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Judge Provost, whose wife and daughters were the leaders of fashion in Hamilton, was himself a social Greatheart. Having brought to bear upon various vexed domestic problems the force of his astute mind and enlightened Christianity, he had arrived at a series of conclusions equally creditable to both. The pertinence of his deductions was so obvious to the impartial reasoner as to excite his surprise, that the great body of good and sensible men and women did not adopt and practise them. For example, he maintained first, that the best way to keep men out of jails, was to provide them with abodes so comfortable that they would prefer these to stone cells and prison fare: secondly, as a modification of the same principle, that, since amusements are necessary to the happiness of the young, they should be provided with lawful diversions in their own homes, lest they should seek unlawful abroad; thirdly, in unconscious plagiarism of the wise and genial author of "Annals of a Country Neighborhood," he held and believed for certain, that the surest way to make an indifferent thing bad, was for good people to hold themselves aloof from doing it.
Acting upon these principles, the eminent jurist built a bowling-alley at the back of his garden; caused his eight children to be instructed in music and dancing, and encouraged them to pursue these recreations in his parlors,—where, also, lay backgammon and chess board in full sight. Finally, he crowned their gratification while he drew upon himself the reprobation of the zealots and puritans among his neighbors, by throwing a wing out from his already spacious residence, expressly for a billiard-room. It was a pretty place, and a cheerful, with its green carpets and lounges, tinted walls, and long French windows, and was, as may be supposed, a popular resort with those of the college students who had the entrée , as well as with the young Provosts and their friends of both sexes in the town. A happy, hospitable set were the young Provosts—the four sisters and four brothers—affectionate to one another, dutiful and loving to the parents to whose judicious affection they owed their sunny childhood and youth. Jessie liked them better than she did any other family in Hamilton, while Fanny, the second daughter, had taken a fancy to her at first sight, which was ripening into a cordial friendship.
The billiard-room was very bright with afternoon sunshine, and merry with the chatter of gay voices, one day late in February, when a party of six or eight girls was collected about the table—four playing, the others looking on and talking, sometimes of the game in progress, sometimes upon other subjects—all in a familiar yet ladylike way.
"Somebody mark for me, please!" said a ruddy-cheeked damsel who had never, by any chance, won a game, and whose principal points were the point she made of missing every shot. "If I should hit anything it would be a pity not to get credit for it. Now—all of you look and learn!"
She poised the cue with a superabundance of caution, pursing up her lips into an O, as she took aim; dashed at the white ball nearest her, which flew frantically from side to side of the board, rebounding twice from the cushion, and, at last, popping into a distant pocket, having dodged every other ball with a malicious ingenuity eminently illustrative of the proverbial perversity of inanimate things.
"Better luck next time!" said the player, invincibly good-humored, resigning her place. "If there is anything in perseverance and hope, I shall do it yet, some day, and astonish you all."
The others laughed—with, rather than at her—and Jessie Kirke took the stand she had vacated. All leaned forward to watch her play, her skill being already an established fact. A touch—not a thrust—to the white ball sent it against a red at such an angle that in the rebound it hit another quite at the other end of the green table, which latter rolled into a pocket. This, to the uninitiated, meaningless process, being repeated by her, with trifling variations, until she had made sixteen points, was considered a feat among the embryo billiardists surrounding her.
"So much for a true eye and a sure touch!" said Fanny Provost. "You shame us all, Jessie dear."
"So much for having a good teacher!" said another, less complimentary. "If Mr. Wyllys would bestow as much care upon our tuition as he has upon hers, we might be adepts, too."
"She has practised ten times as much with me as she has with him," answered Fanny, pleasantly. "So, I am entitled to the larger share of the praise for her proficiency. I will not be cheated of my laurels."
"Is Mr. Wyllys, then, your best player?"
The querist was Miss Sanford, who "did not care about billiards," and had even remonstrated, at the beginning of her visit with her cousin Fanny, with regard to her liking for the game—"such a queer one for ladies! She would be afraid to touch a cue for fear she might be called strong-minded." She had discovered, furthermore, that her wrists were not stout enough to bear the weight of a cue steadily, and took pleasure in publishing their genteel fragility. Only that afternoon she had called attention to this by an exclamation addressed to Jessie, as she drew up her cuffs in order to be ready for her turn.
"Dear me! Miss Kirke! what wouldn't I give to be as robust as you are! Look at her arms! They would make six of mine. What do you do to develop your muscles so?"
Jessie smiled in quiet satisfaction with her own beautifully moulded wrists.
"I am healthy, and I lead an active life," she said, laconically, but politely.
