Trumps

CHAPTER XIX. — DOG-DAYS.

The great city roared, and steamed, and smoked. Along the hot, glaring streets by the river a few panting people hurried, clinging to the house wall for a thin strip of shade, too narrow even to cover their feet. All the windows of the stores were open, and within the offices, with a little thinking, a little turn of the pen, and a little tracing in ink, men were magically warding off impending disaster, or adding thousands to the thousands accumulated already—men, too, were writing without thinking, mechanically copying or posting, scribbling letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with hearts burning or cold; full of ambition and hope, or vaguely remembering country hill-sides and summer rambles—a day’s fishing—a night’s frolic—Sunday-school—singing-school, and the girl with the chip hat garlanded with sweet-brier; hearts longing and loving, regretting, hoping, and remembering, and all the while the faces above them calm and smooth, and the hands below them busily doing their part of the great work of the world.

In Wall Street there was restless running about. Men in white clothes and straw-hats darted in at doors, darted out of doors—carrying little books, and boxes, and bundles in their hands, nodding to each other as they passed, but all infected with the same fever; with brows half-wrinkled or tied up in hopeless seams of perplexity; with muttering pale lips, or lips round and red, and clearly the lips of clerks who had no great stakes at issue—a general rushing and hurrying as if every body were haunted by the fear of arriving too late every where, and losing all possible chances in every direction.

Within doors there were cool bank parlors and insurance offices, with long rows of comely clerks writing in those Russia red books which Thomas Tray loved—or wetting their fingers on little sponges in little glass dishes and counting whole fortunes in bank-notes—or perched high on office-stools eating apples—while Presidents and Directors, with shiny bald pates and bewigged heads, some heroically with permanent spectacles and others coyly and weakly with eye-glasses held in the hand, sat perusing the papers, telling the news, and gossiping about engagements, and marriages, and family rumors, and secrets with the air of practical men of the world, with no nonsense, no fanaticism, no fol-de-rol of any kind about them, but who profoundly believed the Burt theory that wives and daughters were a more sacred kind of property than sheep pastures, or even than the most satisfactory bond and mortgage.

They talked politics, these banking and insurance gentlemen, with vigor and warmth. “What on earth does, this General Jackson mean, Sir? Is he going to lay the axe at the very roots of our national prosperity? What the deuce does a frontier soldier know about banking?”

They talked about Morgan who had been found in Lake Ontario; and the younger clerks took their turn at it, and furiously denied among themselves that Washington was a Mason. The younger clerks held every Mason responsible for the reported murder. Then they turned pale lest their neighbors were Masons, and might cause them to be found drowned off the Battery. The older men shook their heads.

Murders—did you speak of murders, Mr. Van Boozenberg? Why, this is a dreadful business in Salem! Old Mr. White murdered in his bed! The most awful thing on record. Terrible stories are told, Sir, about respectable people! It’s getting to be dangerous to be rich. What are we coming to? What can you expect, Sir, with Fanny Wright disseminating her infidel sentiments, and the work-people buying The Friend of Equal Human Rights? Equal human fiddle-sticks, Mr. Van Boozenberg!

To which remarks from the mouths of many Directors that eminent officer nodded his head, and looked so wise that it was very remarkable so many foolish transactions took place under his administration.

And in all the streets of the great city, in all the lofty workshops and yards and factories, huge hammers smote and clashed, and men, naked to the waist, reeking in dingy interiors, bent like gnomes at their tasks, while saws creaked, wheels turned, planes and mallets, and chisels shoved and cut and struck; and down in damp cellars sallow ghastly men and women wove rag-carpets, and twisted baskets in the midst of litters of puny, pale children, with bleared eyes, and sore heads, and dirty faces, tumbling, playing, shouting, whimpering—scampering after the pigs that came rooting and nosing in the liquid filth that simmered and stank to heaven in the gutters at the top of the stairs; and the houses above the heads of the ghastly men and women were swarming rookeries, hot and close and bare, with window-panes broken, and hats, and coats, and rags stuffed in, and men with bloodshot eyes and desperate faces sitting dogged with their hats on, staring at nothing, or leaning on their ragged elbows on broken tables, scowling from between their dirty hands at the world and the future; while in higher rooms sat solitary girls in hard wooden chairs, a pile of straw covered with a rug in the corner, and a box to put a change of linen in, driving the needle silently and ceaselessly through shirts or coats or trowsers, stooping over in the foul air during the heat of the day, straining their eyes when the day darkened to save a candle, hearing the roar and the rush and the murmur far away, mingled in the distance, as if they were dead and buried in their graves, and dreaming a horrid dream until the resurrection.

