CHAPTER XXXIII.THE DUVAL BALL.
THE evening of the great ball has come, at last; all the preparations have been made to the very last touch; the thousand orchids have arrived, that are to fade away their costly blooms in this one evening’s pleasure; brought from forests of the Amazon, where, perhaps they saw no brighter colors and heard no louder chattering of bird or biped than they will to-night. And the fifty imported footmen have arrived also and cased their faultless calves in white silk stockings; and old Antoine is sitting in his private “library,” smoking, with his ashcup upon the billiard-table that is the chief furniture of that apartment; and his daughter Mrs. De Witt, still sleeping in her dressing-room, or trying to; but her sleep is troubled with her gorgeous dreams.
But what are we to do? For it is only eight o’clock; just after dinner-time, and we cannot think of going yet. We have four long hours before us; where shall we go to spend the evening? We cannot call upon our friends; no one of them will be at home to-night. Gracie, to be sure, might be in; for her dress is but a simple one, and takes but little time of her one maid,who then hurries away to be an extra aid to Mamie; and Gracie will dress her hair herself, and she is now reading to her aunt and uncle. In a few moments she will go up to help Mamie, who is terribly excited, with cheeks all flushed already, and eyes of a feverish brightness. Mamie has such good reason, though, that we can hardly wonder: she has made up her mind that she will take the first opportunity to see Mr. Derwent, and give him his dismissal. Thus may she keep her word, and still be free to say—what shall she say, when she goes off with Mr. Townley, late in the evening, no doubt, to some fragrant nook, just beyond the range of voices, but murmurous with distant music and curtained with rare flowers? What the impulse of the moment bids her, no doubt;—she might refuse him—but it would be so nice to have the greatest ball of the century marked by one such scene. She means to be the leading “bud” at the ball, besides; and cannot spare all of those epochal moments, even for her lover.
John Haviland, too, is in; but he is sitting in his study with a pipe, and hard at work; at least, he is trying to be hard at work, that he may keep his mind at rest. He is on some political subject, writing an argument to serve with them who make laws for us at Albany; but it seems as hard to get them to take their functions seriously as it was with any Charles Stuart; moreover, the subject is a dry one, concerning only the ultimate welfare of indefinite numbers, and there is a small number, lobbyists, who are sure to meet him there with argumentsad hominesand numbersmuch more definite. So his mind still turns from these abstractions to the girl he loves and whom he thinks that he shall lose forever, this same night. Nevertheless it is right that he shall do it; for he has lost all hope of Arthur, now.
But to Arthur himself, this is a red-letter day. Not only that he looks forward with some of Mamie’s eagerness to the great ball, where he is to lead the cotillon—such homage is already paid his eminence and begins so soon to bore—he has more solid cause for his content than that. This day—this second of January—he has severed his subordinate connection with the house of Townley & Tamms, and gone in, as junior partner, with the new firm of Duval & De Witt, who, now that he has capital, naturally wishes to make more. Poor Arthur has little capital, and he has some debts; but he is allowed to put in what he has, and his experience, and may draw five thousand a year as a maximum, from the firm. On this, for the present, he can live quite comfortably; seeking, meanwhile, the other fruits of success, that in due time he may enjoy them, as his own.
It was pleasant to walk by the old shop, which he had entered almost as an office-boy, and see Charlie Townley, his former mentor, sitting there alone; looking a bit troubled, too, as Arthur thought. He had stopped in and smoked a cigar with him the day before; Tamms was not there, and Charlie had seemed distrait, and complained of having had to work all that New Year’s day upon the balance-sheet.
It is nine o’clock now, but we have two or three hours yet to wait. If we have seen all the friends we care about who are invited, suppose we look in on some of our acquaintance who are not? There is James Starbuck, for instance; he is to be found in the little back apartment on Sixth Avenue, where he pretends that his sister still lives, though she does not, and he has not seen her since that day at the race. The name Rose Marie is yet on the door; and James has written many a letter, beseeching, imploring, perhaps. He does not like to supplicate; nor, perhaps, does Jenny like to be sermonized; and her pretty head is now full of envy that she can never go to the great Duval ball, which she has been reading of so much in the papers. And many another pretty girl has read of it in the papers, too, by many a comfortable fireside; though Wemyss perhaps would call it a middle-class one; and learned there were “high people” in this country, too. But James and his friends have been discussing it; and it seems to them an impudent taunt of the monopolist, flaunted in the face of suffering labor; so illogical are they. It happens that this festivity comes just about the end of the first century of actual American independence; and it is very certain, at least, that there have not been so many dollars spent on any jamboree—as Simpson calls it—of all that time before. But surely, the harvest of a century should be greater than a one year’s crop in some new and oppressed colony? And the Duval fortune, made from a nation’s hair-oil and cosmetics, and multiplied, when welded to the maceof capital, in a hundred corporations, has but grown in proportion.
