Horace Chase Part 16

The house which Horace Chase had taken at St. Augustine was much larger than old Miss L'Hommedieu's abode; it was built of coquina, like hers, but it faced the sea-wall directly, commanding the inlet; from its upper windows one could see over Anastasia Island opposite, and follow miles of the blue southern sea. Ruth's French maid, Felicite, had arrived at this brown mansion the day before, with the heavy luggage; to-night, however, new-comers were to remain with the mother in the smaller house.

When the barouche reached Mrs. Franklin's door, Etheridge, Mrs. Kip, and the heart were already there. "I won't stay now," said Mrs. Kip. "But may I look in later? Evangeline Taylor is perfectly _wild_ to come."

When she returned, a little after eight, Chase was still in the dining-room with Anthony Etheridge, who had dined there. The heart had been suspended from a stout hook on the parlor wall, and Ruth happened a moment before to have placed herself under it, when, having discovered her old guitar in a closet, she had seated herself to tune it. "It's _so_ sweet, Ruth, your sitting there under my flowers," said the visitor, tearfully. "And yet, for _me_, such an--such an _a.s.sociation_!"

"I thought your daughter was coming?" said Mrs. Franklin, peering towards the door over her gla.s.ses.

"Evangeline Taylor will be here in a moment," answered her mother; "her governess is bringing her." And presently there entered a tall, a gigantically tall girl, with a long, solemn, pale face. As she was barely twelve, she was dressed youthfully in a short school-girl frock with a blue sash. Advancing, she kissed Ruth; then, retiring to a corner, she seated herself, arranged her feet in an appropriate pose, and crossed her hands in her lap. A little later, when no one was looking, she furtively altered the position of her feet. Then she changed once or twice the arrangement of her hands. This being settled at last to her satisfaction, she turned her attention to her features, trying several different contortions, and finally settling upon a drawing in of the lips and a slight dilatation of the nostrils. And all this not in the least from vanity, but simply from an intense personal conscientiousness.

"The dear child longed to see you, Ruth. She danced for joy when she heard you had come," explained the mother.

"Yes, Evangeline and I have always been great chums," answered Ruth, good-naturedly.

The room was brightly lighted, and the light showed that the young wife's face was more beautiful than ever; the grace of her figure also was now heightened by all the aids that dress can bestow. Ruth had said to Jared, jokingly, "Wait till you see how pretty I shall be in fine clothes!" The fine clothes had been purchased in profusion, and, what was better, Felicite knew how to adapt them perfectly to her slender young mistress.

Mrs. Kip, having paid her tribute to "the a.s.sociation" (she did not say whether the feeling was connected with Andrew Taylor, her first husband, or with the equally departed John Kip, her second), now seated herself beside Ruth, and, with the freedom of old friendship, examined her costume. "I know you had that made in Paris!" she said. "Simple as it is, it has a sort of something or other! And, oh, what a beautiful bracelet! What splendid rings!"

Ruth wore no ornaments save that on her right wrist was a band of sapphires, and on her right hand three of the same gems, all the stones being of great beauty. On her left hand she wore the wedding circlet, with her engagement-ring and the philopena guard over it. In answer to the exclamation, she had taken off the jewels and tossed them all into Mrs. Kip's lap. Mrs. Kip looked at them, her red lips open.

To some persons, Lilian Kip seemed beautiful, in spite of the fact that the outline of her features, from certain points of view, was almost grotesque; she had a short nose, a wide mouth, a broad face, and a receding chin. Her dark-brown eyes were neither large nor bright, but they had a soft, dove-like expression; her curling hair was of a mahogany-red tint, and she had the exquisitely beautiful skin which sometimes accompanies hair of this hue; her cheeks really had the coloring of peaches and cream; her lips were like strawberries; her neck, arms, and hands were as fair as the inner petals of a tea-rose.

