 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
AN UP-TOWN CRISIS;
OR, MRS. LUTHER LEATHERS'S FIRST “FRIDAY MORNING.”
It was one o'clock, in a certain new four-story house, within
fashionable reach of Union-Square. The two drawing-rooms,
with the folding doors sheathed to the glass handles, were in
faultless order. There was a fire in one of the grates, to take off
the smell of the new furniture, and the chill of a November day;
and just audible was the tick of a showy French clock, wound up
for the first time, and expected to swing its pendulum that morning
and thereafter, in the “first society” of New York.
As the unsuspecting and assenting clock struck one, there was
a rustle of silk down the banisters of the staircase, and the lady
of the house—(the seaffolding of a well-built woman who had
fallen in)—sailed into the room.
“Betsey!—that is to say, Judkins!—are you there?” she inquired,
as she gave the blue curtains of the front windows a
twitch each.
“Yes, mem,” said a voice from the little verandah room in the
rear.
“Is the chocolate hot?”
“Bilin', mem!”
“Now, Judkins, you remember all Mr. Cyphers told you about
how to behave when the ladies come in there?”
“I can't help it, Mrs. Leathers!” said the invisible speaker,
without answering the question, “but it flusters me to be called
`Judkins,' so blunt and sudden-like! I shall upset this chocolate-pot,
I know I shall, if you call me so when there's company.
Why, it's just like hearing my poor, dead husband called up out
of his grave, Mrs. Leathers! If you please, mem, let it be `Betsey,'
or `Mrs. Judkins'—least-wise till I get used to it, somehow?”
But this remonstrance had been heard before, and the mistress
of the aggrieved Mrs. Judkins paid no attention to it. She had
been assured, by fashionable Mr. Cyphers, that head maids in
“first families,” were always called by their sirnames, for it implied
a large establishment, with two classes of servants—the
chambermaids and kitchen scrubs being the only legitimate
Sallys and Betseys.
A ring at the bell, while Judkins was meditating another remonstrance,
suddenly galvanized Mrs. Leathers into the middle
of the sofa, facing the door; and there she sat, as composed as if
she had been sitting an hour for her picture, when the gentleman
whose advice had just been acted upon, was shown in by the new
footman.
Like every unfashionable rich man's ambitious wife, Mrs.
Leathers had one fashionable male friend—her counsellor in all
matters of taste, and the condescending guide of herself and her
husband's plebeian million through the contempts which form the
vestibule to “good society.” Mr. Theodore Cyphers was one
of two dwindled remainders to a very “old family”—a sister,
who seemed to be nothing but the family nose walking about in a
He was, perhaps, thirty-five, of a very genteel ugliness of
personal appearance, good-humored, and remarkably learned upon
the motives, etiquette and usages of fashionable society. Of a
thought unconnected with the art of gentility, or of the making
of a penny, Mr. Cyphers was profoundly incapable. Skill at
thinking, indeed, would have been a superfluity, for he had had a
grandfather, in a country where grandfathers are fewer and more
prized than anywhere else, and he had only to do nothing and be
highly respectable. The faculty of earning something would
scarcely have bettered his condition, either, for his rarity as an
unemployed gentleman, in a city where excessive industry is too
universal to be a virtue, gave him that something to be known by,
which it is the very devil to be without. What paid for Mr. or
Miss Cyphers's sustenance and postage, was one of the few respectable
mysteries of New York. He had now and then a note
discounted by the house of Leathers and Co., Wall-street; but
of course it was not taken up at maturity by his attentions to
Mrs. Leathers, nor have we any knowledge that these promises of
Cyphers to pay, were still under indefatigable renewal up to the
date of the great stockholder's wife's first “Friday Morning.”
It was in expectation of a proper “reception” call, that Mrs.
Leathers had taken her seat upon the sofa, and, upon the appearance
of Mr. Cyphers, she came out of her attitude with a slight
look of disappointment.
