 | CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY. The guardian angel |  |
26. CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.
MYRTLE HAZARD had flowered out as beyond
question the handsomest girl of the season. There
were hints from different quarters that she might possibly
be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap.
The young men about town talked of her at the clubs in
their free-and-easy way, but all agreed that she was the
girl of the new crop, — “best filly this grass,” as Livingston
Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city
was going to capture her. She seemed to favor him
certainly as much as anybody. But Myrtle saw many
young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
have been to make out who was an especial favorite.
There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would
have offered his heart and hand to Myrtle at once, if he
had felt sure that she would accept him. But he preferred
playing the safe game now, and only wanted to feel sure
of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could
hardly doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed
well when in the city, — even elegantly, — he had many
of the lesser social accomplishments, was a good dancer,
and compared favorably in all such matters with the more
dashing young fellows in society. He was a better talker
than most of them, and he knew more about the girl he
was dealing with than they could know. “You have only
said to her relative, “and you can have her. But don't be
rash. I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and
there 's something better there than possibilities.” Murray
Bradshaw laughed, and told Mrs. Clymer Ketchum not to
worry about him; he knew what he was doing.
It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley
walking with Mr. Gifted Hopkins the day before the
party. She longed to have a talk with her old friend, and
was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical admirer.
She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
party to please her, which she promised to do at once.
Thus the two elegant notes were accounted for.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were
chiefly in the world of fortune and of fashion, had yet
a certain weakness for what she called clever people. She
therefore always variegated her parties with a streak of
young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and,
if she could lay hands on a first-class celebrit, was as
happy as an Amazon who had captured a Centaur.
“There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name
of Lindsay,” Mr. Livingston Jenkins said to her a little
before the day of the party. “Better ask him. They say
he 's the rising talent in his line, architecture mainly, but
has done some remarkable things in the way of sculpture.
There 's some story about a bust he made that was quite
wonderful. I 'll find his address for you.” So Mr. Clement
Lindsay got his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum's party promised to bring together a number of
persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were acquainted
with each other.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let
she used to tell her lord, and she would see to the
rest, — lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet. He need n't
be afraid: all he had to do was to keep out of the way.
Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern
civilization. Labor was beautifully subdivided in this
lady's household. It was old Ketchum's business to make
money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s business
to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms
blazed with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned
like lamps of many-colored flame; the music throbbed into
the hearts of the promenaders and tingled through all the
muscles of the dancers.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'
Alençon must have spoiled ever so many French girls'
eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind of breastplate
glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer
forgot to question too closely whether the eyes matched the
brilliants, or the cheeks glowed like the roses. Not far
from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard. She was
dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had
added certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences
of the time when the dead beauty had flourished, and
which first provoked the question and then the admiration
of the young people who had a natural eye for effect. Over
the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich
bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had
seen anything like it, and as some one whispered that it
was “the last thing out,” it was greatly admired by the
fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the few who had
a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long
in dim consciousness through any of those who inherited
her blood, it was then and there that she breathed through
the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young girl almost trembled
with the ecstasy of this new mode of being, soliciting
every sense with light, with perfume, with melody, — all
that could make her feel the wonderful complex music of
a fresh life when all its chords first vibrate together in harmony.
Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle, whose mother was
an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always made
an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and
had all their portraits painted with halos round their heads),
found herself extinguished in this new radiance. Miss
Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the wall as if she had been
a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties were dismayed
and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if
she had been a Gorgon, instead of a beauty.
The guests in whom we may have some interest were in
the mean time making ready for the party, which was expected
to be a brilliant one; for 24 Carat Place was well
known for the handsome style of its entertainments.
Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation.
He had, however, been made a lion of several times of
late, and was very willing to amuse himself once in a
while with a peep into the great world. It was but an
empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days
were over.
Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in
his earlier time, and understood very well that all a gentleman
of his age had to do was to dress himself in his
usual plain way, only taking a little more care in his arrangements
But Gifted must be looked after, that he should not
provoke the unamiable comments of the city youth by any
defect or extravagance of costume. The young gentleman
had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very large
breast-pin containing a gem which he was assured by the
vendor was a genuine stone. He considered that both
these would be eminently effective articles of dress, and
Mr. Gridley had some trouble to convince him that a
white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more fitted to
the occasion.
