People of the Whirlpool Part 10

Grape fruit, with a dash of sherry, or the more wholesome sloe-gin, is Miss Lavinia's compromise with the before-dinner c.o.c.ktail of society, that is really very awakening to both brain and digestion; and before the quaint silver soup tureen had disappeared, even Martin Cortright had not only come wholly out of his sh.e.l.l, but might have been said to have fairly perched on top of it, before starting on a reminiscent career with his hostess, beginning at one of the monthly meetings of the Historical Society; for though Martin's past belonged more to the "Second Avenue"

faction of the old east side, and Miss Lavinia to the west, among the environs of what had once been Greenwich and Chelsea villages, they had trodden the same paths, though not at the same time. While Sylvia and the "Professor," as she at once began to call him, picked up the web of the college loom that takes in threads of silk, wool, and cotton, and mixing or separating them at random, turns out garments of complete fashion and pattern, or misfits full of false starts or dropped st.i.tches that not only hamper the wearers, but sometimes their families, for life. All that Evan and I had to do was to maintain a sympathetic silence, kept by occasional e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and murmurs from growing so profound as to cause a draught at our corner of the table. "Yes, we used to go there regularly," I heard Miss Lavinia say; "when we were girls Eleanor (Barbara's mother) and I attended the same school--Miss Black's,--Eleanor being a boarding and I a day pupil and a clergyman's daughter also, which, in those days, was considered a sort of patent of respectability.

Miss Black used to allow her to spend the shorter holidays with me and go to those historical lectures as a matter of course. We never publicly mentioned the fact that Eleanor also liked to come to my house to get thoroughly warmed and take a bath, as one of Miss Black's principles of education was that feminine propriety and cold rooms were synonymous, and the long room with a gla.s.s roof, sacred to bathing, was known as the 'refrigerator'; but those atrocities that were committed in the name of education have fortunately been stopped by education itself. I don't think that either of us paid much attention to the lectures; the main thing was to get out and go somewhere; yet I don't think any other later good times were as breathlessly fascinating.

"Mother seldom went, the hermetically sealed, air-proof architecture of the place not agreeing with her; so father, Eleanor, and I used to walk over, crossing the head of Washington Square, until, as we pa.s.sed St.

Mark's Church and reached the steps of the building, we often headed a procession as sedate and serious as if going to Sunday meeting, for there were fewer places to go in those days. Once within, we usually crept well up front, for my father was one of the executive committee who sat in the row of chairs immediately facing the platform, and to be near him added several inches to my stature and importance, at least in my own estimation. Then, too, there was always the awesome and fascinating possibility that one of these honourable personages might fall audibly asleep, or slip from his chair in a moment of relaxation. Such events had been known to occur. In fact, my father's habit of settling down until his neck rested upon the low chair back, made the slipping accident a perpetual possibility in his case.

"Then, when the meeting was called to order, and the minutes read with many h-hems and clearings of the throat, and the various motions put to vote with the mumbled 'All-in-favour-of-the-motion-will-please-signify- by-saying-Ay! Contrary-minded-no-the-motion-is-accepted!' that some one would only say 'No' was our perpetual wish, and we even once meditated doing it ourselves, but could not decide which should take the risk.

"Another one of our amus.e.m.e.nts was to give odd names to the dignitaries who presided. One with lurching gait, erectile whiskers, and blinking eyes we called 'The Owl'; while another, a handsome old man of the 'Signer' type, pink-cheeked, deep eyed, with a fine aquiline nose, we named 'The Eagle.'"

"Oh, I know whom you mean, exactly!" cried Martin, throwing back his head and laughing as heartily as Bradford might; "and 'The Owl' was supposed to have intentions of perpetuating his name by leaving the society money enough for a new building, but he didn't. But then, he doubtless inherited his thrift from the worthy ancestors of the ilk of those men who utilized trousers for a land measure. Do you also remember the discussions that followed the reading of paper or lecture? Sometimes quite heated ones too, if the remarks had ventured to even graze the historical bunions that afflicted the feet of many old families."

"No, I think we were too anxious to have the meeting declared adjourned to heed such things. How we stretched ourselves; the physical oppression that had been settling for an hour or two lifting suddenly as we got on our feet and felt that we might speak in our natural voices.

"Then father would say, 'You may go upstairs and examine the curiosities before joining us in the bas.e.m.e.nt,' and we would go up timidly and inspect the Egyptian mummy. I wonder how he felt last year when there was a reception in the hall and a band broke the long stillness with 'The Gay Tomt.i.t.' Was ever such chocolate or such sandwiches served in equally sepulchral surroundings as in the long room below stairs. I remember wondering if the early Christians ever lunched in the catacombs, and how they felt; and I should not have been surprised if Lazarus himself had appeared in one of the archways trailing his graveclothes after him, so strong was the spell of the mummy upon us.

