First harvests

ARTHUR was thinking of getting up a little dinner for some of his most worthy friends and most valuable acquaintances, and he was sitting in the reading room of his favorite club, trying to make up his list. There was a reception at the Livingstones that afternoon, and he proposed going; but this deuce of a list took much more time than one would suppose possible. He threw impatiently into the waste-paper basket the third tentative sketch which had proved impossible, and looked at his watch. The cards said half-past three—“to meet Miss Holyoke”—it was indeed the first time Gracie was to appear out of her deep mourning.

Arthur looked at his watch. It was after three already. He had thought of going early, before the people came; however, he would make one attempt more, and meantime ring and order the cab.

John Haviland—he must come of course—he was the man he really esteemed most, of all the men he knew. But Birmingham did not like Haviland—and Arthur could not possibly do without the earl—well, so much the worse for his lordship; they could be put at opposite ends of the table. So Haviland went in. Then there was Van Kull and Charlie Townley; there had been some trouble, about a woman, between these two men, and they were not upon the best of terms. But then Arthur particularly wanted Van Kull; his presence at a stag-party was sure to give it just the cachet that it needed, and Charlie was by no means so popular, among the men. After all, he could not be forever deferring to his friends; he would tell Charlie who was coming, and if he didn’t like it, he could stay away. Besides, the dinner was but an impromptu affair, gotten up for that very evening; at least, the invitations were to be sent out then, though Arthur had schemed about it for several days; and they might not half of them be disengaged. He had spoken to Birmingham already; and he had promised to come. Caryl Wemyss—there was another man. Him, at least, he would cut; for he disliked him thoroughly. But, after all, Wemyss was a great card; he affected to look down on young men, and it would be quite a social triumph for him to get him. (It is difficult perhaps for us, who have seen this celebrated personage from the inside, to realize what a figurehead he had made himself in that portion of American society which has aspirations beyond the ocean.) Yet it would give him the keenest pleasure to leave this man out for once, more so than to put in all the others; for he knew that Wemyss would like to go. Which was the greatest pleasure—ambition or revenge?

A servant came up just here, and whispered that Mr. Holyoke’s cab was ready. “Tell him to wait,” said Arthur, impatiently; and he admitted Mr. Wemyss, with a sigh, to his list. Who next? There was Lucie Gower, of course; everyone liked Lucie; and Arthur wrote the name, this time with a sigh of relief. Then there was Lionel Derwent. He himself liked him very much.—But confound it, no; Van Kull and Birmingham would leave the room if that self-assertive, carelessly-dressed radical were of the party. Who else was there? Mr. Tamms? Arthur was anxious enough to get on in his business, and had even thought of his angular employer at first. But it really would not do; that was a trifle too much of the shop; he could ask him alone some time, to Coney Island. The list would do as it was: the earl, Wemyss, Van Kull, Gower, Townley and Haviland.

He looked at his watch again; it was after four, and little Gussie Mortimer, that dried-up old beau, would be sure to be there by this time; he always went first, to get his fine work in with the very youngest girls, while the coast was clear. There was no use seeing Gracie with Gussie Mortimer. He might as well write the notes and get them off; some of the men he could see at the Livingstones, and Birmingham he was sure of, as that gentleman had lately been accepting his hospitality at the Hill-and-Dale Club, and he had asked him yesterday.

But Jimmy De Witt came in just then, and began to talk; it was nice to be clapped on the shoulder by him, for he was very rich, in the right of his wife, and given to entertaining. An enviable fellow, popular, a great athlete, with a rich and pretty wife, who did not look much to his comings in and goings out, having far too good a time herself for that. It will be seen that Arthur’s ideas had changed a little from his poetry days; but what would you have? He had been studying les moyens de parvenir since then. New York life is not a lyric, nor yet an epic, or we had not called this book a satire. Before he knew it, Arthur had asked him to dinner also, and Tony Duval; and then remembered that the latter always cut John Haviland. But everything seemed to go wrong that afternoon; the very de’il was in it. Derwent came in too, and asked him if he was not going to the Livingstones. Arthur answered irritably; and felt glad he had not invited him. He should go, he said, if he got time. So, that we may not miss the kettledrum ourselves, perhaps we had better accompany Derwent.

