University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

A few days after my arrival, some friends dined with Mrs.
Somers. The daughters of a Senator, as Ann informed me,
and an Ex-Governor, or I should not have known this fact, for
I was not introduced. The dinner was elaborate, and Desmond
did the honors. I sat next him, and when he asked me what
wine I would have, I promptly offered him the glass intended
for water. He adroitly rectified my mistake, exchanging
smiles with his mother, which of course cost me my composure,
and my appetite. But their place was supplied by an ample
sense of insignficance, which he might have discovered, for he
did not glance my way again, nor speak to me. With the walnuts,
one of ladies asked for the baby.

Mrs. Somers made a sign to Desmond, who pulled the bell rope
—mildly this time. An elderly woman instantly appeared with
a child a few months old, puny and anxious-looking. Mrs. Somers
took it from her, and placed it on the table; it tottered and
nodded to the chirrups of the guests. Ben, from the opposite
side of the table, addressed me by a look, which enlightened me.
His voyage to India was useless, as the property would
stand for twenty-one years more, lacking some months, unless
Providence interposed. Adelaide was oblivious of the child;
but Desmond thumped his glass on the mahogany to attract it,
for its energies were absorbed in swallowing its fists, and fretfully
crying. When Murphy announced coffee in the parlor,
the nurse took it away; and after coffee and sponge cake were

served, the visiters drove off. That afternoon some friends of
Adelaide called, to whom she introduced me as “cousin.”
She gave me graphic descriptions of them, after their departure.
One had achieved greatness by spending her winters in
Washington, and contracting a friendship with John C. Calhoun.
Another was an artist, who had painted an ideal head
of her ancestor, Sir Roger de Roger, not he who had arrived
some years ago, as a weaver from Glasgow, but the one who had
remained on the family estate. A third reviewed books, and
collected autographs.

The next afternoon one of the Miss Hiticutts from across the
way came, in a splendid camel's-hair shawl and a shabby
dress. “How is Mr. Somers?” she asked. “He is such a
martyr.”

Here Mrs. Somers entered. “My dear Bellevue, you are
worn out with your devotion to him; when have you taken the
air?” She did not wait for a reply, but addressed Adelaide
with: “This is your young friend, and where is my favorite,
Mr. Ben, and little Miss Ann? Have you anything new? I
went down to Harris yesterday to tell her she must sweep
away her old trash of a circulating library, and begin with the
New Regime of Novels, which threatens to overwhelm us.”

Adelaide talked slowly at first, and then soared into a region,
where I had never seen a woman—an intellectual one.
Miss Hiticutt followed her, and I experienced a new pleasure.
Mrs. Somers was silent, but she listened with respect to Miss
Hiticutt, for she was of the real Belem azure in blood, as well
as in brain. Besides, she was rich, and would never marry.
It was a Pickersgill hallucination to be attentive to people
who had legacies in their power. Mrs. Somers had a bequested
fortune already, in hair rings, and silver ware. She appeared
to listen to Adelaide, but her eyes wandered over to me with
speculation askant in them. Adelaide was so full of esprit that
I was again smitten with my inferiority; from this time I felt
a respect for her, which never declined, although she married
an Englishman, who, too choleric to live in America, took her
to Florence, where they settled with their own towels and silver,
and are likely to remain, for her heart is too narrow to
comprise any further interest in Belem.

Miss Hiticutt chatted herself out, giving us an invitation to
tea, for any day, including Ben, and Miss Ann, who had not
been visible since breakfast.

April rains kept us in doors for several days. Ann refused
to go to school. She must have a holiday; besides, pa needed

her; she alone could take care of him, after all. Her mother
said that she must go.

“Who can make me, mum?”

Desmond ordered the coach for her. When it was ready he
put her in it, seated himself beside her, with provoking nonchalance,
and carried her to school. Murphy, with his velvet-banded
hat, left her satchel at the door, with a ceremonious
air, which made Ann slap his cheek, and call him an old grimalkin.
But she was obliged to walk home in the rain, after
waiting an hour, for him to come back.

Mr. Somers hobbled about his room, with the help of his
cane, and said that he should be out soon, and requested Adelaide
to put in order some book shelves that were in the third
story, for he wanted to read without confusion. We went there
together, and sorted some odd volumes; piles of Unitarian sermons,
bound magazines, political works, and a heap of histories.
Ben found a seat on a bunch of books, pleased to see us
together.

“This is a horrid hole,” he said. “I have not been up in
this floor for ages. How do the shelves look?”

A hiccough near us, caused us to look towards the door.

“It is only Des, in his usual afternoon trim,” said Ben.

She nodded.

He pushed open the door, thrusting in his head. “What
the hell are you doing here? This region is sacred to Chaos
and old Night;” striking the panels, first one, and then the
other, with the tassels of his dressing-gown. No one answered
him. Adelaide counted a row of books, and Ben whistled.