Only sometimes an acute withering pain, as if something or somebody were sewing the sewer and pierced her with a needle sharp and burning, made the room swim and the straw in the corner glimmer; and the girl dropped the work and closed her eyes—the cheeks were black and hollow beneath them—and she gasped and panted, and leaned back, while the roar went on, and the hot sun glared, and the neighboring church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart as it smote relentlessly the girl’s returning consciousness. Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back death and dishonor.

At neighboring corners were the reefs upon which human health, hope, and happiness lay stranded, broken up and gone to pieces. Bloated faces glowered through the open doors—their humanity sunk away into mere bestiality. Human forms—men no longer—lay on benches, hung over chairs, babbled, maundered, shrieked or wept aloud; while women came in and took black bottles from under tattered shawls, and said nothing, but put down a piece of money; and the man behind the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again, and the speechless phantoms glided out, guarding that little travesty of modesty even in that wild ruin.

In shops beyond, yards of tape, and papers of pins, and boots and shoes and bread, and all the multitudinous things that are bought and sold every minute, were being done up in papers by complaisant, or surly, or conceited, or well-behaved clerks; and in all the large and little houses of the city, in all the spacious and narrow streets, there were women cooking, washing, sweeping, scouring, rubbing, lifting, carrying, sewing, reading, sleeping—tens and twenties and fifties and hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children. More than two hundred thousand of them were toiling, suffering, struggling, enjoying, dreaming, despairing on a summer day, doing their share of the world’s work. The eye was full of the city’s activity; the ear was tired with its noise; the heart was sick with the thought of it; the streets and houses swarmed with people, but the world was out of town. There was nobody at home.

In the mighty stream, of which men and women are the waves, that poured ceaselessly along its channels, friends met surprised—touched each other’s hands.

“Came in this morning—off to-night—droll it looks—nobody in town—”

And the tumultuous throng bore them apart.

In the evening the Park Theatre is jammed to hear Mr. Forrest, who made his first appearance in Philadelphia nine or ten years ago, and is already a New York favorite. Contoit’s garden flutters with the cool dresses of the promenaders, who move about between the arbors looking for friends and awaiting ices. The click of billiard balls is heard in the glittering café at the corner of Reade Street, and a gay company smokes and sips at the Washington Hotel. Life bursts from every door, from every window, but there is nobody in town.

More than two hundred thousand men, women, and children go to their beds and wake up to the morrow, but there is nobody in town. Nobody in town, because Mrs. Boniface Newt & Co. have gone to Saratoga—no cathedral left, because some plastering has tumbled off an upper stone—no forest left, because a few leaves have whirled away. Nobody in town, because Mrs. Boniface Newt & Co. have gone to Saratoga, and are doing their part of the world’s work there.

Mr. Alfred Dinks, Mr. Zephyr Wetherley, and Mr. Bowdoin Beacon, were slowly sauntering down Broadway, when, they were overtaken and passed by a young woman walking rapidly for so warm a morning.

There was an immense explosion of adjectives expressing surprise when the three young, gentlemen discovered that the young lady who was passing them was Miss Amy Waring.

“Why, Miss Waring!” cried they, simultaneously.

She bowed and smiled. They lifted their hats.

“You in town!” said Mr. Beacon.

“In town?” echoed Mr. Dinks.

“Town?” murmured Mr. Wetherley.

“Town,” said Miss Waring, with her eyes sparkling.

“Where did you come from? I thought you were all at Saratoga,” she continued.

“It’s stupid there,” said Mr. Beacon.

“Quite stupid,” echoed Mr. Dinks.

“Stupid,” murmured Mr. Wetherley.

“Stupid?” asked the lady, this time making the interrogation in the antistrophe of the chant.

“We wanted a little fun.”

“A little fun.”

“Fun,” replied the gentlemen.

“Well, I’m going about my business,” said she. “Good-morning.”

“About your business?”

“Your business?”

“Business?” murmured the youths, in order. Zephyr concluding.

“Business!” said Miss Amy, bursting into a little laugh, in which the listless, perfectly good-humored youths cheerfully joined.

“It’s dreadful hot,” said Mr. Beacon.

“Oh! horrid!” said Mr. Dinks.

“Very,” said Zephyr. And the gentlemen wiped their foreheads.

“Coming to Saratoga, Miss Waring?” they asked.

“Hardly, I think, but possibly,” said she, and moved away, with her little basket; while the gentlemen, swearing at the heat, the dust, and the smells, sauntered on, asseverated that Amy Waring was an odd sort of girl; and finally went in to the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back in an armchair, with the white duck legs reposing in another—excepting Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that commanded Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the mouth, and a glass of iced port-wine sangaree in the hand, the three young gentlemen labored through the hot hours until dinner.

