Fashion and Famine Part 27

"Do you read? Of course! what Down Easter does not? But are you fond of reading?--in the habit of picking up books and papers?"

Jacob saw the drift of this question at once.

"Wal, yes. I can read a chapter in the Bible, or a piece in the English reader, I suppose, as well as most folks, though I haven't tried much of late years. But then, if you want a feller to read books for you, why I don't think we should agree. I was set agin them at school, and haven't got over it yet."

"You know how to write, of course?"

He made one of his shuffling bows, and began to brush his hat with the sleeve of his coat.

"You need not wait; we will talk about the wages to-morrow," said Leicester. "Meantime if you can gather any more information about--about the lady, you know it would be a praiseworthy introduction to your new duties."

Jacob bowed again and edged himself toward the door. "I will do my best, you may be sartain. What time o' day shall I come to-morrow?"

"At ten or two, it does not signify. If I am not in, wait!"

"I will!" muttered Jacob, when he found himself alone. "It is something to have learned how to wait, as you shall find, my new master--_master_!" and Jacob laughed.

CHAPTER XII.

STRIFE FOR AN EARL.

Thistledown--Thistledown!--join the pursuit; While fashion flies onward, let wisdom be mute.

All pleasure is fleeting, and life's but a span, Come gather up, Thistledown, souls, while you can!

It had been a brilliant season in the fashionable world that year.

Saratoga and Newport were perfect hot-beds of gaiety, splendor and trivial ambition. A thorough bred n.o.bleman or two from England--a German countess--the greatest and most popular statesmen of our own land, had flung a dazzling splendor over these places. But even amid all this false life and _eclat_ there was one person whose dress, wit and beauty became the theme of general comment. She had taken rooms at Saratoga late in the season. Accommodations for half a dozen servants--stabling for almost as many horses, all was in preparation long before the lady herself appeared.

There was something about this to puzzle and bewilder the most thorough-bred gossip of a watering-place. The servants were foreign, and thoroughly educated to their vocation. When questioned regarding their mistress, they spoke of her without apparent restraint, and always as my lady. But there was no t.i.tle attached to the name under which the superb suite of apartments had been engaged. Mrs. Gordon! Nothing could be more simple and unpretending. If there was a t.i.tle behind it, as the indiscretion of the servants seemed to intimate, she was only the more interesting.

Mrs. Gordon's servants had lounged about the United States a whole fortnight; her horses had been exercised by the grooms often enough to attract attention to their superb beauty, and to keep the spirit of gossip and curiosity alive. A lady's maid had for days been making a sensation at the servant's table by her broken English and Parisian finery. Yet no one had obtained a sight of the lady. At last she appeared in the drawing-room, very simply dressed, quiet and self-reliant, neither courting attention nor seeming in the least desirous of avoiding it. She presented no letters, sought no introductions. The various fashionable cliques, with their reigning queens, seemed scarcely to attract the notice of this singular woman, though a mischievous smile would sometimes dawn upon her beautiful mouth, as some petty manoeuvering for superiority pa.s.sed before her.

A creature so calm, so tranquil, so quietly regardless of contending cliques and fashionable factions, was certain to become an object of peculiar attention, even though rare personal beauty, and all the appliances of great wealth had been wanting. The reputation of a t.i.tle, the graceful repose of manners just enough tinged with foreign grace to be piquant, and, above all, the novelty of a face and position singularly unlike anything known at the Springs that season, could not fail to excite a sensation.

If the lady had designed to secure for herself with one graceful fling a place among the _elite_ of American fashion, she could not have managed more adroitly. But even the design was doubtful; she scarcely seemed conscious of the position after it had been awarded to her, and accepted it with a sort of graceful scorn at last, as if yielding herself to the caprice of others, not to her own wishes.

In less than three weeks after her domestication at the Springs, this stranger, announced without introduction, and with no seeming effort, became the reigning belle and toast of the higher circles. Her dress was copied--her wit quoted--her manners became a model to aspiring young ladies, and, with all her power, she was the most popular creature in the world, for she was affable to all, and peculiarly gentle and una.s.suming to those whom other fashionable leaders were ready to crush with a look and wither by a frown. Sometimes a dash of haughty contempt was visible in her manner, but this was only when thrown in contact with a.s.sumption and innate coa.r.s.eness, which soon shrunk from her keen wit and smiling sarcasms. She was feared by the few, but loved, nay, almost worshipped, by the many.

When the season broke up and the waves of high life ebbed back to the cities, this woman had attained a firm social position, una.s.sailable even by the most envious and the most daring. Still she was as completely unknown as on the first day of her appearance. Of herself she never spoke, and from the strange serving-man, who, maintaining the most profound respect, always hovered about her, nothing but vague hints could be obtained. These hints, apparently won from a simple and hesitating nature, always served to inflame rather than satisfy curiosity. One thing was certain. The lady had seen much of foreign life--had travelled in every penetrable country, and her wealth seemed as great as her beauty. More than this no one knew; and this very ignorance, strange as it may seem, added strength to her position.

