“But if you do,” she insisted, “if you make a lot, you will let me entertain, won’t you?”
Nevius shook his head. No, not though it were millions. In the now remote bachelor days he had his fill of society, and while it is colloquial to maintain that those who do not care for society are those for whom society does not care, in his case the argument was invalid. He was too busy to fatigue himself further with futilities and late hours.
His wife was not. She was essentially social, schemingly so, with a dream unfulfilled, yet, perhaps still fulfillable of leadership in the upper four, and so exasperating did her husband’s disinclination for any form of entertainment seem to her, that had you confessed her privately and apart she would have declared illicit commerce as nothing in comparison.
But this was natural. Not until her engagement was announced did society become aware of her existence. Born a Snaith, her people were believed to be rich and known to be common. Her father was an old person of both sexes—possessed of all the vices of woman and none of the virtues of man—a Wall Street rat who told untenable stories and insisted on morning prayers. His wife, it was rumored, was of better stock, and in reviewing the documents, it seems difficult for her not to have been. But she had little to boast of. She was a bloodless creature, with a deprecatory manner and a total inability to look you in the face.
To these people two children had been born, both girls. The elder, Frances, became in time the wife of young Montrion who promptly landed her in a set which, while not censorious, has a curious habit of closing its doors on women who leave their own wide open. In what manner and through what circumstances Mrs. Montrion became negligent in regard to her vestibule is not a matter with which the telling of the accompanying episode need be delayed. Suffice it to say that after being urged from one end of the avenue to the other the sufficiency of that urging ceased.
This occurred at the hour when her sister, Hilda, was about to make some form of début. That the latter was thereby materially handicapped goes without phrases. Apart from a handful of school friends, their brothers and lovers, the girl knew no one. It was Mrs. Montrion on whose offices she relied to join the since defunct F.C.D.C., and to tread Assembly floors. It was through her she was to be smiled upon by the Bleeckers, Rewicks and Wainwarings. It was through her she was to grasp those two potential fingers with which Mrs. Amsterdam sealed the advent of the debutante, and just when the frocks were ordered, presto! up and down Fifth Avenue one door after another was closing on Mrs. Montrion’s back.
It was hard on the girl, very. But she held her tongue, and the frocks which were to have been worn at routs she wore quite graciously at home. Now and again when her father could be induced to secrete himself, the handful of friends, their brothers and lovers, were asked to break bread at the house; and in return now and again her friends asked her to their own abodes. It was on one of these occasions that she met Carol Nevius.
Nevius was then in his twenty-fourth year. As men go his appearance was not distressing, he was neither effeminate nor beefy, his chin may not have been one which Lavater would have praised, but his features were good, he held himself well, and he dressed as those do who put themselves in West-End hands, and then dismiss the subject. A little before he had taken honors at the Law School, and had been welcomed to the bar by judges to whom his name was evocative of old New York and the early history of Manhattan. Of immediate relatives he had none. His income, derived from a small bundle of bonds and the rental of the Nevius house in Tenth Street, was sufficient to enable him to live without toil though not without debts. An existence of that kind not being to his liking he had fought for spurs and won them, so notably even that the cigars he smoked while digesting the Code were paid for from the emoluments of his profession.
His initial encounter with Miss Snaith occurred at a dinner. As the conversation expanded he found himself taking pleasure in the sound of her voice, and presently he discovered that her eyes were so blue they dazzled; that her mouth was perfect, the poise of her head delightful; that though slight of figure, she was adorably constructed; that her wit was nimble and her manner subdued. She seemed to exhale all that is good in woman—simplicity, sympathy, sweetness ard strength; manifestly she was pure of mind, of eye and tongue, and before the dinner was done he told himself that her beauty was the least of her charms.
These impressions he kept to himself, but on learning that at her house a cup of tea was to be had any afternoon for the asking, he thanked her with much gratitude and took her at her word the next day.
But was it tea she gave him? Surely there was a philter in that samovar. It was February then, but by the time Lent had come and gone and the spring’s bold emissaries were in the air, such was the potency of that brew that only her people and his poverty prevented him from praying her to become his wife. Try as he might, he could not reconcile himself to her family, and try too as he was able, he could discern none of the cohorts of advancing wealth. And yet the girl was so radiantly fair, so graceful in speech, so gracious in bearing and apparently so unexpectant
