 | CHAPTER III.
THREE MEN? What can she do? |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
THREE MEN?
WHILE Mrs. Allen was planning the social
pyrotechnics that should dazzle the fashionable
world, Edith and Zell were working off their
exuberant spirits in the manner described in the
last chapter, and which was an natural to their city-bred
feet as a wild romp to a country girl.
The brilliant notes of the piano and the rustle
of their silks had rendered them oblivious of the
fact that the door-bell had rung twice, and that
three gentlemen were peering curiously through the
half open door. They were evidently at home as
frequent and favored visitors, and had motioned
the old colored waiter not to announce them, and
he reluctantly obeyed.
For a moment they feasted their eyes on the
scene as the two girls, with twining arms and many
innovations on the regular step, whirled through
the rooms, and then Zell's quick eye detected
them.
Pouncing down upon the eldest gentleman of
the party, she dragged him from his ambush, while
the others also entered. One who was quite young
approached the blushing, panting Edith with an
almost boyish confidence of manner, as if assured
was verging toward middle age, quietly glided to
the piano and gave his hand to Laura, who greeted
him with a cordiality scarcely to be expected from
so stately a young lady.
The laws of affinity and selection had evidently
been developed here, and as the reader must surmise,
long previous acquaintance had led to the
present easy and intimate relations.
“What do you mean,” cried Zell, dragging
under the gaslight her cavalier, who assumed much
penitence and fear, “by thus rudely and abruptly
breaking in upon the retirement of three secluded
females?”
“At their devotions,” added the cynical voice
of the gentleman at the piano, who was no other
than Mr. Goulden, Laura's admirer.
Zell's attendant threw himself in the attitude
of a suppliant and said deprecatingly,—
“Nay, but we are astronomers.”
“That's a fib, and not a very white one either,”
she retorted, “I don't believe you ever look towards
heaven for anything.”
“What need of looking thither for heavenly
bodies,” he replied in a low, meaning tone, regarding
with undisguised admiration her glowing cheeks.
“Moreover I don't believe in telescopic distances,”
he continued, with a half-made motion to put his
arm around her waist.
“Come,” she said, pirouetting out of his reach,
to-day.”
“Would that you might never be a day older
in appearance and feelings.”
“Are you willing to leave me so far behind?”
she asked with some maliciousness.
“No, but you would make me a boy again. If
old Ponce de Leon had met a Miss Zell, he would
soon have forsaken the swamps and alligators of
Florida.”
“O what a watery, scaly compliment. Preferred
to swamps and alligators! Who would
have believed it?”
“I am not blind to your pretty wilful blindness.
You know I likened you to something too divine
and precious to be found on earth.”
“Which is still true in the carrying out of your
marvellously mixed metaphors. I must lend you
my rhetoric book. But as your meaning dawns on
me, I see that you are symbolized by old Ponce.
I shall look in the history for the age of the ancient
Spaniard to-morrow and then I shall know how old
you are, a thing I could never find out.”
As with little jets of silvery laughter and butterfly
motion she hovered round him, the very embodiment
of life and beautiful youth, she would
have made, to an artist's eye, a very true idealization
of the far-famed mythical fountain.
And yet as a moment later she confidingly took
his arm and strolled toward the library, it was evident
that all her flutter and hesitancy, her seeming
some bright tropical bird fascinated by a remorseless
serpent whose intent eyes and deadly purpose
are creating a spell that cannot be resisted.
Mr. Van Dam, upon whose arm she was leaning,
was one of the worst products of artificial metropolitan
life. He had inherited a name which
ancestry had rendered honorable, but which he to
the utmost dishonored, and yet so adroitly, so
shrewdly respecting fashion's code, though shunning
nothing wrong, that it still gave him the entrée
into the gilded homes of those who call themselves,
“the best society.”
True, it was whispered that he was rather fast,
that he played heavily and a trifle too successfully,
and that he lived the life of anything but a saint
at his luxurious rooms. “But then,” continued
society, openly and complaisantly, “he is so fine
looking, so courtly and polished, so well-connected,
and what is still more to the point, my dear, he is
reputed to be immensely wealthy, so we must not
heed these rumors. After all it is the way of these
young men of the world.”
Thus “the best society” that would have
politely frozen out of its parlors the Chevalier
Bayard, “sans peur et sans reproache,” had he not
appeared in the latest style, with golden fame
rather than golden spurs, welcomed Mr. Van Dam.