The way in which Mrs. Gordon shrouded herself had its own fascination.

True, it might conceal low birth, even shame, but it had pleased the fashionable world to bury a high European t.i.tle under all this mystery, and this belief the lady neither aided nor contradicted, for she seemed profoundly unconscious of its existence. With no human being had she become so intimate that a question on the subject might be directly hazarded. With all her graceful kindliness, there was some thing about her that forbade intrusion or scrutiny. She came to Saratoga beautiful, wealthy, unknown. She left it a brilliant enigma, only the more brilliant that she continued to be mysterious, though a t.i.tle still loomed mistily in the public mind.

This mysteriousness was rather increased in its effect, and her position wholly established at the annual fancy ball given the last week of her stay at the springs.

During the whole of that season the United States Hotel had been kept in a state of delightful commotion by the rivalry of two leaders in the fashionable world, who had taken up their head-quarters in that n.o.ble establishment.

Never was a warfare carried on with such amiable bitterness, such caressing home-thrusts. Everything was done regally, and with that sublime politeness which duellists practice when most determined to exterminate each other. Of course, each lady had her position and her followers, and no military chieftains ever managed their respective forces more adroitly.

Mrs. Nash was certainly the oldest inc.u.mbent, and had a sort of preemption right as a fashionable leader. She had won her place exactly as her husband had obtained his wealth, first plodding his way from the work-shop to the counting-room, thence into the stock market, where, by two or three dashing speculations worthy of the gambling-table, and entered upon in the same spirit, he became a millionaire.

Exactly by the same method Mrs. Nash worked her way upward as a leader of ton. Originally uneducated and a.s.suming, she had exercised unbounded sway over her husband's work-people, patronizing their wives, and practising diligently the airs that were to be transferred with her husband's advancement into higher circles.

Through the rapid gradations of her husband's fortune, she held her own in the race, and grew important, dressy, and presuming, but not a whit better informed or more refined. When her husband became a millionaire, she made one audacious leap into the midst of the upper ten thousand, hustled her way upward, and facing suddenly about, proclaimed herself a leader in the fashionable world.

People looked on complacently. Some smiled in derision; some sneered with scorn; others, too indolent or gentle for dispute, quietly admitted her charms; while to that portion of society worth knowing, she retained her original character--that of a vulgar, fussy, ignorant woman, from whom persons of refinement shrunk instinctively. Thus, through the forbearance of some, the sneers of others, and the carelessness of all, she fought her way to a position which soon became legitimate and acknowledged.

But this year Mrs. Nash met with a very formidable rival, who disputed the ground she had usurped inch by inch. If Mrs. Nash was insolent, Mrs.

Sykes was sly and fascinating. With tact that was more than a match for any amount of arrogant presumption, and education which gave keenness to art, founded upon the same hard purpose and coa.r.s.e-grained character that distinguished Mrs. Nash, she was well calculated to make a contest for fashionable superiority, exciting and piquant.

Women of true refinement never enter into these miserable rivalries for notoriety, but they sometimes look on amused. In this case the ladies were beautifully matched. The audacity of one was met with the artful sweetness of the other. If Mrs. Nash had power and the prestige of established authority, Mrs. Sykes opposed novelty, unmatched art, and a species of serpent-like fascination difficult to cope with; and much to her astonishment, the former lady found her laurels dropping away leaf by leaf before she began to feel them wither.

Always on the alert for partisans, both these ladies had looked upon Mrs. Gordon with calculating eyes. Beautiful, undoubtedly wealthy, and with that slight foreign air--above all, with a t.i.tle dropping now and then unconsciously from the lips of her servants--she promised to be an auxiliary of immense value to either faction.

For a week or two they hovered about her, much as two cautious trouts might coquette with a fly on the surface of a mountain pool. Both were afraid to dart at the fly, and yet each was vigilant to keep the other from securing the precious morsel.

Thus, while they were manoeuvering around her, drawing public attention that way, Mrs. Gordon became an object of very general admiration, and bade fair, without an effort, and wholly against her will, to rival both the combatants, and like the dancing horse of a Russian chariot, to carry away all the admiration, while the other two bore the toil and burden of the road.

But a few days before the fancy ball, a new fly was cast into the fashionable current, that quite eclipsed anything that had appeared before. An English earl, fresh from the continent, came up to Saratoga, one day, in a train from New York, and would be present at the fancy ball.

Here was new cause for strife between the Nashes and the Sykeses. Which of these ladies should secure the n.o.bleman for the fancy ball? True, the earl was very young, awkward as the school-boy he was, and really looked more like a juvenile horse-jockey than a civilized gentleman. But he was an _earl_; would a.s.suredly have a seat in the House of Lords, if ever he became old enough; besides, he had already lost thirty thousand dollars at the gaming-table, and bore it like a prince.