“Damn you, Ben,” he said in a languid voice; “you never
seem bored. Curse you all. I hate ye, especially that she-Calmuck
yonder—that Siberian-steppe-natured, Malachite-hearted
girl, our sister”

“Oh come away, Mr. Desmond. What are the poor things
doing, that you should harry them?” and the woman who had
brought in the baby the day of the dinner, laid her hands on
him, and pulled him away.

“Sarah will never give him up,” said Ben.

“She swears there is good in him. I think he is a wretch,”
turning over the leaves of a book with her beautiful hand;
such a hand as I had just seen beating the door—such a hand
as clasped its fellow in Ben's hair. Adelaide was not embarrassed
at my presence. She neither sought, nor avoided my
look. But Ben said, “You are thinking.”

“Is she?” And Adelaide raised her eyes.

“You are all so much alike,” I said.

“You are right,” she answered seriously. “Our grandfather”—

“Confound him!” broke in Ben. “I wish he had never
been born. Are you proud, Adde, of being like the Pickersgills?
But I know you are. Remember that the part of us
which is Pickersgill, hates its like. I am off; I am going to
walk.”

Adelaide coolly said, after he had gone, that he was very visionary:
predicting changes that could not be, and determined
to bring them about.

“Why did he bring me here?” I asked, as if I were asking
in a dream.

“Ben's hospitality is genuine. He is like pa. Besides, you
are related to us—on the Somers' side, and are the first visitor
we ever saw, outside of mother's connection. Do you not know,
too, that Ben's friendship is very sincere—very strong?”

“I begin to comprehend the Pickersgills,” I remarked in
my dream. “How words with any meaning glance off, when
addressed to them. How impossible it is to return the impression
they give. How incapable they are of appreciating what
they cannot appropriate to the use of their idiosyncrasies.”

She gazed at me, as if she heard an abstract subject discussed,
with a slight interest in her black eyes.

“Are they vicious to the death?” I went on in my dream.
`It is not fair—their overpowering personality—it is not fair
to others. It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious.”

“I am ignorant of Ethical Philosophy.”

“Miss Somers,” said Murphy knocking, “if Major Millard
is below?”

“I am coming.”

She smiled when she looked at me again. I stared at her
with a singular feeling. Had I touched her, or had I made a
fool of myself?

“There is some nice gingerbread in the closet. Sha'nt I
get you a piece?”

I fell out of my dream.

“Major Millard is an old beau. Come down, and captivate
him. He likes fair women.”

Declining the gingerbread, I accepted the Major. He was
an old gentleman, in a good deal of highly starched linen,
amusing himself by teazing Ann, who liked it, and paid him in
impertinence. Adelaide played chess with him. Desmond
sauntered in about nine, threw himself into a chair behind

the sofa where I sat, and swung his arm over the back. The
chessboard was put aside, and a gossipy conversation was
started, which included Mrs. Somers, who was on a sofa across
the room, but he did not join in it. I watched Mrs. Somers,
as her fingers moved with her Berlin knitting, feeling more
composed and settled as to my identity, in spite of my late
outburst, than I had felt at any moment since my arrival in
Belem. They were laughing at a funny description, which Ann
was giving of a meeting she had witnessed between Miss Hiticutt
and Mr. Pearsall, a gentleman lately arrived from China,
after a twenty years' residence, with several lacks of rupees.
Her delineation of Miss Hiticutt, who attempted to appear as
she had twenty years before, was excellent. Ben, who was
rolling and unrolling his mother's yarn, laughed till the tears
ran, but Major Millard looked uneasy, as if he expected to be
served a-la-Hiticutt by the satirical Ann after his departure.
Before the laughter subsided, I heard a low voice at my ear,
and felt a slight touch from the tip of a finger on my cheek.

“How came those scars?”

I brushed my cheek with my handkerchief, and answered,

“I got them in battle.”

He left his chair, and walked slowly through the room into
the dark front parlor. Major Millard took leave, and was followed
by Mrs. Somers and Ann, neither of whom returned. As
Ben stretched himself on his sofa with an air of relief, Desmond
emerged from the dark, and stood behind him, leaning
against a column, with his hands in his coat pockets, and his
eyes searchingly fixed upon me. Ben turning his head in my
direction, sprang up so suddenly that I started; but Desmond's
eyes did not move till Ben confronted him, then he gave him
a haughty smile, and begged him to take his repose again.

I went to the piano and ran my fingers over the keys.

“Do you play? Can you sing?” asked Adelaide, rousing
herself.

“Yes.”

“Do sing. I never talk music; but I like it.”

“Some old song,” said Ben.

Singing

I became conscious that Desmond was near me. With a perfectly
pure voice he joined in the song:

As the tones of his voice floated through the room, I saw
the white sea-birds flashing between the blue deeps of our
summer sea and sky, and the dark rocks that rose and dipped
in the murmuring waves.