Amy Waring walked quite as rapidly as the heat would permit. She crossed the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street, continued toward the river, but turned into Water Street. The old peach-women at the corners, sitting under huge cotton umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely face going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the sitters in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces and feet, easily enough recognized as the step of one who was bound upon some especial errand. Clerks looked idly at her from open shop doors, and from windows above; and when she entered the marine region of Water Street, the heavy stores and large houses, which here and there were covered with a dull grime, as if the squalor within had exuded through the dingy red bricks, seemed to glare at her unkindly, and sullenly ask why youth, and beauty, and cleanly modesty should insult with sweet contrast that sordid gloom.

The heat only made it worse. Half-naked children played in the foul gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large, and comfortably at home in the purlieus of the docks and the quarter of poverty. Carts jostled by with hogsheads, and boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen, furious with their horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten the air, staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks. There was nothing that could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or imagination, in any part of the street—not even the haggard faces, thin with want, rusty with exposure, and dull with drink, that listlessly looked down upon her from the windows of lodging-houses.

The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went in. She passed rapidly through the desolate entry and up the dirty stairs with the broken railing—stairs that creaked under her light step. At a room upon the back of the house, in the third story, she stopped and tapped at the door. A voice cried, “Who’s there?” The girl answered, “Amy,” and the door was immediately unlocked.

CHAPTER XX. — AUNT MARTHA.

The room was clean. There was a rag carpet on the floor; a pine bureau neatly varnished; a half dozen plain but whole chairs; a bedstead, upon which the bedding was scrupulously neat; a pine table, upon which lay a much-thumbed leather-bound family Bible and a few religious books; and between the windows, over the bureau, hung a common engraving of Christ upon the Cross. The windows themselves looked upon the back of the stores on South Street. Upon the floor was a large basket full of work, with which the occupant of the room was evidently engaged. The whole room had an air of severity and cheerlessness, yet it was clear that every thing was most carefully arranged, and continually swept and washed and dusted.

The person who had opened the door was a woman of nearly forty. She was dressed entirely in black. She had not so much as a single spot of white any where about her. She had even a black silk handkerchief twisted about her head in the way that negro women twine gay cloths; and such was her expression that it seemed as if her face, and her heart, and her soul, and all that she felt, or hoped, or remembered, or imagined, were clad and steeped in the same mourning garments and utter gloom.

“Good-morning, Amy,” said she, in a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman’s condition, as if the whole had been rather superinduced than naturally developed.

“Aunt Martha, I have brought you some things that I hope you will find comforting and agreeable.”

The young woman glanced around the desolately regular and forbidding room, and sighed. The other took the basket and stepped to a closet, but paused as she opened it, and turning to Amy, said, in the same dry, hopeless manner,

“This bounty is too good for a sinner; and yet it would be the unpardonable sin for so great a sinner to end her own life willfully.”

The solemn woman put the contents of the basket into the closet; but it seemed as if, in that gloom, the sugar must have already lost its sweetness and the tea its flavor.

Amy still glanced round the room, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Dear Aunt Martha, when may I tell?” she asked, with piteous earnestness.

“Amy, would you thwart God? He is too merciful already. I almost fear that to tolerate your sympathy and kindness is a sore offense in me. Think what a worm I am! How utterly foul and rank with sin!”

She spoke with clasped hands lying before her in her lap, in the same hard tone as if the words were cut in ebony; with the same fixed lips—the same pale, unsmiling severity of face; above which the abundant hair, streaked with early gray, was almost entirely lost in the black handkerchief.

“But surely God is good!” said Amy, tenderly and sadly. “If we sin, He only asks us to repent and be forgiven.”

“But we must pay the penalty, Amy,” said the other. “There is a price set upon every sin; and mine is so vast, so enormous—”

She paused a moment, as if overwhelmed by the contemplation of it; then, in the same tone, she continued: “You, Amy, can not even conceive how dreadful it is. You know what it is, but not how bad it is.”

She was silent again, and her soul appeared to wrap itself in denser gloom. The air of the room seemed to Amy stifling. The next moment she felt as if she were pierced with sharp spears of ice. She sprang up:

“I shall smother!” said she; and opened the window.

“Aunt Martha, I begin to feel that this is really wicked! If you only knew Lawrence Newt—”

The older woman raised one thin finger, without lifting the hand from her lap. Implacable darkness seemed to Amy to be settling upon her too.

“At least, aunt, let me have you moved to some less horrid place.”

“Foulness and filth are too sweet and fair for me,” said the dark woman; “and I have been too long idle already.”

She lifted the work and began to sew. Amy’s heart ached as she looked at her, with sympathy for her suffering and a sense of inability to help her.

There came a violent knock at the door.

“Who’s there?” asked Aunt Martha, calmly.

“Come, come; open this door, and let’s see what’s going on!” cried a loud, coarse voice.

“Who is it?”

“Who is it? Why, it’s me—Joseph!” replied the voice.