Miss Sanford was not pleased either with smile or words, but there was apparently nothing to resent, and she returned to her sofa. She had attended a party the evening before, and was to-day "utterly worn out." While the game went on, she toyed with her rings, slipped her bracelets of dead gold and pearls up and down her thin arms, and now and then yawned behind her hand. Mr. Wyllys' name awoke her from the apathetic droning.
"Decidedly!" replied a looker-on, Selina Bradley by name—a kind-hearted, talkative, and indiscreet girl whom everybody liked, yet of whose tripping tongue many were afraid. "Decidedly the best in town. Don't you think so, Fan?"
"There are not many who can equal him among our finest billiard players," said Fanny. "I do not believe he has lost a game since Mr. Fordham went away. He played splendidly! His nerves were steady and his judgment nice."
"Fordham!" repeated the heiress, quickly. "What was his first name? Who is he?"
"Roy—and he is a professor in our college. He is now in Heidelberg, Germany. Do you know him?" said Fanny, in surprise. "You must have heard us speak of him before."
"Never! I used to know him," rejoined Miss Sanford, tossing her head. "He was engaged to a very dear friend of mine. No! I didn't know he was in Germany. I am glad of it!"
Selina, breathless with excitement, did not catch the meaning of the latter sentences.
"Engaged! I thought he was love-proof! Fanny! Nettie! Sue! do you hear this? Who do you guess is engaged to be married? No less a personage than our invulnerable Professor Fordham!"
The girls crowded about Miss Sanford, forgetting the game in the superior attractions of a love-story.
"To whom?"
"Who told you?"
"I don't believe it!" were the divers comments upon the intelligence.
Jessie remained alone at the table, tapping the cushion opposite her with her cue, her face flaming with indignant confusion. Taken utterly by surprise, she could not at once rally to reply to the false statement she had heard, or govern her countenance well enough to seem indifferent.
The heiress bridled at the last remark, setting back her head in a fashion she conceived was regal, whereas it was merely ungracefully scornful.
"You are not asked to believe it, Miss Barnes! I said distinctly that the gentleman was formerly betrothed to my friend. I am happy, on her account, to be able to state that the (to her) unfortunate engagement was broken almost a year since."
"What do you mean? How did it happen? And to think we never heard a breath of it! Go on! there's a darling! and tell us all about it!" entreated Selina, sinking to the carpet at the feet of the in nowise reluctant newsmonger.
"Perhaps you had rather not, Hester," suggested gentle Fanny to her cousin. "Such stories are painful to those interested in either of the parties to the engagement, and the telling does no good to any one. The fewer people that hear of them the better, it seems to me."
"Oh! I don't mind it in the least now !" Hester hastened to re-assure her. She settled the voluminous skirt of her purple cashmere peignoir about her; disposed her rings upon her fingers, and her fingers upon her lap to her liking; sighed profoundly, and looked smirkingly sentimental. "There was a time when I could not allude to it, or even think of it, without tears. My disposition is so sympathetic! But time deadens all griefs, and my poor friend acknowledges herself that it was best the affair should have terminated as it did. She met Mr. Fordham at the seashore summer before last—was with him there for a week or so. It was long enough for him to fall violently in love with her. He couldn't help being taken by her appearance, for she is just perfectly lovely! a blonde, with blue eyes, and a red rose-bud of a mouth, and golden hair, and the sweetest smile!"
"She must be a real beauty!" sighed Selina, in an ecstasy of admiration.
"She is. People pretend to see a resemblance between us. I have actually been mistaken for her more than once—but that is all nonsense," said Hester, modestly. "I should be just too happy if I were half as handsome as Maria. But I love her too dearly to be envious. We are like twin sisters in heart. I dare say that is the reason we are called so much alike. We go out so much together, you see, that the sight of one reminds people of the other, you know. But as I was saying, this Mr. Fordham pretended to be smitten with her, and, early in the winter, visited her at her own home. Her parents liked him exceedingly. He is rather an imposing man, you know, and has some reputation as a scholar. So, when he paid a second visit at Christmas, and offered himself, there was no objection raised to the match. Poor, dear, deluded Maria! how happy she was! All went swimmingly for about six weeks, when, without warning, he broke the engagement. And why, do you suppose? He had heard that one of her sisters had died of consumption several years before he knew her, and he 'could not be hampered by a sickly wife!'"
