University of Virginia Library

2. II.
PLACE AUX DAMES!

IN every town there is one young maiden
who is the universal favorite, who belongs
to all sets and is made an exception to all
family feuds, who is the confidante of all girls
and the adopted sister of all young men, up to
the time when they respectively offer themselves
to her, and again after they are rejected.
This post was filled in Oldport, in those days,
by my cousin Kate.

Born into the world with many other gifts,
this last and least definable gift of popularity
was added to complete them all. Nobody criticised
her, nobody was jealous of her, her very
rivals lent her their new music and their lovers;
and her own discarded wooers always
sought her to be a bridesmaid when they married
somebody else.

She was one of those persons who seem to
have come into the world well-dressed. There
was an atmosphere of elegance around her,
like a costume; every attitude implied a presence-chamber

or a ball-room. The girls complained
that in private theatricals no combination
of disguises could reduce Kate to the
ranks, nor give her the “make-up” of a waiting-maid.
Yet as her father was a New York
merchant of the precarious or spasmodic description,
she had been used from childhood to
the wildest fluctuations of wardrobe; — a year
of Paris dresses, — then another year spent in
making over ancient finery, that never looked
like either finery or antiquity when it came
from her magic hands. Without a particle of
vanity or fear, secure in health and good-nature
and invariable prettiness, she cared little
whether the appointed means of grace were
ancient silk or modern muslin. In her periods
of poverty, she made no secret of the necessary
devices; the other girls, of course, guessed
them, but her lovers never did, because she
always told them. There was one particular
tarlatan dress of hers which was a sort of local
institution. It was known to all her companions,
like the State House. There was a
report that she had first worn it at her christening;
the report originated with herself.
The young men knew that she was going to
the party if she could turn that pink tarlatan
once more; but they had only the vaguest impression
what a tarlatan was, and cared little
on which side it was worn, so long as Kate was
inside.

During these epochs of privation her life, in
respect to dress, was a perpetual Christmas-tree
of second-hand gifts. Wealthy aunts supplied
her with cast-off shoes of all sizes, from two
and a half up to five, and she used them all.
She was reported to have worn one straw hat
through five changes of fashion. It was averred
that, when square crowns were in vogue,
she flattened it over a tin pan, and that, when
round crowns returned, she bent it on the bed-post.
There was such a charm in her way of
adapting these treasures, that the other girls
liked to test her with new problems in the way
of millinery and dress-making; millionnaire
friends implored her to trim their hats, and
lent her their own things in order to learn how
to wear them. This applied especially to certain
rich cousins, shy and studious girls, who
adored her, and to whom society only ceased
to be alarming when the brilliant Kate took
them under her wing, and graciously accepted
a few of their newest feathers. Well might
they acquiesce, for she stood by them superbly,

and her most favored partners found no way to
her hand so sure as to dance systematically
through that staid sisterhood. Dear, sunshiny,
gracious, generous Kate! — who has ever done
justice to the charm given to this grave old
world by the presence of one free-hearted and
joyous girl?

At the time now to be described, however,
Kate's purse was well filled; and if she wore
only second-best finery, it was because she had
lent her very best to somebody else. All that
her doting father asked was to pay for her
dresses, and to see her wear them; and if her
friends wore a part of them, it only made
necessary a larger wardrobe, and more varied
and pleasurable shopping. She was as good
a manager in wealth as in poverty, wasted
nothing, took exquisite care of everything, and
saved faithfully for some one else all that was
not needed for her own pretty person.

Pretty she was throughout, from the parting
of her jet-black hair to the high instep of her
slender foot; a glancing, brilliant, brunette
beauty, with the piquant charm of perpetual
spirits, and the equipoise of a perfectly healthy
nature. She was altogether graceful, yet she
had not the fresh, free grace of her cousin

Hope, who was lithe and strong as a hawthorne
spray: Kate's was the narrower grace
of culture grown hereditary, an in-door elegance
that was born in her, and of which dancing-school
was but the natural development.
You could not picture Hope to your mind in
one position more than in another; she had
an endless variety of easy motion. When you
thought of Kate, you remembered precisely
how she sat, how she stood, and how she
walked. That was all, and it was always the
same. But is not that enough? We do not
ask of Mary Stuart's portrait that it should
represent her in more than one attitude, and
why should a living beauty need more than
two or three?

Kate was betrothed to her cousin Harry,
Hope's brother, and, though she was barely
twenty, they had seemed to appertain to each
other for a time so long that the memory of
man or maiden aunt ran not to the contrary.
She always declared, indeed, that they were
born married, and that their wedding-day
would seem like a silver wedding. Harry was
quiet, unobtrusive, and manly. He might seem
commonplace at first beside the brilliant Kate
and his more gifted sister; but thorough manhood

is never commonplace, and he was a
person to whom one could anchor. His strong,
steadfast physique was the type of his whole
nature; when he came into the room, you felt
as if a good many people had been added to
the company. He made steady progress in
his profession of the law, through sheer
worth; he never dazzled, but he led. His
type was pure Saxon, with short, curling hair,
blue eyes, and thin, fair skin, to which the
color readily mounted. Up to a certain point
he was imperturbably patient and amiable,
but, when overtaxed, was fiery and impetuous
for a single instant, and no more. It seemed
as if a sudden flash of anger went over him,
like the flash that glides along the glutinous
stem of the fraxinella, when you touch it with
a candle; the next moment it had utterly
vanished, and was forgotten as if it had never
been.

