CHAPTER V.CLARICE.
The next summer Mrs. Percy bought a pretty little cottage on Oceanside, which she occupied season after season, while Jack grew to manhood and Clarice to a brilliant, beautiful girl. Mrs. Percy was a delicate woman, and, aside from the cheapness of the place compared with more fashionable resorts, the quiet and rest suited her, and she found her pleasant, airy cottage a delightful change from her rather stuffy house in Washington, with negro huts crowded close to it in the rear. Clarice, on the contrary, detested it and the people, and took no pains to conceal her dislike. She was a haughty girl, with all the pride of the Percys, from the bondman down to old Roger, her grandfather, who, up to the last, wore his dress suit to dinner when there was nothing better than bacon and eggs. She gloried in such pride as that, she said, and respected himfar more than if he had sat down to his bacon and eggs in his shirt sleeves. She knew her father had been a Treasury clerk, but he was a Percy and a gentleman, and she had no fault to find with him except that he did not leave more money. She wanted to be rich and live in the style of rich people. She would like to have had a large establishment, with housekeeper and butler and maids and horses and carriages, and she meant to have all this some time, no matter at what sacrifice. Given her choice between a man she loved who was poor, and a man she didn’t love who was rich and not obnoxious to her, she would unhesitatingly have taken the latter and overlooked any little escapades of which he might be guilty, provided he gave her all the money she wanted. In marrying Paul Ralston she was getting everything she desired,—family, position, love and money. She had had Paul in her mind for some time as a most desirableparti, provided one more desirable was not forthcoming. In Washington, where her beauty attracted a great deal of attention, she was much sought after by men who, while pleasing her in many respects, lacked the one thing needful.
In Oak City, to which she always went unwillingly, she frequently met men of her style,—classshe called it,—and in this class Paul stood pre-eminent. With Ralph Fenner, whom Miss Hansford had designated as a snipper-snapper, she had flirted outrageously, but with no serious intent. He was too poor, and, although there was a title in his family, there were three lives between it and himself. To marry him would not pay, and over and above any other reasons which might influence her, she had a genuine liking for Paul, and when he asked her to be his wife she unhesitatingly answered yes.
After the betrothal there was no happier man in Paris than Paul Ralston. He went everywhere Clarice wished to go, from the Grand Opera House to the Champs d’Elysees, where Jenny Mills delighted a not very select audience with her dancing. He accompanied her and her mother on their shopping expeditions for the bridal trousseau, most of which was to be made in Paris. It was on one of these occasions that he thought of Miss Hansford and suggested getting her a dress to wear to his wedding.
“Do you propose to inviteher?” Clarice asked, in some surprise, and he replied, “Certainly. She is one of my best friends. I wouldn’t slight her for the world.”
“An announcing card will answer every purpose,” was Clarice’s next remark.
Paul did not think it would. He wanted Miss Hansford to see him married. It would please her, and she had always been so kind to him. Clarice made a little grimace and said, “Let’s get her a dress, then, by all means. I want her to look decent if she comes,” and she selected the grey silk at his request, and made some additions to it in the way of laces and gloves, which last he forgot to take with him when he carried the dress to Miss Hansford.
Clarice could scarcely have given any good reason for her antipathy to Miss Hansford except on general principles. She did not like Oak City and would never have come there from choice. It was not gay enough, nor fashionable enough to suit her. She called Miss Hansford a dowdy and a crank and included her in the category of second-class people who were no society for her. All this was repeated to Miss Hansford by her colored factotum, Martha Ann, who had taken Sally’s place at the Percys, and, after a few weeks, had left because she was not allowed to entertain her young men on the steps of the dining room, and hadbeen told she talked and laughed too loud for a servant. Her next place was with Miss Hansford, to whom she retailed all she had heard and seen at Mrs. Percy’s, with many additions. Miss Hansford knew it was not good form to listen to the gossip, but when she became mixed with it curiosity overcame her sense of propriety, and she not only listened but questioned, while her wrath waxed hotter and hotter with what she heard.
“Said you’s a second-class and a crank, and she didn’t see why Miss Ralston could make so much of you,” was Martha Ann’s last item, and then Miss Hansford, who had never forgotten Mrs. Percy’s slight in not returning her call, lost her temper entirely.
She had heard herself called a crank before, and, looking in the dictionary, had found so many definitions to the word that she felt a little uncertain as to which applied to herself.
“I s’pose I am queer and different from folks like the Percys, and I thank the Lord I am,” she thought, but to the “second-class” she objected.
She, whose lineage went back to Oliver Cromwell and Miles Standish and a Scotch lord, she to be called second-class by Clarice Percy was too much. Who were the Percys? she’d like to know. “Nobodies! Sprung from a white slave! Talk to me of F. F. V.’s, as if I didn’t know all about ’em. Second-class, indeed! It makes me so mad!” and Miss Hansford banged the door so hard that Martha Ann, who had evoked the storm and was washing dishes in the sink, dropped a china saucer in her fright and broke it.
After this, Miss Hansford’s antipathy to the Percys increased, and not even the grey silk Clarice had selected mollified her completely. Still, it did a good deal towardsit, and she gradually became more reconciled to the thought of the engagement.
“I s’pose Paul must marry sometime,” she said, “and if it was anybody but Clarice, I’d try to be glad, but try as I will I can’t abide the Percys.”