University of Virginia Library

44. CHAPTER XLIV.
A PROSPECTIVE COUNTESS.

Mrs. Dinneford was at first greatly amazed, as well as terrified and
grieved, by the result of Alice's flirtations.

She was as much astonished to find herself the prospective mother-in-law
of a dandified, grimacing, philological foreign Count as a sober hen might be
at discovering that she had hatched a hook-nosed, flame-colored, jabbering
macaw. It was really pitiful to see the eager, ruffled, clucking way in which
she watched his struttings and gasconadings, as if she were wondering what
noise this outlandish bird would make next, and fearing lest he should peck
the coop to pieces. Little by little, however, she became somewhat numb to
the situation, and even learned to treat her daughter's betrothed with a certain
exterior cordiality, smiling much at him in a mechanical, placating way, and,
so to speak, dumbly interceding with him not to be as bad as he could be.

He on his part saw that virtue was desired of him, and did his best to inspire
hope that it would be forthcoming. To hear him talk about himself was
like listening to a fairy-tale about the “good prince.” According to his telling,
he was one of the finest fellows morally that you could set your mind's
eye upon. He had never done a dishonorable thing; that was a point on
which he frequently and copiously insisted; nothing unworthy of a gentleman!
nothing unworthy of his ancestors! nothing ignoble! And then he was so
rich; he had such enormous and little less than immeasurable territories!
such hosts, and ever increasing hosts, too, of tenants! The most remarkable
thing about his estate, indeed, was the facility with which it committed annexation
and doubled its population. The expansion of the United States and the
increase of the children of Israel in Egypt were as nothing by the side of these
phenomena. In truth it seemed alarmingly probable that if Poloski continued

to talk about his county, it would shortly absorb all Europe. As a matter of
course he was beloved to distraction by his multitudinous retainers; when he
should return to them they would pour forth to receive him with shouts, and
redden the domed night with bonfires of welcome. Of course also these grandeurs
involved a footing in the highest walks of society, and an easy entrée to
all the courts of Europe. His Alice, his adored and dashing Alice, would be
a “sure-enough countess and no mistake,” he declared, falling back upon one
of his favorite “slangs” for a vividness of description suited to the brilliant
fact. In a word, the copious and imaginative man confessed and affirmed himself
to be a most desirable match, both in spirituals and temporals.

Mrs. Dinneford could not help swallowing somewhat of a tale which was
put to her lips so often and so earnestly. She was hopefully anxious to believe;
she shut her eyes and opened her mouth, as children say; doubt was
such a torment that she almost prayed for faith. Moreover, it is the nature
of women, shielded as they usually are from the business-like realities of life,
to grant easy credence to the new, the unheard of, the marvellous. The excellent
lady actually feared at times lest her own and her daughter's head
should be turned by the social altitudes which they were about to ascend. She
thought of Satan leading people up into high mountains, and promising them
kingdoms and the glory thereof, if they would fall down and worship him.
She meditated upon the warnings and reproofs which her favorite Massillon
(she read him in a translation) levelled against the “great ones of the earth”
who forget that they are human. As for Alice, that credulous and ambitious
young lady had fairly departed out of her Yankee senses, and resided altogether
in cloud-castles of Polish construction.

We must not linger long on the delectable mountains of this Poloski engagement.
Of course there was a deal of love-dalliance between Miss Dinneford
and her noble adorer, which we should find savory to the minutest sugared
crumb, if we could stop to feed upon it. But delicacy with regard to the young
lady, and the summoning voices of more important adventures, oblige us to
omit tasting of these deleterious sweets. We must, however, state the satisfactory
fact that the Count's presents were all that a future countess could
reasonably expect. A superb engagement ring was the forerunner of pearl
brooches, coral earrings, choice mosaics, and other similar proofs of highborn,
opulent affection. Even Mrs. Dinneford was presently driven to admit that
Poloski's revenues must be ample, and that his heart seemed to be in the right
place. Indeed, gifts came in so abundantly and of such an obviously costly
nature, that this mother in Israel, educated to regard economy as a weighty
duty and a bright virtue, felt herself called upon to remonstrate.

