University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

ONE of the most fateful days of John Vane's
life was the day on which he took board with
that genteel though decayed lady, the widow of a
wholesale New York grocer who had come out at
the little end of the horn of plenty, and the
mother of two of the prettiest girls in Slowburgh,
Mrs. Renssaelaer Smiles.

Within a week he was in a state of feeling
which made him glance frequently at the eldest
of these young ladies, and within a month he
would have jumped at a chance to kiss the ground
upon which she trod. In the interval he ventured
various little attentions, intended to express his
growing admiration and interest, such as opening
the door for her when she left the dining-room,

taking off his hat with a flourish when he met
her in the hall, joining her now and then in the
street, “just for a block or two,” and once tremulously
presenting her with a bouquet.

He would have been glad to run much more
boldly than this in the course of courtship, but
his heart was in such a tender-footed condition
that he could not go otherwise than softly. In
his worshiping eyes Miss Olympia Smiles was not
only a lovely phenomenon, but also an august and
even an absolutely imposing one. Notwithstanding
that she was the daughter of his landlady, and
held but a modest social position even in our unpretentious
little city, she had an unmistakable
air of fashionable breeding and boarding-school
finish, such as might be expected of a lady who
had passed her early youth in opulence. Moreover,
she drew about her an admiring bevy of our
university undergraduates, who, by their genteel
fopperies and classic witticisms, made Vane feel
ill at ease in their presence, although he strove
manfully in secret to despise them as mere boys.

Finally, she was handsome and impressively so,
tall, shapely, and grand in figure, superb and even
haughty in carriage, with a rich brunette coloring
which made him think of Cleopatra, and with
glowing dark eyes which pierced even to his
joints and marrow.

The one circumstance which encouraged Vane
to aspire after this astral being was the fact that
she seemed older than most of the undergraduate
planets who revolved about her, throwing him for
the present into sorrowful eclipse. He thought
that she must be twenty-three, and he sometimes
trusted that she might be twenty-five, or perhaps
twenty-seven. At the same time he so reverenced
her that he could not have been tortured into
believing that she was a veteran flirt, trained to
tough coquetry in many a desperate skirmish.
Often and often had Olympia “sat up” with a
young man till after midnight, and then gone up
stairs and passed her mother's bedroom door on
her hands and knees, not in penance and mortification
of spirit, but in mere anxiety to escape a
lecture.

Of these melodramatic scenes John Vane knew
nothing, and desired to know nothing. We must
add also, as indicative of his character and breeding,
that, had he been minutely informed of them,
he would have thought none the less of Miss
Smiles. In the first place he was so fascinated
by her that he would have pardoned almost any
folly or imprudence in her bygone history. In
the second place, he had been brought up in a
simple stratum of society, where girls were allowed
large liberties in sparking, even to the extent of
arms around the waists and much kissing, without
incurring prudish condemnation. Indeed, so
far was he from being fastidious in these matters,
that, when he heard that Olympia had been engaged
to one or more students, and that these
juvenile bonds had been promptly severed, he
was rather pleased and cheered by the information
than otherwise.

“She must be about sick of those young jackanapes,”
he hopefully inferred. “She must be
about ready to take up with a grown man, who

knows what he wants, and has some notion of
sticking to a bargain, and is able to do the decent
thing in the way of supporting her.”

John Vane was himself, both in person and in
repute, no despicable match. As may have been
already guessed by such readers as are fitted to
apprehend his character and find instruction in
his history, he was one of those heroes of industry
and conquerors of circumstances known
as self-made men, whose successes are so full of
encouragement to the millions born into mediocrity,
and whom, consequently, those millions delight
to honor.

Had he really fabricated himself, whether we
speak of his physical structure or of his emotional
nature, he would have accomplished a rather
praiseworthy job of creation. Very few better
looking men or kinder hearted men have ever
paraded the streets of Slowburgh in Masonic
caparisons. Justly proportioned, with ample
withers, a capacious barrel, and limbs that were
almost majestic, he stood nearly six feet high in

his stockings, weighed full two hundred pounds
in the same, and was altogether an uncommonly
fine animal. It is true that, to use his own jovial
phrase, he “ran a little too much to blubber for
comfort”; but it was disposed so becomingly and
carried so easily, that it did not prevent him from
moving with grace; while even his political enemies
had to admit that it conspicuously enhanced
his dignity, and justified his admirers in talking
of him for governor.

