Chapter 2

Of course there were some drawbacks to the ball, but small things that didn't really count. Mary Farnham came and sat the whole evening thro', as usual, without once dancing. Even papa said he "drew the line at that." Why doesn't she take something? You see lots of things advertised that change people almost as big as she into a perfect shadow in no time. You feel so sorry for her when she's your guest. I had a great mind to put Lord ---- to the test, but I didn't quite dare! Then Tommy Baggs came and repeated his customary gymnastics--waltzed on everybody's toes in the rooms (slipper sellers ought to pay him a commission), tore two women's gowns nearly off their waists and spilled champagne frappe down Mrs. Carton's back; would have ruined her bodice, if she'd had any on, at the back. She bore it like a lamb. Her teeth were fairly chattering, but she laughed and said it was rather pleasant.

Good heavens! Who do you suppose is down stairs? Lord ----! It's going to be a bore if he's coming every day. I shall go down and tell him these two weeks I am to have a complete holiday.

Do write me all you're doing.

With love always,

HELEN.

_Later_--I have accepted him! He was so perfectly charming! I couldn't help it!

IV

_From a Guest._

Thursday.

My dear Claire:

I was so glad to hear from you about Florida, and, as you are having such an amusing time, and as the season here is practically finished now that the much-talked of Makeway ball is over, I've decided to join you next week. Besides, I've missed you awfully, and it will be so nice to be with you again. Will you be so good as to engage my rooms for me?--a bedroom with two windows facing south; not near the elevator by any means; not above the third floor--_but not on the first_. Please see that the coloring is blue or pink; I'm not particular about design or material, or anything of that sort (I don't think people should be too _exigeant_)--only yellow, or red, or white, or green rooms are too awfully unbecoming to me. Have drawing-room to connect with the bedroom please, and then a room for my maid. I hope you won't have to pay more than seven dollars a week for her (all included, naturally). She isn't at all particular. I'm sure I couldn't afford to keep her if she were, and she's such a treasure. Of course she reads all my letters and minds my own business more than I do myself, and uses up my crested writing paper at a terrific rate; but that one expects--don't you think so--with a _good_ servant?

I know you are mad to hear all about the ball, so I'll tell you. In the first place it was a great success, and that settles it! The Makeways are now a power in New York society, and there's really no reason why they shouldn't be. His family are all right and her English connections are better; and then what a charming woman she is! She makes a perfect hostess. Such tact! Everything was carried out in the best of taste. If they erred at all it was on the side of simplicity; and yet that gives you a wrong idea about the ball, because it really could boast of splendor. Yes, I mean it, but of a solid, real kind. There is nothing papier mache about the Makeway house; nor about its owners, nor about their entertainment. You can't help but believe this, and it gives you a sense of social security! Everyone anyone would want in their house was there. If any line was drawn tightly inside the smart circle, it defined the pseudo-declasse. Mrs. Makeway might be described in England as a slightly early-Victorian hostess, or if our presidents had at all the position and social power of royalties, she would be ticketed perhaps as of the Hayes period, except that would imply "Total Abstinence," which would mean instant death to anyone in smart society, thank goodness! I suppose you've heard that old _mot_ of the dinners at the White House during the Hayes administration, that water flowed like champagne! Well, that will never be said of the Makeways. Their wine was the very best, too; I never had better at any party, seldom as good, and even John, who scoffs at the idea of women being a judge of wines, confesses, that, though we've entertained everybody all our lives, we've never had such a good wine inside our doors. The supper was, in the first place, comfortable, and, in the second place, faultless. (There was a queer kind of game, which I loathed, but of course I knew, whatever it was, under the circumstances it was the right thing, so I choked it down.) The music was superb--all the good Hungarian orchestras in town. The cotillon favors were lovely, and some very stunning gold and jeweled things from Tiffany's must have cost a fortune.

But of course what you want to know about most is the people and what they had on. I wore my--but you'll see my dress in Florida, so never mind. Mrs. Makeway had a superb dress, but she always dresses handsomely. What a nice man Mr. Makeway is. You felt sure he was bored to death by the party, and all of us at it, but he concealed it with such charming manners and such natural courtesy that you really felt somehow it was a pleasure to come and put him out. The daughter is a great success; there's no denying that. She has a perfect figure, and is very graceful. She seems to have her father's manners, brought up to date by her mother. She's going to be a leader, you can tell that, and apparently she can be an eventual duchess, if she wishes. Young Lord ---- is still here, and his devotion in the Makeway quarter is undisguised. Everyone likes him, and says he isn't the sort of young fellow to be merely after her money; but no one can tell if Helen is going to take him or not. I am sure of one thing, she will do as she pleases.

