as engaged in the banking business, with one of the Lydams as his partner. It was a Miss Lydam whom he married. He was very rich, or had that reputation; and was a prominent magnate in one of the largest evangelical denominations. There he had met and known and appreciated old Starbuck. He was not sorry, however, that that gentleman was dead. Mr. Gower felt toward him much as aci-devantmarquis might have felt toward the rich farmer-general father of his daughter-in-law. Mr. Gower lived in the most democratic city of a democracy; but a democracy lends itself to sudden and extreme social distinctions. The imaginary line, drawn hap-hazard, must be drawn all the deeper to endure a decade. A society which has no Pyrenees must give an extra attention to the artificial forts of its boundaries. Old Mrs. Gower felt deeply these truths. She knew that Mr. Starbuck had been in oil; but she also said to herself that her son would raise Flossie to his own level. What that level was we have seen.
Meanwhile, the two lovers were very happy.Flossie allowed herself, by anticipation, a little more style in dress. She appeared with young Gower in his buggy in the park, radiant, and really very pretty. Lucie Gower’s friends congratulated him boisterously, and called her Flower-de-Luce—a name which persisted ten years or so, until some savage wit changed the Flower to Fruit. She was then still slight; and, for the first time, dared to show how pretty she was. “How she has come out since her engagement!†was the common remark. Indeed she had; she was very happy; she felt as if she had been born anew, into a world of which previously she had only seen the brown-stone front. Gower went to see her every day; and though thesetête-à -têteswere rather long, she consoled herself with the idea that the marriage would soon be over. He, too, was impatient; and very proud of her. He secretly liked to have his friends dig him in the ribs—as they would do, with Gower. He had never possessed any girl, before, who had loved him solely for himself; for surely there was nothing else to attract Miss Starbuck?—he had little money. Lucie felt a flattering sense of ownership in this fair creature that was going to link her life with his. The simple fellow was touched by it; and he never really ceased to be in love with her, though too weak to resist temptation in any simple and attractive form. Si, too, was immensely delighted. He thought Lucie little better than a fool; but then, he was just the man to make a capital husband. And, on the whole, he would not be a disagreeable brother-in-law. However, after the first relief and contentment of the thingwere over, and Flossie fairly disposed of, it no longer concerned Si very much.
Never was a marriage so happy, or the course of true love so smooth. There was a delicious excitement about it all to Gower; he felt as if he had multiplied himself by four. And Flossie—Flossie’s feelings were more complex. She obtained Miss Brevier’s services as a bridesmaid; and it was arranged that the newly-married couple should live on Fifth Avenue at the corner of Thirty-second Street. The old Starbuck house in Eighteenth Street was sold, and Si went into lodgings—as he had long desired.
The wedding-presents, though few in number, were very handsome; Flossie had the satisfaction of seeing her wedding under the head of “Fashionable Weddings†in theNew York Herald; two clergymen performed the ceremony; and in the evening the bride and groom went to Boston. After a fortnight they returned and installed themselves in the Fifth Avenue house, which had been elaborately decorated and extravagantly furnished for their coming. Old Mrs. Gower gave a grand reception in their honor. And about the same time, young Gower began to find himself in his club-window, sucking his cane, and wondering what he should do with his afternoon, very much as usual. He puzzled much over a certain feeling he had, but was not clever enough at self-analysis to make it out. But it was as if the theatre had ended too early, and there were nothing to do with the rest of the evening.
Not so Mrs. Gower.