With the exception of her imperfect facial outlines, she was as faultlessly modelled as a Venus. A short Venus, it is true, and a well-fed one; still a Venus. No one would ever have imagined her to be the mother of that light-house of a daughter; it was necessary to recall the fact that the height of the late Andrew Taylor had been six feet four inches. Andrew Taylor having married Lilian Howard when she was but seventeen, Lilian Kip, in spite of two husbands and her embarra.s.singly overtopping child, found herself even now but thirty.

She had put Ruth's rings on her hands and the bracelet on her wrist; now she surveyed the effect with her head on one side, consideringly. While she was thus engaged, Mrs. Franklin's little negro boy, Samp, ushered in another visitor--Walter Willoughby.

"Welcome to Florida, Mrs. Chase," he said, as he shook hands with Ruth.

"As you are an old resident, however, it's really your husband whom I have come to greet; he is here, isn't he?"

"Yes; he is in the dining-room with Commodore Etheridge," Ruth answered. "Will you go out?" For it was literally out; the old house was built in the Spanish fashion round an interior court, and to reach the dining-room one traversed a long veranda.

"Thanks; I'll wait here," Walter answered. In reality he would have preferred to go and have a cigar with Chase. But as he had not seen his partner's wife since she returned from Europe, it was only courtesy as well as good policy to remain where he was. For Mrs. Chase was a power.

She was a power because her husband would always wish to please her; this desire would come next to his money-making, and would even, in Walter's opinion (in case there should ever be a contest between the two influences), "run in close!"

Mrs. Kip had hastily divested herself of the jewels, and replaced them on Ruth's wrist and hands, with many caressing touches. "Aren't they _lovely_?" she said to Walter.

"That little one, the guard, was _my_ selection," he replied, indicating the philopena circlet.

"And not this also?" said Ruth, touching her engagement ring.

"No; that was my uncle Richard's choice; Chase wrote to _him_ the second time, not to me," Walter answered. "I'm afraid he didn't like my taste."

He laughed; then turned to another subject. "You were playing the guitar when I came in, Mrs. Chase; won't you sing something?"

"I neither play nor sing in a civilized way," Ruth answered. "None of us do. In music we are all awful barbarians."

"How can you say so," protested Mrs. Kip, "when, as a family, you are _so_ musical?" Then, summoning to her eyes an expression of great intelligence, she added: "And I should know that you were, all of you, from your thick eyebrows and very thick hair. You have heard of that theory, haven't you, Mr. Willoughby? That all true musicians have very thick hair?"

"Also murderers; I mean the women--the murderesses," remarked Dolly.

"Oh, Dolly, what ideas you do have! Who would ever think of a.s.sociating murderesses with music? Music is _so_ uplifting," protested the rosy widow.

"We should take care that it is not too much so," Dolly answered. "Lots of us are ridiculously uplifted. We know one thing perhaps, and like it.

But we remain flatly ignorant about almost everything else. In a busy world this would do no harm, if we could only be conscious of it. But no; on we go, deeply conceited about the one thing we know and like, and loftily severe as to the ignorance of other persons concerning it. It doesn't occur to us that upon other subjects save our own, we ourselves are presenting precisely the same spectacle. A Beethoven, when it comes to pictures, may find something very taking in a daub representing a plump child with a skipping-rope, and the legend: 'See me jump!' A painter of the highest power may think 'The Sweet By-and-By' on the cornet the acme of musical expression. A distinguished sculptor may appreciate on the stage only negro minstrels or a tenth-rate farce. A great historian may see nothing to choose, in the way of beauty, between a fine etching and a chromo. It is well known that the most celebrated, and deservedly celebrated, scientific man of our day devours regularly the weakest fiction that we have. And people who love the best cla.s.sical music and can endure nothing else, have no idea, very often, whether they belong to the mammalia or the crustacea, or whether the Cologne cathedral is Doric or late Tudor."

