The Belle of Bowling Green 1 – Barr · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Belle of Bowling Green 1Chapter 1
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Literature · Romance
The Belle of Bowling Green 1
Chapter 1
BarrEnglish
Monday’s Daughters
Every city has some locality to which its heroic and civic memories especially cling; and this locality in the city of New York is the historic acre of the Bowling Green. With that spot it has been throughout its existence, in some way or other, unfailingly linked; and its mingled story of camp and court and domestic life ought to make the Bowling Green to the citizens of New York all that the Palladium was to the citizens of ancient Troy. For as the Palladium held in one hand a pike, and in the other hand a distaff and spindle, so also, the story of the Bowling Green is one of the pike and the distaff. It has felt the tread of fighting men, and the light feet of happy maidens; and though showing a front of cannon, has lain for nearly three centuries at the open seaward door of the city, like a green hearthstone of welcome.
In the closing years of the eighteenth, and the early years of the nineteenth century, the Bowling Green was in a large measure surrounded by the stately homes of the most honourable and wealthy citizens; and though this class, before the war of 1812, had began to move slowly northward, it was some years later a very aristocratic quarter, especially favoured by the rich families of Dutch extraction, who, having dwelt for many generations somewhere around the Fort and the Bowling Green, were not easily induced to relinquish their homes in a locality so familiar and so dear to them.
Thus for nearly one hundred and forty years there had been Bloommaerts living in the old Beaver Path, and in Bloommaert’s Valley, or Broad Street, and when Judge Gerardus Bloommaert, in 1790, built himself a handsome dwelling, he desired no finer site for it than the Bowling Green. It was a lofty, roomy house of red brick, without extraneous ornament, but realising in its interior arrangements and furnishings the highest ideals of household comfort and elegance.
Sapphira, his only daughter, a girl of eighteen years old, was, however, its chief charm and attraction. No painting on all its walls could rival her living beauty; and many a young citizen found the road to the Custom House the road of his desire. For was there not always the hope that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Sapphira at the window of her home? Or meet her walking on the Mall, or the Battery, and perhaps, if very fortunate, get a smile or a word from her in passing.
All knew that they could give themselves good reasons for their devotions; they did not bow to an unworthy idol. Sapphira Bloommaert had to perfection every mystery and beauty of the flesh--dark, lambent eyes, hardly more lambent than the luminous face lighted up by the spirit behind it; nut-brown hair, with brows and long eyelashes of a still darker shade; a vivid complexion; an exquisite mouth; a tall, erect, slender form with a rather proud carriage, and movements that were naturally of superb dignity: “the airs of a queen,” as her cousin Annette said. But Sapphira had no consciousness in this attitude; it was as natural as breathing to her; and was the result of a perfectly harmonious physical and moral beauty, developed under circumstances of love and happiness. All her life days had been full of content; she looked as if she had been born smiling.
This was exactly what her grandmother Bloommaert said to her one morning, and that with some irritation; for the elder woman was anxious about many people and many things, and Sapphira’s expression of pleasant contentment was not the kind of sympathy that worry finds soothing.
“In trouble is the city, Sapphira, and over that bit of hair-work you sit smiling, as if in Paradise we were. I think, indeed, you were born smiling.”
“The time of tears is not yet, grandmother; when it comes, I shall weep--like other women.”
“Weep! Yes, yes; but one thing remember--deliverance comes never through tears. Look at Cornelia Desbrosses; dying she is, with her own tears poisoned.”
“I am sorry for Cornelia; I wish that she had no cause to weep,” and with these words she did not smile. It had suddenly struck her that perhaps it was not right or kind to be happy when there was so much fear and anxiety in her native city. The idea was new and painful; she rose and went with it to the solitude of her own room; and her mother after silently watching her exit, said:
“She is so gentle, so easily moved--was it worth while?”
“You think so? Give Sapphira a motive strong enough, and so firm she will be--so impossible to move. Oh, yes, Carlita, I know!”
