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A Concise History of Poland 2, Edition Jerzy Lukowski
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki
ISBN(s): 9780521618571, 0521618576
Edition: 2,
File Details: PDF, 22.20 MB
Year: 2006
Language: english
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certain careful courtesy very attractive. Altogether, you would say, a
man of limited, but not narrow mind, gentle and amiable. His passion
was genealogy, and if he was ever querulous, it was when inevitable
antiquaries connected him with the first Waddy, well known to all
American pedigrees, cook of the Mayflower and victim of Miles
Standish.
“Do I look,” he would say, “like the son of a sea-cook, even in the
sixth generation?”
And, indeed, he did not resemble a descendant of the caboose, but
rather a marquis of the Émigration, such as we behold him at the
Théâtre Français. This somewhat faded élégant had another passion:
it was for his lovely daughter; nor was he the only man thus
affected.
Mrs. Waddie was wifely, motherly, and a little over-energetic, as
became the spouse of so mild and unpractical a gentleman. It was
she who devised and carried out that purchase of real estate by
which their comfortable property became a handsome fortune. It was
she who officered the campaign which ended in giving him the civic
crown of Member of Congress, and when the bad cookery of the
American snob’s paradise had impaired his health and compelled his
resignation, it was again his energetic wife who suggested to General
Taylor that she wished the embassy to Florence. It was obtained, of
course, and was one of the most creditable acts of that President’s
brief career. His successor did not venture to recall Mr. Waddie,
although he knew the scorn with which that gentleman, usually so
amiable, regarded those ridiculously unsuccessful makeshifts and
cowardly compromises of 1850. Mr. Waddie’s fortune, high social
position, formidable wife, his serene worth and merited popularity,
made him a person whom an accidental President could not presume
to offend; and if he were already an enemy, at least it were wiser to
keep him in a foreign land.
So his wife and the ambassador remained at Florence, where her
balls crushed the Grand Duke’s. She instituted a subscription for
fronting the Duomo and introduced into Florentine life Buckwheat
Cakes, Veracity, and Sewing Machines—of which only the first-named
are still popular in that beautiful city.
It was the last year of the embassy when they thought proper to
send for Miss Clara, who, with Diana, Mr. Waddie’s ward, had been in
charge of Miss Sullivan at home. This was the first year of Mr.
Pierce’s administration, and while he was hesitating whom to appoint
in Mr. Waddie’s place. He did appoint, in time, a tobacconist from the
South-west, who viewed the world only as a spittoon.
Everybody has been in Florence or will go. It is not necessary,
therefore, here to describe what Clara and Diana saw under the
superintendence of Miss Sullivan, instinctive discoverer of the best.
They were devout beneath the dome of Brunelleschi, rapt beside the
tower of Giotto, critical in the galleries, gay in the Cascine. The
Florentines adored Clara, the fair. Strangers worshipped Diana, the
dark. This was not Diana, pale queen of night, but the huntress deity,
bold and clear of eye, of colours rich and warm, with vigorous, fiery
blood, hastening, almost fevering, a living life of passionateness. An
Amazonian queen was Diana, who could do the dashing deeds of an
Amazon with fanciful freedom. The Actæons dreaded her. No man of
feeble manhood was permitted in her presence. Soldierly men and
travellers she liked, and deep-sea fishermen, and blacksmiths and
architects and heroes and lyric poets. And when any of these told her
of his ambitions, large as life, or the dangers he had passed, and
while he told, looked in her unblenching eyes and saw through them
a soul that could comprehend any great ambition, or dare any
danger; he, the strong man, always loved her madly. But she, the
strong woman, the master-hero of her own soul, could not find her
hero. There were ideal men in history for her to adore—at least, they
seemed so, as history painted them—and as she read of them, she
felt that strange thrill of despair for their absence that later she knew
to be the passion of love—the passion of the woman longing for the
fit, appointed mate.
The friendship of Clara and Diana was fore-ordained. Its historic
beginning dates back to the college intimacy between young Waddie,
refined, timid, studious, and Diana’s father, a bold and ardent youth
of southern blood and foreign race. This gentleman, being afterward
unhappy in his home, wandered away into Texas. There he acquired
immense estates by the purchase of old Spanish grants, and dying
early, bequeathed his only child to his friend, Mr. Waddie, for care
and nurture. The two girls grew up as sisters, and it was not until
Diana’s womanhood that the serious consideration of her orphanage
was forced upon her. Mrs. Waddie, the kindest of mothers, was
immersed in business, speculating for her husband, urging him
forward to posts of responsibility he shrank from. She was therefore
ready to yield her two daughters entirely into the hands of Miss
Sullivan.
It was to Miss Sullivan that the task fell of telling Diana the sad
history of her father and her mother, and how the mother, after a life
worse than death, was now in a madhouse. It was a terrible
revelation for this pure and brave young girl. In an agony of tears,
she threw herself into Miss Sullivan’s arms and prayed her to be a
mother to the orphan. Miss Sullivan must have been of a nature
singularly sympathetic, or herself have felt the loneliness of bitter
grief, so deeply did she know the only consolations—endurance, and
long-suffering faith, and hope in other lives, eternal ones.
Clara was present at this interview, and, after this, the relations
between the elder and the younger women were closely sisterly. The
elder sister, hardly older in appearance, except of paler and more
thoughtful beauty, formed the younger minds.
Clara Waddie had inherited all her father’s grace and refinement of
face, form, mien, manner, and thought, and withal had gained from
her mother judgment and strength of character, which underlay
without diminishing her delicate sweetness. You might have known
this fair young person for months and have given only a mental
assent to her reputation of exquisite beauty; but one day, when
some changing charm of emotion cast an evanescent flush upon her
cheek and your sudden inspiration of eloquence had roused a look of
interest in her lambent listening eyes, you would become conscious
of more than mental assent to her unclaimed claim of perfect
loveliness; your soul itself would thenceforth be cognisant of her
beauty.
At the end of that delightful year in Florence, now rich with
memories of the art and poetry of Italy, Diana was suddenly
summoned to America. A most favourable change had come over her
mother’s malady, and with sanity returning, she was praying for
kindly companionship and love. Her life, at best, was to be but brief,
but it was thought that a residence in the dry, elevated regions of the
interior might prolong it and allay the pangs of her desperate
disease. Diana did not hesitate; she saw her duty clearly and
accepted it, rejoicing.