“You are giving Alice too much,” she whispered to the extravagant
grandee. “It really seems to me like wasting wealth, and I fear that some
day it may be regretted. Such generosity may spoil any girl, and lead her to
expect too much hereafter. You must forgive me for quoting to you a line
of my favorite poet, Tupper: Rashly give they, and afterward are sad, a gift
that doubly erred.”

“Bah! a few inexpensive trifles,” laughed the Count, showing all his fine
teeth. “Excuse me, my very dear Mrs. Dinneford, for treating your most
kind and valued warning with gayety. I am profoundly impressed by the
softness of your heart and the hardness of your head. But money is a drug.
There is more where this comes from. I haven't got to the bottom of my pile
by a long shot.”

He quoted so many of our American “slangs,” and he laughed so victoriously
after each one of them, that Mrs. Dinneford was silenced for a moment.

“Besides, there is more coming,” continued Poloski. “We shall have
plenty to live on. Miss Dinneford is to get a fortune from the Wetherel estate.
Aha! you see that I know all. There is money on both sides. Why
should there not be a few jimcracks and knicknacks?”

“I ought to speak to you about that,” answered the good woman promptly
and firmly. “You have heard, I suppose, that my poor cousin, Judge Wetherel,
left us a large property. It is my duty as a Christian woman to tell you
the exact truth of the matter. The will was lost and all the estate goes to
Edward Wetherel.”

“I know—I have understood,” hastily muttered the Count. He was not
looking at her; his eyes were wandering unsteadily about the room; he seemed
to her to be awaiting further information.

“Edward may give us something,” hesitated Mrs. Dinneford, who did not
feel quite certain of the gift, now that Alice was about to make this dubious
match in spite of Edward. “He has declared his purpose of so doing. I query
and worry daily as to whether we ought to accept.”

“Is he mad, and are you all mad?” exclaimed the Count, turning upon her
with a stare of irritated amazement. “Why should you not accept? But he
will not give. No man gives away a fortune who is not forced. The thing is
to force. You wait! I will attend to this business. You wait and see. All
that is yours shall come to you. The moment I shall have power to act for
Miss Alice I will make things to happen. I will make some one restore that
estate. You shall have all your money. You wait and trust in me. Say
nothing. Keep dark. Wait.”

“Do you mean to charge Edward—?” stammered Mrs. Dinneford, opening
her eyes wide in an obscurity full of horrors, and feeling as if she were
turning dizzy on the verge of an abyss.

“I charge nothing,” answered the Count, still looking away from her.
“But I will cause some one to disgorge. Wait till I am married. I will see
to all. I ask nothing of you but to trust in me and keep dark.”

He would explain no further. Mrs. Dinneford went out from this interview
quite confounded and terrified by it. What frightful thing had the man
uttered, or rather what frightful thing had he concealed? But after much
meditation she decided that his discourse had been mere high-flying babble,
such as she supposed foreigners could not help indulging in, especially if they
were counts. Alice, when informed of Poloski's tall talk, expressed the same
opinion of it.

“It is just some of his blank verse,” she said in a tone of half petulance,
half apology. “I must admit that he does sometimes go on like a fairy-tale,
or like Mother Goose's Melodies,” she added, unable to control her Wetherel
wit. “But I believe all those European continental folks do the same. They
have so much more vivacity and imagination than we Yankees! He has said
something of this sort to me once or twice. I don't know what he believes or
what he means to do. I didn't ask him. I didn't want to talk about it. It is
such a horrid, hateful subject.”

After a little she resumed hesitatingly: “Mother—do you suppose Edward
can have—done anything wrong?”