There were beautiful jewels in evidence at the ball. Mrs. Makeway wore, I believe, a dozen strings of the most gorgeous pearls. All _real_, of course, with their money. They must represent a fortune in themselves. Poor old Mrs. Hammond Blake came with _all_ her Switzerland amethysts, and a few new topazes mixed in (she must have been at Lucerne last summer). She looked like one of those glass gas-lit signs. But really, all the best jewels in New York were there. And it is wonderful to see how the women whose throats are going the way of the world have welcomed the revival of black velvet if they haven't the pearl collarettes. I shall be wanting something of the sort myself soon. Woe is me! And John does keep looking so abominally young. I tell him out of courtesy to me he must get old more quickly, or people will be saying I married a man years younger than myself!

John says I needn't trouble to furnish people with subjects for talking; they can make up their own. But I don't think we are gossips nowadays here in America; do you? Which reminds me that everybody says the Mathews are going to separate at last. She's going to Dakota, and get it on incaptability, or cruelty, or some little thing like that. Everybody wondered at first why, since she'd stood it so long, she was going to divorce Ned now, at this late day, but it has leaked out. Think of it--Charlie Harris! Aren't you surprised? It's only about two years since _he_ divorced his wife. Mrs. Harris got the children, so I presume Mrs. Mathews will keep hers to give Charlie in place of his own. If I remember the number he will be getting compound interest! You know the Mathews babies came with such lightning rapidity we lost count. One was always confusing the last baby with the one that came before it. Anyway, I think Charlie Harris gets the best of it; so, even if it isn't altogether ideal to possess your children "ready made," as it were, still Elsie Mathews is a charming woman, and I never could bear Mrs. Harris. She told such awful fibs, and her exaggerations were not decorative; they were criminal. Why, I couldn't recognize a piece of news I told her myself when I heard her repeating it to some one else not five minutes after, as John says.

Heavens! for the third time, "as John says," I must stop. But _I am_ a very happy married woman! John gives me everything I want, and I adore him.

When I hear from you I will telegraph my train. We missed you awfully at the Makeways. John spoke of it several times. He loves to dance with you because you are always ready to sit it out and do all the talking. Dear me, I'm afraid that doesn't sound complimentary, but I assure you he _meant_ it as such!

How nice it will be to be with you. You aren't strict about your mourning, are you? I don't think it's at all necessary, way off there.

With love, always affectionately,

MAYBEL PARKE RODNEY.

V

_From an Uninvited._

Thursday.

My Darling George:

I hope this letter will reach you before you leave Minneapolis. I do wish you would leave politics alone, if they're going to take you away like this. Believe me, the country can get along much better without you than _I_ can! When we are married you have _got_ to give them up. When we are married, too, and this bore of a divorce of mine is finally settled, I presume I shall be invited to Mrs. Makeway's parties! I wasn't asked last night to her big ball!--not that I care. I am sure that beast of a husband of mine will never be able to prove his nasty charges against us, and that I shall win the case. Then there'll be no excuse for Mrs. Makeway and her prudish set, and I promise you they shall eat "humble pie," if there's any left in the world after all my dear friends have made me devour. Tom has been making overtures to my maid through a detective, but Lena is faithful to us, and I've promised her double any sum they offer her. _When_ my position is all right again, I shall go in for society in the most extravagant, splendid way for one long, brilliant, spiteful season, and I shall punish every one of these women who have snubbed me so terribly. After all, half of them owe their positions in the world to my family, and with my family to back me there will be no trouble about my being absolutely reinstated. My people will back me up, too, for we have never had a scandal up till now. We have been almost the only family left.

Of course the papers are full of the Makeway ball, and the pictures of Mrs. Makeway are too deliciously absurd for anything. One looks like that one of me in the Evening News when I gave my evidence. I really believe it's the same picture. I hear that she looked rather well with her famous pearls on (which, between you and me, I believe are false), and her tiara, which all the out-of-town people go to the opera to see. But they say she was dressed entirely too young, and showed she thought her own party a great success. However, what can you expect? She was nobody; her family are most ordinary people, the kind that are prominent in some unfashionable church and influential in its Sunday-school. O, la-la-la-la! She prides herself on having an ancestor of some sort who fought in the War of Independence--a common soldier, I suppose, in Washington's army; that's why she has had an office in the "Daughters of the Revolution." _We_ had several ancestors in the war--commissioned officers; and they all fought for King George, thank heaven; and if they had only won my father would have been the third Lord Banner, probably, if not something better. So hang Mrs. Makeway! Her daughter is an ugly little creature; she hasn't a single feature that doesn't go its own way irrespective of the others, and with a total disregard for the _tout ensemble_ of the poor girl's face. You know the sort of thing--each feature seems to be minding the other's business. Her teeth _look_ lovely, but I believe some of them are "crowns"--they do that sort of thing so well nowadays! What I will grant her is a beautiful figure, but my corset-maker, who is hers, too, gives me her word of honor she laces awfully! They say she had the best time of any girl at the ball; which, if you ask me, I think beastly taste.