Mr. Waddie went over with Diana. She found a mother with the
saddened relics of a feeble beauty. Married hastily, out of silly school,
she had been ignorantly, in her husband’s absence, bewildered in the
toils of a great villainy, which death to the villain and madness to the
victim had sufficiently avenged. Rejecting Mr. Waddie’s kind offer of
escort, Diana took her mother to their estates in the up-country of
Texas. In that most beautiful region, the Amazon could carry out her
huntress fancies. She could gallop with her Mexican master of the
horse over vast reaches of prairie, all her own. She could encamp in
those belts of timber that sweep like rivers across boundless plains of
Western wildness. At noon, when the deer she chased were hid in
forest court, she, too, could seek such sylvan shelter, and lying there
beneath an oak, all grey with mossy drapery, could take delight of
dreamy contrast, and, with closed eyes, narrow her horizon with
remembered palaces and rebuild under broad blue heavens the
wonderful domes of Italy. Then she would study in some shady pool
of the forest her face nut-browned to warm and healthy hues and
fancy Clara, more palely beautiful, suddenly appearing, like Una from
the ancient grove, and standing beside her at this softening mirror,
as they had often stood in loving sisterhood before. In this existence,
free and fresh, she learnt what so few women ever know, the pure
physical joy of living.
The Texas postmaster was puzzled with strange stamps on Diana’s
constant letters from Europe; she was as constant in her replies. At
last, she had sadly to tell her friend how her mother, after a sudden
and fearful access of madness, had died. If there were any
circumstances accompanying this death that made it doubly painful,
and if, far away from the civilisation of towns, she had made other
friends from whom this death was the cause of bitter parting, of this
she said nothing to Clara. There are some secrets which honourable
women do not impart to anyone more distant from their hearts than
God. As to Endymion, it was certainly not probable that she had
found him among Santa Fé traders, or Dutch emigrants, or rude
cattle drovers whose best hope was a week of debauch in San
Antonio.
She rejoined the Waddies and they did Europe. Mankind stared, and
jealous women scoffed wherever Clara and Diana, charming pair,
were seen. Diana was in mourning and very sad—sadder than
seemed wholly natural for her mother’s relieving death. The only
gentleman to whom she allowed any intimacy was Belden. She told
Miss Sullivan that she distrusted him and was displeased with the
little she heard of his deeds, but that he was a bad imitation of an
old friend of hers and she liked to be reminded of a favourite, even
by a poor copy. I think upon this there must have been some very
close confidence between these ladies; there certainly was a long
interview, with tearfulness.
Are the Waddies of New York sufficiently introduced? We certainly
know them better historically than Major Granby could, when,
presented by Ambient, he had passed his first afternoon in their
society. Not so well personally; one look of a practised eye discovers
more than all description or all history can reveal.
Granby was a wide-worldling of the best type, and the ladies and Mr.
Waddie found him charming. Sir Com Ambient, that pleasant pinkling
of hesitant utterance, was also a favourite; indeed, Diana had quite
petted him on the voyage, for she liked travellers, even verdant ones.
Freshmen, when they are honest and ardent, are pleasant to meet.
So she had petted him—poor Sir Com! He was not at all blasé, a
fresh and susceptible youth; and of course he lost his heart utterly.
Granby spoke of his friend Ira. Mr. Ambassador Waddie had heard of
this gentleman; in fact, who had not?
“We suppose Mr. Ira Waddy to belong to a younger branch of our
somewhat ancient family,” he explained. “Indeed, I have already
written him to inquire our relationship. We shall be happy to meet
him as a kinsman and as a friend of Major Granby.”
The young ladies were interested in the major’s account of his friend.
He was not, Granby said, a misogynist, though he always avoided
women if he could. He was a cynic of the kindest heart. Utterly
careless of money, but possessed of a Pactolian genius for making it,
he dashed at a speculation as a desperate man rides through a front
of opposing battle. It seemed that he valued success so little that the
Fates were willing to give it him.
“Perhaps,” said Diana, “the Fates took an antecedent revenge.
Perhaps they are lavishly compensating him with what he does not
value for the fatal loss of what he did.”
Granby looked hard at her, studying the hieroglyphs of her expressive
face. What experience had this young person had, enabling her to
divine such secrets of his own life and what he had divined in his
friend’s history? A sham Champollion would have given his
interpretation that she was generalising from some disappointment
of the wrong man and not the right one having offered her a
bouquet. Granby, looking deeper, perceived that to this maiden,
whom the gods loved, they had given some early sorrow, which she
was endeavouring to explain to herself.
Granby went on with the character of Mr. Waddy. He was a man who
concerned himself not much with books. Having his own thoughts,
he did not hungrily need those of other men. He could exhaust the
books by a question or two from those who took the trouble to read
them. But if generally not a believer in the works of men or the
words of women, he was a child of nature.
“During the long and excursive pilgrimage from India to London,”
explained Granby, “which we have made together, there is hardly one
oddity, one beauty, one fact or phenomenon in nature, not human,
that we have not investigated. We’ve shot and bagged everything;
we’ve fished and fished up everything.”
And then, the major, who liked to talk—and who does not?—to
beautiful women, told them snake stories and tales of crocodiles, and
how, in the primary sense, he and his friend had seen the elephant
and fought the tiger. Then he passed to the Crimean campaign,
where Mr. Waddy had joined him and gone about recklessly to see
the fun of fighting and relieve its after agony. On the side of fun,
there was a story how Mr. Waddy and Chin Chin had surrounded a
picket-guard of a Russian officer and four men and brought them in
prisoners at the point of their own bayonets—a pardonable violation
of the neutrality laws. On the other side, was the account of Major
Granby’s own rescue by his friend. Granby told this last with an
enthusiasm that showed the earnestness of his friendship.
The two girls, who would have given up life or a lover, one for the
other, felt a romantic interest in the alliance of these men, both
apparently isolated, and erratic for some good cause from tranquil
happiness. Diana’s interest was that of a comrade in these
adventures; Clara’s was an almost timorous sympathy. Ambient
listened and blushed pinker with excitement. He was a little cut out
by a man who had done what he only hoped to do; but Sir Com was
a good fellow, and while the first fiddle played, he put up his pipe of
tender wild oat in its verdant case and applauded the solo heartily.