“I have dropped in early, my dear friend,” she he, “to see
that everything is comme il faut. Bless me, how light the room
is! Nobody would come twice where there is such a glare on
the complexion! Will you allow me to call Cæsar to shut the
recall the man who had let him in.
But no Cæsar answered, for the black footman had a sirname
as well as Betsey Judkins, and if she was to be called “Judkins,”
he would be called “Fuzzard,” and he would answer to nothing
else.
“It cannot be permitted, my dear Mrs. Leathers!” expostulated
Mr. Cyphers, when the man carried his point, and shut
the blinds to an order given him by the name of Fuzzard; “a
head servant, with a white cravat, is the only man who can go by
a sirname in a genteel family. A trifle—but little things show
style. Pay the man more wages to let himself be called Cæsar,
but call him Cæsar! Pardon me!” (continued Mr. Cyphers,
suddenly changing to an apologetic cadence,) “might I venture
to suggest a little change in your toilette, my dear madam?”
“Mine!” cried Mrs. Leathers, coloring slightly, but looking
as frightened as if she had been pulled back from a precipice.
“Why, Mr. Cyphers, this is the very last fashion out from
Paris! I hope—I trust—why, what do you mean, Mr. Cyphers?”
and Mrs. Leathers walked to the pier glass and looked
at herself, behind and before, in rapid succession.
“For the Opera, very well, my dear friend,” he replied, appealingly,
or for a bridal call, or a féte champétre. It is as pretty
a three-quarter toilette as ever I saw, and you look quite lovely
in it, dear Mrs. Leathers, but—”
“But what, I should like to know?”
“Why, in your own house, you see, it is stylish to be rather
under-dressed; as if seeing people were such an every-day matter,
that you had not thought it worth while to appear in more
than your ordinary toilette.”
“And so everybody in my own house is to look well but me!”
remonstratively exclaimed Mrs. Leathers.
“No—pardon me; morning caps and well studied négliges
are very becoming; but it is not that exactly. Let me explain
the principle to you. Sitting up in showy dress to receive calls,
looks, (does it not?) as if you made a great event of it; as if the
calls were an unusual honor—as if you meant to be extremely
deferential towards your visitors.”
`But they are splendidly dressed when they make the calls,
Mr. Cyphers!”
“Yes, but it is, as one may say, open to supposition that they
are going somewhere else, and have only taken your house in their
way—don't you see? And then, supposing nobody comes—a
thing that might happen, you know, my dear Mrs. Leathers;
why, there you are—in grand toilette—evidently expecting
somebody; of course mortified, yourself, with the failure of your
matinéc, and, what is worse, seen to be mortified, by your neighbors
across the way!”
“La! mercy! of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Leathers, discovering
that there was a trap or two for the unwary in “good
society,” of which she had been entirely unsuspicious; “but
what am I to do? I have no time to dress over again! Mrs.
Ingulphus might be here, and—”
“Oh!” interrupted Cyphers, with a prophetic foreboding that
(spite of his influence with Mrs. Ingulphus, and the hundred and
fifty “At home on Friday mornings” which had been left on
people she did not know,) Mrs. Leathers would have very few
visitors for many a Friday morning yet to come, “Oh, my dear
madam, you are abundantly in time. Pray go up and slip into
your prettiest demi-toilette, and take your chance of any one's
not to have expected them so early, as it were. While you are
gone, by-the-bye, I will make a little arrangement of your place
to sit, etc. etc., which strikes me, at this moment, as a matter
we had quite overlooked. Go, my dear Mrs. Leathers!”
It was upon the call of Mrs. Ingulphus, so confidently alluded
to by Mrs. Leathers, that Mr. Cyphers secretly built all his hope
of making his friend fashionable. Mrs. Ingulphus's carriage,
seen at any door for half an hour, was a sufficient keystone for a
new aspirant's arch of aristocracy; but of such demonstration,
Mrs. Ingulphus was exceedingly chary. The sagacious leader of
fashion knew that her house must, first of all, be attractive and
amusing. She was too wise to smother its agreeableness altogether,
with people who had descended from grandfathers; but, to
counteract this very drowse of dwindledom, she required, of the
grandfatherless, either beauty or talent. Mr. Cyphers, in making
interest for Mrs. Leathers, had not pleaded her wealth. That
was now so common as to have ceased to be a distinction, or, at
least, it was a distinction which, in mounting to Mrs. Ingulphus's
drawing-room, Mrs. Leathers must leave in the gutter with her
carriage.