“Indeed, mother, she obeys as readily as a little child. Our will is her will. She bends to it just like the leaves of that tree to the wind.”
“Very good! but there may come a day when to your will she will not bend; when a rod of finely tempered steel will be more pliant in your hand than her wish or will. We shall see. She is a very child yet, but times are coming--are come--that will turn children quickly into men and women. Our Gerardus, where is he?”
“He left home rather earlier than usual. He was sure there was important news.” Mrs. Bloommaert spoke coldly. Her mother-in-law always set her temper on edge with the claim vibrating through the two words “our Gerardus.” “There is so much talk and nothing comes of it but annoyance to ourselves,” she continued, “the cry has been war for five years. It comes not.”
“It is here. At the street corners I saw the bill-man pasting up news of it. In every one’s mouth I heard it. Alive was the air with the word war; and standing in groups, men were talking together in that passion of anger that means war, war, and nothing but war.”
“The blood of New York is always boiling, mother. When Gerardus comes he will tell us if it be war. I shall not be sorry if it is. When one has been waiting for a blow five long years, it is a relief to have it fall. Who is to blame? The administration, or the people?”
“As well may you ask whether it is the fiddle, or the fiddlestick, that makes the tune.”
“At any rate we shall give England a good fight. Our men are not cowards.”
“Carlita, all men would be cowards--if they durst.”
“Mother!”
“If they durst disobey the nobler instincts which make the lower ones face their duty.”
“Oh!”
“Carlita, you have no ideas about humanity.”
“I think mother I, at least, understand my husband and sons--as for Sapphira----”
“More difficult she will be--and more interesting. Peter and Christopher are all Dutch; they that run may read them, but in Sapphira the Dutch and French are discreetly mingled. She has tithed your French ancestors, Carlita--take good heed of her.”
“They were of noble strain.”
“Surely, that is well known. Now I must go home, for I know that Annette is already afraid, and there is the dinner to order. Pigeons do not fly into the mouth ready roasted, and Commenia is getting old. She is lazy, too; but so! The year goes round and somehow we do not find it all bad.”
As she finished speaking, Sapphira came hastily into the room. Her face was flushed, her eyes flashing, and she cried out with unrestrained emotion: “Mother! Mother! We must put out our flags! All the houses on the Green are flagged! Kouba has them ready. He will help me. And you too, mother? Certainly you will help? Kouba says we are going to fight England again! I am so proud! I am so happy! Come, come, mother!”
“My dear one, wait a little. Your father will be here soon, and----”
“Oh, no, no! Father may be in court. He is likely with the mayor. Perhaps he is talking to the people. We can not wait. We must put out the flags--the old one that has seen battle, and the new one that is to see it.”
“But Sapphira----”
“I have the flags ready, mother. Come quickly,” and without further parley she ran with fleet, headlong steps to the upper rooms of the house. Madame, her grandmother, smiled knowingly at her daughter-in-law.
“The will that is your will?” she asked; “where is it? You can see for yourself, Carlita.”
“The news seems to be true at last. You had better wait for Gerardus, mother. He will tell us all about it.”
“The news will find me out in Nassau Street.”
“Commenia can manage without you for one day.”
“There are strawberries to preserve. I like to manage my affairs myself. I have my own way, and some other way does not please me.”
“Well, then, I shall go to Sapphira. My hands are itching for the flags. I am sure you understand, mother.”
“Understand! If it comes to that, I made up my mind many years ago about those English tyrants--and I have not to make it over. I think about them and their ways exactly as I did when I sent my dear Peter with Joris Van Heemskirk’s troops to fight them. Gerardus was but a boy then--ten years old only--but he cried to go with his father. God be with us! Wives and mothers don’t forget, O wee! O wee!”