By Mr. Waddie’s invitation, Granby and Ambient joined his party at
the Tremont House. The ladies also suggested Newport, whither they
were all going. Granby mentioned his half-engagement with Mr.
Waddy to drop in at that watering-place on their tour, and said that
the pleasure of their society, etc., etc. In short, if he could persuade
his friend, they would drop in, and “we’ll give you a plunge, too,
Ambient,” he promised.
This conversation took place at the breakfast table, the morning after
they landed. The ladies presently disappeared and, when they
reappeared, were resplendent with results of unpacking. The proud
and brilliant Diana was still in half-mourning. I think this Amazon
must have beheld Clara’s loveliness with almost masculine admiration
and have expressed it with manly compliments, for Clara seemed a
little conscious as they stepped into a carriage, not quick enough to
avoid the two gentlemen. These knightly squires were eager for a
glimpse at brightened beauty. Granby assumed the privilege of
handing them into their go-cart, while the humbler Ambient
defended skirt from wheel.
“We are going,” said Diana, “to pass the morning with our friend,
Miss Sullivan, in the country.”
“Adieu the eagle and the swan!” cried Granby, as they drove off. “By
Imperial Jove! Ambient, she is worthy to be the consort of a god. If I
was ambitious, as you are, I should aspire as you do and as much in
vain. I suppose this is your first love, eh? You’re luckier than most
men. A man’s first is generally either a grandmotherly old flirt
become dévote, or some bread-and-butter, sweet simplicity,—oh,
bah!”
“Lucky!” echoed Ambient. “I’m confoundedly unlucky and unhappy.
She’ll never have anything to say to me—except in that infernal
condescending de haut en bas style, as if I was a boy. I’d like to
pwove it on somebody that I’m not!” and Sir Com looked around with
a quite fierce expression upon his pleasant countenance.
“Well, I’m not at all sorry for you,” said Granby cheerfully. “It never
does anyone any harm to be desperately in love with a woman who
is worthy. You may be sure that Diana will never flirt with you.”
“She fluriot!—she would never care enough for anyone’s admiration
to twy to gain it. I only wish she would fluriot with me; then I could
be angwy—now I’m only wetched.”
“It will not help you to know that everybody must go through it,” said
Granby, his face grave again—even a little bitter. “I have, my dear
fellow—and worse. For my part, I admire the goddess immensely;
but I think I could love her friend more—that heavenly mildness
gently soothes my soul. The nose,” continued the major, waxing
eloquent, “is man’s most available feature—it may be tweaked. The
mouth in woman is delicately expressive and available when we are
allowed to”—and he raised his fingers with courteous reverence to
his lips. “But the mouth is external merely. Who wishes to look down
it, even though heart may be in throat and panting at the parted
lips? It is the eyes—eyes like Clara’s, where there is soul beneath the
surface and down in the deep profound of those wells of lightsome
lustre is truth—these we may dreamily gaze in for life-long
peacefulness.”
Ambient stared at this rhapsody, not quite certain whether his
companion was in earnest. But before he could decide, a carriage
drove up, and Granby gave a distant view-halloo as Mr. Waddy
stepped out.
“Punctual to a tick,” said Ira, holding up his watch and producing the
rhinoceros-horn match-box and his case of cheroots.
Granby took one, presented Sir Com, and they entered the hotel
together.

Horace Belden was out that morning exercising his race-horse

Knockknees. As he descended the same slope where he had fouled
with Tootler’s buggy, he saw approaching a carriage with two ladies.
He recognised them instantly, with a leap of the heart. He drew up
by their side with polite commonplaces of welcome, dashed with
more meaning when he addressed Diana. They told him whence and
whither—to-day to Miss Sullivan, to-morrow to Newport.
“How can you like that man?” asked Clara, as they drove on. “He
seems to me a Sansfoy.”
“I do not like or trust him,” replied Diana. “I tolerate him because he
rides well and is agreeable, and because he reminds me of an old
friend.”
She stooped to pick up a broken-winged butterfly that had fluttered
feebly into the carriage. Stooping sent the blood into her face. While
they cherished the poor insect, she grew of a sudden deadly pale,
and putting her hand to her side, shuddered slightly. Clara did not
observe the motion, which was not repeated.
There is no need to describe the meeting between pupils and
preceptress; but in the late twilight Clara returned without Diana,
who had consented to stay a day or two with Miss Sullivan. She
wished to keep both the friends, but Mrs. Waddie would need her
daughter in arranging their house.
Mr. Ira Waddy lionised Boston with Granby and Ambient. They looked
in for a moment on Mr. Tootler. He was composing an air to a
Frémont song which he had just written, and which Mrs. Tootler
would revise—and perhaps infuse with even sharper ginger. He
played it for them on the flute. Sir Com listened with astonishment.
Mr. Tootler figures in the chapter entitled, “An Hour with a Musical
Wool-Merchant,” in that young gentleman’s book, “Pork and Beans;
or, Tracks in the Trail of the Bear and the Buffalo.”
In the evening, Waddy and Waddie became acquainted. The
ambassador accepted the relationship, which was now fully
established by relics and traditions. The Great Tradition, however, of
the Mayflower, the caboose, Miles Standish, the pepper-pot—this he
laughed at as legendary. Ira clung to it vigorously; he liked to have
come in with the Pilgrims, even at the expense of humble ancestry
and an inherited curse.
The serene Waddie, whose life was happy gentleness, whose toil had
been done for him by fortune and by feminine energy, had no
occasion to look to the past for causes of present exasperating
characteristics. He had inherited the family mildness, and though he
decorated his social station, he was not one to have assumed it. He
acknowledged his obligations to his wife. He had thus ignorantly
fulfilled the destiny of his race.
Clara gave the legend her full adhesion; but nothing was said in this
conclave of the Tory sutler, or the Revolutionary sergeant.
Diana was missed, but the name of her hostess was not mentioned.
There was no reason why Miss Sullivan should be talked of among
strangers; no one knew of that incident of Mr. Waddy’s Return where
she had appeared and played so important a part, nor that he would
be pleased to see and thank his preserver.
In the morning, the whole party went to Newport. Thither all the
actors of our drama are centering. It is strange by what delicate links
of influence life is bound to life—what chances of seemingly casual
meetings and partings determine history!
Pallid went with his master; also a fast pair that Tootler had
purchased for Mr. Waddy, who meant to be both charioteer and
cavalier.