Here was an object worth contending for. What American lady would be immortalized by leaning upon the arm of an earl as she entered the a.s.sembly room? No minor claims could be put in here. The earl undoubtedly belonged to Mrs. Nash or Mrs. Sykes--which should it be?

This was the question that agitated all fashionable life at the Springs to its centre. Partisans were brought into active operation. Private amba.s.sadors went and came from the gambling saloons to the drawing-rooms, looking more portentous than any messenger ever sent from the allied powers to the Czar.

The innocent young lord, who had escaped from his tutor for a lark at the Springs, was terribly embarra.s.sed by so many attentions. Too young for any knowledge of society in his own land, he made desperate efforts to appear a man of the world, and feel himself at home in a country where men are set aside, while society is converted into a paradise for boys. It is rumored that some professional gentlemen took advantage of this confusion in the young lordling's ideas, and his losses at the gambling-table grew more and more princely.

But the important night arrived. The mysterious operations of many a private dressing-room became visible. A hundred bright and fantastic forms trod their way to music along the open colonnade of the hotel toward the a.s.sembly-room. The brilliant procession entered the folding-doors, and swept down the room two rivers of human life, flowing on, whirling and retiring, beneath a shower of radiance cast from the wall, and the chandeliers that seemed literally raining light. In her toilet, the American lady is not a shade behind our neighbors of Paris; and no saloon in the world ever surpa.s.sed this in picturesque effect and richness of costume. Diamonds were plentiful as dew-drops on a rose thicket. Pearls embedded in lace that Queen Elizabeth would have monopolised for her own toilet, gleamed and fluttered around those republican fairies, a decided contrast to the checked handkerchief that Ben. Franklin used at the European court, or the bare feet with which our revolutionary fathers trod the way to our freedom through the winter snows. After the gay crowd had circulated around the room awhile, there was a pause in the music, a breaking up of the characters into groups; then glances were cast toward the door, and murmurs ran from lip to lip.

Neither Mrs. Nash or her rival had yet appeared; as usual their entrance was arranged to make a sensation. How Dodsworth's leader knew the exact time of this fashionable's advent, I do not pretend to say. Certain it is, just as the band struck up an exhilarating march, Mrs. Z. Nash entered the room with erect front and pompous triumph, holding the English earl resolutely by the arm. Mrs. Theodore Sykes came in a good deal subdued and crestfallen, after the dancing commenced. She was escorted by one of the most ill.u.s.trious of our American statesmen, which somewhat diminished the bitterness of her defeat. Her fancy dress was one blaze of diamonds, and when Mrs. Nash sailed by, holding the young earl triumphantly by the arm, she seemed oblivious of the n.o.ble presence, but was smiling up into the eyes of her august companion, as if an American statesman really were some small consolation for the loss of a schoolboy n.o.bleman, who looked as if he would give his right arm, which however, belonged to Mrs. Nash just then, to be safe at home, even with his tutor. When Mrs. Gordon entered the room, no one could have told. When first observed, she was sitting at an open window which looked into the public grounds. The light was striking aslant the white folds of a brocaded silk, and on the delicate marabout feathers in her hair, with the brilliancy of sunshine, playing upon wreaths of newly fallen snow. She evidently had no desire to enter into the spirited compet.i.tion going on between the rival factions. When a crowd of admirers gathered around the window, she received them quietly, but without empressment. At length, as if weary with talking, she took the first arm offered, and sauntered into the crowd, searching it with her eyes, as if she feared or expected some one. The first dance had broken up; all was gay confusion, when unwittingly she came face to face with Mrs. Nash, who was sailing down the room with her captive. The young earl, who had remained awkwardly shy since his entrance, gave a start of recognition, his sullen features lighted up, and freeing his arm from the grasp of Mrs. Nash, with an unceremonious "Excuse me, Madam!" he advanced with both hands extended.

"My dear, dear lady, I am so glad to see you!"

The lady reached out her hand, smiling and cordial. "You, here?" she answered, shaking her head, "and alone, ah truant!"

"It wasn't my fault; I was deluded off--kidnapped--but by the best fellow in the world; I will tell you all about it." With a hurried bow to the party he was about to leave. The youth placed himself in a position to converse with Mrs. Gordon, as she pa.s.sed with her previous escort, quite unconscious of her triumph, or of the rage it had occasioned. The lady bent her head with matronly grace, and resumed her walk. "And so you have run away from the good tutor?" she said.

"Run away? oh, nothing of the sort; he consented to let me come.

Leicester can do anything with him. A deuced clever fellow, that Leicester; you know him of course! Everybody knows Leicester, I believe.

Ha, what is the matter? Did I tread on your dress?"

"No no! you were saying something of--"

"Yes, yes, of Leicester--a wonderful fellow--we have only known him a week or two, and he can do anything with my tutor--got me off up here like magic!"

"And do you like him?"