Her voice softened, she looked wistfully backward and, with outstretched hand, waved her daughter-in-law upstairs. Then she opened for herself the wide, front entrance. The door was heavy, but it swung easily to her firm grip. And yet she was in the seventy-fourth year of her life days.
With a slow but imperious step she took the road to her own home. She was not afraid of the crowd, nor of the enthusiasm that moved it. At every turn she was recognised and saluted, for Madame Bloommaert was part and parcel of the honour of the city, and her bright, handsome face with its coal-black eyes and eyebrows, and snow-white hair lying like mist upon its brown temples, was a familiar sight to old and young. She was rather small of stature, but so disdainfully erect that she gave the impression of being a tall woman--an illusion aided by the buoyancy of her temper and the definite character of her movements.
Her home was on lower Nassau Street between Beaver and Marketfield. It had been her residence for fifty years, and was as perfectly Dutch as herself in its character. Nothing in the street, however, was more interesting than this human habitation. It appeared to have created for itself a sort of soul, so instinct with personality was it. A large garden surrounded it, though its space had been slowly curtailed as land in the vicinity became valuable; yet there was still room enough for some fine shrubbery, a little grass plot, beds of flowers, strawberry and other vines, and the deep, cool well, with its antique shed full of bright pewter dishes.
The house itself was of red brick, mellow and warm, and soft to the eyes with the rains and sunshine of half a century; and nothing could be finer than its front, sending up sharp points to the sky, with a little boat weathercock on the tallest point boxing about in the wind. Over the wide casements a sweetbrier climbed, and nodded its tiny flower; and the veranda, cunningly carved along the bottom railing in an open leaf pattern, was a perfect bower of Virginia creeper.
She opened the garden gate, and its mingled perfumes made her sigh with pleasure. Such boxwood borders, such gay, sweet flowers, such brick walks laid in zig-zag pattern, and shaded by elm and maple trees are not to be found in New York city now, but to madame they were only the beautiful frame of her daily life. She cast her eyes down to see if the walk had been swept, and then looked up at the house as if it were a friend. The flag she loved, the flag under which her young husband had died fighting for liberty, was floating from her window. She stood still and gazed at it. Without words it spoke to her, and without words she answered its claim. In a moment she had accepted whatever of trial or triumph it might bring her.
She went forward more hastily, but, ere she reached the entrance, a very pretty girl came running to meet her. “Have you heard the news, grandmother?” she cried. “Are you not very happy? What did Sapphira say? And Aunt Carlita?--and uncle?--and all of them?”
Madame was unable to answer her questions. She clasped her hand firmly, and went with her into the house. Straight to the main living room she went, an apartment in which the dearest portion of her household gods were enshrined: massive silver services on a richly carved sideboard; semi-lucent china in the corner cupboard; three pictures of Teniers that one of her husband’s ancestors had bought from the hands of the great painter himself; and chairs of antique workmanship that had crossed the ocean with Samuel Bloommaert in 1629 when he bought Zwanendael, the Valley of the Swans. The wide, open fireplace of this room was in itself a picture. The deep cavity at the back and the abutting jambs were coloured a vivid scarlet, with a wash made from iron dust; the hearthstone was white as snow with pipeclay, and in front of the heavy brass irons was a tall blue and white jar with dragons for handles, holding a bunch of red roses, mingled with green asparagus branches. The broad chimney piece above this home picture had also its distinctive charm. It shone with silver candlesticks, their snuffers, and little trays. It kept the silver posset pan that had made the baby’s food half a century ago; the christening cups of her son Gerardus and her daughter Elsie; and two beautiful lacquered tea-caddies from India and China.
Opposite the fireplace, at the end of the room, there was a long table black with age and heavy with Nuremburg carving; but it was on a small round one which stood by an open window that a dinner service for two persons was very prettily laid. Madame sat down in a chair near it, and Annette took off her scarf and bonnet and long gloves, and chattered volubly as she did so:
“I know you would like our flag to be out as soon as the rest, grandmother, and the Yates’ flag was flying, and the Vanderlyns’, and I had hard work to get ours flying before the Moores’ and the Rivingtons’. I thought the whole city had gone mad, and I sent Mink and Bass to find the reason out. They stopped so long! and when they came back, they said it was because we are going to fight England again. How men do love to fight, grandmother!”