Aunt Martha rose and unlocked the door. A man whose face was like his voice bustled noisily into the room, with a cigar in his mouth and his hat on.

“Come, come; where’s that work? Time’s up! Quick, quick! No time, no pay!”

“It is not quite done, Mr. Joseph.”

The man stared at Aunt Martha for a moment; then laughed in a jeering way.

“Old lady Black, when you undertake to do a piece of work what d’ye mean by not having it done? Damn it, there’s a little too much of the lady about you! Show me that work!” and he seated himself.

The woman brought the basket to him, in the bottom of which were several pieces completed and carefully folded. The man turned them over rapidly.

“And why, in the devil’s name, haven’t you done the rest? Give ‘em here!”

He took the whole, finished and unfinished, and, bundling them up, made for the door. “No time, no pay, old lady; that’s the rule. That’s the only way to work such infernally jimmy old bodies as you!”

The sewing woman remained perfectly passive as Mr. Joseph was passing out; but Amy sprang forward from the window:

“Stop, Sir!” said she, firmly. The man involuntarily turned, and such was his overwhelming surprise at seeing a lady suddenly standing before him, and a lady who spoke with perfect authority, that, with the instinct of obsequiousness instinctive in every man who depends upon the favor of customers, he took off his hat.

“If you take that work without paying for it you shall be made to pay,” said Amy, quietly, her eyes flashing, and her figure firm and erect.

The man hesitated for a moment.

“Oh yes, ma’am, oh certainly, ma’am! Pay for it, of course, ma’am! ‘Twas only to frighten the woman, ma’am; oh certainly, certainly—oh! yes, ma’am, pay for it, of course.”

“At once,” said Amy, without moving.

“Certainly, ma’am; here’s the money,” and Mr. Joseph counted it out upon the pine table.

“And you’d better leave the rest to be done at once.”

“I’ll do so, ma’am,” said the man, putting down the bundle.

“And remember that if you ever harm this woman by a word or look, even,” added Amy, bending her head toward her aunt, “you will repent it bitterly.”

The man stared at her and fumbled with his hat. The cigar had dropped upon the floor. Amy pointed to it, and said, “Now go.”

Mr. Joseph stooped, picked up the stump, and departed. Amy felt weak. Her aunt stood by her, and said, calmly,

“It was only part of my punishment.”

Amy’s eyes flashed.

“Yes, aunt; and if any body should break into your room and steal every thing you have and throw you out of the window, or break your bones and leave you here to die of starvation, I suppose you would think it all part of your punishment.”

“It would be no more than I deserve, Amy.”

“Aunt Martha,” replied Amy, “if you don’t take care you will force me to break my promise to you.”

“Amy, to do that would be to bring needless disgrace upon your mother and all her family and friends. They have considered me dead for nearly sixteen years. They have long ago shed the last tear of regret for one whom they believed to be as pure as you are now. Why should you take her to them from the tomb, living still, but a loathsome mass of sin? I am equal to my destiny. The curse is great, but I will bear it alone; and the curse of God will fall upon you if you betray me.”

Amy was startled by the intensity with which these words were uttered. There was no movement of the hands or head upon the part of the older woman. She stood erect by the table, and, as her words grew stronger, the gloom of her appearance appeared to intensify itself, as a thunder-cloud grows imperceptibly blacker and blacker.

When she stopped, Amy made no reply; but, troubled and uneasy, she drew a chair to the window and sat down. The older woman took up her work again. Amy was lost in thought, wondering what she could do. She saw nothing as she looked down into the dirty yards of the houses; but after some time, forgetting, in the abstraction of her meditation, where she was, she was suddenly aware of the movement of some white object; and looking curiously to see what it was, discovered Lawrence Newt gazing up at her from the back window of his store, and waving his handkerchief to attract her attention.

As she saw the kindly face she smiled and shook her hand. There was a motion of inquiry: “Shall I come round?” And a very resolute telegraphing by the head back again: “No, no!” There was another question, in the language of shoulders, and handkerchief, and hands: “What on earth are you doing up there?” The answer was prompt and intelligible: “Nothing that I am ashamed of.” Still there came another message of motion from below, which Amy, knowing Lawrence Newt, unconsciously interpreted to herself thus: “I know you, angel of mercy! You have brought some angelic soup to some poor woman.” The only reply was a smile that shone down from the window into the heart of the merchant who stood below. The smile was followed by a wave of the hand from above that said farewell. Lawrence Newt looked up and kissed his own, but the smiling face was gone.

CHAPTER XXI. — THE CAMPAIGN.

Miss Fanny Newt went to Saratoga with a perfectly clear idea of what she intended to do. She intended to be engaged to Mr. Alfred Dinks.