"It seems really very odd that you were one of those polite young men who used sometimes to pa.s.s the plates of sandwiches to us where we stayed hidden in a corner so that the parental eye need not see how many we consumed."

Thus did Martin Cortright and Miss Lavinia meet on common ground and drift into easy friendship which it would have taken years of conventional intercourse to accomplish, while opposite, the talk between Sylvia and Bradford dwelt upon the new professorship and Sylvia's roommate of two years, who, instead of being able to remain and finish the course which was to fit her for gaining nominal independence through teaching, had been obliged to go home and take charge, owing to her mother's illness.

"Yes, Professor Jameson's decision to give all his time to outside literary work was very sudden," I heard Bradford say. "I thought that it might happen two or three years hence; but to find myself now not only in possession of a salary of four thousand dollars a year (hardly a fortune in New York, I suppose), but also freed this season from being tied at Northbridge to teach in the summer school, and able to be at home in peace and quiet and get together my little book of the 'Country of the English Poets,' seems to me almost unbelievable."

"I have been wondering how the book was coming on, for you never wrote of it," answered Sylvia. "I have been trying all winter, without success, to arrange my photographs in sc.r.a.p-books with merely names and dates. But though, as I look back over the four months, everything has been done for me, even to the b.u.t.toning of my gloves, while I've seemingly done nothing for any one, I've barely had a moment that I could call my own."

"I do not think that it is strange, after having been away practically for six years, that family life and your friends should absorb you.

Doubtless you will have time now that Lent has come," said Bradford, smiling. "Of course we country Congregationalists do not treat the season as you Anglican Catholics do, and I've often thought it rather a pity. It must be good to have a stated time and season for stopping and sitting down to look at oneself. I picked up one of your New York church papers in the library the other day, and was fairly surprised at the number of services and the scope of the movement and the work of the church in general."

Sylvia looked at him for a moment with an odd expression in her eyes, as if questioning the sincerity of his remarks, and then answered, I thought a little sadly: "I'm afraid it is very much like other things we read of in the papers, half truth, half fiction; the churches and the services are there, and the good earnest people, too--but as for our stopping! Ah, Mr. Bradford, I can hardly expect to make you understand how it is, for I cannot myself. It was all so different before I went to boarding school, and we lived down in the house in Waverley Place where I was born. The people of mamma's world do not stop; we simply whirl to a slightly different tune. It's like waltzing one way around a ballroom until you are quite dizzy, and then reversing,--there is no sitting down to rest, that is, unless it is to play cards."

"Yet whist is a restful game in itself," said Bradford, cheerfully; "an evening of whist, with even fairly intelligent partners, I've always found a great smoother-out of nerves and wrinkles."

"They do not play it that way here," answered Sylvia, laughing, in spite of herself, at his quiet a.s.sumption. "It's 'bridge' for money or expensive prizes; and compared to the excitement it causes, the tarantella is a sitting-down dance. I'm too stupid with cards to take the risk of playing; even mamma does not advise it yet, though she wishes to have me coached. So I shall have some time to myself after all, for my defect puts me out of three Lenten card clubs to which mamma belongs, two of which meet at our house. That leaves only two sewing cla.s.ses, three Lenten theatre clubs (one for lunch and matinee and two for dinner and the evening), and Mr. Bell's cake-walk club, that practises with a teacher at our house on Monday evenings. The club is to have a semi-public performance at the Waldorf for charity, in Easter week, and as the tickets are to be ten dollars each, they expect to make a great deal of money. So you see there is very little time allowed us to sit down and look at ourselves."

"I cannot excuse cake-walking off the stage, among civilized people,"

interpolated Miss Lavinia, catching the word but not the connection, and realizing that, as hostess, she had inconsiderately lost the thread of the conversation. "It appeals to me as the expression of physical exuberance of a lower race, and for people of our grade of intelligence to imitate it is certainly lowering! The more successfully it is carried out the worse it is!"

Miss Lavinia spoke so fiercely that everybody laughed but Sylvia, who coloured painfully, and Horace Bradford deftly changed the subject in the lull that followed.

The men did not care to be left alone with their cigars and coffee, so we lingered in the dining-room. Suddenly a shrieking whistle sounded in the street, and the rapid clatter of hoofs made us listen, while Evan rushed to the door, seizing his hat on the way.

"Only the fire engines," said Miss Lavinia; "you would soon be used to them if you lived here; the engine house is almost around the corner."

"Don't you ever go after them?" I asked, without thinking, because to Evan and me going to fires is one of the standard attractions of our New York.

"Barbara, child, don't be absurd. What should I do traipsing after an engine?"

"Yet a good fire is a very exciting spectacle. I once had the habit of going," said Martin Cortright, emerging from a cloud of cigar smoke. "I remember when Barnum's Museum was burned my father and I ran to the fire together and stayed out, practically, all night."

More whistling and a fresh galloping of hoofs indicated that there was a second call, and the engines from up town were answering. I began to tap my feet restlessly, and Miss Lavinia noticed it.