“When for their liberty and their homes men fight they do well, do they not?”
“If you had heard Peter Smith talking to a little crowd at our very gate, you would think men found the reason for their existence in a gun or a sword. He said we should whip England in about six weeks, and----”
“That is enough, Annette. The sort of rubbish that Peter talks and simpletons believe I know. We shall win our fight, no doubt of that; but in six weeks! No, it may as likely be six years.”
“Grandmother! Six years! And will there be no balls, and suppers, and no lovers for six years? Of course, all the young men who are to be noticed will prefer fighting to anything else; and what shall I do for a lover, grandmother?”
“There is always Jose Westervelt.”
“He will not do at all. He is too troublesome. He thinks I ought not to dance with any one but him; actually he objects to my speaking to some people, or even looking at them. It is too uncomfortable. I do not like tyranny--no American girl does.”
“So you rebelled. But then, do you expect to catch fish without wetting yourself?”
“It has been done.” She was putting on her grandmother’s feet the cloth slippers she usually wore in the house, and as she rose she perceived with a smile the delicious odour of the roasted pigeons which a negro slave was just bringing to the table.
“I told Commenia to roast them, grandmother. I knew you would want something nice when you got back.”
“Before the fire did she roast them?”
“Yes--on skewers, and basted them with fresh butter. I found enough peas on the vines, and I pulled and shelled them myself, for it was next to impossible to keep the blacks off the streets.”
“Thank you, dear one.”
“I have had such a happy year, grandmother, and now, I suppose, all our gaieties will be ended.”
“Come, come, there will be more gaieties than ever. I am sure that the Battery will be put in fighting trim; then the Bowling Green, with soldiers, will be alive. What will follow? Drills and parades, and what not; and in all the houses round about the Green the women will make idols of the men in uniform. And to be sure they will show their adoration by meat offerings and drink offerings; ceremonies, Annette, which generally end in dancing and love-making.”
“You notice everything, grandmother.”
“I have been young and now I am old; but love never gets a day older. What love was in the beginning, he is now, and ever shall be. These pigeons are very good. You said you had some at the Radcliffes’ yesterday--what kind of a dinner did they give?”
“It was a good dinner, but not a dinner to be asked out to; you and I often have a better one--and there was no dancing, only cards and games--and Jose Westervelt.”
“Poor Jose!”
“Grandmother, he is so magisterial. He sets up his opinions as if they were a golden image; and I am not the girl to fall down before them.”
“He is a distinguished mathematician already.”
“And looks it: besides he knows no more of dancing than a Hindoo knows of skating. Also, since he came back from England, he is so cold and positive in his views, and so stiff and rigid in his London-made clothes, that I cannot endure him. Did you see Sapphira, grandmother?”
“Yes. With some hair work she was busy--a finger ring, or brooch or some such trifle. There will be other work soon, I think. In the last war we had to make all our own clothing and most of our household necessities. The last war! Oh, Annette, dear one, I lost everything in the last war!”
“But you are now a rich woman, grandmother.”
“I mean not that. I lost your grandfather; he was everything to me. There was money, yes; and there was property; but all in a bad way then. Now; well, it is a little different.”
“However did you manage?”
“I worked and hoped and helped myself and others, and left the rest to God. While I slept He made things to grow and prosper. And when this war is over we shall have settled our standing among the nations beyond all dispute, and New York will stride forward as if she wore the seven-leagued boots.”
“Then, grandmother, you will build a fine house past Trinity Church--a good deal past it--perhaps half a mile, or even a mile, and we shall have a carriage of our own and be among the quality.”