She waited until the chorus of reprobation subsided, then resumed:
"He wrote to her. Iron man as he was, he was afraid to trust himself in her presence. He 'regretted the necessity that forced him to this unpleasant step,' he said, 'but he owed a duty to himself which was not to be lightly put aside. He should always remain her friend,' and all that sort of rubbish, you know. The broken-hearted creature stooped to argue with him. She loved him devotedly, and she had had no other love. If I had been in her place, I would have died sooner than let him know how I suffered; but she was such a lamb-like, gentle creature! and her spirit was utterly crushed. She wrote to him, imploring him not to leave her, representing that there was not a sign of hereditary consumption in the family; that her parents were living, and that her grand-parents on both sides had all died from other diseases. But he was obstinate. He 'would never,' he replied, 'in any circumstances, marry a woman who was not, in his opinion, perfectly sound in mind and body, or who had any predisposition to scrofula, consumption, or insanity.' He pretended to believe still that she had the seeds of a fatal malady in her system, and went so far as to allude to her beautiful color—just the sweetest pink and white you ever saw!—as a hectic flush. That's the history of Mr. Roy Fordham's love-scrape!"
"And did she break a blood-vessel, or go into a decline?" asked Sue Barnes, her round face ludicrously elongated, while her eyelids twinkled away a sympathizing tear.
"Well—no!" Miss Sanford hesitated, then made the admission unwillingly, evidently appreciating the damage her mournful recital must sustain through the want of this orthodox sequel. "But she was in a sad way for awhile. Her family kept the miserable affair as quiet as possible for her sake. The truth was communicated to nobody except a few very intimate and dearest friends. But you can't wonder that I have hated the sound of Professor Fordham's name ever since."
"Very natural, I am sure!" murmured the plastic Sue.
Hester made a parade of wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
"Not that I ever liked him. Poor Maria brought him around to our house, one evening, on purpose to have me see him. And the next morning she was in, bright and early, to ask what I thought of him. 'I don't fancy him in the least, my dear child,' I said to her, candidly. 'He has a cold, severe eye, and a stubborn mouth. He is quiet in manner because he is unfeeling. If you marry him, he will rule you with a rod of steel, and make your life a burden.' It was a trial to say it, but I knew it was my duty, and I didn't turn back, you know. She cried her eyes out over what she said was my unkindness, and left me in a tremendous huff. She would neither speak to me, nor hear my name mentioned in her presence, until the rupture came. Then she sent right away for me, and fell upon my neck, begging my pardon. 'If I had been as clear-sighted as you, Hester, what wretchedness I would have been spared!' she sobbed. I am very acute in my perception of character. My grandmother, Mrs. General Deane—my mother's mother—said to her dying day that my skill in seeing through people—especially sheep in wolves' clothing—I mean wolves in sheep's clothing—was—well! the most astonishing thing she had ever seen."
Jessie was knocking the balls to and fro, in reckless disregard of the laws controlling the game, but the sharp click of the ivory spheres did not distract general attention from Miss Sanford.
"I never was more amazed in all my born days!" said Selina, conscientiously reserved with respect to her pre-natal experience. "Mr. Fordham is so pleasant, yet so dignified, and ranks so high in the Faculty and the church, and has so much influence among the students! Who could ever have thought of his behaving in such an inhuman and ungentlemanly manner?"
"Why, people in Hamilton—everybody—out of the college as well as in, consider him a piece of perfection!" added Sue.
"He is a detestable snake in the grass, then!" Hester said, vehemently, her energy so disproportionate to the occasion, that doubts would have arisen, in an unbiassed mind, of her own belief in the affecting narration she had glibly poured forth.
"Take care, dear!" cautioned Fanny. "There may be extenuating circumstances of which we are ignorant. Mr. Fordham's character as a gentleman and a Christian is not to be lightly disputed. Every question has two sides, papa says, and those are wisest who suspend judgment until both are heard. I am morally certain there is some mistake about all this, which Mr. Fordham could clear up, if he were here."
The heiress sniffed haughtily, and her light skin was dappled with fiery red spots to the roots of her hair; her faint eyebrows met in a viragoish frown.
"I thank you for the inference, Miss Provost! Would I repeat a story unless I was sure—'morally certain,' as you say, that it was true in every particular? If you question my veracity, you can ask dozens of her acquaintances in her native place, who will confirm my statement. And you may be thankful if you don't, at the same time, hear some other ugly facts about your Christian gentleman, that I have chosen to omit. If I have a fault, it is that I am too charitable in my judgment of human nature. I am perpetually being imposed upon."
The cue that had been stationary while Fanny put in her plea for mercy to the absent perjurer, was restless again, red balls and white chasing one another aimlessly across the green cloth.
"To tell the truth," said Nettie Fry, another of the listening group, propitiatory of the mistress of a million in her own right,—"I never admired Mr. Fordham so much as many pretend to do. He was always so cool and lofty—so unapproachable and unlike other young men of his age. And as Miss Sanford says, he looked as if he might, when married, grow into a kind of Bluebeard."
