Stories by American Authors Volume VIII Part 20

He carried Osgood to his country-home beyond Liverpool, where they staid till the ship was ready to sail again. He amused his mother and sisters with stories of Osgood's adventures on sea and land, and represented him in the light of a "Jarley's wax-works" hero, till he was fairly cured of his melancholy.

Five months from the day on which he left New York Osgood returned, and stood on his Aunt Formica's door-steps with Dr. Black. They looked like a pair of Englishmen. Both had shiny, red noses, shiny, hard, narrow-brimmed hats, and shiny, narrow-toed boots, and the nap had brushed off their coats.

Osgood looked into the familiar area with emotion, and the Doctor looked at the windows with curiosity.

"They must be out of town," he said; "the house has been put in brown hollands."

But Osgood knew the habits of his aunt--knew that from the first of July till the first of October the house was put on an out-of-town footing; and that she skirmished between city and country, or watering-place. The bell was answered by a servant he did not know.

"I wish to see Mrs. Formica," he said, brushing past her, and entering the dark parlor. "Dr. Black and friend say."

Mrs. Formica came in a moment after with a slight air of amazement, which increased to astonishment when she saw her nephew. She gave a little yelp as he embraced her, and said, "Where _have_ you been?"

"To Cape Cod, and to Europe. I have been shipwrecked, aunt--that is, I lost my mackerel venture, and have been taken care of by my n.o.ble friend, Dr. Black."

Aunt Formica grew pale at the word "shipwrecked," and turned to Dr.

Black. Something in his face made her extend her hand and give him a warm welcome.

"Black may stay here while he is in port, mayn't he? He will amuse you with yarns about me."

"Of course," she replied. "Now tell me the whole story."

Between Osgood and the Doctor it was related.

"Why did you ever go from me?" she asked, wiping away a real tear.

"I believe, aunt, I shall keep up the business of going--it suits me.

I can never live through your conventional cramps."

She did not think it prudent to combat him just then; but made a mental memorandum that something must be done that would change his foolish resolution. A plan developed at dinner that evening.

"I had a note yesterday from Mrs. Senator Conch," said Mrs. Formica.

"She will be in Saratoga this week, and begs me to meet her there.

Formica and I have been talking it over, Osgood, and we think that it will be pleasant for Dr. Black and you to go up for a week. You will go, Doctor?"

"Thank you, Madam, provided Osgood is not averse."

"Any of our set there?" Osgood asked.

"The Trees went up last Sat.u.r.day with Barclay Dodge. They are making an extensive tour this year."

"What's Barclay Dodge along for?"

"He is engaged to Lily Tree!"

"Ah!" said Osgood, looking at the Doctor, who could not help giving him a malicious grimace. "How long since? It's a capital match, ain't it?"

"The engagement must have been announced soon after you left."

This reply put Osgood in a brown study. What impulse, he mused, had prompted Lily to give herself to Barclay Dodge? Would _he_ have done so?

Dr. Black commented on Osgood's face, and considered himself in a fair way to make studies.

"As far as money goes," continued Mrs. Formica, "it may be called a good match; but certainly not as far as family goes."

"Family!" echoed Dr. Black, softly.

"His father was a tradesman," explained Mr. Formica, "while Lily can go back to her great-grandfather before trade need be mentioned."

"Old Mr. Tree's father," remarked his wife, "was a brigadier-general in the Revolution."

"He was a drover, for all that," said Osgood.

Mrs. Formica changed the theme, and talked of Saratoga.

"We'll go," Osgood said, crossly; "but I must first go to my tailor."

Mrs. Formica held a private conversation with him after dinner, gave him a check, and told him not to worry about the future: she had a plan in view.

"Plans go by contraries with me, aunt."

"You owe it to me not to be perverse."

"I can't pay any debt."

Previous to going to bed Dr. Black and Osgood smoked several cigars.

"You strike me," said the Doctor, "as growing to the dramatic just now. One event runs into another with monstrous rapidity among you Americans. How you differ from the English! How is it that you catch fortune by the hair so?"

"We are pa.s.sionate and quick-witted."

"And then you repudiate with ease."

"Bah! you imitate Sydney Smith."

"I did not mean in the sense of State bonds precisely."

"I think," Osgood groaned, "that I begin to feel like a sn.o.b again.

What shall I do to be saved?"

"Go on in the groove that is making for you. I'll stand by and be the chorus. When I hear thy plaints of misery I will let fall the tear; but remember that 'laws determine even the fates.'"

"Bosh!"

Except a dispute between the Doctor and Osgood concerning a slouched hat, which the Doctor would not wear, the party succeeded in starting and arriving amicably at the Union in Saratoga. In a few hours Mrs.

Formica knew who was there. The Trees were at the Union. Mrs. Senator Conch had taken a cottage; but the Senator himself had stopped at Albany for a day to confer with the Governor. Old Madam Funchal of Philadelphia was at Congress Hall, with her train, and Mrs. Romeo Pipps Bovis and husband, from Boston. All her friends were round her; that is, the traveling set she was in the habit of meeting; and her spirits rose to the occasion. These particulars she detailed, in a white muslin morning-dress, to Osgood, who, dressed in a new cream-colored suit, lounged in the doorway of a small parlor off the hall. He shouldered round just in time to come face to face with Lily Tree, who was pa.s.sing on the arm of Barclay Dodge. She stopped, of course, to shake hands with Mrs. Formica, whose apparently warm kiss fell on the edge of a braid of her chestnut hair with the weight and coldness of a snow-flake. Her face settled into rigidity when she turned to speak to Osgood, and, like a transparent boy, he looked, with all the earnestness his gray eyes were capable of, straight into hers. Aunt Formica and Barclay read a story at once upon the text his countenance furnished; but they both made the mistake of believing that Lily had rejected him. Lily was too much occupied in managing her own feelings to divine Osgood's. The imperative necessity of concealment, which all tutored women feel, governed her. She laughed a great deal, though n.o.body said a witty thing, and kept her eyes going between Mrs. Formica and Barclay with a steadiness which equaled the movements of the wax women in the Broadway shop windows. Mr. Formica and Dr. Black added themselves to the party, and the relief of an introduction to the Doctor came to Lily. She approached him, and his honest face induced her to skirmish lightly with him; but not a word did he utter of the whys and wherefores of his being with Osgood. He would not, at any rate, extend his self-elected office of chorus so far as to include her. He felt a dislike toward her. She was too thin, he thought; there was an air of wear and tear about her which was not pleasant. He felt, too, that she knew more than Osgood; and a woman, in his estimation, should never be the intellectual superior of a man she might make choice of. But the Doctor was an Englishman; his ideas of women had been developed by the cynical Thackeray and the material d.i.c.kens. There was a line between the two cla.s.ses of women he only believed to exist--the bad capable woman and the good foolish woman--which could never be crossed by one or the other. The elements which go to make up a man, of good and evil mixed, never enter into the composition of the women of Englishmen of the present time. It is possible that Lily discovered Dr. Black's impression: she discovered it so nearly that she was certain Osgood had talked of her with him.

Why had he? she wondered.

In a few minutes the party fell apart as naturally as it had come together. Lily went on her walk with Barclay; after which she retired to dress for luncheon, but instead of appearing thereat kept her room till evening.