“I shall never leave this house, Annette. But I tell you, my dear one--you shall go to Washington every season. If your uncle and aunt Bloommaert go there, that will be sufficient; if not, I have friends who will see to it. Sapphira grows wonderfully handsome.”
“And I, grandmother?”
“You have your own beauty. You need not to envy any one. Now I am tired and I will go to my room. I want to take some better counsel than my own.”
“May I not go to see Sapphira, grandmother? I want to see her very much.”
“You may not go to-day. Listen; the constant tramp of feet and the noise of men shouting and gathering grows louder. Stay in your home.”
“It is very tiresome! Men are always quarrelling about something. What is the use of governments if they can’t prevent war? Any one can settle a quarrel by fighting over it. I do not see what good fighting does. The drums parading round will give us headaches, and the men will go swaggering from one day to another after them. I am in a passion at President Madison--just too when summer is here, and we were going to the Springs, and I was sure to have had an enchanting time.”
“Thou little good-for-nothing! Hold thy foolish tongue! If our men are going to fight it is for thy liberty and thy honour and thy happiness. Sit still an hour and think of that.”
She shut the door when she had spoken these words, and then went, a little wearily, upstairs; but if any one had seen her half an hour afterwards sitting with closed eyes and clasped hands asleep in the large chair that stood by her bedside, they would have said, “She has been satisfied.” For though she looked much older when asleep, her face then showed nothing but that sacred peace and refinement which comes only through a constant idea of God’s care and presence.
Annette stood still until she heard her grandmother’s door close; then, after a moment or two of indecision, she took from under the sofa-cushion a book, and stood it up before her with a comical air of judgment.
“It is all your fault, you unlucky ‘Children of The Abbey,’” she said sternly. “If I had been able to get rid of you, I should have gone with grandmother to Uncle Gerard’s house this morning; and, considering the news, we should certainly have remained there all day. And as grandmother says, ‘if the pot boils, it always boils over on the Bowling Green.’ I ought to have been where I could see and hear all that was going on. I think Sapphira might have sent for me! People are so selfish, and affairs always work so contrary. If I try to be unselfish nothing good comes of it--to me; and if I am reasonably selfish then I am sure to suffer for it. Grandfather de Vries is right; whenever I go to see him, he always mumbles to me: ‘see now, love others well, but thyself most of all.’ Grandfather de Vries is a wise man--every one says so--and he tells me to love myself best of all. Well, I shall have no company this afternoon but these silly ‘Children of The Abbey.’ They are as distractingly absurd as they can be, but I want to know whether they get married or not.”
She sought this information with great apparent interest, yet ever as she turned the fascinating leaves, she let the book drop down a minute while she wondered “what was going on on the Bowling Green.” For she had that keen impression of “something missed” which frequently and mockingly informs a person in whom selfishness is ingrained, unconscious, hereditary.
And her premonition was more than true. Her uncle at that very hour was standing on the topmost step of the flight leading to his house door, and there was a crowd of young men before him--a crowd drunk with its own passionate enthusiasm--who would not be satisfied until he had spoken. His wife and his daughter stood at his right hand, and at his left his son Christopher held aloft the torn and stained colours that had floated above “Bloommaert’s Men” through the heroic days of the War for Independence. Shout after shout greeted his appearance, and when there was a moment’s pause, a beautiful youth stepped forward and called out:
“Speak to us, judge. It is your words we are waiting for.” His hat was in his hand, and his bare head, crowned with close, clustering curls, was lifted to the judge. For one moment his eyes sought out Sapphira, and she caught the glance, and it went to her heart like a ray of sunshine. Yet it was into her father’s face she smiled as she gently touched his arm. Then he spoke as if a burning coal had been laid on his lips, and the very air felt as if set on fire by his words:
“My neighbours, and my fellow citizens!” he cried, “I have hitherto been bitterly against this war with England; but now, I am for it. With all my heart and soul, with all my body, with every shilling of my estate I am for it. I have always been a true and consistent Federalist. But now, there are no Federalists! there are no Republicans! We are all Americans! Dutch and English and French and Scotch, all are to-day Americans! America is the mother of us all. She has nursed us at her breast. She has made us free from all ancient tyrannies. She has given us homes and wives and children, filled our granaries with the finest of the wheat, and set before us the commerce of the whole earth. Shall we not love her? Shall we not defend her when she is insulted and wronged and threatened?”