"Carry it a little further, Miss Franklin," said Walter Willoughby; "it has often been noted that criminals delight in the most sentimental tales."

"That isn't the same thing," Dolly answered. "However, to take up your idea, Mr. Willoughby, it is certainly true that it is often the good women who read with the most breathless interest the newspaper reports of crimes."

"Oh no!" exclaimed Mrs. Kip.

"Yes, they do, Lilian," Dolly responded. "And when it comes to tales, they like dreadful events, with plenty of moral reflections thrown in; the moral reflections make it all right. A plain narrative of an even much less degree of evil, given impartially, and without a word of comment by the author--_that_ seems to them the unpardonable thing."

"Well, and isn't it?" said Mrs. Kip. "Shouldn't people be _taught_--_counselled_?"

"And it's for the sake of the counsel that they read such stories?"

inquired Dolly.

During this conversation, Chase, in the dining-room, had risen and given a stretch, with his long arms out horizontally. He was beginning to feel bored by the talk of Anthony Etheridge, "the ancient swell," as he called him. In addition, he had a vision of finishing this second cigar in a comfortable chair in the parlor (for Mrs. Franklin had no objection to cigar smoke), with Ruth near by; for it always amused him to hear his wife laugh and talk. The commodore, meanwhile, having a.s.signed to himself from the day of the wedding the task of "helping to civilize the Bubble," never lost an opportunity to tell him stories from his own more cultivated experience--"stories that will give him ideas, and, by Jove!

phrases, too. He needs 'em!" He had risen also. But he now detained his companion until he had finished what he was saying. "So there you have the reason, Mr. Chase, why _I_ didn't marry. I simply couldn't endure the idea of an old woman's face opposite mine at table year after year; for our women grow old so soon! Now you, sir, have shown the highest wisdom in this respect. I congratulate you."

"I don't know about that," answered Chase, as he turned towards the door. "Ruth will have an old man's face opposite _her_ before very long, won't she?"

"Not at all, my good friend; not at all. Men have no age. At least, they _need_ not have it," answered Etheridge, bringing forward with joviality his favorite axiom.

Cordial greetings took place between Chase and Walter Willoughby. "Your uncles weren't sure you would still be here," Chase remarked. "They thought perhaps you wouldn't stay."

"I shall stay awhile--outstay you, probably," answered Walter, smiling.

"I can't imagine that you'll stand it long."

"Doing nothing, you mean? Well, it's true I have never loafed _much_,"

Chase admitted.

"You loafed all summer in Europe," the younger man replied, and his voice had almost an intonation of complaint. He perceived this himself, and smiled a little over it.

"So that was loafing, was it," commented Ruth, in a musing tone--"catching trains and coaches on a full run, seeing three or four cantons, half a dozen towns, two pa.s.ses, and several ranges of mountains every day?"

All laughed, and Mrs. Kip said: "Did you rush along at that rate? That was baddish. There's no hurry _here_; that's one good thing. The laziest place! We must get up a boat-ride soon, Ruth. Boat-drive, I mean."

Mrs. Franklin meanwhile, rising to get something, knocked over accidentally the lamplighters which she had just completed, and Chase, who saw it, jumped up to help her collect them.

"Why, how many you have made!" he said, gallantly.

She was not pleased by this innocent speech; she had no desire to be patted on the back, as it were, about her curled strips of paper; she curled them to please herself. She made no reply, save that her nose looked unusually aquiline.

"Yes, mother is tremendously industrious in lamplighters," remarked Dolly. "Her only grief is that she cannot send them to the Indian missions. You can send _almost_ everything to the Indian missions; but somehow lamplighters fill no void."

"Do you mean the new mission we are to have here--the Indians at the fort?" asked Walter Willoughby. "They are having a big dance to-night."

Ruth looked up.

"Should you like to see it?" he went on, instantly taking advantage of an opportunity to please her. "Nothing easier. We could watch it quite comfortably, you know, from the ramparts."