East Angels

The gloves having been duly put on, the three ladies descended to the front drawing-room, where Mrs. Thorne seated herself in an att.i.tude which might have been described as suggesting a cultured expectation.

Her little figure remained erect, not touching the back of her chair; her hands, endued with the gloves, were folded lightly; her countenance expressed the highest intelligence, chastened by the memory of the many trials through which she had pa.s.sed; this, at least, was what she intended it to express.

The fall of the gate-latch was now heard again.

"Had we not better be standing?" suggested their hostess, in a hurried whisper. It was so many years since she had opened her old house for what she called "evening company" that she felt fluttered and uncertain--embarra.s.sed, as imaginative people always are, by the number of things that occurred to her, things she might do.

"I think not, dear friend," answered Mrs. Thorne, with decision. "We are too few, it would have, I fear, the air of a tableau."

Mrs. Thorne was above flutter, a whisper she scorned. As the approaching footsteps drew nearer, the listening silence in the drawing-room, whose long windows stood open, became in her opinion far too apparent; she coughed, turned to her daughter, and, in her clear little voice, remarked, "I have always esteemed the pearl the most beautiful of precious stones. The diamond has more brilliancy, the ruby a richer glow, but the pearl--" Here the steps, entering the hall without ceremony, showed that the new-comers were not the expected northern guests, since they, of course, would have gone through the form of raising the knocker upon the open door. It was Dr. Kirby who entered, followed by the Rev. Mr. Moore.

The Doctor offered his salutations in his usual ceremonious fas.h.i.+on. He made a compact little bow, and a formal compliment, over the hand of each of the ladies in turn; he was dressed in black, but still looked like a canary-bird--a canary-bird in mourning.

After some minutes, again came the sound of the gate-latch. Mrs. Carew, who was talking, stopped short, even Dr. Kirby's attention flew to the gravel-path; there was danger of another pause. But bravely Mrs. Thorne came to the rescue a second time. "The emerald," she observed, to the unlistening Kirby, "is clear, and even one may say translucent. And how profound it is!--how deep the mysterious green which--" The new-comers had crossed the piazza, lifted the knocker, and had then, without waiting for Pompey's appearance, entered the hall; this showed acquaintance, though not the familiar intimacy of the first guests; it proved to be Manuel Ruiz, and with him Adolfo Torres.

But now came the sound of wheels, Mrs. Carew listened eagerly. "A carriage!" she murmured, turning to the Doctor, as the sound stopped before her house. He nodded and twirled his thumbs. This time there could be no doubt, the strangers were coming up the path.

But silence had again attacked the little group, and Mrs. Thorne, feeling that graceful conversation was now more than ever imperative, if the strangers were to be impressed with the ease and distinction of Gracias society, was again about to speak, when Garda, with a merry gleam in her eyes, exclaimed, with sudden enthusiasm, to Manuel, "Sapphires, oh, beautiful sapphires, how I wish I had a tiara of them!"

Manuel, though somewhat surprised by the unexpectedness of the topic, gallantly answered that she was worthy to have her floors paved with them if she should wish it; nay, that he himself would become a sapphire for such a purpose. And then by the formal knock and the delay, all felt that the strangers were at last within their gates. A few minutes later they entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Rutherford, Margaret Harold, and Evert Winthrop. Mrs. Thorne's eyes turned towards her daughter with one quick single beam of triumph: the ladies wore gloves.

Mrs. Carew seated herself beside her dearest Katrina, and Dr. Kirby bore them company; the Rev. Mr. Moore and Mrs. Thorne gave their attention to Mrs. Harold. Evert Winthrop took a seat which had the air of being near enough to the first group for conversational purposes, but which was in reality a little apart. Garda and Manuel were on the opposite

"Did you have a pleasant ride to-day?" she asked, standing with the simplicity of a child before him, her hands clasped and hanging.

"Yes; I went down the King's Road," he answered, rising. "I like a 'King's Road;' we have no King's Roads at the North."

"Why not?" said Garda.

"We abolished kings more completely than you did perhaps; in 1776."

"What happened then? Something at the North?"

"Oh, a small matter, quite unimportant; it didn't include Gracias-a-Dios."

"It might have, I don't pretend to know the history of Gracias-a-Dios,"

replied Garda, rather loftily; "all I know is the history of my own family. In 1776 my grandmother Beatriz was five years old, and even then, they say, water could run under her insteps."

"Why did they keep the poor child in such wet places? It must have been very unhealthy. Won't you have this chair?"

"I'm so tired of chairs."

"Have you been asleep in the hammock all the afternoon?"

"Yes," she confessed. "But I hope I don't show it so plainly? It isn't polite to look sleepy at a party."

"Let us walk up and down for a while: that will waken you," he said, offering his arm.

"Do people walk up and down when the party is such a small one? Is that a northern custom?"