 CHAPTER XIV
PROTECTIVE SCANDALS AND OTHER
DIVERTING HUMOURS
OF A FASHIONABLE WATERING-PLACE

O NCE upon a time, by a chance of history, a small man was thrust

into greatness of place.
Moulded in putty for a niche, he tottered and crumbled on a
pedestal.
This pedestalled weakling, small in his great place, prayed for
support. He got it on conditions—rather shabby ones. He was to
acknowledge himself frightened, his niche in life a mistake. He was
to deny his old views of right, and compromise away right for a
novel view of ancient wrong.
When time came that he should remove, he was willing to stay and
be a dough image in a high place; but a grateful people of a grateful
republic did not invite him.
At another time, a grateful people rather scornfully declined him a
re-invitation to the old place, though he prayed it in suppliant guise.
But a grateful people did as much as could be expected; they built a
great hotel at Newport and named it by his name. It still lives, and
its name is “The Millard.”
What they call the odour of respectability that hangs about an old
institution is not always fragrance when that institution is a hotel.
There, most people prefer the odour of new paint. So it was with our
dramatis personæ. They chose the Millard, not from sympathy with
its name, but with its newness.
Mr. Waddy preferred going with Granby and Ambient, whom they
had adopted, to abandoning these friends and accepting the
invitation of his ambassador kinsman. So these three gentlemen
inscribed themselves upon the books of the Millard.
Miss Arabella Budlong had just returned from her bath. She was in
the hair and costume of La Sonnambula in the bridge scene, and it
was a little dangerous, her rush to the window to inspect the
companions of Mr. Waddy. She might have been seen—in fact, she
was seen, but not recognised, by Peter Skerrett, who had arrived
that morning. He called Gyas Cutus and told him to look at Venus
Anadyomene, drying herself in the sun.
“Anna who?” asked Gyas. “That’s Belle Bud. She’s always drying at
this hour, and I believe doesn’t care who knows it. I say, Peter, who
are those chaps just come in? You know everybody before he is
born. A very neat lot they are.”
“That brown one with the cheroot is Ira Waddy,” replied Peter, “the
partner of the great East Indian banker, Jimsitchy Jibbybohoy. The
big man is the Grand Duke Constantine, come over to study our
institutions, republican and peculiar, with a view to the emancipation
of serfs. Number three is the eldest hope of the Pope.”
“Gaaz!” said Gyas, with indescribable intonation. “The Pope don’t
have eldest sons.”
“I would be willing to have him the old gentleman’s youngest to
please you,” replied Peter, “but historic truth is a grave thing.
Apropos of boots and kicking, I significantly advise you not to call
that young lady Belle Bud any more.”
Misses Julia Wilkes and Milly Center were in the Millard parlour with
Cloanthus Fortisque and Billy Dulger. They saw the stranger
gentlemen arrive, and Milly felt her volage little heart expand toward
Ambient, that rosebud of Albion. She had a lively imagination for
flirtations and immediately built an ideal vista with a finale of a
kneeling scene, Ambient, in tears, offering his heart and a dukedom.
She was not quite decided whether to raise him from his
entrancement by a tap of fan, as wand, or to leave him in that
comical position and call in a friend to witness her disdained
triumph.
“Go, Mr. Dulger,” said Milly, with the despotism of a miss in her
position, “and find out who they are—particularly that handsome
young man in the curious coat, lovely complexion, and mutton-
chops. He looks so sweet.”
Poor Dulger, compelled to prepare the way for a possible rival, went
off savagely.
“I’ll make her pay for all this sometime,” he murmured, with
clenched fists.
Dulger was fast getting desperate. He had been with this young fair
one a centripetal dangler or gyroscope for years. Milly had taken his
bouquets all her winters, without regard to expense. But other
bouquets she had likewise taken, to the dismay of his faithful heart.
When cleverer men, or bigger men, or men with more regular
features or less sporadic moustache, came, yielding to Miss Milly’s
seducing attentions,—and she was not chary of them,—poor Dulger
sat in the background, looking at his tightish new boots, and bit his
thumb at these cleverer, bigger, handsomer. He could not understand
the world-wide discursiveness of the clever men, nor in truth, did
Milly, but she had tact enough to see when her locutor thought he
had said a witty thing, and then she could give a pretty laugh; or
when it was a poetical, sentimental thing, she could look down and
softly sigh. A man must have flattery for his vanity as much as sugar
for his coffee, and Milly was very liberal of that sweet condiment.
Her charm lasted with the clever men days, weeks, months,
according to their necessities for unintelligent flattering sympathy
and the frequency of their interviews.
Billy Dulger had seen so many generations of such lovers come and
go, more or less voluntarily, that he began to feel a pre-emptive,
prescriptive, or squatter sovereign right to the premises; for there
were premises, as well as a person—a house where one might
willingly hang his hat. Miss Milly was an orphan and had a house—
nay, many houses—of her own. Her lover was proceeding in the
established manner of courtship by regular approaches and steady
siege. It generally succeeds, this method, and is, after all, easier to
the dangling man of no genius and safer than the bold assault of a
hardy forlorn hope. So many campaigns—such constant cannonade
of bouquets with great occasional bombardment of flower-baskets—
missives proposing truce—shams of raising the siege—showers of
Congreve rockets in the form of cornucopias of bonbons—parleys of
no actual consequence effected by sympathising allies—cautious
spying with lorgnette, followed by assault upon opera box—watchful
pouncings when the garrison sallies forth for stores—patience,
pertinacity, and final success: this was Mr. Dulger’s game. It was,
however, no sport to him. It cannot be sweet for a man to be forever
in the presence of a woman he loves or wants, he playing the
triangle while a gran’ maestro is leading at the apex of the orchestra.
He cannot enjoy hearing her applaud another man for saying things
he cannot possibly think of and does not quite understand. Billy,
therefore, was not happy in his courtship. He knew his love was a
flirt, and not particularly charming, except that she made a business
of being so. But it had become with him a vice to love her, if such is
love. Should he ever succeed, after his ages of suspensory dangling,
he will not be brilliantly happy. This is experience which he will
remember, and though a well-enough intentioned man, he will
necessarily avenge with marital severities his ante-nuptial pains.
Have we dallied too long with Miss Milly and Master William? They
are essentials in this history, and, though casually as it would seem,
yet on them depends its event.