“Oh, Alice!” implored Mrs. Dinneford, putting up her hands. “Don't say

any such words to me. They are like the whisperings of Satan. We must
resist such thoughts as uncharitable and wicked temptations.”

“I don't believe in him as I did,” murmured Alice, who had not forgiven
Edward for opposing her match and maligning her lover.

“Walter believes in him,” replied Mrs. Dinneford, with a profound confidence
in the intelligence of Lehming, and little knowing the doubts by which
he was tormented.

“You shan't misjudge my Count,” broke out Alice, after watching her
mother's worried face for an instant. “He is not to blame for having his suspicions.
A great many people have had suspicions. Just think what a muddle
it has all been. Uncle Wetherel dead, and Nestoria spirited away, and the
whole thing as black as midnight!”

“I know,” sighed Mrs. Dinneford. “We have cause to be thankful for
that we have been allowed to keep our reason amid it all.”

“And you won't think hardly of him because he talks a little fancifully now
and then?” begged the girl. “You will think kindly of him?”

“I will,” promised the mother, unable to resist an only child, a child, too,
whom she was not used to resisting.

But Mrs. Dinneford and even Alice herself did come to feel a little hardly
toward the noble Poloski, when a few days later he broached the idea of an
immediate marriage, to be followed by instant departure for Europe.

“I have letters which call for me to arrive,” he alleged. “I must arrive
as soon as I can go. There are family affairs, very urgent. My sister is
about to contract a marriage which is undemeaning of her and of our family.
I must hasten to prevent it.”

What should be done? What girl wants to be hustled through that triumphal
march, that review which celebrates love's greatest victory, an engagement?
The wedding trousseau was not selected; the robes of silk and the garments
of fine linen were not made up; the hymeneal glories of all sorts were
in an entirely embryonic condition. Mrs. Dinneford mildly argued against
the confounding proposition, while Alice protested, implored, pouted, and
finally wept. The Count did not take opposition sweetly, and there was a scene
of the kind known as a love quarrel.

For a time the two women stood firm, upheld by the importance and grandeur
of the situation, and by that habit of commanding the inferior sex which
American females have. It was proposed that the patrician lover should go
to Poland alone, and return as soon as he had finished his lofty business. But
he looked so sulky over this suggestion that it seemed quite probable that he
might not return at all. What if one of those titled ladies whom he would be
sure to encounter in the courts of Europe should throw herself at his head and
cause him to forget the simple New York girl who had nothing to give him
but a heart and some democratic dollars? Moreover, he was heard to mutter
something about the insulted honor of his family and the possibility of a duel.

These bugbeara were too much for Alice. In general a woman does not
want to break off an engagement unless she is comfortably certain of entering
promptly upon another, seizing the hand of Number Two simultaneously with
dropping that of Number One. Furthermore, Alice, like most newly betrothed
girls, had just set seriously to the work of loving. The Count had been dazzling
to her before he proposed; but now that he had been accepted, he was
precious. It is one of the noble characteristics of the feminine heart that in
general it worships all the more earnestly for winning. Alice was beginning

to be honestly and almost passionately and we must say admirably infatuated
with her man, for the reason that she had got him and could call him her own.
When it seemed likely that she might have to part with him, and when she
was assaulted by the still more dreadful idea that he might rush into mortal
combat if she did not watch over him, she gave up her rapturous dream of a
long engagement and a splendid wedding, and consented to become a wife
without trousseau or cards.

The surrendry of Alice was punctually followed by that of Mrs. Dinneford.
“I consent,” she said, dropping a tear over the thought of so early a parting.
“Heaven's will be done!—if it is heaven's will,” she added with some temper.
“But I shall follow you, if you are gone two months. I shall break up and
rent the house and follow you.”

“I shall be delighted, I am sure,” bowed the Count with a grin which expressed
a very skeleton-like sort of joy.

And so the wedding day was fixed for a week later: it was the 25th of
November which was to be thus honored; and on the 26th the happy couple
were to set sail for Hamburg.