His face, too, usually passed for handsome; it
was fairly regular in feature, and of a fresh blonde
color like that of a healthy baby; moreover, it
had the spiritual embellishment of a ready, courteous,
and kindly smile. It was only the fastidiously
aristocratic and the microscopically cultivated
who remarked of this large and well-moulded
figure-head that it lacked an air of high-breeding
and was slightly vacuous in expression. These
severe critics found the genial blue eyes which
fascinated humble people as uninteresting as if
they had been made of china-ware. They hinted,

in short, that John Vane's beauty was purely
physical, and had no moral or intellectual significance.

To this height of sentimental fault-finding Miss
Olympia Smiles had not attained. New-Yorker
by birth though she was, and polished by long-continued
friction against undergraduate pundits,
she was not a soul of the last and most painful
finish. She could not see but that Mr. Vane was,
from every point of view, sufficiently handsome.
Still she did not feel much pleased with his
obvious admiration, nor desire at all to lure him
on to the point of love-making. There were imperfections
in him which grated upon her sensibilities,
far as these were from being feverishly
delicate.

In the first place, she found his conversation
rather uninteresting and distinctly “common.”
He could only talk freely of politics, business, and
the ordinary news of the day; he had no sparkles
of refined wit and no warm flashes of poesy; he
was a little given to coarse chaffing and to slang.

For instance, he one day said to his vis-à-vis at
table, “Harris, please to scull that butter over this
way”; and, what made the matter worse, he said
it with a self-satisfied smile, as though the phrase
were original and irresistibly humorous. It was
unpleasant also to hear him remark every morning,
alluding to the severity of the weather, that
“the thermometer was on a bender.” Such metaphors
might do in students and other larkish,
agreeable youngsters; but in a mature man, who
pretended to be marriageable, they argued dullness
or vulgarity. Finally, Olympia plainly
gathered from Mr. Vane's daily discourse that he
was pretty ignorant of science, history, literature,
and other such genteel subjects.

But there was a much more serious defect in
this handsome man, considered as a possible admirer.
He was a widower, and a widower with
incumbrances. He had a wife thirty years old in
the graveyard, and he had two children of eight
and ten who were not there. It was annoying to
Olympia to see him help this boy and this girl to

buttered slapjacks, and then bend upon herself a
glance of undisguisable, tender appetite. Had he
rolled in his carriage and resided in a mansion on
Saltonstall Avenue, she might have been able to
put up with his weeds and his paternity; but in
a mere manufacturer of refrigerators, whose business
was by no means colossal, these trappings of
woe and pledges to society were little less than
repulsive.

“I can never, never let him speak to me about
it,” said the young lady, with excitement, when
her mother hinted to her that Mr. Vane seemed
to be drifting toward an offer; “he is so common!”

“You must get married some time, I suppose,”
sighed Mrs. Smiles, whose pride had had a fall as
splintering as that of Humpty Dumpty, and who
found it hard work to support two stylish daughters.
“Men who are not common are rare in our
present circle.”

“I would rather be an old maid than take a
widower with two children,” asserted Olympia.

“But how would the old maid live in case her

mother should be removed?” asked the parent,
pained in heart by her own plain-dealing, but feeling
that it was called for.

The spinster who had never spun nor done any
other remunerative labor could not answer this
question. Presently it might have been observed
that a tear was rolling down her cheek. Hard,
hard indeed is the condition of a proud girl who
sees herself encompassed by the thorny hedges
of poverty, with no escape therefrom but a detested
match,—a match as disagreeable to smell
at as one of the brimstone species.

“Don't throw away this chance without fairly
considering it,” continued the widow. “Mr.
Vane is a prosperous man, and a growing man
every way. He has good manners, barring some
slang phrases. He likes to talk about sensible
subjects and to inform himself. Ten years hence
you may find him your superior and have reason
to be proud of him. A clever wife would help
him forward wonderfully. He is a man that the
right kind of a woman could make over and make
fit for any circle.”