As Mr. Waddy turned after booking himself at the Millard, he found
his hand suddenly seized by Mr. De Flournoy Budlong. The bloom on
this gentleman’s cheeks had jaundiced to autumnal hues. His
smooth, round, jolly face had shrunken and was veined with dry
wrinkles like a frozen apple. Poor Bud, flowering no longer, seediness
was overcoming him, to no one’s special wonder who saw the
principal female of his family conducting herself very much indeed,
and watched young Tim subscribing every night.
“Glad you’ve come,” said Budlong, with unhappy cordiality. “I got
here this morning. Peter Skerrett said it was time for me to be on
hand and gave me half his stateroom. Seasick all night; yes, sir,
every minute. Peter says juicy men always are. Deuced rough off
P’int Judith. Peter said it was the story in the Apocalypse, Judith, and
whole infernos. Found Tim with his head very much swelled. Bad
cold, he said. I told him he’d better stay in bed. He said he would till
evening—had a small subscription party at nine. Asked him to take
me—he said strangers had to be balloted for once a week for three
weeks. I’m afraid it’s all poppycock. Mrs. B. has gone out to walk
with that blasted Frenchman. Ah, here she comes now.”
Mrs. Budlong entered with Auguste Henri. She dismissed her escort
with a whisper and walked up to her husband, very handsome, very
well dressed, perfectly at her ease, and gave him two fingers of the
hand which held her parasol.
“How d’ye do, pa?” said she. “You’ve left us to take care of ourselves
so long that we thought you’d forgotten us. I’m sorry you didn’t let
me know you were coming; you could have brought up another
horse instead of Drummer.”
“What’s happened to him? He’s my best horse,” said the husband
thus tenderly received as master of the cavalry.
“De Châteaunéant was riding him, and that rude young Dunstan,
driving the Wellabouts, ran into him. Drummer was badly cut and
Aug—De Châteaunéant had his—his clothes torn. He intends to
punish Dunstan, who was very insolent.”
“I hope he will,” said De Flournoy, rubbing his hands and brightening
up. “I should like to see the beggar well thrashed”—of course it was
Dunstan he meant.
Mrs. De Flournoy had been quite conscious of Waddy’s presence
during this colloquy. Waddy was a man whom she was willing to
propitiate. She had even tried her fascinations on him early in the
voyage—merely in the way of a flirtation, of course. But Ira was
loyal, though not pretending to be a saint, and remained impervious
to the darts which Mrs. B. shot at him from her expressive eyes. To
Ira, therefore, Mrs. B. now turned, bowed gracefully and smiled
pleasantly. She had the spoiling of a very fine woman in her.
“We were sorry to be deprived of your society on board,” said she,
with easy suavity, “even for so heroic a reason. We were hardly
willing to speak to Mr. Tim Budlong after his abandoning you. But he
is so aristocratic. He said he thought the little beggar might as well
drown. We, of course, did not think so. I hope to see you often while
you are here. We will study American society together. One of the
charms of hotel life is that we can see our friends so constantly and
familiarly and form agreeable intimacies.”
All this was said in Mrs. De Flournoy’s most gracious manner to Mr.
Waddy, and at him and his friends. She was determined to make a
good impression—excessively determined, unfortunately. She wished
to signalise her first summer after Europe by great social triumphs
and courted everybody, except those whom she could venture to
contemn. Still, men at a watering-place are not disposed to reject
the advances of pretty women, and Waddy would have been
placable, but that he did not care for intimacy with a person who
could accept De Châteaunéant as cicisbeo, or even acquaintance. He
could not forget signs of a complete understanding he had detected
between him and the lady. However, Waddy said the civil nothings
and Mrs. Budlong went upstairs, followed humbly by poor old Bud.
Peter Skerrett calls the stair at the Millard “Jacob’s Ladder,” because,
says he, “the angels who have good tops to their ankles are
continually ascending and descending.” Up Jacob’s Ladder, then, Mr.
Waddy and his friends presently marched to their rooms.
When the trio, after their toilet, descended, they found the hall lined
with people awaiting dinner. Peter Skerrett stepped up to greet Mr.
Waddy.
“Come, Peter,” said the young nabob, introducing his friends, “sit
down and tell us what you call the protective scandals. We are all
green at Newport.”
“That is a new expwession to me,” said Sir Com, gaspingly as usual.
“Pwotective scandals—what does it mean?”
“Strangers,” explained Peter oracularly, “before they are up to trap,
are apt to put their foot in it. They need someone to inform them
who are the people they must know, whom they may know, whom
they may know under penalties, and whom they must not know.
They need also a general guide to conversation—to know to whom
they shall say, ‘Man is the architect of his own fortunes,’ and to
whom, ‘It is a noble thing to be descended from a long line of proud
and noble ancestors.’”
“Must we learn the pedigwee of evewybody here?” demanded
Ambient, in consternation. “I shall have to cwam like a fellow going
up for his gweat go.”
“Ah, there you’ve hit it,” replied Peter. “The actual pedigrees are
almost none, thanks to republican institutions. Except a very few
families, who have managed to hold together and keep pelf to their
names, there are no pedigrees to remember. As a Nation, we have
buried our grandfather. Parentage only of everyone is what you must
know. We are a religious people,” and he turned his eyes upward
whither the ceiling was between him and heaven, and motioned as if
to cross himself. “Yes, fervently religious, and have read in Holy Writ
that labour was a curse. We have agreed that it ought to be
expunged. But as it is almost impossible in general powwow to avoid
alluding to some trade or business, the great protective scandal is to
know the individual one not to mention to each of these people.
They do not wish to be reminded by what especial class of curse
their papas were made miserable and millionaire.
“For example,” continued Peter, delighted to have the floor and so
select an audience, “that rather long girl, walking with a race-horse
stride, is Miss Peytona Fashion. Her parent began his fortune by
betting against his own horse. It would be deemed uncivil if you, Sir
Comeguys, should stand before her, and with a whiff at her
circumambient atmosphere of odours, should ask her if her favourite
perfume was Jockey Club.
“So there is hardly one subject that is not taboo with someone. Mrs.
De Flournoy Budlong loves not to hear of flowery meads or breakfast
called a meal—it seems to let the cat out the bag. Old Flirney, you
know, began as a deck-hand on a barrel-barge, and has, turned to
the wall in a lock-up in his garret, a portrait of himself shouldering a
cask of flour; that portrait is her closet skeleton.