That young gentleman was a second cousin of Hope Wayne’s, and his mother had never objected to his little visits at Pinewood, when both he and Hope were young, and when the unsophisticated human heart is flexible as melted wax, and receives impressions which only harden with time.

“Let the children play together, my dear,” she said, in conjugal seclusion to her husband, the Hon. Budlong Dinks, who needed only sufficient capacity and a proper opportunity to have been one of the most distinguished of American diplomatists. He thought he was such already. There was, indeed, plenty of diplomacy in the family, and that most skillful of all diplomatic talents, the management of distinguished diplomatists, was not unknown there.

Fanny Newt had made the proper inquiries. The result was that there were rumors—“How do such stories start?” asked Mrs. Budlong Dinks of all her friends who were likely to repeat the rumor—that it was a family understanding that Mr. Alfred Dinks and his cousin Hope were to make a match. “And they do say,” said Mrs. Dinks, “what ridiculous things people are! and they do say that, for family reasons, we are going to keep it all quiet! What a world it is!”

The next day Mrs. Cod told Mrs. Dod, in a morning call, that Mrs. Budlong Dinks said that the engagement between her son Alfred and his cousin Hope Wayne was kept quiet for family reasons. Before sunset of that day society was keeping it quiet with the utmost diligence.

These little stories were brought by little birds to New York, so that when Mrs. Dinks arrived the air was full of hints and suggestions, and the name of Hope Wayne was not unknown. Farther acquaintance with Mr. Alfred Dinks had revealed to Miss Fanny that there was a certain wealthy ancestor still living, in whom the Dinkses had an interest, and that the only participant with them in that interest was Miss Hope Wayne. That was enough for Miss Fanny, whose instinct at once assured her that Mrs. Dinks designed Hope Wayne for her son Alfred, in order that the fortune should be retained in the family.

Miss Fanny having settled this, and upon farther acquaintance with Mr. Dinks having discovered that she might as well undertake the matrimonial management of him as of any other man, and that the Burt fortune would probably descend, in part at least, to the youth Alfred, she decided that the youth Alfred must marry her.

But how should Hope Wayne be disposed of? Fanny reflected.

She lived in Delafield. Brother Abel, now nearly nineteen—not a childish youth—not unhandsome—not too modest—lived also in Delafield. Had he ever met Hope Wayne?

By skillful correspondence, alluding to the solitude of the country, et cetera, and his natural wish for society, and what pleasant people were there in Delafield, Fanny had drawn her lines around Abel to carry the fact of his acquaintance, if possible, by pure strategy.

In reply, Abel wrote about many things—about Mrs. Kingo and Miss Broadbraid—the Sutlers and Grabeaus—he praised the peaceful tone of rural society, and begged Fanny to beware of city dissipation; but not a word of old Burt and Hope Wayne.

Sister Fanny wrote again in the most confiding manner. Brother Abel replied in a letter of beautiful sentiments and a quotation from Dr. Peewee.

He overdid it a little, as we sometimes do in this world. We appear so intensely unconscious that it is perfectly evident we know that somebody is looking at us. So Fanny, knowing that Christopher Burt was the richest man in the village, and lived in a beautiful place, and that his lovely grand-daughter lived with him constantly, with which information in detail Alfred Dinks supplied her, and perceiving from Abel’s letter that he was not a recluse, but knew the society of the village, arrived very naturally and easily at the conclusion that brother Abel did know Hope Wayne, and was in love with her. She inferred the latter from the fact that she had long ago decided that brother Abel would not fall in love with any poor girl, and therefore she was sure that if he were in the immediate neighborhood of a lady at once young, beautiful, of good family and very rich, he would be immediately in love—very much in love.

To make every thing sure, Abel had not been at home half an hour before Fanny’s well-directed allusion to Hope as the future Mrs. Dinks had caused her brother to indicate an interest which revealed every thing.

“If now,” pondered Miss Fanny, “somebody who shall be nameless becomes Mrs. Alfred Dinks, and the nameless somebody’s brother marries Miss Hope Wayne, what becomes of the Burt property?”

She went, therefore, to Saratoga in great spirits, and with an unusual wardrobe. The opposing general, Field-marshal Mrs. Budlong Dinks, had certainly the advantage of position, for Hope Wayne was of her immediate party, and she could devise as many opportunities as she chose for bringing Mr. Alfred and his cousin together. She did not lose her chances. There were little parties for bowling in the morning, and early walking, and Fanny was invited very often, but sometimes omitted, as if to indicate that she was not an essential part of the composition. There was music in the parlor before dinner, and working of purses and bags before the dressing-bell. There was the dinner itself, and the promenade, with music, afterward. Drives, then, and riding; the glowing return at sunset—the cheerful cup of tea—the reappearance, in delightful toilet, for the evening dance—windows—balconies—piazzas—moonlight!

Every time that Fanny, warm with the dance, declared that she must have fresh air, and that was every time she danced with Alfred, she withdrew, attended by him, to the cool, dim piazza, and every time Mrs. Dinks beheld the departure. On the cool, dim piazza the music sounded more faintly, the quiet moonlight filled the air, and life seemed all romance and festival.

“How beautiful after the hot room!” Fanny said, one evening as they sat there.

“Yes, how beautiful!” replied Alfred.

“How happy I feel!” sighed Fanny. “Ever since I have been here I have been so happy!”

“Have you been happy? So I have been happy too. How very funny!” replied Alfred.

“Yes; but pleasant too. Sympathy is always pleasant.” And Fanny turned her large black eyes upon him, while the young Dinks was perplexed by a singular feeling of happiness.

They were content to moralize upon sympathy for some time. Alfred was fascinated, and a little afraid. Fanny moved her Junonine shoulders, bent her swan-like neck, drew off one glove and played with her rings, fanned herself gently at intervals, and, with just enough embarrassment not to frighten her companion, opened and closed her fan.

“What a fine fellow Bowdoin Beacon is!” said Miss Fanny, a little suddenly, and in a tone of suppressed admiration, as she drew on her glove and laid her fan in her lap, as if on the point of departure.

“Yes, he’s a very good sort of fellow.”

“How cold you men always are in speaking of each other! I think him a splendid fellow. He’s so handsome. He has such glorious dark hair—almost as dark as yours, Mr. Dinks.”

Alfred half raged, half smiled.

“Do you know,” continued Fanny, looking down a little, and speaking a little lower—“do you know if he has any particular favorites among the girls here?”

Alfred was dreadfully alarmed.

“If he has, how happy they must be! I think him a magnificent sort of man; but not precisely the kind I should think a girl would fall in love with. Should you?”

“No,” replied Alfred, mollified and bewildered. He rallied in a moment. “What sort of man do girls fall in love with, Miss Fanny?”

Fanny Newt was perfectly silent. She looked down upon the floor of the piazza, fixing her eyes upon a pine-knot, patiently waiting, and wondering which way the grain of the wood ran.

The silence continued. Every moment Alfred was conscious of an increasing nervousness. There were the Junonine shoulders—the neck—the downcast eyes—moonlight—the softened music.

“Why don’t you answer?” asked he, at length.

Fanny bent her head nearer to him, and dropped these words into his waistcoat:

“How good you are! I am so happy!”

“What on earth have I done?” was the perplexed, and pleased, and ridiculous reply.

“Mr. Dinks, how could I answer the question you asked without betraying—?”

“What?” inquired Alfred, earnestly.

“Without betraying what sort of man I love,” breathed Fanny, in the lowest possible tone, which could be also perfectly distinct, and with her head apparently upon the point of dropping after her words into his waistcoat.

“Well?” said Dinks.

“Well, I can not do that, but I will make a bargain with you. If you will say what sort of girl you would love, I will answer your question.”

Fanny dreaded to hear a description of Hope Wayne. But Alfred’s mind was resolved. The foolish youth answered with his heart in his mouth, and barely whispering,

“If you will look in your glass to-night, you will see.”

The next moment Fanny’s head had fallen into the waistcoat—Alfred Dinks’s arms were embracing her. He perceived the perfume from her abundant hair. He was frightened, and excited, and pleased.

“Dear Alfred!”

“Dear Fanny!”

“Come Hope, dear, it is very late,” said Mrs. Dinks in the ball-room, alarmed at the long absence of Fanny and Alfred, and resolved to investigate the reason of it.

The lovers heard the voice, and were sitting quietly just a little apart, as Mrs. Dinks and her retinue came out.

“Aren’t you afraid of taking cold, Miss Newt?” inquired Alfred’s mother.

“Oh not at all, thank you, I am very warm. But you are very wise to go in, and I shall join you. Good-night, Mr. Dinks.” As she rose, she whispered—“After breakfast.”

The ladies rustled along the piazza in the moonlight. Alfred, flushed and nervous and happy, sauntered into the bar-room, lit a cigar, and drank some brandy and water.

Meanwhile the Honorable Budlong Dinks sat in an armchair at the other end of the piazza with several other honorable gentlemen—Major Scuppernong from Carolina, Colonel le Fay from Louisiana, Captain Lamb from Pennsylvania, General Arcularius Belch of New York, besides Captain Jones, General Smith, Major Brown, Colonel Johnson, from other States, and several honorable members of Congress, including, and chief of all, the Honorable B.J. Ele, a leading statesman from New York, with whom Mr. Dinks passed as much time as possible, and who was the chief oracle of the wise men in armchairs who came to the springs to drink the waters, to humor their wives and daughters in their foolish freaks for fashion and frivolity, and who smiled loftily upon the gay young people who amused themselves with setting up ten-pins and knocking them down, while the wise men devoted themselves to talking politics and showing each other, from day to day, the only way in which the country could be made great and glorious, and fulfill its destiny.

“I am not so clear about General Jackson’s policy,” said the Honorable Budlong Dinks, with the cautious wisdom of a statesman.

“Well, Sir, I am clear enough about it,” replied Major Scuppernong. “It will ruin this country just as sure as that,” and the Major with great dexterity directed a stream of saliva which fell with unerring precision upon the small stone in the gravel walk at which it was evidently aimed.

The Honorable Budlong Dinks watched the result of the illustration with deep interest, and shook his head gravely when he saw that the stone was thoroughly drenched by the salivary cascade. He seemed to feel the force of the argument. But he was not in a position to commit himself.

“Now, I think,” said the Honorable B.J. Ele, “that it is the only thing that can save the country.”

“Ah! you do,” said the Honorable B. Dinks.

And so they kept it up day after day, pausing in the intervals to smile at the ardor with which the women played their foolish game of gossip and match-making.

When Mrs. Dinks withdrew from her idle employments to the invigorating air of the Honorable B.‘s society, he tapped her cheek sometimes with his finger—as he had read great men occasionally did when they were with their wives in moments of relaxation from intellectual toil—asked her what would become of the world if it were given up to women, and by his manner refreshed her consciousness of the honor under which she labored in being Mrs. Budlong Dinks.

The weaker vessel smiled consciously, as if he very well knew that was the one particular thing which under no conceivable circumstances could she forget.

“Budlong, I really think Alfred ought to keep a horse.”

“My dear!” replied the Honorable B., in a tone of mingled reproach, amusement, contempt, and surprise.

“Oh! I know we can’t afford it. But it would be so pleasant if he could drive out his cousin Hope, as so many of the other young men do. People get so well acquainted in that way. Have you observed that Bowdoin Beacon is a great deal with her? How glad Mrs. Beacon would be!” Mrs. Dinks took off her cap, and was unpinning her collar, without in the least pressing her request. Not at all. His word was enough. She had evidently yielded the point. The horse was out of the question.

Now the state of the country did not so entirely engross her husband’s mind, that he had not seen all the advantage of Hope’s marrying Alfred.

“It is a pleasant thing for a young man to have his own horse. My dear, I will see what can be done,” said he.

Then the diplomatist untied his cravat as if he had been undoing the parchment of a great treaty. He fell asleep in the midst of rehearsing the speech which he meant to make upon occasion of his presentation as foreign minister somewhere; while his beloved partner lay by his side, and resolved that Alfred Dinks must immediately secure Hope Wayne before Fanny Newt secured Alfred Dinks.

CHAPTER XXII. — THE FINE ARTS.

The whole world of Saratoga congratulated Mrs. Dinks upon her beautiful niece, Miss Wayne. Even old Mrs. Dagon said to every body:

“How lovely she is! And to think she comes from Boston! Where did she get her style? Fanny dear, I saw you hugging—I beg your pardon, I mean waltzing with Mr. Dinks.”

But when Hope Wayne danced there seemed to be nobody else moving. She filled the hall with grace, and the heart of the spectator with an indefinable longing. She carried strings of bouquets. She made men happy by asking them to hold some of her flowers while she danced; and then, when she returned to take them, the gentlemen were steeped in such a gush of sunny smiling that they stood bowing and grinning—even the wisest—but felt as if the soft gush pushed them back a little; for the beauty which, allured them defended her like a fiery halo.

It was understood that she was engaged to Mr. Alfred Dinks, her cousin, who was already, or was to be, very rich. But there was apparently nothing very marked in his devotion.

“It is so much better taste for young people who are engaged not to make love in public,” said Mrs. Dinks, as she sat in grand conclave of mammas and elderly ladies, who all understood her to mean her son and niece, and entirely agreed with her.

Meanwhile all the gentlemen who could find one of her moments disengaged were walking, bowling, driving, riding, chatting, sitting, with Miss Wayne. She smiled upon all, and sat apart in her smiling. Some foolish young fellows tried to flirt with her. When they had fully developed their intentions she smiled full in their faces, not insultingly nor familiarly, but with a soft superiority. The foolish young fellows went down to light their cigars and drink their brandy and water, feeling as if their faces had been rubbed upon an iceberg, for not less lofty and pure were their thoughts of her, and not less burning was their sense of her superb scorn.

But Arthur Merlin, the painter, who had come to pass a few days at Saratoga on his way to Lake George, and whose few days had expanded into the few weeks that Miss Wayne had been there—Arthur Merlin, the painter, whose eyes were accustomed not only to look, but to see, observed that Miss Wayne was constantly doing something. It was dance, drive, bowl, ride, walk incessantly. From the earliest hour to the latest she was in the midst of people and excitement. She gave herself scarcely time to sleep.

The painter was introduced to her, and became one of her habitual attendants. Every morning after breakfast Hope Wayne held a kind of court upon the piazza. All the young men surrounded her and worshipped.

Arthur Merlin was intelligent and ingenuous. His imagination gave a kind of airy grace to his conversation and manner. Passionately interested in his art, he deserted its pursuit a little only when the observation of life around him seemed to him a study as interesting. He and Miss Wayne were sometimes alone together; but although she was conscious of a peculiar sympathy with his tastes and character, she avoided him more than any of the other young men. Mrs. Dagon said it was a pity Miss Wayne was so cold and haughty to the poor painter. She thought that people might be taught their places without cruelty.

Arthur Merlin constantly said to himself in a friendly way that if he had been less in love with his art, or had not perceived that Miss Wayne had a continual reserved thought, he might have fallen in love with her. As it was, he liked her so much that he cared for the society of no other lady. He read Byron with her sometimes when they went in little parties to the lake, and somehow he and Hope found themselves alone under the trees in a secluded spot, and the book open in his hand.

He also read to her one day a poem upon a cloud, so beautiful that Hope Wayne’s cheek flushed, and she asked, eagerly,

“Whose is that?”

“It is one of Shelley’s, a friend of Byron’s.”

“But how different!”

“Yes, they were different men. Listen to this.”

And the young man read the ode to a Sky-lark.

“How joyous it is!” said Hope; “but I feel the sadness.”

“Yes, I often feel that in people as well as in poems,” replied Arthur, looking at her closely.

She colored a little—said that it was warm—and rose to go.

The cold black eyes of Miss Fanny Newt suddenly glittered upon them.

“Will you go home with us, Miss Wayne?”

“Thank you, I am just coming;” and Hope passed into the wood.

When Arthur Merlin was left alone he quietly lighted a cigar, opened his port-folio and spread it before him, then sharpened a pencil and began to sketch. But while he looked at the tree before him, and mechanically transferred it to the paper, he puffed and meditated.

He saw that Hope Wayne was constantly with other people, and yet he felt that she was a woman who would naturally like her own society. He also saw that there was no person then at Saratoga in whom she had such an interest that she would prefer him to her own society.

And yet she was always seeking the distraction of other people.

Puff—puff—puff.

Then there was something that made the society of her own thoughts unpleasant—almost intolerable.

Mr. Arthur Merlin vigorously rubbed out with a piece of stale bread a false line he had drawn.

What is that something—or some-bod-y?

He stopped sketching, and puffed for a long time.

As he returned at sunset Hope Wayne was standing upon the piazza of the hotel.

“Have you been successful?” asked she, dawning upon him.

“You shall judge.”

He showed her his sketch of a tree-stump.

“Good; but a little careless,” she said.

“Do you draw, Miss Wayne?”

A curious light glimmered across her face, for she remembered where she had last heard those words. She shrank a little, almost imperceptibly, as if her eyes had been suddenly dazzled. Then a little more distantly—not much more, but Arthur had remarked every thing—she said:

“Yes, I draw a little. Good-evening.”

“Stop, please, Miss Wayne!” exclaimed Arthur, as he saw that she was going. She turned and smiled—a smile that seemed to him like starlight, it was so clear and cool and dim.

“I have drawn this for you, Miss Wayne.”

She bent and took the sketch which he drew from his port-folio.

“It is Manfred in the Coliseum,” said he.

She glanced at it; but the smile faded entirely. Arthur stared at her in astonishment as the blood slowly ebbed from her cheeks, then streamed back again. The head of Manfred was the head of Abel Newt. Hope Wayne looked from the sketch to the artist, searching him with her eye to discover if he knew what he was doing. Arthur was sincerely unconscious.

Hope Wayne dropped the paper almost involuntarily. It floated into the road.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Merlin,” said she, making a step to recover it.

He was before her, and handed it to her again.

“Thank you,” said she, quietly, and went in.

It was still twilight, and Arthur lighted a cigar and sat down to a meditation. The result of it was clear enough.

“That head looks like somebody, and that somebody is Hope Wayne’s secret.” Puff—puff—puff.

“Where did I get that head?” He could not remember. “Tut!” cried he, suddenly bringing his chair down upon its legs with a force that knocked his cigar out of his mouth, “I copied it from a head which Jim Greenidge has, and which he says was one of his school-fellows.”

Meanwhile Hope Wayne had carefully locked the door of her room. Then she hurriedly tore the sketch into the smallest possible pieces, laid them in her hand, opened the window, and whiffed them away into the dark.