What Mrs. Leathers was like, after getting inside a door, was
the question. She might be dull, if she was Knickerbocratic—
low-born, if stylish and beautiful—scandalized, if willing to undertake
wall-flowers and make her fascinations useful, but she
must be something besides rich and vulgar. Cyphers could plead
for her on none of the usual grounds, but, with a treacherous ingenuity,
he manufactured an attraction which was, in fact, a slander
on Mrs. Leathers. He reminded Mrs. Ingulphus that
foreigners liked a house where the married ladies would flirt, and
bag for a husband, and (to use his own phrase), “would listen to
reason.”
Mrs. Ingulphus said she would think of it, and, upon this encouragement,
Cyphers cherished a hope that she would call.
With the aid of Judkins and Fuzzard, Mr. Cyphers, on Mrs.
Leathers's disappearance, made some important changes in the
furniture of the front drawing-room. A fancy writing-desk was
taken out from under the pier-table, opened, and set upon a
work-stand in the corner, the contents scattered about in epistolary
confusion, and a lounging chair wheeled up before it
With some catechising, Judkins remembered an embroidered footstool
in one of the closets up stairs, and this was sent for and
placed in front of the fauteuil. The curtains all let down, except
one, and the sofa wheeled up with its back to this one entrance
for the light—Mr. Cyphers saw that he could do no more.
“Now, my very expeditious Mrs. Leathers,” he said, as she
entered, in an unobjectionable morning dress, and a cap rather
becoming, “one little word more of general directions. Ladies
love to sit with their backs to the light, in a morning call, and as
the sofa is placed now, they will easily take a seat in a becoming
position, and without any inconvenient drawing up of a chair.
As to yourself, sit you at this desk and write—”
“Bless me! I have nothing to write!” interrupted Mrs.
Leathers.
“Oh, copy an advertisement from a newspaper, if you like,
resumed her polite instructor, “but write something, and let it be
upon note paper. You must seem to be passing your morning
quite independently of visits, and to be rather broken in upon
than otherwise, by any one's coming in. Fashionable people
that's in Pelham.”
“La! and must I write till somebody comes?”
“Dip your pen in the ink when the bell rings, that's all; and
write till their coming in makes you look up, suddenly and unconsciously,
as it were. Stay—suppose I sit in your chair, and
show you how I would receive a call? You are the visitor, say,
and I am Mrs. Leathers?”
Mr. Cyphers crossed his feet, in an clongated position, upon
the embroidered footstool, and threw his hankerchief over them
in imitation of a petticoat, just disclosing a toe and an instep;
then, taking up a pen, he went through the representation of a
lady surprised, writing, by a morning call. As, upon Mrs.
Leathers' trying to do it after him, he found there were several
other points in her attitude and manners which required slight
emendation, we will leave these two at their lesson above stairs,
and take a look into the basement parlor of the story below.
2. PART II.
THE LEATHERS'S BASEMENT.
A pair of beautiful partridges, cooked to a turn, had just succeeded
a bass, done in port-wine sauce; the potatoes were hot,
and the pint bottle of champagne had given place to a decanter
of sherry, at the right hand of Mr. Luther Leathers, dining alone
in his basement parlor. A fire of bituminous coal burned very
brightly in the grate. Dividing her attention between watching
as he soliloquized over his dinner, sat a hunchback girl of nineteen
or twenty, carefully propped on a patent easy-chair upon
wheels. There was no servant waiting on table. The bread and
water were within Mr. Leathers's reach, and the bell-handle was
at the right hand of the pale and patient-looking little cripple in
the corner.