“Ah, I see you have spotted the Southern belle,” added he to
Ambient, who was gazing at a dark, luxurious beauty opposite him.
“Spotted her!” echoed the youth, blushing pinkly. “I wouldn’t do it
for the wowuld.”
“Oh, I mean remarked her. You’ll learn the language by-and-by.
You’re looking at her foot—that’s the pretty one; the other’s enlarged
in the joint by dancing. Well, that is Miss Saccharissa Mellasys, the
creole belle from Louisiana. You’re an abolitionist, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said the Englishman: “isn’t evewyone who has no pecuniawy
intewest in slavewy?”
“Of course,” replied Peter, “more or less so. But beware of talking
anti-slavery to Miss Mellasys. You’ll bring an unhandsome look into
those tranquil eyes. She’s here on the proceeds of one of her half-
sisters. Success of abolitionism would knock off her summer trips to
civilisation, and she knows that her amiable papa wouldn’t hesitate
to sell her, as he does the scions of his dusky brood, without too
much inquiry as to the purpose.”
“You call this a democratic republic, I believe,” said Granby.
“’Tis the land of the free and the home of the brave!” cried Peter,
waving his hat. “Pardon this ebullition of national pride. I’m getting
up my enthusiasm for a presidential stumping tour this fall. Well,
Saccharissa is very pretty. I’m told they cultivate that startled
expression of the eyes at the South by placing the girls, when
they’re infants, on the edge of a bayou; the alligators come and
snap at them, but the nurse runs them off just in time.”
“Will you allow me to make a note of that custom?” asked Ambient,
who had listened open-mouthed.
“Certainly,” assented Peter graciously, “and I can tell you more of the
same sort, if you wish,” but the sound of the dinner-gong prevented
further recitals.
Tim Budlong appeared at dinner, all beauteous with raiment, but
looking desperately roué. He had, too, the peculiarly anxious look of
an amateur subscriber, so different from the cautious carelessness of
the professional receiver of subscriptions.
Tim was disposed to dodge Mr. Waddy; but Ira had no quarrel with
the hopeful youth, who had in the Halifax affair only done as most
men do. It is not worth while, as Mr. Waddy knew, to be
permanently disgusted with human beings for acting according to
their natures; he knew that character is a compound of blood,
breeding, and experience. So he gave Tim a glass of claret and said
“Pax vobiscum, my lad!” very kindly.
Tim, pleased with the patronage of the distinguished stranger, who,
with his two friends, and Chin Chin behind his chair, was an object of
gaze at the Millard—Tim, elated by such good society, for twenty
minutes resolved to reform. At the twenty-first minute, he caught a
wink from Gyas Cutus, and with a knowing crook of the elbow,
turned off his glass of what Millard called champagne and became a
reprobate again.
After dinner, Peter Skerrett was besieged by speculators for
information. “Who are your friends?” was the cry of many a hopeful
mother. Peter forgot his previous story and now asserted that they
were Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the Three Kings of Cologne.
Peter was fond of mystification. But the hotel books and the
Budlongs gave more authentic accounts. Henceforth patrols of
marriageable daughters were about Ira’s path; but we shall regard
them no more than did he.
De Châteaunéant, swaggering up the hall before dinner, had seen Sir
Comeguys. He seemed to recognise and desire to avoid him, and
had kept out of the way carefully. Miss Arabella was therefore
solitary, as old Bud adhered to his wife, which, perhaps, accounted
for the fact that she was not blossoming so luxuriantly as usual.
“Miss Arabella is not a bad girl,” remarked Peter Skerrett to Waddy at
dinner. “The mother—such a mother!—is ruining her, as she has
already spoiled poor Tim. I abhor that woman.” Peter was usually
very cool and non-committal, but he grew quite excited at this
moment. “Look now at her étalage,” he continued, referring to her
low-neck. “What fun it is—a watering-place! I’m so romantic that I
have to come here every year for a week to be taken down. I should
positively be falling in love with women if I didn’t see them here
occasionally.”
“Why not stay away and be romantic near cottages rose-
embowered?” suggested Waddy. “The damsels who trim the roses
are fresh as they are pure—what these others are doesn’t in the
least matter.”
“Gammon! Pardon me,” said Peter quickly. “That observation was
addressed to the waiter—ham, I meant. Can a man like myself seek
his love among hollyhocks and marigolds? Really, whatever I may
say, I’m not quite spoony enough for female society, except when
the band is playing melting strains of passionate despair from some
Italian opera, and I am far enough distant therefrom not to observe
false notes and brassiness.”
“You seem to be sentimental now,” said Waddy, smiling. “Who is it?
Can it be Miss Arabella? I am interested there, too, in a godfatherly
way. I will help you to lynch hot nubbless, as Mr. Budlong calls him.
What do you say?”
“No, thanks,” said Peter, his cheeks somewhat unnaturally bright.
“He’ll take himself off when he’s won all he can from Tim and the
other boys, unless he can marry some of the girls—and then, as
Squire Western says, one would hate like the deuce to be hanged for
such a rascal. I don’t believe Miss Arabella would allow him so much
about her, if it were not for her step-mother. I think the infernal
blackleg has the mother in his power and she intends to sacrifice the
daughter to save herself!” and Peter took a draught of ice-water,
against his better judgment, for he was growing quite unnaturally
heated.
“Peter! Peter!” protested Waddy, “I’d be afraid your imagination had
become perverted by dealing so much with the protective scandals—
but I’d come nearly to the same conclusion myself. I saw too much
on board the steamer. I said all I could to old Bud.”
It was on account of this conversation that Mr. Waddy, seeing Miss
Arabella alone after dinner, joined her and chatted a while. Mr.
Waddy, though he allows himself to swear in several distant
languages, and is altogether perfectly independent in his conduct,
will, I hope, already have shown himself a man of refinement in
feeling and manner. Women have tact enough to adapt themselves
to such men and often humbug them for a time. Miss De Flournoy’s
altered manner, as she promenaded with Ira, was not humbug, but
the unconscious effect of gentlemanly influence.
Long absence from Society, so called, had given Mr. Waddy a large
appetite to taste whatever it might have to offer of nutriment or
tidbit. He was not a gourmand for scandals, nor a gourmet for
gossip. Food is food. Yet grub may not be ambrosia, and, certes,
nectar is not swipes. On the whole, he remained a-hungered.