Kate's love for her lover was one of those
healthy and assured ties that often outlast
the ardors of more passionate natures. For
other temperaments it might have been inadequate;
but theirs matched perfectly, and it
was all sufficient for them. If there was
within Kate's range a more heroic and ardent

emotion than that inspired by Harry, it
was put forth toward Hope. This was her
idolatry; she always said that it was fortunate
Hope was Hal's sister, or she should have felt
it her duty to give them to each other, and
not die till the wedding was accomplished.
Harry shared this adoration to quite a reasonable
extent, for a brother; but his admiration
for Philip Malbone was one that Kate
did not quite share. Harry's quieter mood
had been dazzled from childhood by Philip,
who had always been a privileged guest in
the household. Kate's clear, penetrating, buoyant
nature had divined Phil's weaknesses, and
had sometimes laughed at them, even from her
childhood; though she did not dislike him,
for she did not dislike anybody. But Harry
was magnetized by him very much as women
were; believed him true, because he was tender,
and called him only fastidious where Kate
called him lazy.

Kate was spending that summer with her
aunt Jane, whose especial pet and pride she
was. Hope was spending there the summer
vacation of a Normal School in which she had
just become a teacher. Her father had shared
in the family ups and downs, but had finally

stayed down, while the rest had remained up.
Fortunately, his elder children were indifferent
to this, and indeed rather preferred it; it was
a tradition that Hope had expressed the wish,
when a child, that her father might lose his
property, so that she could become a teacher.
As for Harry, he infinitely preferred the drudgery
of a law office to that of a gentleman of
leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned
out, when she was left a widow, that she had
secured for herself and Emilia whatever property
remained, so that she suffered only the
delightful need of living in Europe for economy.

The elder brother and sister had alike that
fine physical vigor which New England is now
developing, just in time to save it from decay.
Hope was of Saxon type, though a shade less
blonde than her brother; she was a little taller,
and of more commanding presence, with a peculiarly
noble carriage of the shoulders. Her
brow was sometimes criticised as being a little
too full for a woman; but her nose was straight,
her mouth and teeth beautiful, and her profile
almost perfect. Her complexion had lost by
out-door life something of its delicacy, but had
gained a freshness and firmness that no sunlight

could impair. She had that wealth of
hair which young girls find the most enviable
point of beauty in each other. Hers reached
below her knees, when loosened, or else lay
coiled, in munificent braids of gold, full of
sparkling lights and contrasted shadows, upon
her queenly head.

Her eyes were much darker than her hair,
and had a way of opening naively and suddenly,
with a perfectly infantine expression, as
if she at that moment saw the sunlight for the
first time. Her long lashes were somewhat
like Emilia's, and she had the same deeply
curved eyebrows; in no other point was there
a shade of resemblance between the half-sisters.
As compared with Kate, Hope showed
a more abundant physical life; there was more
blood in her; she had ampler outlines, and
health more absolutely unvaried, for she had
yet to know the experience of a day's illness.
Kate seemed born to tread upon a Brussels
carpet, and Hope on the softer luxury of the
forest floor. Out of doors her vigor became a
sort of ecstasy, and she walked the earth with
a jubilee of the senses, such as Browning attributes
to his Saul.

This inexhaustible freshness of physical organization

seemed to open the windows of
her soul, and make for her a new heaven
and earth every day. It gave also a peculiar
and almost embarrassing directness to
her mental processes, and suggested in them
a sort of final and absolute value, as if truth
had for the first time found a perfectly translucent
medium. It was not so much that
she said rare things, but her very silence was
eloquent, and there was a great deal of it.
Her girlhood had in it a certain dignity as of a
virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty sympathies
and her healthy energy made her at
home in daily life, and in a democratic society.
To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of
existence, like light or air. Kate's nature was
limited; part of her graceful equipoise was
narrowness. Hope was capable of far more
self-abandonment to a controlling emotion,
and, if she ever erred, would err more widely,
for it would be because the whole power of
her conscience was misdirected. “Once let
her take wrong for right,” said Aunt Jane,
“and stop her if you can; these born saints
give a great deal more trouble than children
of this world, like my Kate.” Yet in daily
life Hope yielded to her cousin nine times out
of ten; but the tenth time was the key to the
situation. Hope loved Kate devotedly; but
Kate believed in her as the hunted fugitive
believes in the north star.

To these maidens, thus united, came Emilia
home from Europe. The father of Herry and
Hope had been lured into a second marriage
with Emilia's mother, a charming and unscrupulous
woman, born with an American body
and a French soul. She having once won him
to Paris, held him there life-long, and kept her
step-children at a safe distance. She arranged
that, even after her own death, her daughter
should still remain abroad for education; nor
was Emilia ordered back until she brought
down some scandal by a romantic attempt
to elope from boarding-school with a Swiss
servant. It was by weaning her heart from
this man that Philip Malbone had earned the
thanks of the whole household during his
hasty flight through Europe. He possessed
some skill in withdrawing the female heart
from an undesirable attachment, though it was
apt to be done by substituting another. It
was fortunate that, in this case, no fears could
be entertained. Since his engagement Philip
had not permitted himself so much as a flirtation;

he and Hope were to be married soon;
he loved and admired her heartily, and had an
indifference to her want of fortune that was
quite amazing, when we consider that he had
a fortune of his own.