“Lucy, my dear girl,” said the carver of the partridge,
holding up a bit of the breast of the bird upon his fork, “I wish
I could persuade you to take a bit of this. See how nice it
looks!”
“I know you wish it,” she answered, with an affectionate half
smile, “and you would give me your own health to enjoy it, if
you could, but I have no appetite to-day—except sympathy with
yours.”
Leathers was a short, stout man, of about forty. He had a face
roughly lined with anxiety, and a knit contraction of brows,
which showed a habit of forcibly contracting his attention at short
notice. The immediate vicinity of his mouth, however, was
pliable and good-humored, and, in fact, looked as if neither care
nor meanness had ever been permitted to have a pull upon it. His
hair was pushed rudely away from a compact, well-filled forehead,
the lids were habitually drawn together around his small twinkling
grey eyes, and his head was set forward upon his shoulders,
in the attitude of one giving close attention. A very carelessly-tied
cravat, coat-sleeves turned back over the wrist, and hands
that evidently never wore a glove, showed that the passion for
fashionable life, which reigned up stairs, had little influence on
the thoughts or toilettes in the basement below.
Yet, to the policy or proceedings of his wife, to her expensiveness,
intimacies or her ambitions, Mr. Leathers made no manner of
objection. He differed wholly from her in her valuation of
things and people, and, perhaps, there was a little dislike of
trouble in his avoidance of the desperate task of setting her right;
but there was another and less easily divined reason for his
strange letting of Mrs. Leathers have her own silly way so
entirely. There was a romantic chivalry of mind, laid away,
unticketted and unsuspected by himself, in a corner of his capacious
brain, and, silly woman as she was, he had married her for
love. In the suburb where he had found her, she was a sort of
school girl belle, and, as he had not then struck his vein of
prosperity, and was but a poor clerk, with his capacities unsuspected,
her station in life was superior to his, and he had first
taken her to his bosom with the feeling of a plebian honored with
the condescending affection of a fair patrician.
To this feeling of gratitude, though they had so essentially
changed places—he having given her a carriage as a millionaire's
wife, and she having only grown silly, and lost her beauty—he
remained secretly and superstitiously loyal. It was his proud
pleasure to give her everything she could ask for, and still retain
his nominal attitude as the receiver of favor. He never, by look
or word, let Mrs. Leathers understand that the promise of eternal
love was not a promise, religiously to pay. Of the dis-illusion in
his heart—of his real judgment of her character—of the entire
abandonment, by his reason, of all the castles in the air for which
he had romantically married—she, fortunately, never had a suspicion,
or asked a question, and he would have cut off his hand
sooner than enlighten her. In public he assumed a manner of
respect and devotion, because his good sense told him there might
motive, and his appearance not being fashionable, Mrs. Leathers
would often rather have been waited on by Mr. Cyphers, and this
the husband saw without uneasiness, and would have yielded to,
but for the wish to serve her, in spite of herself. With this single
exception of occasional contradictoriness, and the exercise of
quiet and prior authority—as to his own hours of dining, and his
own comforts, and those of hunchback Lucy, in the basement
the stock-broker and his establishment were under the apparently
complete control of Mrs. Leathers, and, thereby, in a state of
candidacy for admission into the list of New York fashionable
aristocracy.
Of course, Leathers, the stock-broker, had a heart; and, like
other hearts, human and disappointed, it might have buried its
hopes without a funeral, and sought consolation elsewhere without
a drum. It was necessary that he should love and love well.
How long a want of this nature may go unexplained in the breast
that feels it—the love-needing man being miserable, he knows
not why—depends on circumstances; but, as Leathers was
beginning to turn his un-escapeable business faculty of attention
upon himself to see what the deuce he wanted, and how to get it,
he was accidentally appointed, by the whim of a nominating committee,
one of the wardens of a poor-house. Compelled, for his
character's sake, to visit and report upon the condition of this
establishment, he chanced to see, in one of the wards, a little
orphan hunchback, whose pitiful and delicate face excited his
compassion. His unemployed heart sprang to the child—he
adopted her, and took her home—gave Mrs. Leathers a carriage
and horses on the same day, to appease and propitiate her—and
business as he was,) sufficed to fill the void in his existence.
