The Pioneer Women Trilogy: The Coast of Bohemia, Dr. Breen's Practice & Annie Kilburn. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ always believe them as she had reported them. Cornelia knew from novels that they were very humble facts, but she was prepared to abide by them whatever a great society woman like Mrs. Maybough should think of them. Mrs. Maybough seemed to think none the worse of them in the simple angularity which Cornelia gave them.

      Her friends began to come in at last, and Cornelia found herself, for the first time, in a company of those modern nomads whom prosperity and the various forms of indigestion have multiplied among us. They were mostly people whom Mrs. Maybough had met in Europe, drinking different waters and sampling divers climates, and they had lately arrived home, or were just going abroad, or to Florida, or Colorado, or California. The men were not so sick as the women, but they were prosperous, and that was as good or as bad a reason for their homelessness. They gradually withdrew from the ladies, and stirred their tea in groups of their own sex, and talked investments; sometimes they spoke of their diseases, or their hotels and steamers; and they took advice of each other about places to go to if they went in this direction or that, but said that, when it came to it they supposed they should go where their wives decided. The ladies spoke of where they had met last, and of some who had died since, or had got their daughters married; they professed a generous envy of Mrs. Maybough for being so nicely settled, and said that now they supposed she would always live in New York, unless, one of them archly suggested, her daughter should be carried off somewhere; if one had such a lovely daughter it was what one might expect to happen, any day.

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      The part that Charmian had chosen to represent must have been that of an Egyptian slave. She served her mother's guests with the tea that Cornelia poured, in attitudes of the eldest sculptures and mural paintings, and received their thanks and compliments with the passive impersonality of one whose hope in life had been taken away some time in the reign of Thotmes II. She did not at once relent from her self-sacrificial conception of herself, even under the flatteries of the nice little fellow who had decorated the apartment for Mrs. Maybough, and had come to drink a cup of tea in the environment of his own taste. Perhaps this was because he had been one of the first to note the peculiar type of Charmian's style and beauty, and she wished to keep him in mind of it. He did duty as youth and gayety beside the young ladies at their tea-urn, and when he learned that Cornelia was studying at the Synthesis, he professed a vivid interest and a great pleasure.

      "I want Huntley to paint Miss Maybough," he said. "Don't you think he would do it tremendously well, Miss Saunders?"

      "Miss Saunders is going to paint me," said Charmian, mystically.

      "As soon as I get to the round," said Cornelia to Charmian; she was rather afraid to speak to the decorator. "I suppose you wouldn't want to be painted with block hands."

      The decorator laughed, and Charmian asked, "Isn't she nice not to say anything about a block head? Very few Synthesis girls could have helped it; it's one of the oldest Synthesis jokes."

      The young man smiled sympathetically, and said he was sure they would not keep Miss Saunders long at the block. "There's a friend of mine I should like to bring here, some day."

      "Mamma would be glad to see him," said Charmian. "Who is it?"

      Somebody began to sing: a full-bodiced lady, in a bonnet, and with an over-arching bust distended with chest-notes, which swelled and sank tumultuously to her music; her little tightly-gloved hands seemed of an earlier period. Cornelia lost the name which Mr. Plaisdell gave, in the first outburst, and caught nothing more of the talk which Charmian dropped, and then caught up again when the hand-clapping began.

      Some of the people went, and others came, with brief devoirs to Mrs. Maybough in the crepuscular corner where she sat. The tea circulated more and more; the babble rose and fell; it was all very curious to Cornelia, who had never seen anything like it before, and quite lost the sense of the day being Sunday. The stout lady's song had been serious, if not precisely devotional in character; but Cornelia could not have profited by the fact, for she did not know German. Mr. Plaisdell kept up his talk with Charmian, and she caught some words now and then that showed he was still speaking of his friend, or had recurred to him. "I'm rather dangerous when I get started on him. He's working out of his mannerisms into himself. He's a great fellow. I'm going to ask Mrs. Maybough." But he did not go at once. He drew nearer Cornelia, and tried to include her in the talk, but she was ashamed to find that she was difficult to get on common ground. She would not keep on talking Synthesis, as if that were the only thing she knew, but in fact she did not know much else in New York, even about art.

      "Ah!" he broke off to Charmian, with a lift of his head. "That's too bad! There he comes now, with Wetmore!"

      Cornelia looked toward Mrs. Maybough with him. One gentleman was presenting another to Mrs. Maybough. They got through with her as quickly as most people did, and then they made their way toward Cornelia's table. She had just time to govern her head and hand into stony rigidity, when Wetmore came up with Ludlow, whom he introduced to Charmian. She was going to extend the acquaintance to Cornelia, but had no chance before Ludlow took Cornelia's petrified fingers and bowed over them. The men suppressed their surprise, if they had any, at this meeting as of old friends, but Charmian felt no obligation to silence.

      "Where in the world have you met before? Why, Cornelia Saunders, why didn't you say you knew Mr. Ludlow?"

      "I'm afraid I didn't give her time," Ludlow answered.

      "Yes, but we were just speaking of you—Mr. Plaisdell was!" said Charmian, with the injury still in her voice.

      "I didn't hear you speak of him," Cornelia said, with a vague flutter of her hands toward the teacups.

      The action seemed to justify Wetmore to himself in saying, "Yes, thank you, I will have some tea, Miss Saunders, and then I'll get some one to introduce me to you. You haven't seen me before, and I can't stand these airs of Ludlow's." He made them laugh, and Charmian introduced them, and Cornelia gave him his tea; then Charmian returned to her grievance and complained to Cornelia: "I thought you didn't know anybody in New York."

      "Well, it seems you were not far wrong," Wetmore interposed. "I don't call Ludlow much of anybody."

      "You don't often come down to anything as crude as that, Wetmore," Ludlow said.

      "Not if I can help it. But I was driven to it, this time; the provocation was great."

      "I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Saunders at home, several years ago," Ludlow said in obedience to Charmian. "We had some very delightful friends in common, there—old friends of mine—at Pymantoning."

      "What a pretty name," said Mr. Plaisdell. "What a pity that none of our great cities happen to have those musical Indian names."

      "Chicago," Wetmore suggested.

      "Yes, Chicago is big, and the name is Indian; but is it pretty?"

      "You can't have everything. I don't suppose it is very decorative."

      "Pymantoning is as pretty as its name," said Ludlow. "It has the loveliness of a level, to begin with; we're so besotted with mountains in the East that we don't know how lovely a level is."

      "The sea," Wetmore suggested again.

      "Well, yes, that's occasionally level," Ludlow admitted. "But it hasn't got white houses with green blinds behind black ranks of maples in the moonlight."

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