For Gracie has long been wondering why Arthur has not come; she has looked forward to her “coming out” chiefly that she might see our hero every day once more. Derwent goes to her at once. “I have just left a friend of yours lamenting that he cannot get here sooner,” says he. “Holyoke was positively savage that he was kept so long down town.” It was a white lie, I know; yet few men would have been at the pains to tell it. And Gracie smiles once more; and the burly, blond-bearded man stays by her, like some comforting, protecting power. But he seems destined to annoy his friends that afternoon; for Charlie Townley finds him near by, too, and with quite other feelings. Charlie was there early enough, you may be sure; and he is sitting with pretty Mamie Livingstone on a sofa just behind them. And Birmingham, I fear, is cursing Derwent too; such a knack have fanatics of making themselves disagreeable! For every time he makes a pretty compliment to Miss Farnum—and pretty compliments are slow and heavy things for our peer of the realm to struggle with—it seems as if his beautiful companion caught Derwent’s eye. And the beauty is, even to the Briton’s eye, a bit unconscious of his fine speeches; and looks about her as if she too were looking for some other swain. Only Mrs. Gower and Wemyss seem to have escaped; but they are sitting by a certain screen in the tea-room and fancy themselves unseen; so they are, indeed, save by the eyes of some old dowagers—the same who had called upon her the day of the drive—barbed by a touch of malice to a keener sight than even “that damned adventurer’s,” as Birmingham calls him. But Pussie De Witt is there, in a gorgeous dress her novel matronhood permits her, perfectly happy yet; and Kill Van Kull, her partner, manages to get his amusement out of all the world and everywheres.

Then Derwent takes his seat by Mamie, calmly turning Charlie’s flank. So the Wall Street knight has to retreat; and Derwent flirts most desperately, so that her little head—heart—what shall I say? is tickled. And it is very late when Arthur comes, and he finds that Gracie has gone up-stairs with a headache; so that he is angrier than ever.

But the dinner that night is a great success. Everybody came—except Van Kull, which is, indeed, a little of a disappointment—and the wines and cooking are most excellent. A great success, that is, until Wemyss, most unfortunately, began to talk of American families. Some one said something about Kitty Farnum, and what a fine woman she was, and what a pity it was that her people was so ordinary. “Pooh!” says his lordship, “all your Yankee families are just alike.”

“Without impugning Birmingham’s knowledge of American families,” says Wemyss, thinking of his own, “I think I may submit that there are differences. Take Mrs. Gower, for instance, Mrs. Levison Gower, I mean—I think that is a family name not unknown in England, and blood shows itself in every line of her face, and, in every motion of her figure, breeding.” Wemyss never forgets his polished periods, even in the heat of argument. “Or take,” he goes on, “Miss Holyoke, whom we saw to-day, she is perhaps even a better example of what I mean. She has not perhaps much style; she is countrified, if you like—but she comes of the best old Massachusetts stock, and I submit there is no older blood in the England of to-day than hers.”

“Oh, come, now, I say,” says his lordship, “you don’t mean to set up that little filly against us? That’s the sort of thing our governesses are in England.”

It is a little hard for Arthur to sit by and hear this; but he remembers that Birmingham is the guest of the evening and keeps silent. But Haviland takes it up. “If that is true, Lord Birmingham, I congratulate you upon your governess’s breeding; and am only sorry that its lessons are so soon forgotten.”

“I think, sir; you should remember the lady is a cousin of our host,” adds Lucie Gower, pluckily.

“Damn it, man,” cries Birmingham, “we all think so in England. Do you suppose the prince cares a curse for your shop-keeping distinctions? As much as I do for Jess the farrier’s daughter and Nell the draper’s wife in my county town. He only takes up one Yankee woman after another because they’re easier than the women that he’s used to. That’s why your Buffalo Bills get to the Queen’s levees as well as your poker Schencks—we might as well marry a Chicago pork man’s pretty daughter as any Yankee Boston professor’s—if she’s got the money and the looks.”

“And damn it, sir,” cries little Lucie Gower, “I tell you that if you had spoken but just now of my wife as you did of poor Miss Holyoke, I’d have shied this bottle at your head.”

Gower looks fierce, as he stands up, grasping his decanter; and Charlie Townley interposes to pour oil on troubled waters. “Sit down, Lucie,” says he, “I’ve no doubt all our ancestors were no better than they should be; Lord Birmingham’s own included.” With which American reflection, and something in the ludicrousness of Gower’s gentle nickname, the altercation passes for the time. Birmingham, being a bit of a coward, is brought to apologize; “and perhaps,” adds Charlie, “Lord B. has just been touched upon a tender point.” All laugh at this, save Birmingham, who blushes red and angrily. But John has said nothing, and is twirling his mustache grimly.