"Don't hesitate to go if you wish to," she said. At the same moment Evan dashed back, calling: "It's a fire on the river front, a lumber yard; plenty of work ahead, with little danger and a wonderful spectacle. Why can we not all go to see it, for it's only half a dozen blocks away?

Bundle up, though, it's bitterly cold."

Horace Bradford sprang to his feet and Sylvia was halfway upstairs and fairly out of her evening gown when Miss Lavinia made up her mind to go also, Evan's words having the infection of a stampede.

"Don't forget the apples," I called to Evan as I followed my hostess.

"The shops and stands are closed, I'm afraid," he called back from the stoop where he was waiting; "perhaps Miss Lavinia has some in the house."

"Apples, yes, plenty; but for mercy's sake what for? You surely aren't thinking of pelting the fire out with them!" she gasped, hurrying downstairs and struggling to disentangle her eyegla.s.ses from her bonnet strings; a complication that was always happening at crucial moments, such as picking out change in an elevated railway station, and thereby blocking the crowd.

"No, apples to feed the fire horses; Barbara always does," Evan answered, dashing down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs to the kitchen, and returning quickly with a medley of apples and soup vegetables in a dish-towel bundle, leaving the solemn cook speechlessly astonished.

Then we started off, Evan leading the way, and the procession straggling after in Indian file; for the back streets were not well shovelled, and to go two abreast meant that one foot of each was on a side hill. Evan fairly dragged me along. Sylvia and Bradford, being fleet of foot, had no difficulty in following, but Martin and Miss Lavinia had rather a b.u.mpy time of it. Still, as pretty much all the uncrippled inhabitants of the district were going the same way, our flight was not conspicuous.

It was, as Evan had promised, a glorious fire! Long before we reached the Hudson the sky rayed and flamed with all the smokeless change of the Northern Lights. Once there, Evan piloted us through the densely packed crowd to the side string-piece of a pier, Miss Lavinia giving little shrieks the while, and begging not to be pushed into the water.

From this point the great stacks of lumber that made the giant bonfire could be seen at the two points, from land and water side, where the fire-boats were shooting streams from their well-aimed nozzles.

As usual, after running the steam-pumping engines as close as desirable to the flames, the horses were detached, blanketed, and tied up safe from harm, and we found a group of three great intelligent iron-gray beauties close behind us, who accepted the contents of the dish-towel with almost human appreciation, while a queer, wise, brown dog, an engine mascot, who was perched on the back of the middle horse, shared the petting with a politely matter-of-fact air.

"It is wonderful! I only wish I could see a little better," murmured Miss Lavinia, who was short, and buried in the crowd.

"Why not stand on this barrel?" suggested Bradford, holding out his hand.

"It's full of garbage and ashes," she objected.

"Never mind that, they are frozen hard," replied Bradford, poking the ma.s.s practically.

Three pairs of hands tugged and boosted, and lo! Miss Lavinia was safely perched; and as there were more barrels Sylvia and I quickly followed suit, and we soon all became spellbound at the dramatic contrasts, for every now and again a fresh pile of Georgia pine would be devoured by the flames, the sudden flare coming like a noiseless explosion, making the air fragrantly resinous, while at the same time the outer boundaries of the doomed lumber yard were being draped with a fantastic ice fabric from the water that froze as it fell.

As to the firemen! don't talk to me of the bygone bravery of the crusaders and the lords of feudal times, who spent their lives in the sport of encamping outside of fortresses, at whose walls they occasionally b.u.t.ted with rams, lances, and strong language, leaving their wives and children in badly drained and draughty castles. If any one wishes to see brave men and true, simply come to a fire with Evan and me in our New York.

We might have stood there on our garbage pedestals half the night if Horace Bradford had not remembered that he must catch the midnight express, glanced at his watch, found that it was already nearly half-past ten, and realized that he had left his grip at Miss Lavinia's.

Consequently we dismounted and pushed our way home.

As we were half groping our way up ill-lighted West Tenth Street Martin Cortright paused suddenly and, after looking about, remarked: "This is certainly a most interesting locality. That building opposite, which has long been a brewery, was once, in part at least, the first city or State's Prison. How often criminals must have traversed this very route we are following, on their way to Washington Square to be hanged. For you know that place, of later years esteemed so select, was once not only the site of Potter's Field, but of the city gallows as well!"

No one, however, joined more heartily than he in the merriment that his inapropos reminiscence caused, and we reached home in a good humour that effectually kept off the cold.

"Did you succeed in buying the gown?" Horace Bradford asked Miss Lavinia, as he stood in the hall making his farewells.

"Oh, yes, I had almost forgotten. Here is the package only waiting for your approval to be tied," and she led the way to the library.

Bradford touched the articles with his big fingers, as lovingly as if he were smoothing his mother's hair, or her hand.