Lucy had no other name, that she knew of, but that was
enough. Her education had been such as she could pick up in
an alms-house, but she was fond of reading, and passionately
fond of music, and when her benefactor was not at home, she
was happy with her books in the arm-chair, or with her piano,
and Mrs. Leathers seldom saw her except at breakfast. Lucy
thought the stock-broker an angel, and so, to her, he was. He
loved her with a tear in his throat, and kissed her small, white
forehead at night and morning, with a feeling many a brilliant
beauty has sighed in vain to awaken. At half-past three, every
day, Leathers alighted from the omnibus, at his own house, having,
perhaps, passed his wife in her carriage, on his way up from
Wall street, and, with an eager happiness, unexplained to himself,
went in at the basement door and sat down to his punctual
dinner. Lucy dined with him, or sat by the fire. From the
moment of his entering she had no thought, wish, or attention,
for anything but him. Her little thin lips wore an involuntary
smile, and her soft, blue eyes fairly leaned up against his heart in
their complete absorption in what he said. She showed the most
pleasure, however, when he talked most about himself, and, by
questions and leadings of the conversation, she drew from him,
daily, the history of his morning, his hopes, successes, obstacles
or disappointments.
He did not confess to her, for he did not confess to himself,
why this or that “operation” had pleased him, but there was
sympathy in having its mere mention heard with carnest attentiveness,
and he felt expanded and lightened at heart by her
interruptions and digressions, usually occupied the hour of dinner,
and then, genial with his glass of wine and his day's work,
Leathers drew up his chair to Lucy's, and had no earthly desire,
save the passing of his evening between her talk and his
newspaper.
Little stuff for poetry as there would seem to be in Wall-street
mornings, Leathers was not undramatic, in his view of his own
worldly position, and in his descriptions of business operations to
Lucy. He had, early in life, looked askance, with some bitterness,
at people with whom he could never compete, and at refinements
and advantages he could never attain. Too sensible a man
to play a losing game at anything, he had stifled his desire to
shine, and locked down the natural chivalry, for which, with his
lack of graces, he was so certain to lack appreciation. In giving
up all hope of distinction in matters of show, however, he had
prepared himself to enjoy more keenly the satisfaction of controlling
those who were its masters, and it was this secret feeling of
supremacy, over the very throne of the empire that had rejected
and exiled him, which gave his business the zest of a tourney, and
made him dwell on its details, with delight in Lucy's eager and
sympathetic listening.
The household, in short, went on very harmoniously. Mrs.
Leathers was never up at breakfast, and usually made her dinner
of the lunch in her boudoir, at which Mr. Cyphers daily played a
part, and drank his bottle of champagne. Leathers was asleep
when she went to bed, she asleep when he got up; she spent
money without stint, and used her carriage as she and Mr. Cyphers
pleased, and that made all comfortable above stairs. Below,
there.
3. PART III.
WILL MRS. INGULPHUS CALL?
By the French clock, it was getting towards half-past four in
the drawing-room. At five minutes to four, Mrs. Leathers had
ordered Fuzzard to oil the joint of the door-bell, for it was inconceivable
that nobody should have come, and perhaps the bell
wouldn't ring. Ladies in good society would give up an acquaintance
rather than split their gloves open with straining at a tight
bell-handle—so Mr. Cyphers seriously assured her.
The afternoon wore on, and still no sign of a visitor. Of her
unfashionable acquaintances she was sure not to see one, for, on
them, Mrs. Leathers had left “At Homes” for Saturday, to preserve
an uncontaminated “Friday” for the list made out by Mr.
Cyphers.
Mrs. Leathers walked the room nervously, and, at every turn,
looked through the lace curtain of her front window.