But Starbuck is but telling them that these inert millions represent a greater tyranny than my lord duke of York’s; and that the experiment of a republic has been tried for just a hundred years and failed. Starbuck is very bitter to-night and inclined to look upon things from their darkest side.
“Why,” says he, “they have gone back like whipped curs to the very outward forms of the tyranny they broke away from.”—(Starbuck has been educating himself lately, hoping that he might be fit company for his sister; and he spoke at all times much better English than does Mr. Tamms.) “It is as if they said, ‘Yes, we have had our fling, and we broke away from lords and bishops and aristocracies and lords of the soil; and we were all wrong, and now we want again our powdered flunkies and our my lord this and that, and our coats-of-arms, and our daughters want to marry foreign princes, and our wives would like to be fast women of the court again, and our boys hunt foxes and have their poaching laws; and we ourselves would like to rule at Washington? Why, a man who owns a railroad is really a bigger, stronger lord than any feudal baron!’”
“That’s all very pretty; but we’d like to see a little less talk from you, an’m suthin’ done,” said Simpson, who had been drinking almost more than usual.
“Shut your mouth,” said James. “You’ll see something done before you’re much older. For one,I’m opposed to scarin’ people much, before we’re ready to really act and smash everything at once.”
“That’s damned fine talk, but you ain’t boss, you know,” sneered Simpson.
“Boss or not, I don’t know as I’ve got any more stomach for one kind of a mastery than another—whether they call ’emselves reds and internationalists, or employers of labor! What do you suppose the G. M. G. wants anyhow? Fireworks—nothin’ but fireworks.”
“Well, but what’s the use o’ goin’ so far?” said another man, pacifically. “We can take a job where we like—we’ve liberty, anyhow.”
“Liberty!” cried James. “So’s a horse his oats. They’ve got the mines, an’ the mills, an’ they fix the wages, an’ we’ve got to live in the company’s tenements, an’ pay the company’s rents, an’ get up to the whistle, an’ wash our daughters’ faces when we’re bid; and if we don’t like it, the company’ll import a lot of dirt-eating foreigners, but we’ve got to pay our rent, just the same. And all that these fellers, who ain’t no better than we are, can have a good time and drink champagne at breakfast. I’ve had enough of republics and democracies; an’ I tell you we don’t want any kind of ’ocracy but just nothin’ at all!”
“H—l!” snarled Simpson, who had listened with impatience to Starbuck’s speech. “They ain’t no different from what we are; you were a boss yourself until a few weeks ago, and then you sang a different tune.” (It was true that Starbuck had lately been discharged, for his complicity in the mining strike.)“You’d like ter be a swell, like the rest of ’em, and your sister’s just the same.”
Starbuck compressed his pale lips, and his mouth worked violently. “Don’t you talk of my sister,” said he.
“Naw,” said Simpson, “we ain’t to talk of your fine sister; and yet we all know that you’re livin’ here on what she makes outside—Eh?”
For Starbuck had thrown himself upon him with an open knife; and driven the blade well into his side. Simpson fell, and the others, clasping Starbuck by the body, sought to drag him away; but his right arm still was disengaged, clenching the open blade, and with it he was sawing viciously at Simpson’s wrist.
Starbuck was the weakest man of all; but when he was at last torn away, the other’s cries had ceased, and he was lying huddled in the pool of blood, with a hiccough in his pallid throat.
Starbuck stood looking at him, panting; while the others bent over him, and tried to lift him to the bed. “You’ll swing for this night’s work, Jem Starbuck,” said one.
“I think not,” said another. “The first dig didn’t go very deep; and these flesh-wounds ain’t no account. Get away from here, Jem, before the cops get wind of it.”
And they pushed James Starbuck roughly, but with hands still friendly, out into the winter’s night.
But it is after eleven o’clock; and now we must hurry, if we would be in time for the ball.