The house everyone says looked very beautiful--of course, money will do everything--and the music was superb for the same reason, and the supper not too extravagant. (I suppose they economized on that!) But lots of people I've met say they were bored to death, and that there was an awful crowd. It's extraordinary the people she had there! How she got them I don't know--all the swells. But dear me, after all, that's nothing; swells will go to anyone who'll amuse them. I hear old Makeway looked fearfully miserable, and, instead of paying other women compliments, made love to his own wife all the evening. It's extraordinary, because he is really a gentleman. His great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were great chums; made their money, I think, in the same business.

By the way, the Pinkertons have written me that they have still more evidence against Tom. They say _she_ is "doing a turn"--whatever that is--in some variety theatre. According to accounts she _did_ Tom for a good deal--just served him right.

Do hurry back--I miss you so, and am so lonely. It's a year and a half since we've been separated so long as this. Come back. Don't make me jealous or _suspicious_. Besides it isn't complimentary to _trust_ me so tremendously.

The lawyer is here--I hope he has come to assure me of my positive victory.

* * * * *

He has thrown up the suit. We are lost! He says Tom has indisputable proof, and that there is no use trying. Can Lina be a wretch after all? or do you suppose it is your man? Come at once, at no matter what sacrifice. The Majestic sails on Wednesday. Hadn't we better throw up the sponge and take it?

Always, and in spite of everything, your adoring

EDITH.

The Plaintiff

Two Letters

From Mr. John Stuart Kennington to Mrs. Kennington, his wife.

From Mrs. John Stuart Kennington, by special messenger, to the law firm of Jordan & Fields.

I

_From John Stuart Kennington to Mrs. Kennington, his wife._

Newport, October --th, 189-.

Suspicion is absolutely foreign to my nature. Therefore, far from a thought of worry when I found my business visits to New York this summer becoming more and more easy to make as far as you were concerned, I used instead to get "a lump in my throat" on the train which left you here behind, believing that your love for me influenced you to hide your own feelings and aid me all you could in the performance of my duties, even at the cost of your own preferred pleasure and at the price of a good many hours of loneliness. Loneliness! Oh, what fools we men sometimes are! Yes, and how careless you women become!

I shall never forget the day I changed my plans suddenly, deciding I wouldn't go to New York that week after all, although my bag was packed and Smithers already at the station with it. The instantaneous look of disappointment which leaped across your face, and which for some seconds you didn't sufficiently realize to conceal--what a vista that look opened out to me--a hellish vista! And your constrained little smile--a sort of conscious visible movement of the muscles about your mouth--"on purpose"--came too late. That first look had been like a Roentgen ray over the last six months of our life--lives I should say, for while you and I were living one life, you at the same time, without me, were living another. Then I understood this summer's comfortable weekly good-byes, so different from other years! I think, down in the bottom of my heart, I understood _all_ at _that moment_,--though I wouldn't acknowledge it not even in secret to myself, and even when, before another twenty-four hours had passed, my eyes were damnable witnesses against you. I couldn't believe them, and doubt if I would have if you had not confessed. Of course, I knew whenever we had guests Jack Tolby was always one of them, and also one of the guests wherever we went, but it only seemed natural. He was extremely agreeable in our house; it's only now I realize he has always rather avoided me at the club. I suppose even men like him have some sort of conscience, or at least a sense of decency, if not of honor, toward their own friends, and, if so, good God, how ashamed he must have been every time he had to take my hand! And _you_, when you received my lips on yours, already satiated with kisses in my absence! Ugh! Kate! Kate! how I hate you! Yes, hate is the word. And to think _you_ are the mother of my children! That is the _big_ hurt.

I want you to understand that what I am going to do is entirely for their sake, not at all for yours. You who have been the first to drag the name of Kennington in the public mud. Three honest generations of us have kept it clean and honorable, and our wives have done the same for us all down to you--all except my wife. I used to think that in marrying me you had placed me deeper in your debt than I could ever repay. Ever since the first time I saw you I loved you; and after that meeting I put my arms about no woman--arms that had been free enough before--until I put them around you. And since then the same. I have been an absolutely faithful husband to you. Do you understand what that means? I don't believe so. I preferred you to every other woman in the world. When away from you, your memory guarded my embraces. Yet I am not a romantic man. Now, for instance, I look at it all in a straightforward light. I realize that you were a girl with no money and no particular position in the world; and in marrying me you obtained both. You have reveled in society--thanks to me and my family--and this is the return you have made. You have dishonored us. Now listen; this is what I propose doing. I do not intend to have my children suffer publicly, as they would, especially my two little daughters, if your disgrace were made public. It happens to be with us that a father's falling in this direction does not so seriously, if at all, affect his children; therefore, for their sake, instead of my divorcing _you_, I am going to give you proof and witness by which you may divorce _me_, for your own sin. But there are certain conditions with which you must comply. I will send by my lawyer a paper, which you will sign in the presence of witnesses before any further steps are taken. In this paper you will agree on your securing your divorce to marry Tolby. I have had an interview with him (this is not an age nor a country of duels), and I demanded that he make me the reparation of marrying you when you are free. I must frankly say from his manner I do not judge him over anxious. I believe even a duel with pistols would on the whole have pleased Tolby better. It is true that precedent is not in his favor. His own experience with you will doubtless make him a little uneasy. To continue: You are to marry him. You are to demand of me in your suit the sum of $---- (and do not be uneasy, you will win your suit). This will be convenient for you when you re-marry, for you know Tolby hasn't a cent. It will be a real love match on your part, charming! You are to give all my mother's jewels to our oldest daughter on her marriage, and all the jewels I have ever given you to our second on hers. Should the girls not marry at twenty-five, they are then to have the jewels. As to the children I shall have to submit, in my role of the guilty party, to letting you have control over them; but I warn you that this is to be only nominal. If ever I find you prejudicing either one of them _against me in any way whatever_--even if I find their affections are being alienated from me by some sort of public opinion or gossip--I warn you that when each one is old enough to understand he shall be told the _truth_. You had better look to it then that my children love me. Your own hold over their affections rests upon it. These points, and a few others bearing upon them, will be set forth legally in the paper which my lawyer will bring you. Kindly send me word if you are prepared to sign, and, if so, when Mr. Jordan or his representative may call. Good bye.

JOHN STUART KENNINGTON.

II

_From Mrs. John Stuart Kennington, by Special Messenger, to the law firm of Jordan & Fields._

No. -- East 66th street.

Benj. K. Jordan, Esq.

Dear Sir:

On second thoughts, after you have left me, I have decided to ask you to write Mr. Kennington as follows--I mean I will give you the idea of what I wish said: Acknowledge the receipt of his letter, and say I shall be delighted to sign the paper he proposes at his earliest convenience. I must ask, however, that he submits the document through you, etc. (the same as we agreed on just now in our interview). Now, besides, you must demand for me the following changes or corrections, or whatever is right to call them, in the paper. First, the sum of $---- is too small; $---- must be added to it. Also, I am not willing to give up all my homes. Either the house in New York, or in Newport, or on Long Island must be made over to me. And I positively refuse to part with the ruby necklace to one of my daughters unless I should choose to do so of my own free will. For the other jewels I have no use whatever. You can express that as you see fit. Ask him to let me hear as soon as possible.

Yours truly,

GERTRUDE CORTE KENNINGTON.

Tuesday.

The Summer

A Letter

Grand Hotel de l'Europe,

Aix-les-Bains,

Sunday.

My Dear Mary:

Our summer has been a perfect failure. I said in the very beginning if we followed John and the children's ideas it would be; but as I was in the minority I gave in. Fortunately we did catch the tail end of the London season. The others wanted to go straight on to Paris, but for that once I put my foot down--and all the trunks as well. It was very warm; still there was a great deal going on, so we didn't mind the heat, at least I didn't. Heat in London during the season is such a different thing from heat in Switzerland or some dull seaside place, where there is not sufficient distraction to take your mind off it. I was doing something every minute. That's the charm of London. Every hour of the day there is something, and if there ever was a dull interval I dropped into one of the picture galleries. You know you have to do that sort of thing over here. People talk about pictures, and some do it very well, too, and you really meet painters out. The children go and see things that are good for their education, you know--the Tower, where Mary Queen of Scots, or Anne Boleyn, I forget which, was beheaded, and the--well, all sorts of places like that. The heat made them rather irritable, and Evelyn had a rash, but I thought it was good for them to see all the historical sights. So we staid on just the same till after Goodwood. And the races ended my pleasure, for next we started for Lucerne.