“I'll move from this house,” said the unhappy woman, twisting
her handkerchief around her elbow and thumb, “for there are
those Sneden girls opposite, with their bonnets on, peeping
through the blinds, and, if nobody comes, they'll stay away themselves
and tell everybody else. Mr. Cyphers! if some carriage
don't stop at the door before dark, I shall die! How came you
a card and not have it returned, is so mortifying!”
“Nasty Snedens, as you say,” echoed Cyphers, “but it's no
use to despise people till you have something to refuse. Wait
till they want to come to a party because Mrs. Ingulphus is
coming!”
“Why, do the Snedens know Mrs. Ingulphus?” inquired Mrs.
Leathers, half incredulously.
“Know her?—she couldn't live without them!” and glad of
anything to take off the attention of his friend from her disappointment,
and enliven the dullness of that very long morning,
Cyphers proceeded to define the Snedens.
“They are of a class of families,” he continued, “common to
every well-regulated society,—all girls and all regular failures—
a sort of collapsed-looking troop of young ladies, plain and good
for nothing, but dying to be fashionable. Every stylish person
at the head of a set has one such family in her train.”
“But what on earth can the Snedens do for Mrs. Ingulphus?”
inquired Mrs. Leathers rather listlessly.
“Why, they pick up her scandal, do her cheap shopping, circulate
what she wants known, put down reports about her, collect
compliments, entertain bores, praise her friends and ridicule her
rivals—dirty work you may say, but has to be done! No `position'
without it—I assure you I have come to that conclusion. In
natural history there is a corresponding class—jackals. As
clever what-d'ye-call-him says, a leader of fashion without a
family of girls of disappointed prospects, is like a lion starving to
death for want of jackals.”
“Twenty minutes to five!” digressed Mrs. Leathers; “I wonder
if Mrs. Ingulphus is sick! Oh, Mr. Cyphers!” she continued,
“can't you go round and implore her—beg her—anything to
make her come—only this once! You told me you knew her so
well, and she was certain to be here!”
Cyphers, in fact, had about given up Mrs. Leathers's “Friday
morning” as a failure; but he went on consoling. The light
perceptibly lessened in the room. It was evident that the evening,
without any regard to Mrs. Leathers's feelings, was about to
close over the visiting hour. Meantime, however, a scene had
been going on in the basement, which eventually had an important
influence on Mrs. Leathers's “Friday mornings,” and of
which we must, therefore, give the reader a glimpse, though, (our
story is getting so long,) we must confine ourselves to its closing
tableau.
4. PART IV.
WHAT BROUGHT MRS. INGULPHUS.
A middle-aged man, of a very high-bred mould of feature, sat
on the forward edge of a chair, leaning far over the table toward
Mr. Leathers. He was dressed for a dinner party, and a pair of
white gloves lay on the cloth beside him; but his face looked
very little like that of a man on his way to a festivity. The
sweat stood in large drops on his forehead and upper lip. His
closed left hand was clutched in the palm of his right; his
elbows were crowded to his side; his drawn-up shoulders crushed
his white cravat into a wisp under his ears, and he sat with his
expecting life or death from his immediate decision. Lucy sat in
her chair, looking on, but not with her ordinary calmness. Her
lips were trembling to speak, and her thin hand clutched the handle
of the lever which moved her patent chair, while her little
bent back was lifted from its supporting cushion, with the preparatory
effort to wheel forward. Leathers, on whom her moist
eyes were intently fixed, sat gazing on a bundle of papers, with
his under lip pinched between his knuckle and thumb.
“Think, I implore, before you decide,” said the visitor, at last,
breaking the silence. “You are my last hope! I could not
plead with you this morning in Wall street. I should have betrayed
myself to people coming in. I did not then think of
asking you again. I went home, despairing. Afraid—yes,
afraid—to stay alone with my own thoughts, I dressed to go out.
My wife will be here in a moment to take me up, on her way to a
dinner-party. Oh God! how little she dreams we may be
beggars to-morrow!”