A roar of enthusiastic assent answered these questions.
“If we must fight we will strike no soft blows in battle. We will give our enemy and the whole world this lesson--that no foreign warships can safely come blustering and pillaging our coasts. New York is to be defended, and New Yorkers are the men to defend their native city. Will you do it?”
He was answered by a shout of affirmation.
“To the last gun?”
“Yes.”
“To the last man?”
“Yes! Yes! You will stand with us, Bloommaert?”
“Living or dead I will stand with you.” Then he took reverently in his hands the faded glorious rag that Christopher Bloommaert held.
“Look,” he said, in a voice as tender as a woman’s--“look at the flag that never waved over a coward, the flag to which we lifted our eyes when all was dark, and saw victory in its stars. It is a flag made for free men; will you ever let England--ever let any enemy--take it from you?”
“We will die for it!”
“No, you will live for it! You will carry it from victory to victory and fly it in the face of all the world--the flag of a free country--the flag of men that will have nothing else, and nothing less--than absolute liberty and absolute independence.” As he spoke these words he lifted the old banner to his lips, and then held it out to the people.
It was an act of allegiance that embraced every soul present, and was followed by a moment of silence that throbbed with emotion; then the young man who had spoken for the company looked expressively at his comrades, and they turned northward to the city, their hearts burning with a steady fervour of loyalty, and their faces full of that dauntless hope which of its own energy fulfils itself. Quiet they could not long be, and when they reached the upper end of the Bowling Green, they began to sing; softly at first, but gradually gathering into a rattling vocal melody, the fiery passion of loyalty that filled their hearts:
“Here’s to the Squire who goes to parade!
Here’s to the citizen soldier!
Here’s to the merchant who fights for his trade
Whom danger increasing makes bolder.
Here’s to the lawyer, who leaving his bar
Hastens where honour doth lead, Sir,
Changing his gown for the ensigns of war,
The cause of his country to plead, Sir!
Freedom appears,
Every heart cheers,
And calls for the help of the brave Volunteers.”
They sang the verse to the gay inspiring music of its old English song, and then gave lustily the cheers it called for. Their echo floated into the Bloommaert house, where the family were sitting down to their belated dinner; for this commonplace event was eagerly accepted as a relief. To eat and to drink, that would mean help and remission, and they had felt until feeling had become prostrating and oppressive.
Christopher made the first remark, and this was to quote the last line of the song, “Calls for the help of the brave Volunteers,” asking after a short pause, “Is it not so, father?”
“Yes, Christopher. I suppose you will sail soon?”
“As soon as my new ship is ready. Peter is hurrying it forward. I am impatient to be off.”
“Have you seen Peter to-day?” asked his mother.
“I saw him, but he was far too busy to talk. The hammers ring in his ship-yard from the first streak of dawn to the last glint of daylight. And now the demand for ships will be doubled.”
“We shall want soldiers as well as sailors, Christopher,” said the judge.
“That is true, father, and they will not be to beg nor to seek. This is a cause that knocks at every man’s door. Leonard Murray is only one of many rich young men who are raising companies at their own expense.”
“Then it was Leonard Murray with those men who were here an hour ago,” said Mrs. Bloommaert. “I felt sure of it; but how much he has changed.”
“In some ways, yes; in general he is just the same good fellow he has ever been. I had a few words with him early this morning, and he asked me to give his respectful remembrance to you and to Sapphira.”
“It is four or five years since I saw him; where has he been?”