Indeed not a few forced exotic belles, who had prematurely
developed in the hot house atmosphere
of wealth and extravagance, regarded him as a
mystery in which he shrouded his evil life, made
him all the more fascinating. He was past the
prime of life, though exceedingly well preserved,
for he was one of those cool, deliberate votaries of
pleasure that reduce amusement to a science, and
carefully shun all injurious excess. While exceedingly
deferential toward the sex in general, and
bestowing compliments and attentions as adroitly
as a financier would place his money, he at the
same time permitted the impression to grow that
he was extremely fastidious in his taste, and had
never married because it had never been his fortune
to meet the faultless being who could fill his
exacting eyes. Any special and continued admiration
on his part therefore made its recipient an
object of distinction and envy to very many in the
unreal world in which he glided serpent-like, rather
than moved as a man. To morbid unhealthful
minds the rumors of his evil deeds became piquant
eccentricities, and the whispers of the oriental
orgies that were said to take place in his bachelor
apartments made him an object of a curious interest,
and many sighed for the opportunity of reforming
so distinguished a sybarite.
On Edith's entrance into society he had been
much impressed by her beauty, and had gradually
grown quite attentive, equally attracted by her
father's wealth. But she, though with no clear
perception of his character, and with no higher
moral standard than her set, instinctively shrank
were too much alike for that mysterious attraction
that so often occurs between opposites. Not that
she had his unnatural depravity, but like him she
was shrewd, practical, resolute, and controlled more
by her judgment than impulses. Her vanity, of
which she had no little share, led her to accept his
attentions to a certain point, but the keen man of
the world soon saw that his “little game,” as in
his own vernacular he styled it, would not be successful,
and he was the last one to sigh in vain or
mope an hour in love-lorn melancholy. While
ceasing to press his suit, he remained a frequent
and familiar visitor at the house, and thus his
attention was drawn to Zell, who, though young,
had developed early in the stimulating atmosphere
in which she lived. At first he petted and played
with her as a child, as she wilfully flitted in and
out of the parlors, whether her sisters wanted her
or not. He continually brought her bonbons and
like fanciful trifles, till at last, in jest, the family
called him Zell's “ancient beau.”
But during the past year it dawned on him
that the child he petted on account of her beauty
and sprightliness was rapidly becoming a brilliant
woman, who would make a wife far more to his
taste than her equally beautiful but matter-of-fact
sister. Therefore he warily, so as not to alarm
the jealous father, but with all the subtle skill of
which he was master, sought to win her affections,
she knew what way she wanted.
For Zell this unscrupulous man had a peculiar
fascination. He petted and flattered her to her
heart's content, and thus made her the envy of her
young acquaintances, which was incense indeed to
her vain little soul. He never lectured or preached
to her on account of her follies and nonsense, as
her elderly friends usually did, but gave to her wild,
impulsive moods free rein. Where a true friend
would have cautioned and curbed, he applauded
and incited, causing Zell to mistake extravagance
in language and boldness in manner for spirit and
brilliancy. Laura and Edith often remonstrated
with her, but she did not heed them. Indeed, she
feared no one save her father, and Mr. Van Dam
was propriety itself when he was present, which
was but seldom. Between his business and club,
and Mrs. Allen's nerves, the girls were left mainly
to themselves.
What wonder that there are so many shipwrecks,
when young, heedless, inexperienced hands
must steer, unguided, through the most perilous
and treacherous of seas?
Mr. Allen's elegant costly home was literally
an unguarded fold, many a laborer, living in a tenement
house, doing more to shield his daughters
from the evil of the world.
To Mr. Van Dam, Zell was a perfect prize.
Though he had sipped at the cup of pleasure so
leisurely and systematically, he was getting down
satiety burdening him with its leaden weight. But
as the child he petted developed daily into a woman,
he became interested, then fascinated by the
process. Her beauty was so brilliant, her excessive
sprightliness so contagious, that he felt his
sluggish pulses stir and tingle with excitement the
moment he came into her presence. Her wild
varying moods kept him constantly on the qui vive,
and he would say in confidence to one of his intimate
cronies,—
“The point is, Hal, she is such a spicy, piquant
contrast to the insipid society girls, who have no
more individuality than fashion blocks in Broadway
windows.”
He liked the kittenish young creature all the
more because her repartee was often a little cutting.
If she had always struck him with a velvet paw,
the thing would have grown monotonous, but he
occasionally got a scratch that made him wince,
cool and brazen as he was. But after all, he daily
saw that he was gaining power over her, and the
manner in which the frank-hearted girl took his
arm and leaned upon it, spoke volumes to the experienced
man. While he habitually wore a mask,
Zell could conceal nothing, and across her April
face flitted her innermost thoughts.
If she had had a mother, she might, even in the
wilderness of earth, have become a blossom fit for
heavenly gardens, but as it was, her wayward nature
so full of dangerous beauty, was left to run wild.
Edith was beginning to be troubled at Zell's
intimacy with Mr. Van Dam, and had conceived a
growing suspicion and dislike for him. As for
Laura, the eldest, she was like her mother, too
much wrapped up in herself, to have many
thoughts for any one else, and they all regarded
Zell as a mere child still. Mr. Allen, who would
have been very anxious had Zell been receiving
the attentions of some penniless young clerk or artist,
laughed at her “flirtation with old Van Dam”
as an eminently safe affair.
But on the present evening her sisters were too
much occupied with their own friends to give Zell
or her dangerous admirer much attention. As yet
no formal engagement had bound any of them, but
an intimacy and mutual liking tending to such a
result, was rapidly growing.
In Edith's case the attraction of contrasts was
again shown. Augustus Elliot, the youth who
had approached her with such confidence and
grace, was quite as stylish a personage as herself,
and that was saying a good deal. But every line
of his full handsome face, as well as the expression
of his light blue eyes, showed that she had more
decision in her little finger than he in the whole of
his luxurious nature. Self-pleasing, self-indulgence,
good-natured vanity were unmistakably his characteristics.
To yield, not for the good of others, but
because not strong enough to stand sturdily alone,
was the law of his being. If he could ever have
been kept under the influence of good and stronger
kind heart and good impulses into something like
principle, he might have had a safe and creditable
career. But he was the idol of a foolish, fashionable
mother, and the pet of two or three sisters
who were empty-brained enough to think their
handsome brother the perfection of mankind; and
by eye, manner, and often the plainest words, they
told him as much, and he had at last come to
believe them. Why should they not? He was
faultless in his own dress, faultless in his criticism
of a lady's dress, taking the prevailing fashion as
the standard. He was perfectly versed in the
polite slang of the day. He scented and announced
the slightest change in the mode afar off, so that
his elegant sisters could appear on the Avenue in
advance of the other fashion-plates. As they
sailed away on a sunny afternoon in their gorgeous
plumage, the envy of many a competing belle, they
would say,—
“Isn't he a duck of a brother to give us a hint
of a change so early. After all there is no eye or
taste like that of man when once perfected.”
And then they knew him to be equally au fait
on the flavor of wines, the points of horses, the
merits of every watering place and all the other
lore which in their world gave pre-eminence. They
had been educated to have no other ideal of manhood,
and if an earnest, straight-forward man, with
a purpose, had spoken out before them, they would
have regarded him as an uncouth monster.
Notwithstanding all his vanity, “Gus,” as he
was familiarly called, was a very weak man, and
though he would not acknowledge it, even to himself,
instinctively recognized the fact. He continually
attached himself to strong, resolute natures,
and where it was adroitly done, could easily be
made a tool of. He took a great fancy to Edith
from the first hour of their acquaintance, and she
soon obtained a strong influence over him. She
as instinctively detected his yielding disposition,
and liked him the better for it, while his contagious
good-nature and abundant supply of society
talk, made him a general favorite.
When every one whispered, “What a handsome
couple they would make,” and she found him so
looked up to and quoted in the fashionable world,
she began to entertain quite an admiration as well
as liking for him, though she saw more and more
clearly that there was nothing in him that she
could lean upon.
Gus' parents, who knew that the Allens were
immensely wealthy, urged on the match, but Mr.
Allen, aware that the Elliots were living to the extent
of their means, discouraged it, plainly telling
Edith his reasons.
“But,” said Edith, at the same time showing
her heart in the practical suggestion, “could not
Gus go into business himself?”
“The worst thing he could do,” said the keen
Mr. Allen. “He has tried it a few times, I have
learned, but has not one business qualification. He
sports. His mother and sisters have spoiled him.
He is nothing but a society man. Mr. Elliot has
not a word to say at home. His business is to make
money for them to spend, and a tough time he has
to keep up with them. You girls must marry men
who can take care of you, unless you wish to support
your husbands.”