He pressed his forehead between his two hands for a moment,
and crowded his elbows down upon the table. Lucy rolled her
chair a little forward, but Leathers motioned her back.
“You may think,” he resumed, “that I might go to others—
more intimate friends—in such extremity—family friends. But
I know them. It would be utterly in vain, Mr. Leathers! I
have no friend, much less a relative, in the world, of the least use
in misfortune. I had strained my credit to the last thread before
coming to you, in Wall street. Why I suddenly resolved to
come to you, here, with no claim, and at such an unfit hour for
business, I know not. Instinct prompted. It seemed to me,
while I was dressing, like the whisper of an angel!”
Leathers made a movement as if to speak.
“Take care, sir! for God's sake, take care! With one word
you may bind me to you while I live, with the gratitude of desperation,
or you plunge me into ruin!”
The stock-broker took up the schedules of property which lay
before him, and, after an instant's hesitation, pushed them across
the table. During the half-hour, while proud Ingulphus, the
millionaire, had been pleading with him for salvation from ruin,
he had not been examining these, though his eyes were bent on
them. He had satisfied himself of their unavailable value, before
his refusal of the morning. The struggle in his heart between
pity and prudence occupied him now. He knew that the chances
were against his ever seeing again the very large sum necessary to
prevent the present bankruptcy of Ingulphus, and that a turn in
business might make the same urgently necessary to himself tomorrow—but
his compassion was moved. He would have refused
over again, outright and without ceremony, in Wall street; but
Ingulphus had taken him at a business disadvantage, with his
heart uppermost and open, and a pleading angel listening and
looking on.
As the three sat silent, pity gradually overcoming the reluctant
prudence of the stock-broker's judgment, there was a dash of
wheels and hoofs upon the clear pavement near the curb-stone, a
sudden pull-up, and the splendid equipage of the Ingulphuses
stood at Leathers's door. Lucy's heart sank within her, for she
had been praying to Heaven, with all her might of sympathy and
inward tears, for the success of the plea, and she felt that the
influence of this ostentatious arrival was unfavorable. Leathers
looked over his shoulder into the street, and rose from his chair as
the footman in livery crossed the sidewalk to ring the bell.
“For God's sake!” gasped the desperate pleader, in an
agonised tone, knitting his hands together, and turning his face
with the movement, as the stock-broker took his stand before the
fire.
There was refusal in the attitude of Leathers, and in his brow,
compressed with the effort to utter it.
The thin, white fingers of the little hunchback gently took the
hand of her benefactor—now brought within her reach—and held
it to her lips, while the tears dropped upon it freely.
“For my sake!” she murmured, in a tone of appealing and
caressing tenderness, which a more hard-hearted man than her
benefactor would have been troubled to resist.
Leathers turned and opened his large eyes with an expression
of sudden tenderness upon her.
“For your sake be it, then, my sweet child!” he said, giving
her a kiss with a rapid movement, as if his heart had joyfully
broken through its restraint with the impulse she had lent it.
“And now, for the sake of this little angel, Mr. Ingulphus,”
he continued—
But the sudden rush of hope, and the instant relaxation of
despair, were too much for the high-strung frame of the proud
suppliant.
Excited to the utmost tension by anxiety, and, doubtless, for
months overdone with sleeplessness and fatigue, his nervous
system gave way, and, as Leathers turned to him from Lucy, he
fell fainting from his chair.
To ring the bell and send suddenly to the carriage for Mrs.
Ingulphus, was the work of a moment; and, to the astonishment
of the Snedens opposite, and the mingled relief and surprise of
Cyphers and Mrs. Leathers, who were peeping at the carriage
ran up the steps, in full dinner-dress, and went in at the
Leathers's!
A present of a bouquet with the Snedens's card the next
morning was the beginning of Mrs. Leathers's recognition by the
discriminating paste-board of fashion—but there are many, who,
(till they read this story), have considered Mrs. Leathers's admission
to the “lngulphus's set,” as one of the most inexplicable
mysteries of this astounding century.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |