University of Virginia Library

46. CHAPTER XLVI.
SEVERE MERCY.

A LITTLE before noon of the day preceding the one fixed for Alice's patrician
nuptials, Edward Wetherel and Walter Lehming arrived at Mrs.
Dinneford's house to await the advent of Count Poloski's creditors.

The two women were tired, but hard at work, and anxious enough in the
secret places of their hearts, but gay in countenance. There were many important
things yet to be done; there was a hasty bridal robe which must have
some final embellishments; there was a dressmaker to be supplied from moment
to moment with ribbons and other necessaries of life; there was a collation,
just decided upon, which must be ordered instantaneously from Delmonico's;
there was the inevitable hurly-burly of a wedding that is to be. Lehming's
compassionate heart turned sick as he looked upon these preparations
for woman's highest ceremony of happiness and honor, and thought how soon
they would tumble into disappointment, grief, and shame.

“Had you not better try to rest, you two?” he said. “You will want
strength by and by.”

“Did you ever know a girl who hadn't strength enough to get married?”
replied Mrs. Dinneford, and not by any means gloomily, for the excitement of
the occasion had given her a vivaciousness which verged upon gayety. “It is
the one thing that a daughter of Eve can always find the might to do, even if
she is at death's door.

“What is the matter with you, Walter?” burst in Alice gleefully. “You
look as white as if you were going to be married yourself. Now, if you are
turning pale on my account, you may save yourself the trouble. My Count
will be a good husband. You wait and see.”

Lehming glanced imploringly at Edward. He pitied this infatuated girl
and this overborne mother with all the fervor of his sensitive spirit. Foolish
as he knew the desire to be, he half wished that the exposure which was to
turn their blithesomeness into weeping, might be averted, and half hoped that
if they should have their bewildered will, it might not be to their hurt. But
there was no relenting in that other young man; he was as calmly resolute
and unflinching as his uncle might have been in his place; he was a Wetherel
of the ancient, remorseless, Cromwellian type.

“Do sit down and take a minute's repose,” begged Lehming, seizing Mrs.
Dinneford's tired, trembling hands, and drawing her to a sofa.

“Edward, I am out of all patience with you,” said Alice. “You look as
grim as a justice. I know what you are thinking, and I don't like it. Besides,
it's of no use. You can't make me give up this step at the eleventh
hour. I shall get married. So don't say a word about it and don't scowl.
What do you want to spoil my wedding for? It is too bad. My own cousins
groaning and glowering at me! It is too bad.”

She was about to cry, but just then the door bell rang, and in an instant
she was all cheerful excitement, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling
splendidly

“There are the ribbons,” she laughed. “Why don't they answer that bell?
I wonder if there is a servant in the house.”

The domestics were slow in coming. Meanwhile there was another ring,
and another, and another.

“They must be out, those creatures,” exclaimed Alice petulantly.

“I will go,” volunteered Edward, guessing what visitors waited admittance.

He stepped into the hall, opened the street door, and ushered in six men,
all wearing more or less of the shopkeeping air and all of foreign aspect.

“What is your business?” he asked.

“My bishnish ish money,” answered a somewhat greasy and rancid youngster
of brief stature and aquiline profile, at the same time exhibiting a slip of
paper.

Wetherel looked with an imperturbable countenance from one to another
of the half dozen. Each and every one held forth a bill, with more or fewer
words of stammering explanation, meanwhile glancing suspiciously at his comrades.

“Ish this a do?” asked the one who had first spoken.

“Let me have your bills,” responded Wetherel. “And wait here.”

Stepping back into the parlor, he said in a clear, strong, merciless tone,”
“Mrs. Dinneford, here are six tradesmen with their accounts. What shall I
say to them?”

“I don't owe a cent in the world,” exclaimed the astonished lady. “I pay
everything by the week.”

“Just look at these and see what they mean,” persisted Edward, handing
her the slips of paper.

Mrs. Dinneford put on her spectacles and read aloud, “One diamond ring
—three hundred dollars! I never bought a diamond ring in my life,” she
broke out. “Did you, Alice?”

The young lady's face was scarlet, and she merely responded by shaking
her head.

“One coat, one pair pants, one vest,” continued the mother, glancing at a
second bill. “Why, this is some ridiculous mistake. These men have got the
wrong house.”

But she looked agitated; she had her pang of wretched divination; it
seemed to her that something ugly was at hand.

“Come in here, all of you,” summoned Edward, opening the door into the
hall. “Come in and explain.”

They entered, the entire half dozen; they told their six stories in six dialects
of imported English; and all the six swindling, humiliating tales were
one. Mr. Boloski, or Boloshki, or Ploskee, or Plosk, as they variously styled
him, had bought this, that, and the other at “our shop,” and ordered the bill
for the “lot” to be sent to Mrs. Dinneford, or Tinnevoort, or whatever it
might be.

The miserable mother, still not quite comprehending this confounding and
disreputable muddle, turned and stared at her still more miserable daughter.