Ecstasy he was not expecting; he had outgrown such hope by fifteen
years. Amusement he found. He had banquets sometimes and
sometimes feasts infestive; people dined him for various reasons; he
was made rather a lion. Peter Skerrett was inexhaustibly amusing.
Under his auspices, Mr. Waddy and his friends came judiciously to
know all the delectable people and all the desirables not so
delectable. When the autocratic gentlemen at the Nilvedere Hotel
expended fifteen dollars in pink buckram for decorations and gave a
ball, Ira was invited, of course. When soon after Mr. Belden’s arrival,
that gentleman, after an unusually successful subscription night,
persuaded Mrs. Aquiline to matronise a picnic, Mr. Waddy and his
friends were of the party. Mr. Belden gave out publicly that this
picnic was for Diana. To Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong he whispered that
it was in honour of their acquaintance and rapid intimacy.
Mr. Belden would hardly have been willing that Diana should know
how great this intimacy had become. She was not likely to hear the
scandals of the Millard; and it is not to be denied that the intimacy
soon became one of the most delectable of the said scandals. Julia
Wilkes and Milly Center talked it over and knew quite too much
about it. Mrs. Aquiline remembered that she was née Retroussée,
and with a subdued delight kept the rector of St. Gingulphus fully
informed. Rev. Theo. Logge, who was by this time well into the Lee
Scuppernong, smacked his lips over the flirtation and hoped to Mrs.
Grognon that there was nothing wrong.
“A foo paw,” he said, “would bring terrible disgrace upon the
congregation of St. Aspasia.”
And then Logge indited two letters to the Preserver. The religious
letter bewailed the immorality of the fashionable world, in the pious
style of generalisation, and referred to the “dreadful developments in
the communication of our secular correspondent, Phylac Terry.”
Phylac did not develop anything; he confined himself to liquorish
innuendos.
Whenever Mrs. Budlong was out with her étalage in the parlours, Mr.
Belden might have been seen hanging over and inspecting it. There
was no hour when they were not together. Belden’s bolter came into
play for buggy drives at solitary hours, and though he was willing to
conceal the qualities of that singed cat, Knockknees, he rode him
cautiously by her side on the beach. The sun went down, dimmer
grew the horizon where it met the sea, dusk and dim and far-away,
falling upon the boundlessness of sea. With the glow and the glory
of sunset, gay files of carriages had left the beach, struggled over
the stones, and climbed the dusty hill. But Mr. Belden and his
companion lingered. She was saying little and sometimes hardly
listening, thinking perhaps of girlish escapades on horseback,
stampedes upon a bareback pony over meadow or among the
pumpkin piles of her father’s orchard long ago,—ah! how long it
seemed!—when she was simpler and possibly purer than now.
Purer? Ah! this seemed a thought she was willing to dismiss, and
Drummer suffered for her wish to fly from it. He tore madly on
through the dim twilight, she looking back almost fearfully. When
that gallop was over, she was again ready to devote herself to her
cavalier, letting him bend over the saddle and rearrange her dress.
Peter Skerrett did not like this at all and spoke to Mr. Budlong, who
came and went every week. Old Bud told him that since his wife had
frankly given up the Frenchman, she should have her own way. He
trusted her fully, he said—good soul!
Peter had no right to interfere. Mr. Waddy had no right. No one had.
No one ever has. Women and men go on ruining themselves, and
the world winks and lets them.
Nor had Peter any right to interfere in Miss Arabella’s flirtation with
De Châteaunéant. He therefore kept away and the flirtation
intensified. Mrs. Budlong patronised it.
Peter could not interfere in Master Tim’s subscriptions. Tim was of
age, his father’s partner. What if he chose to subscribe? Peter used
to drop in at the subscription rooms and watch the young rake’s
progress. The principal subscriptions were in private—it was then
that De Châteaunéant made his heaviest collections. He was a most
accomplished and successful collector. It may have been that he
occasionally allowed Tim to get somewhat in arrears; it was well
enough to have Miss Arabella’s brother under obligations.
Peter Skerrett inquired of Rev. Logge whether all his tract societies
were supplied with agents.
“I could recommend you,” says Peter, “a most surprising beggar who
gets money out of everyone, as Agent for the Society for Making
Tracks.”
In fact, to both Peter and Mr. Waddy, the colour of the nobleman’s
legs became daily more offensive. They were usually clad in violet
cassimere, with a flowered stripe, as is the manner of noblemen of
his particular rank. But to the two gentlemen they seemed dyed of
darkest Stygian hues.
Peter Skerrett, to distract himself from these anxieties, though he
denied that he felt any or was concerned for the Budlongs,
otherwise than as an amateur of scandals, took Sir Comeguys under
his protection. Like a European courier, he would allow no one to
cheat that ingenuous youth but himself. Thus there is a Skerretty
congruity in the wild legends of American life which luridly light the
pages of “Tracks in the Trail of the Bear and the Buffalo.” Gyas Cutus
and Cloanthus, when they were off duty with Miss Julia Wilkes, were
constantly on the watch for Sir Com. They liked to be seen with the
baronet, and were ardent to “sell” him, as they called it. But these
mercantile transactions, more satisfactory to the seller than to the
sold, Peter Skerrett interfered with.
“You’d better take care, Guy, you and old Clo,” he said, to the pair of
pleasant knaves. “This son of perfidious Albion may be green, but he
is plucky and you may get your heads punched. That wouldn’t do,
because they are soft and the indentures caused by such punching
would remain and make it hard to fit you with hats. Abstain and be
wise!”
“Do let us have a shy at him, Peter,” pleaded Gyas. “His ancestors
and mine fought at Bunker Hill—I wish to revenge the death of
General Warren.”
“Your ancestors?” replied Peter. “Who told you that you ever had
any? They may have been tadpoles or worse at that heroic period.
Certainly, your grandfather, the first human Gyas Cutus I ever heard
of, was only a grade above the tadpole when he kept the Frog
Huddle Pond House, near what was then the village of Newark in
Jersey. We allow you to associate with us because you’re not such a
very bad fellow when you’re properly bullied; but don’t try to come
the ancestor dodge—except in that neat and evidently inherited way
you have of mixing drinks.”
“Well, don’t be too hard on a feller,” said Guy. “Come and make it
seven bells—tomar las once, as the Dagoes say—I learned that from
a sailor yesterday aboard of Blinders’ yacht.”