“He was at Yale nearly two years; then he went with a party as far west as the Mississippi, and down the river to New Orleans. He was staying with the Edward Livingstons until the rumours of war became so positive that he could not doubt their truth. Then he sailed from New Orleans to Norfolk, and so on to Washington. He reached Washington the very day of the proclamation of war and came so rapidly with the news that Mayor Clinton received it some hours before the official notice.”
“And every hour is of the greatest importance now,” said the judge. “Indeed, I have hardly time for my afternoon pipe, for I promised Mr. Clinton to meet him at four o’clock.”
This information hurried the dinner a little, and Judge Bloommaert took his smoke very restlessly. After he had left the house, Christopher did not remain long. His ship’s progress absorbed his thoughts, and he was not a talkative man. His ardour, his national pride, and his hatred of oppression were quite as potent factors with Christopher Bloommaert as with any patriot in New York, but the force they induced was a silent and concentrated one. On land he seemed to be rather a heavy man, slow in his movements and short in his speech; but the passion of his nature was only biding its opportunity, and those who had ever seen Christopher Bloommaert in action on his own deck knew for all time afterwards what miracles physical courage set on fire by patriotism and by personal interest combined might accomplish.
As he was leaving the room he held the open door in his hand a minute, and said: “Mother, do you know that Aaron Burr is back? He put up his sign in Nassau Street yesterday; I saw it this morning.”
“Dear me, Chris! I hope he has come to help his country in her trouble--that would be only right.”
“Help his country! Aaron Burr help! The man is dead.”
“What do you mean, Chris? You said he was back, now you say he is dead.”
“His honour is slain, and all men have lost faith in him. The man is dead.”
He went away with these words, and Sapphira and her mother watched him out of sight. For some minutes they did not speak; then Mrs. Bloommaert asked: “Did you know Leonard Murray this morning, Sapphira?”
“Yes, mother. I knew him at once. I think that he passed the house twice yesterday. I was not quite sure then, but this morning I had not a moment’s doubt. I wish Annette had been here. She will be very much disappointed.”
“Annette would have spoiled everything. I am glad she was not here.”
“Oh, mother!”
“Yes, she would. I will tell you how. When your father was called out, and took his stand on the topmost step, with Christopher and the flag on one side of him and you and I on the other side, do you think Annette would have been satisfied to stand with us? To be only one of a group? That is not Annette’s idea of what is due to Annette.”
“But what could she have done to alter it?”
“She would have said in her pretty, apologetic way that it was ‘too bad to crowd us, and that any place was right for her,’ and, before an answer was possible, she would have slipped past Christopher and seated herself on the second step at his feet. With her long curls and her white frock, and the blue snood in her hair, and the flag above her, she would have made a picture sufficiently lovely to have attracted and distracted every man present. There would have been but a poor, divided enthusiasm; and yet, Annette would have been so naturally and so innocently conspicuous that both your father and Christopher would have been unconscious of her small, selfish diplomacy.”
“Annette is so pretty.”
“And so vain of her beauty.”
“That is true, but I fancy, mother, even the flowers are vain of their beauty. I have noticed often how the roses when in full bloom, sway and bend and put on languishing airs as if they knew they were sweet and lovely. And, to be sure, I have frequently when I have looked in a mirror been very glad I had a fair face and a good form.”
“It was a very indiscreet, I may say a very wrong thing to do.”
There was a short, penitential silence, and then Sapphira said:
“Though to-morrow is Sunday, may I go and see Annette early in the morning? I am sure both grandmother and Annette will like to know about father’s speech.”
“I can assure you that they know all about it already. Kouba was not here to wait on your father when he left the house--why? Because he had gone as fast as possible to his old mistress with the news. Your grandmother gave him to your father when we were married, but it is only with his left hand that Kouba has served us. Your grandmother is still first; he goes to her with all the news of our house; he always has done so, he always will do so. Nassau Street already knows all--and more--that happened on the Bowling Green to-day.”