Alice had not spoken since the men entered the room, and she could not
speak now. She had dropped into the chair which stood nearest, her face entirely
destitute of color and her head swimming. One of the duns, an unwholesomely
sallow little creature, with wavy, glossy, carefully-brushed jet
hair, had his beadlike, glittering eyes fixed on her hands. She noticed his

glance, and it startled her like the crawling of a serpent, and she found power
for action and utterance. With a shudder of disgust she commenced stripping
her fingers of emeralds and diamonds.

“There they are,” she said, handing Poloski's betrothal offerings to Lehming,
who had stepped toward her with a fear that she might swoon. “Give
them to their owners. Mother, you must get the corals and the other things,
and send them too.”

Then came a sob—an outburst of insupportable humiliation—and with a
rush and flutter she was gone.

“Go with her,” urged Lehming, addressing the stupefied mother. “We
will attend to these men.”

“Yes,” added Wetherel. “Come into the hall, you people,” he continued
to the six clerks. “I will tell you what this means.”

He led them out, and after a few words of explanation, sent them away,
some of them happy at recovering their merchandise, and others gloomy over
the prospect of collecting from Poloski.

When he returned to the parlor he was astonished by finding Alice there.
She was crying, without even trying to wipe away her tears, or seeming to
know that they were falling. She was weeping, sobbing, talking, and pacing
the room all at once; it was a storm of grief, of shame, and of anger overmastering
both; it was weakness, and yet it was strength.

“I came back—I wouldn't stay up stairs,” she gasped out between her
sobs. “I have just one thing to say—just one thing and no more. He is all
you told me. I believe everything now. He is a contemptible liar and swindler
and impostor. I have done with him. Oh, no doubt about that. I came
back to tell you so. I never will see him again. Never! If he has the face
to come here, I want you to drive him away. He is a mean impostor. He is
a liar. I don't believe a word he ever told me. You have carried your point,
Edward. I suppose you did this. You have almost killed me. But I thank
you. Is that enough? Are you satisfied? You ought to be.”

Edward took her hand, kissed it respectfully, and tried gently to make her
sit down. But she resisted him; elastic and strong with hysteria, she broke
away and kept on walking the parlor; the storm of sobbing, tears, and sharp,
jerky talking did not cease for some minutes. What she said was mainly reiteration;
but it was necessary that she should reiterate; nothing else would
soothe her agitation. Like her mother, she was a born talker, and must babble
out all her emotions or choke with them.

“Do be quiet, child!” begged and commanded Mrs. Dinneford repeatedly,
alarmed by the girl's excitement.

“I must talk or die; let me alone!” returned Alice, and whirled on in her
gust of feverish speech. It was like a tempest in autumn woods, only that in
place of withered boughs and frostbitten leaves, blighted hopes and joys were
blowing about, noisily rustling forth their shame and spite.

“I knew it—I knew it all the while—I knew I was a fool,” she chattered.
“I knew at the bottom that I was wrong. I knew it would end badly. And
it has. It has served me just right for being such a fool. I would have my
own way, and I've got it hot and heavy. I've got it right in my face and eyes.
This puts an end to Alice Dinneford. I shan't go out again in society. It's
the last beau I shall have, unless I pick up some old gentleman with a shiny
top and gold spectacles. You'll see me marry Methusaleh, or the old original
Jacob Townsend, if you see me marry at all. But I want this Count to catch

trouble, too. Oh, I want him to have the hot end of the poker. I had no business
to believe his lies, but he had no business to lie. How glibly he did talk
about his estates and his revenues and his money in bank! And he hadn't a
cent; charged his wedding coat to my mother; and my engagement presents
went down on those Jews' books! Oh, how I do despise him and hate him,
and what a time we should have had in a month! I wish he was in jail and
grinning through the bars.”

“Alice, do hush!” implored the mother. “You are turning yourself inside
out, like a fig-fish on the seashore. You are making a perfect spectacle of
yourself.”

“And why not?” gasped Alice, throwing herself breathless into a chair
and patting the floor with her feet. “Edward and Walter know all about it
already. I can talk before my cousins, can't I? I can trust them, can't I?
And I must talk. I must foam over, or explode. Corking this thing up would
kill me. Don't you know it would, mother? You are just like me. If I
were not gabbling all the time, you would be.”

And, in fact, Mrs. Dinneford was talking all the time, or striving so to do.
As was their wont in moments of unusual excitement, the two women ran
parallel streams of conversation, each gushing along without much regard to
the other, like the Rhone and the Arve at their confluence. Only on this occasion
the superior volubility of the daughter constantly put the mother out,
and rendered her pretty much inaudible. The burden of the elder lady's fragmentary
discourse seemed to be this, that her child had been graciously favored
with a wonderful preservation, and that Providence had interfered just
in the right season to teach a precious lesson of prudence and humility. Meantime
the two men had withdrawn, as it were, to mountains of silence, according
to the custom of male creatures when the fountains of feminine eloquence
are broken up and the waters thereof overspread all creation.

Of a sudden Lehming, who had taken refuge in a window-seat, called sharply,
“Here is the man.”

“Let him come in,” replied Wetherel calmly. “But had not you two ladies
better leave the room?”

“Yes; go, Alice,” urged Mrs. Dinneford. “You must not meet him.
Now, child, do go!”

“I shan't stir a step,” responded Alice spunkily. “I want to look at him
when he catches it.”