"I am a northerner certainly; and it's my custom," he answered. As they entered the back drawing-room, "I did not mean that you looked sleepy,"

he added, "but the contrary; the walking will be of use as a sedative."

"You need not be afraid, I shall not do anything out of the way; don't you see that I have on white gloves?" And she extended her hands for his inspection. "They are not mine, as you may well imagine, I never had a pair of white gloves in my life; they are mamma's, and ever so many years old, she wore them when she was married."

"I wish I could have seen her; she must have looked like a little blossom of the May."

"Yes," answered Garda, "I am sure that mamma must have been very pretty indeed when she was young." She spoke with seriousness, Winthrop imagined that she had given the subject much consideration. They reached the end of the second room, and turned to come back.

"I should never have asked the senorita to do that," said Torres in Spanish to Manuel.

"Very likely not; but do at least sit down, people don't stand up against the wall all the time at tea-parties, like wooden soldiers."

"It is my method," replied Torres; "I have always my own method about everything."

"Change it, then; at least for this evening," suggested his New World companion.

"If they do not, as you say, stand, it appears that they walk. And continue to walk," remarked the Cuban, after a moment, his eyes still upon Garda and Winthrop.

"Of course they do, if they wish to," replied Manuel, who was at heart as much surprised by Winthrop's proceeding as Torres had been; but, if surprised, quick also to seize and appropriate to his own use any advantages which new codes of manners might offer. "But you cannot walk all alone--don't try that. Take something and look at it, if you won't sit down; a book; daguerreotypes. There's a Chinese puzzle; take that."

Thus adjured, Torres stepped forward, took the puzzle from a table, and returned with it to his place. Here he stood still again, holding his prize solemnly.

"Play with it," said Manuel; "I never saw such a fellow! Move the rings up and down."

"I took it because you wished me to do so," replied the Cuban, with dignity. "But to play with it is impossible; why should I play with an ivory toy?--I am not a child."

Here the gray head of Pompey appeared at the front drawing-room door.

The old servant waited respectfully until he had caught his mistress's eye; he then made a low bow, with his hands folded before him--"Miss C'roo am serbed."

Dr. Kirby offered his arm to Mrs. Rutherford, Mr. Moore offered his to Mrs. Harold; Mrs. Carew waved Winthrop towards Mrs. Thorne, while she herself took the arm of Manuel Ruiz. Garda was left to Torres, who, thus unexpectedly made happy, accompanied her into the hall, still bearing his puzzle.

"What in the world are you carrying?" she asked, laughing.

"It is a toy of ivory which Manuel insisted that I should take. With your permission I will now lay it aside." And he deposited it carefully upon a chair.

The little procession now came to a pause, Mrs. Carew having asked her dearest Katrina to look at a portrait upon the wall. "It was taken the year after my marriage," she explained, watching for the increased glow through the dining-room door which should proclaim to her anxious eyes the arrival of the astral lamp in its destined place.

"I do not need a portrait, Betty; I have one in my memory," replied Mrs.

Rutherford, graciously. She could not see the picture without her gla.s.ses, but she gazed at the gilt frame with an interested air, looking at it with her head now a little on one side, now on the other, as if to get the right light.

"I have never considered this portrait a faithful representation of our friend," observed Dr. Kirby. He could not see even the frame, but he surveyed the wall with disapprobation. "It quite fails to give her vivacity, which is so characteristic a feature. But what painter's brush, what limner's art, can fix upon canvas that delicate, that, I may say, intangible charm which belongs to the fairer portion of our humanity? It is, and must always be, a hopeless task."

Mrs. Rutherford admired the Doctor's way of expressing himself. It was the fine old style. She herself had kept pace with the new, as she kept pace with everything; but the old style was more stately, and she had always preferred it; for one thing, she understood it better. Mrs.

Rutherford liked conversations to have a beginning, a middle, and an end; the Doctor's conversations, and even his sentences, had all three.

The increased glow now showed itself through the distant door, and Mrs.

Carew moved on; the little company pa.s.sed down the hall and into the dining-room, where stood a bountifully decked table with the astral lamp radiant in the centre, and Pompey, so dignified under his responsibilities that he actually looked tall, in attendance. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned repast; they were all seated round the table as though it had been a dinner. But the hostess did not place them in the order in which they had proceeded through the hall; having paid what she considered due acknowledgment to etiquette, she now arranged them for the long repast in the way which she thought would please them best, which is quite another matter. Winthrop found himself between Garda and Mrs. Harold; Mrs. Harold had upon her left hand Manuel Ruiz, and Garda upon her right the happy Torres, who, however, in spite of happiness, looked more rigid and solemn than ever as the soft horizontal light of the lamp, s.h.i.+ning above the central plum-cake, illumined his dark face.

"You remember, of course, that he does not speak English," Garda said to Winthrop. She was alluding to her right-hand neighbor.