CHAPTER VIII.TRYING THINGS ON.
The stout woman who had brought on this conversation came up now, her face beaming with curiosity and her dress fluttering ludicrously.
“Well Herman, don’t you think I have been kept waiting about long enough? One gets out of patience, Miss, especially when one is used to being studied and waited on by no end of servants, and such like. Now, if you’ll just look out of the window, you’ll find my footman watching the front entrance like a cat, with one hand on the carriage-door; for he knows well enough there’d be a high breeze if I was kept waiting a single minute; so you mustn’t wonder if I am just a trifle hard on shop girls—I always keep them on the jump.”
“Oh, I am quite ready to wait on you,” said Eva smiling.
Mrs. Carter smiled also, for her genial nature was always ready to meet cordiality half way, and she said blandly.
“Would you mind just stepping over among the lace shawls, they tell me you’re hired to show such things off, and I might take one, if they’ve got something a little superber than the shawl Mrs. Lambert just brought home from Europe. She sits right before me in church, you know, and wears it in the most aggravating way. Everytime I kneel down, that eternal pattern of morning-glory vines, creeping over her shoulder, is before my eyes, daring me to get anything like it, if I can, for love or money. I’m expected to feel meek and humble all the same. It isn’t in human nature. That woman and I can’t be members of the same church if she keeps this thing up. One’s moral character won’t stand such strains; kneeling at the same altar with a woman who wears a fifteen hundred dollar lace shawl, and mine only a thousand, and Carter fairly wallowing in greenbacks, is more than I can stand.”
Eva listened till her amused smile deepened into a laugh, which the man heard with a thrill of pain that ran through him like an arrow. Tilled with recollections that made his blood stir like old wine in his heart, he drew back and watched the girl narrowly, as she conversed with his sister.
“Oh! if you want a fifteen hundred dollar shawl, it is an easy thing to get. Shall I go with you to the lace counter?” said Eva, quite unconscious of the stranger’s regard.
“But it must have a morning-glory vine running through it, leaves and bells like hers, only more of ’em. I’m resolved that our church shall see no costlier shawl than Richard Carter’s lady wears, while it sends up a steeple. Now just tell that young man to show us the very best he’s got. Nothing less than fifteen hundred, understand.”
The light-haired clerk heard all this conversation, and followed the party up to the lace counter, where he became very officious in exhibiting shawls, to which he affixed enormous prices with a solemn gravity of countenance that impressed Mrs. Richard Carter greatly. This helped her to fix upon a beautiful fabric, certainly, but one she would not have deigned to purchase at its real value, which was just five hundred dollars less than the depletion of that huge roll of greenbacks with which the good lady went armed on her shopping excursions.
“There,” she said, crushing the money she had left intoher reticule-purse, and winding the chain about her wrist and little finger, on which she wore a great diamond ring outside the glove, “I begin to feel like myself again. You are sure that a higher-priced shawl than that isn’t to be found in New York, young man?”
“Positive of it, madam: for I don’t believe there is another salesman in New York that would have the courage to set that figure,” he muttered, after the first brief reply. “Not another imported. Rest content that you havetheshawl of the season, madam. Shall I send it to your carriage?”
“Yes, give it to my footman, a tall fellow in maroon livery, with a gold band. You’ll see Carter’s and my monogram on the carriage-door.”
The clerk went away with a droll look in his eyes, and a smile struggling on his lip; for he was well acquainted with the class of persons to which his customer belonged—a class that, like many other strange things in social life, is an offshoot of a civil war, which has served to vulgarize wealth attained by accident or fraud, until refined people shrink from competition with it in sensitive shame.
“I’m ever so much obliged to you for showing off the patterns for me,” said Mrs. Carter, turning toward Eva with cordial warmth. “The people always are obliging in this establishment; know in an instant when a lady carries the look of money in her face; but I must say, that you are the most stylish girl that I’ve seen here yet; was struck with you the first time, wasn’t I, Herman?”
Here Mrs. Carter turned in search of her brother, who had retreated out of hearing.
“Oh! there he is, mousing off by himself; but he don’t take his eyes from your face. No wonder, there is enough in it to strike anyone all in a heap. He don’t seem to get over it, though. Awful sensitive! But we all are that. Exquisite feelings, born with us. He’s my brother, youknow—my only brother. Left New York when he was a young man, and just come back again. I shouldn’t have known him, he’s so altered. Do you think we look alike? He used to be very handsome, and people took us for twins.”
A smile quivered across Eva’s lip, and the lids drooped over her laughing eyes; but both died out suddenly as her glance fell on the strange man, who seemed to shrink away from her mirth as if it wounded him.
“I must not laugh,” said Eva, in her thoughts. “Perhaps he feels how ridiculous his relative makes herself, and is annoyed by it. But why does he look at me with such sorrowful eyes. Yes, he is a handsome man, and seems to be both sensible and sensitive; butherbrother—I don’t believe it.”
The man came forward as these thoughts disturbed the girl, asked Mrs. Carter if she was ready to return home, and, lifting his hat with grave politeness, led the way down stairs.
The tall footman was at his post, shut the carriage-door with a lordly bang, and climbed up to his place by the coachman, leaving the two persons inside to themselves.
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Carter, eagerly, “did you ever see anything so handsome? She quite took my breath away at first. As for you, Ross, well the color hasn’t come back to your face yet. Whatisthe matter with you?”
“Yes, I saw,” answered the man, dreamily, “I saw that she was beautiful.”