Mr. Allen's verdict was true, and Edith felt that
it was. When a boy, Gus could get out of lessons
by running to his mother with the plea of headache
or any trifle, and in youth he had escaped
business in like manner. His father had tried him
a few times in his office, but was soon glad to fall
in with his wife's opinion, that her son “had too
much spirit and refinement for plodding humdrum
business, that he was a born gentleman and suited
only to elegant leisure,” and as his gentleman son
only did mischief down-town, the poor over-worked
father was glad to have him out of the way, for he
with difficulty made both ends meet, as it was.
Hoping he would do better with strangers, he had,
by personal influence, procured him situations
elsewhere, but between the mother's weakness and
the young man's confirmed habits of idleness, it always
ended by Gus saying to his employers,—
“I'm going off on a little trip—by-by,” at
which they gave a sigh of relief. It had at last become
a recognized fact, that Gus must marry an
heiress, this being about the only way for so fine a
gentleman to achieve the fortune that he could not
in the gilded mirror that ornamented his
dressing-room, he felt that a wise selection would
be his only difficulty, and though an heiress is
something of a rara avis, he sternly resolved to cage
one with such heavy golden plumage that even his
mother, whom no one satisfied save himself, would
give a sigh of perfect content. When at last he met
Edith Allen, it seemed as if inclination might happily
blend with his lofty sense of duty, and he soon
became Edith's devoted and favored attendant.
And yet, as we have seen, our heroine was not the
sentimental style of girl that falls hopelessly and
helplessly in love with a man for some occult reason,
not even known to herself, and who mopes and
pines till she is permitted to marry him, be he fool,
villain or saint. Edith was fully capable of appreciating
and weighing her father's words, and under
their influence about decided to chill her handsome
but helpless admirer into a mere passing acquaintance;
but when he next appeared before her in his
uniform, as an officer in one of the “crack” city
regiments, her eyes, taste, and vanity, and somehow
her heart, so pleaded for him that, so far
from being an icicle, she smiled on him like a July
sun.
But whenever he sought to press his suit into
something definite, she evaded and shunned the
point, as only a feminine diplomatist can. In fact,
Gus, on account of his vanity, was not a very urgent
suitor, as the idea of final refusal was preposterous.
Meanwhile Edith for once in her life was playing
the role of Micawber, and “waiting for something
to turn up.” And something had, for this trip to
Europe would put time and space between them,
and gently cure both of their folly, as she deemed
it. Folly! She did not realize that Gus regarded
himself as acting on sound business principles, and
a strong sense of duty, as well as obeying the impulses
of what heart he had. The sweet approval
of conscience and judgment attended his action,
while both condemned her.
As Gus approached this evening, she felt a pang
of commiseration that not only her father's and
her own disapproval, but soon the briny ocean
would be between them, and she was unusually
kind. She decided to play with her poor little
mouse till the last, and then let absence remedy all.
Her mind was quick, if not very profound.
As Mr. Goulden leaned across the corner of
the piano, and paid the blushing Laura some
delicate compliments, one could not but think of
an adroit financier, skilfully placing some money.
There was nothing ardent, nothing incoherent and
lover-like, in his carefully modulated tones, and
nicely selected words that might mean much or
little as he might afterwards decide. Mr. Goulden
always knew what he was about, as truly in a
lady's boudoir, as in Wall street. The stately, elegant
Laura suited his tastes, her father's financial
status had suited him also. But he, who, through
was aware that Mr. Allen had engaged in a very
heavy speculation, which, though promising well at
the time, might, by some unexpected turn of the
wheel, wear a very different aspect. He would see
that game through before proceeding with his own,
and in the meantime, by judicious attention, hold
Laura well in hand.
In that brilliantly lighted parlor none of these
currents and counter currents were apparent on
the surface. That was like the ripple and sparkle
of a summer sea in the sunlight. Every year
teaches us what is hidden under the fair but
treacherous seeming of life.
The young ladies were now satisfied with the
company they had, and the gentlemen, as can
well be understood, wished no farther additions.
Therefore they agreed to retire to the library for a
game of cards.
“Hannibal,” said Edith, summoning the portentous
colored factotum who presided over the front
door and dining-room, “if any one calls, say we
are out or engaged.”
That solemn dignitary bowed as low as his stiff
white collar would permit, but soliloquized,—
“I guess I is sumpen too black to tell a white
lie, so I'se say dey is engaged.”
As the ladies swept away, leaning heavily on
the arms of their favored gallants, he added, with
a slight grin illumining the gravity of his face, “It
looks mighty like it.”
| CHAPTER III.
THREE MEN? What can she do? | |