"For my part, I thought him grand and good," confessed Selina. "And I liked him a hundred times better than I did the modern young gentleman, with his flattering speeches and unmeaning attentions. I didn't think he could trifle with a woman's affections. I am dreadfully disappointed! I wonder if Mr. Wyllys knows anything about this shocking business!"
"Of course he doesn't! How should he?" retorted Hester, tartly. "There are not three people besides myself, even in our city, who ever heard of it."
"You said 'dozens,' just now, Hester!" ventured merciful Fanny, in gentle rebuke.
Selina averted the burst of anger portended by the darkening visage of the moneyed belle.
"I thought Mr. Wyllys would be more likely to hear Mr. Fordham's side of the story than anybody else," she said, timidly. "You know they are own cousins."
"You don't say so!" ejaculated Hester, horrified; and by a simultaneous conviction of their indiscretion, the entire party was moved to glance at Jessie.
She appreciated the extreme awkwardness of the pause; felt that their eyes were directed, like so many burning-glasses, to a focus that was herself, and mechanically went on playing with her cue and balls. Only Fanny Provost was in a position from which she could see that while her features were steady, and her eyes seemed to follow the red and white spheroids in their windings and doublings, one swollen vein in her throat was beating like a clock, and the nails were bloodless where they pressed upon the cue.
"Come! we must finish our game!" said the young hostess, going back to the table. "Jessie has been perfecting her skill by a bit of private practice, while we were making havoc of our neighbors' characters."
At heart she was exceedingly displeased with the tale-bearer, but the courtesy of hospitality forbade her more emphatic expression of disapproval.
Jessie threw down the slender rod, and tried, very unsuccessfully, to laugh,
"I have done nothing except spoil your game for you. I thought you had found an occupation so far preferable that you would not care to go on with this. I give up my cue and my place. You must choose other partners and commence anew. I have forgotten how the balls were set up when we stopped to listen to Miss Sanford's thrilling romance. I must go now, Fanny. My time is up!"
Bowing a general "Good afternoon," she made her way to the library where she had left her hat and cloak. Fanny accompanied her.
"You will join us again this evening, I hope," she said, kindly. "Mr. Wyllys is to give us some music. Hester has never heard him sing. By a somewhat strange series of mischances, she has never happened to be present when he gave the rest of us this pleasure. She cannot endure contradiction, as you see; so when she insisted I should ask him for to-night, I complied, I am often thankful, Jessie, that I am not an only child, when I see how restless and irritable so much notice and petting has made her. It is a downright misfortune to be so wealthy as she is. Everything and everybody conspires to spoil her. She is more to be pitied than blamed, poor girl!"
Jessie said nothing in rejoinder to this ingenious apology for her cousin's ill-natured tattling, and Fanny was obliged to proceed directly to the point.
"I am sorry if you are leaving thus early on account of anything Hester has said," she continued, genuine concern depicted in her countenance—"sorry if the slur cast by the idle talk of a party of thoughtless girls upon the character of your—of our friend, Mr. Wyllys' cousin—has wounded or displeased you. Hester does not mean to exaggerate or misrepresent, but she has a wild, careless fashion of talking sometimes. I am convinced that there is some great mistake in the story we have heard. In details and in general bearing, it is not in keeping with Mr. Fordham's well-established character. If you knew him, you would agree with me in discrediting it, in toto ."
"I do know him, and I quite agree with you!"
Jessie was tying on her hat, and the action might have caused the slight quaver and weakness in her voice. It was firmer when she spoke again. Fanny, in consternation at the unexpected disclosure, and the manner which said that more was behind the mere statement, could not summon words for reply.
"Mr. Wyllys' cousin"—with unconscious emphasis, Fanny imagined was disdainful—"is not a stranger to me. I have known him a long time. But say nothing to your friends about the acquaintanceship. They might fear they had offended me by their strictures. I will—I may tell you more some other time. You will comprehend then why certain things which were said just now, have excited me more than I care to show. You are always just and tender-hearted, and I thank you for speaking when I could not. Good-by!"
Her lips were set and hard to Fanny's soft kiss, and her eyes glowed dangerously as the latter attended her to the front door. The peace-maker, noting this, refrained from further endeavors to heal the breach between her relative and her new friend. Hester had been shockingly, shamefully imprudent, even if what she stated were true. Jessie was hurt and angry, and she had a right to be. Yet she, Fanny, dared not advance another step without a more distinct understanding of the case. For the present it was beyond her art. She tried to content herself by a cordial invitation to "run in to-morrow forenoon for a quiet billiard-practice—only you and myself—if you do not think better of your refusal to come to-night," and let her visitor go.