On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William
Murray Bradshaw received a brief telegram, which
seemed to cause him great emotion, as he changed color,
uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up and
down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a
foreshadowing of a certain event now pretty sure to happen.
Whatever bearing this telegram may have had upon his
plans, he made up his mind that he would contrive an opportunity
somehow that very evening to propose himself
as a suitor to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he
felt as absolutely certain of getting the right answer as he
had felt at some previous periods. Myrtle knew her price,
he said to himself, a great deal better than when she was a
simple country girl. The flatteries with which she had
been surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances
of beauty, which had set her off so that she could not help
seeing her own attractions, rendered her harder to please
and to satisfy. A little experience in society teaches a
young girl the arts and the phrases which all the Lotharios
have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to land
his fish now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet
every fly in his book. However, as he had made up his
mind not to wait another day, he addressed himself to the
trial before him with a determination to succeed, if any
means at his command would insure success. He arrayed
himself with faultless elegance: nothing must be neglected
on such an occasion. He went forth firm and grave as a
general going into a battle where all is to be lost or won.
He entered the blazing saloon with the unfailing smile
upon his lips, to which he set them as he set his watch to
a particular hour and minute.
The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and
made his bow before the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving,
blushing appearance under which palpitated, with the
pleasing excitement of the magic scene over which its
owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He
turned to Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted
which way his inclinations led him, he could doubt no
longer. How much dress and how much light can a woman
bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A
plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only a pleasant
voice, may seem almost a beauty in the rosy twilight.
The nearer she comes to being handsome, the more ornament
she will bear, and the more she may defy the sunshine
or the chandelier. Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled
with the brilliant effect of Myrtle in full dress. He
did not know before what handsome arms she had, — Judith
Pride's famous arms, — which the high-colored young
men in top-boots used to swear were the handsomest pair
in New England, — right over again. He did not know
before with what defiant effect she would light up, standing
as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full flower of
to let his sentiments carry him away from the
serious interests of his future, yet, as he looked upon Myrtle
Hazard, his heart gave one throb which made him feel
in every pulse that this was a woman who in her own
right, simply as a woman, could challenge the homage of
the proudest young man of her time. He hardly knew
till this moment how much of passion mingled with other
and calmer motives of admiration. He could say I love
you as truly as such a man could ever speak these words,
meaning that he admired her, that he was attracted to her,
that he should be proud of her as his wife, that he should
value himself always as the proprietor of so rare a person,
that no appendage to his existence would take so high a
place in his thoughts. This implied also, what is of great
consequence to a young woman's happiness in the married
state, that she would be treated with uniform politeness,
with satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a degree
of confidence quite equal to what a reasonable woman
should expect from a very superior man, her husband.
If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the
breast against which only authors are privileged to flatten
their features, it is for the reader to judge how far the programme
would have satisfied her. Less than this, a great
deal less, does appear to satisfy many young women; and
it may be that the interior just drawn, fairly judged, belongs
to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or
not, Myrtle did not see this picture. There was a beautifully
embroidered shirt-bosom in front of that window
through which we have just looked, that intercepted all
sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man,
young, handsome, courtly, with a winning tongue, with an
of herself, and who was associated with her past
life in such a way that they alone appeared like old friends
in the midst of that cold alien throng. It seemed as if he
could not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this;
for she never looked so captivating, and her presence must
inspire his lips with the eloquence of love. And she —
was not this delirious atmosphere of light and music just
the influence to which he would wish to subject her before
trying the last experiment of all which can stir the soul of
a woman? He knew the mechanism of that impressionable
state which served Coleridge so excellently well, —
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,” —
in that case, — which might be taken as an awful
warning not to sing moving ballads to young ladies of susceptible
feelings, unless one is prepared for very serious
consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening
to him in the intervals of the delicious music, in some
recess where the roses and jasmines and heliotropes made
the air heavy with sweetness, and the crimson curtains
drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from the
curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like
Genevieve's as he told her in simple phrase that she was
his life, his love, his all, — for in some two or three words
like these he meant to put his appeal, and not in fine poetical
phrases: that would do for Gifted Hopkins and rhyming
tomtits of that feather.
Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole
life, implying, as he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a
disastrous disappointment, with a great unexploded mine
of consequences under his feet, and the spark ready to fall
into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile
upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one
would have said he was as vacant of any aim, except a
sort of superficial good-natured disposition to be amused, as
the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied himself up in a
white cravat and come to bore and be bored.
Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with
its thoughts that he had forgotten all about the guests from
Oxbow Village who, as Myrtle had told him, were to come
this evening. His eye was all at once caught by a familiar
figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley, accompanied
by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon.
He stepped forward at once to meet and to present them.
Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified
and respectable appearance. There was an unusual
look of benignity upon his firmly moulded features, and an
air of ease which rather surprised Mr. Bradshaw, who did
not know all the social experiences which had formed a
part of the old Master's history. The greeting between
them was courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw
was acting as one of the masters of ceremony. He
nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them both into
the immediate Presence.
“This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum,
whom I have the honor of introducing to you, — a very
distinguished scholar, as I have no doubt you are well
aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins, a
young poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by
and by, if it has not come to your ears already.”
The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the
poet a little crushed by the Presence, but doing his best.
While the lady was making polite speeches to them, Myrtle
Hazard came forward. She was greatly delighted to
meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet
with a degree of pleasure she would hardly have expected
to receive from his company. They both brought with
them so many reminiscences of familiar scenes and events,
that it was like going back for the moment to Oxbow Village.
But Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening,
and had no opportunity to enter into conversation just then
with either of them. There was to be dancing by and by,
and the younger people were getting impatient that it
should begin. At last the music sounded the well-known
summons, and the floors began to ring to the tread of the
dancers. As usual on such occasions there were a large
number of non-combatants, who stood as spectators around
those who were engaged in the campaign of the evening.
Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely, thinking of the minuets
and the gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted Hopkins,
who had never acquired the desirable accomplishment
of dancing, gazed with dazzled and admiring eyes at the
wonderful evolutions of the graceful performers. The music
stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced
to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and
he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often
the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might
have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what
were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth
of these people would have passed into other hands. In
fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled
and double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And when they
be still fresh in the world's memory. Inspiring thought!
A smile of triumph rose to his lips; he felt that the village
boy who could look forward to fame as his inheritance was
richer than all the millionnaires, and that the words he
should set in verse would have an enduring lustre to
which the whiteness of pearls was cloudy, and the sparkle
of diamonds dull.
He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection,
to look upon these less favored children of Fortune,
to whom she had given nothing but perishable inheritances.
Two or three pairs of eyes, he observed, were fastened upon
him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little self-consciousness,
but he tried to show his features in an aspect of dignified
self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and
questioning going on, which he supposed to be something
like the following: —
Which is it? Which is it? — Why, that one, there, —
that young fellow, — don't you see? — What young fellow
are you two looking at? Who is he? What is he? —
Why, that is Hopkins, the poet. — Hopkins, the poet!
Let me see him! Let me see him! — Hopkins? What!
Gifted Hopkins? etc., etc.
Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy,
but he did unquestionably find a considerable number of
eyes concentrated upon him, which he very naturally interpreted
as an evidence that he had already begun to enjoy
a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively,
some appeared as if they wished to speak, and all the time
the number of those looking at him seemed to be increasing.
A vision came through his fancy of himself as standing on
him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard
was the way with great people when going about the country.
But this was only a suggestion, and by no means a
serious thought, for that would have implied infatuation.
Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted
many eyes. At last those of Myrtle Hazard were
called to him, and she perceived that an accident was making
him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his rather
large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his
left ear. A not very good-natured or well-bred young fellow
had pointed out the subject of this slight misfortune to
one or two others of not much better taste or breeding, and
thus the unusual attention the youthful poet was receiving
explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little accident
of which her rural friend was the victim, than she left her
place in the dance with a simple courage which did her
credit. “I want to speak to you a minute,” she said.
“Come into this alcove.”
And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted
what had happened to him, but found a pin somehow, as
women always do on a pinch, and had him in presentable
condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurre to
him, as it has to other provincial young persons going to
great cities, that he might perhaps have been hasty in
thinking himself an object of general curiosity as yet.
There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant
for the moment, and had given him an idea of what the
rapture would be, when, wherever he went, the monster
digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the collective admiring
would pass from one to another, “That 's him! That 's
Hopkins!”
Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity
for carrying out his intentions, with his pleasant smile
covering up all that was passing in his mind, and Master
Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had been
watching him. The young man's time came at last.