Mrs. Bloommaert was quite correct in her opinion. Kouba had not even waited to eat his dinner, but had gone at once to “old mistress” with his own account of the event. And as madame was in her room asleep, Annette had been made the recipient of his views. She listened and she understood, without inquiry or dissent, where the information was truthful and where Kouba was embroidering the occurrence with his personal opinions. She accepted all apparently with equal faith, and then told the old man to “go to the kitchen and get his dinner and a bottle of ‘Sopus beer.”
“What an exciting event!” she exclaimed, “and Kouba is sure that Leonard Murray was the leader of the crowd. I believe it. It was Leonard I saw with the Clark boys half an hour ago. I dare say he is staying with them. I must go and tell grandmother.”
She found madame awake, and quickly gave her Kouba’s news. And it was really a little comfort to Annette to see her grandmother’s disappointment. “So sorry am I that I came away,” she said, “for a great deal I would not have missed that scene, Annette.”
“No, indeed, grandmother! I think it will be very hard to sit here all evening and not know what is going on; shall we walk over to uncle’s now?”
“Three hours after lunch? No!”
“Kouba said the Clark boys were in the crowd; suppose I write and ask Mrs. Clark and Elsie and Sally to take tea with us. Then the men will come later, and we shall hear whatever there is to hear.”
“The Clarks may not care to come.”
“Yes they will. Let me write and ask them. We do want some one to talk to, grandmother.”
Permission being at last obtained, Annette wrote one of her nicest notes and they sent it with a slave woman across the street to the Clarks’ house. Mrs. Clark read it, laughed, and then called her daughter Sally.
“Sally,” she said, “that little minx over the way has found out that Leonard Murray is here. Answer this invitation as pleasantly as possible, but tell her we cannot leave our own home to-night, as we have company.”
“We might ask Annette here, mother.”
“That is what she expects us to do.”
“She is so pretty and cheerful.”
“We will do without her beauty and her cheerfulness to-night.”
“Joe is very fond of her.”
“That is not the question; answer as I have told you.”
But though Sally made the answer as kind as her own kind heart, nothing atoned to Annette for the fact that her little scheme--though one with a double aspect--had failed in both directions.
“They cannot come, grandmother, and they do not even ask us over there--they have company. I know who it is, for I am sure I saw Leonard Murray with the Clark boys an hour ago. But then----”
“What?”
“Sally is really ugly, and though Elsie has a pretty face, she is as dowdy as can be.”
“And so much prettier is Annette de Vries--is that what you mean?”
“Yes, that is ‘the because’ of the slight.”
“Of such a thing I would not think. ‘The because’ has nothing to do with us. And a very sweet girl is Sally Clark. Every one loves her.”
“Don’t scold me, grandmother. I have had already three disappointments. To-day is very unlucky.”
“Then sit still and let it go by. Take the days as they come to you, child.”
Annette did not immediately answer. She had gone to the window and was looking eagerly out. There was a sound of footsteps and of voices in spirited conversation. Listening and looking, she waited until voices and footsteps became faint in the distance. Then she turned to her grandmother with a shrug of satisfaction:
“I was right, as I generally am,” she said. “The Clark boys, with Leonard Murray, have just gone by. Leonard is their company. What is he there for? He never used to care for those girls. Before he went to college ‘from Sapphira to Sapphira was the limit of his way.’”
“Thou foolish one! He is none of thy affair.”
“I do not care a button for Leonard Murray, but I think my cousin Sapphira does, and--and----”
What other reasons she had were not revealed. She stood at the window with an air of mortification, which, however, soon turned to one of pride and triumph; and then she tapped the glass merrily to her thoughts.
What was the girl dreaming of? Beauty’s conquests? Social power? Love after her own heart? A marriage which would hand in her millennium? Alas, for the dreams of youth! Madame watched her in pitying silence--she knew how they would end.