“You’re learning to mar all hours with tipple. I shall have to whisper
to the fair Julia, unless you swear off,” threatened Peter.
“I swear enough, off and on, don’t I, Clo? But the tipple tap won’t
stop. I believe I’ll knock off everything but bourbon, as you told me
to do before.”
“Do,” said Peter encouragingly. “The deterioration in our race is
completely checked since native wines and bourbon came in. Take
plenty of bourbon, and if you ever have a son, possibly he may have
a beard. Think of that!”
 CHAPTER XV
MR. WADDY RECEIVES A LETTER AND GETS
OUT HIS
PISTOLS

I T was about this time that Mr. Waddy received the following letter
from Mr. Tootler:
“The Shrine, August, 1855.
“Dear Ira:
“I have leased your store, No. 26 Waddy Buildings, to
Godfrey Bullion & Co., for five years at $5000 a year.
“Wool is up and fleecing prospers. I am glad, for Mrs. T.
asked me the other day what I thought had better be the
name of our boy. How would you like to be N. or M. to
him—Ira if it’s he, Irene if it’s a girl? Ira and Irene—Wrath
and Peace—that’s just the difference between boy and
girl.
“But this is not what I am writing about. You know, my
dear old boy, that I was never inquisitive about your
affairs. Still, you can’t suppose that I have not divined
something with regard to you and a certain old friend of
ours. I don’t ask information now, because I believe if you
had the right, you would have given it long ago.
“Of course you remember Sally Bishop. The day after you
bought Pallid, Cecilia went over to see her. (The dear girl
is always going to see people that have diseases. I
wonder she don’t take the smallpox and yellow fever twice
a month the year round.) It seems old Bishop had spoken
of you, and when my wife arrived, Sally, who is dying fast,
was very curious to hear more. Cecilia was surprised to
find that Sally knew you, but would have supposed her
inquiries only the ordinary interest of a neighbour in the
return of a neighbour, except for something very singular
in her manner. Sally asked if you were as fine-looking as
ever. Mrs. T., of course, gave the proper reply. Were you
married? Did you look happy? Cecilia thought it a strange
question—but said that though you were cheerful and
very amusing, she found you sometimes very sad—she
had observed, in fact, as I had, that there seemed to be
some unhappiness at the bottom of your indifferent
manner. Sally Bishop burst into tears, in such a distressed
and almost agonised manner that my wife feared she
would kill herself with weeping. Cecilia prayed her to say
what this meant, and she answered in a frightened voice,
‘Remorse!’—she would not or could not say anything
more, and has always refused to see Cecilia since.
“I have good reason to suppose that Sally had at one time
the most intimate relations with Belden. She may have
been his mistress. I only much suspect, without being able
to fully prove. There was a child, a filius nullius, who died,
and it was the feeling of shame at this, though I believe
that not five people knew it, that drove her father to hard
drinking.
“Ira—what cause can she have to feel remorse at the
mention of your name? Is it possible that she may have
been drawn by Belden into some devilish plot against you?
And against someone else?
“I can make no conjectures, as I do not know facts
enough. Cecilia, who seems to have her own theory,
which she will not impart, will endeavour to learn more
from Sally.
 “Meantime, do you watch Belden! I know that he went
several times to see Sally, and each time she was more ill.
He is capable of anything, the rotten villain!—as two of my
family know, Cecilia and myself. Is he disposed to be
friendly with you now? Something may appear in
conversation, if you have a clew. Watch him!
“Yours,
“Thomas Tootler.”
Mr. Waddy read this letter very carefully twice. He folded and filed it
with a bundle of old yellow letters, written in a hand like his own,
with so much difference only as there may be between writing of
man and boy-man. He then, with the same extreme deliberation,
took from a portmanteau a mahogany box. In it were two eight-inch
six-shooters, apparently fired only once or twice for trial. Both were
loaded in every barrel of the cylinder with conical ball. The caps
were perfectly fresh, but Mr. Waddy changed them all.
While he was thus engaged, Major Granby came in.
“At your armory, eh?” he asked. “You were always a great amateur
in shooting-irons. What’s in the wind now? You look like an
executioner. What do you intend to slay—beast, man, or devil?”
“If I shoot, it will be to slay all three in one,” said Waddy gravely.
He had a manner of intense and concentrated wrath, quite terrible
to see. The Ira of the man’s nature was dominant.
Granby understood that this meant mischief.
“Do you want me?” he asked, quick but quiet.
“Not yet,” replied his friend; “perhaps not at all. I don’t like to talk of
shooting until the time comes to do it. Aiming too long makes the
hand tremble. You can understand, Granby, that the world becomes
a small and narrow place to walk in when we meet an enemy deadly
and damnable. Now, without nourishing any ill-feeling, I begin to
half perceive that there may be a person whose life and mine are
inconsistent. You said I looked like an executioner—it may be that I
shall be appointed executioner of such a person.”
“I know you too well,” said Granby, “to suppose you capable of any
petty revenge—this is grave, of course.”
“It is grave. Personal revenge is necessary for the protection of
society. There is crime that laws take no notice of. Public opinion—
public scorn—is never quite reliable. Nor does public opinion protect
the innocent ignorant. There may be such an absolutely dastard
villain that, for the safety and decency and habitableness of the
globe, he must die—and it is fortunate for society when he outrages
anyone to the point of deadly vengeance.”
“Do you begin to see any light on the part of your life that we have
talked over by so many campfires? Fifteen years is long to wait.”
“No years are lost while a man is learning patience. I remember that
it took thirty years of my life to teach me to regard my moral and
mental tremors and stumbles and falls with the same unconcern that
in my fifteenth year I did my childish physical weaknesses. I suppose
that one hour of actual happiness now, which I am certainly not
likely to have, would explain my dark fifteen years. Patience!”
“You expect to win happiness by killing your man, eh?” questioned
Granby.
“No; if I kill him, it will merely be from a quickened sense of duty.
Don’t think I’m going to lie in ambush like a Thug. I wait information
and entertain a purpose.”
Here, Sir Comeguys knocked at the door. They had an appointment
for a sailing party.
As they passed the parlour, Belden was sitting with Mrs. Budlong. It
was as much contact as was possible in public, and some women
allow liberal possibilities.
“How much that Belden looks like your friend Dunstan,” said Granby.
“No compliment to Dunstan, who is just the type American,
chivalrous, half-alligator, not without a touch of the non-snapping