Some were at the supper-table, some were promenading,
some were talking, when he managed to get Myrtle a little
apart from the rest, and led her towards one of the recesses
in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling, — the
influences to which he had trusted had not been thrown
away upon her. He had no idea of letting his purpose be
seen until he was fully ready. It required all his self-mastery
to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he
was so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her
guard. He meant to make her pleased with herself at the
outset, and that not by point-blank flattery, of which she
had had more than enough of late, but rather by suggestion
and inference, so that she should find herself feeling
happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide
from that to the impression she had produced upon him,
and get the two feelings more or less mingled in her mind.
And so the simple confession he meant to make would at
length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural connection
to the first agreeable train of thought which he had
called up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men
would arrange their great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw
was a lawyer in love as much as in business, and
considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of
lawyer do in a jury case, but begin by giving the twelve
honest men and true to understand, in the first place, that
their intelligence and virtue were conceded by all, and that
he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them
to shape their verdict in accordance with these propositions
and his own side of the case?
Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear
to the honeyed accents of the young pleader. He flattered
her with so much tact, that she thought she heard an unconscious
echo through his lips of an admiration which he
only shared with all around him. But in him he made it
seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real.
This it evidently was which had led him to trust her with
his ambitions and his plans, — they might be delusions,
but he could never keep them from her, and she was the
one woman in the world to whom he thought he could
safely give his confidence.
The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening
with an instinctive premonition of what was coming,
— ten thousand mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers,
and so on, had passed through it all in preceding
generations until time reached backwards to the
sturdy savage who asked no questions of any kind, but
knocked down the primeval great grandmother of all, and
carried her off to his hole in the rock, or into the tree
where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling
in the nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by
the mere blind elemental force, as the plummet was attracted
and she breathed a little faster than so healthy a girl ought
to breathe in a state of repose. The steady nerves of
William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors
tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer
the few simple words with which he was to make Myrtle
Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His tones were becoming
lower and more serious; there were slight breaks
once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down
her eyes.
“There is but one word more to add,” he murmured
softly, as he bent towards her —
A grave voice interrupted him. “Excuse me, Mr.
Bradshaw,” said Master Byles Gridley, “I wish to present
a young gentleman to my friend here. I promised to show
him the most charming young person I have the honor to
be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss
Hazard, I have the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance
my distinguished young friend, Mr. Clement
Lindsay.”
Once more, for the third time, these two young persons
stood face to face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those
nervous seizures which any sudden impression was liable
to produce when she was in her half-hysteric state of mind
and body. She turned to the new-comer, who found himself
unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never
have risked of his own will. He must go through it, cruel
as it was, with the easy self-command which belongs to a
gentleman in the most trying social exigencies. He addressed
her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy, and
then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had
never met since their coming together at Oxbow Village.
Lindsay, of the existence of some peculiar relation between
them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever it was, it
broke the charm which had been weaving between her and
Murray Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a
scene. What fault could he find with Clement Lindsay,
who had only done as any gentleman would do with a lady
to whom he had just been introduced, — addressed a few
polite words to her? After saying those words, Clement
had turned very courteously to him, and they had spoken
with each other. But Murray Bradshaw could not help
seeing that Myrtle had transferred her attention, at least
for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded
his arms and waited, — but he waited in vain. The hidden
attraction which drew Clement to the young girl with
whom he had passed into the Valley of the Shadow of
Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave himself
up to the fascination of her presence.
The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted
just at the moment when he was, as he thought,
about to cry checkmate and finish the first great game he
had ever played, may well be imagined. But it could not
be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege
of young ladies at parties, and had turned from talking
with one to talking with another, — that was all. Fortunately
for him the young man who had been introduced at
such a most critical moment was not one from whom he
need apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful
beyond measure to pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had
good reason for believing, retained her hold upon her early
lover, and was looking forward with bashful interest to the
time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
could get no favorable opportunity that evening to resume
his conversation at the interesting point where he left it off,
he would call the next day and bring matters to a conclusion.
He called accordingly the next morning, but was disappointed
in not seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that
night, and was suffering from a bad headache, which last
reason was her excuse for not seeing company.
He called again, the following day, and learned that
Miss Hazard had just left the city, and gone on a visit to
Oxbow Village.
| CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY. The guardian angel | |