Meantime the wine circulates again; and the earl, who has already taken too much, takes a little more.

And every man has had some little irritation on that unfortunate day; poor Arthur, who expected so much from his little dinner! For Arthur has been thinking now of Gracie, and there is some uneasy feeling on his mind he does not seek to analyze. Though, indeed, it was by her wish that they had never been engaged.

No small talk seems to be quite ready; and Birmingham goes on. “Of course, it’s all very well for you fellows to talk,” says he, as if he meant to be amicable, “and I’m sorry that I said what I did. But you must all know well enough that it’s ridiculous for Americans to talk of family. Why, the country was settled by the very scum and refuse of Old England; and all your ancestors were either thieves, or slaves, or prostitutes and domestic servants shipped out here by the carload——”

He stammers a moment; for John Haviland, eying him calmly, as one might eye some servant seeking for a place, rises, folds his napkin with great deliberation, and stalks out of the room. Gower follows him, assuring the Englishman first, with great particularity, that “he is a confounded blackguard and knows where he may find him.” With which grandiloquent speech, a little out of date perhaps, the other five are left to continue their instructive conversation. Arthur is a little pale, but Charlie Townley, when they have fairly left the room, breaks into a roar of laughter, and Tony Duval seems to think it all good fun; his grandfather, a French barber, had married a Paris grisette, and both had come to America to make their fortunes.

“That’s like ’em all,” says the bellicose Briton, “they court our company, just like the snobs at home, and then are vexed if we don’t treat them as our equals. And all the fuss about a Kitty Farnum! I mean to take her back with me, but damme if I’ve yet decided to marry her first!”

“You will oblige me first by taking your name off this club; or as I put you down, I’ll save you the trouble by doing that myself. Perhaps I had better pay your bill for you too, lest you should forget it, as you did that hundred I lent you last year. And I will write to Mrs. Farnum and the ladies to whom I have introduced you, and apologize to them for the disgrace of bringing you,” says Arthur. “Waiter, you need give this gentleman no more wine; he has had too much already.” Arthur speaks in a loud tone, so that all the other men in the dining-room have heard; and then he too stalks away. “Oh, dammit, no, don’t do that,” begins Birmingham, in answer to the last of Arthur’s threats but one; but our hero is already beyond his hearing.

Charlie is still laughing, but now he finds his breath again. “Never mind, old fellow, you were drunk,” he says, consolingly. “It’ll be all right, to-morrow.” Birmingham is red and puffing like a turkey-cock: and at the same time struggling with some clumsy speeches of repentance.

“Upon my word,” says Wemyss, who has been most uncomfortable throughout this scene, “there has been no such time since the declaration of independence.”

“The fact is,” adds Charlie, soothingly, “you touched them both on a tender point; that fellow Haviland I suspect of being a rejected suitor for Kitty F. herself; and Arthur, I know, has had a soft spot for his cousin since he was a calf.”

But by this time Birmingham is going maudlin; his drunkenness has come on him so quick that Wemyss and Townley have much ado to get him home to bed. He is full of fulsome expressions of regret; and ends with blubbering that he is sorry for what he did.

The next morning, he woke up late, and with a headache, in his room at the hotel that he had found it pleasant (and economical) to abandon for so long; and came down-stairs to find a portmanteau containing all his clothes that he had left at the Hill-and-Dale. With it, but without a letter, were his receipted bills from both the clubs.

Birmingham was very repentant. Late in the afternoon he took a walk with Wemyss, and entered timidly the Piccadilly Club, where Townley—good-naturedly—had put him down again. He passed two or three ladies driving on Fifth Avenue who bowed to him no less cordially than before; and in the club some men came up and spoke to him. He began to fancy that the thing was being hushed up; it is so pleasant to hush up disagreeable things, and we Americans do like to be on good terms with everyone, lest someone say we are not good fellows. But the earl was mortally ashamed of the evening’s occurrences; and finally he mustered up courage, with many brandy-and-sodas, to sit down and compose to Arthur a letter of repentant, almost grovelling apology.

Having done this, he felt that he had done all America could well demand. Judge then of his indignation, when, on the morrow, the letter was returned to him unopened.

It was the first time his lordship had ever had a letter sent back to him unopened; and he curses Arthur for a cad up to this day. But what he most feared was that someone should bear tales of his behavior to Miss Farnum. For he had thrice asked her to marry him, already.