Vance.”
This little note was read and re-read by Clara, till the darkness of night came on. She studied the forms of the letters, the curves and flourishes, all the peculiarities of the chirography, as if she could derive from them some new hints for her incipient hero-worship. Then, lighting the gas, she acted on the advice of the letter, by devoting herself to the performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Vance meanwhile, after a frugal dinner, eliminated from luxurious viands, rang the bell, and sent his card to Miss Tremaine. Laura’s mother was an invalid, and Laura herself, relieved from maternal restraint, had been lately in the habit of receiving and entertaining company, much to her own satisfaction, as she now had an enlarged field for indulging a propensity not uncommon among young women who have been much admired and much indulged.
Laura was a predestined flirt. Had she been brought up between the walls of a nunnery, where the profane presence of a man had never been known, she would instinctively have launched into coquetry the first time the bishop or the gardener made his appearance.
Having heard Madame Brugière, the fashionable widow, speak of Mr. Vance as the handsomest man in New Orleans, Laura was possessed with the desire of bringing him into her circle of admirers. So, one day after dinner, she begged her father to stroll with her through a certain corridor of the hotel. She calculated that Vance would pass there on his way to his room. She was right. “Is that Mr. Vance, papa?”—“Yes, my dear.”—“O, do introduce him. They say he’s such a superb musician. We must have him to try our new piano.”—“I’m but slightly acquainted with him.”—“No matter. He goes into the best society, you know.” (The father didn’t know it,—neither did the daughter,—but he took it for granted she spoke by authority.) “He’s very rich, too,” added Laura. This was enough to satisfy the paternal conscience. “Good evening, Mr. Vance! Lively times these! Let me make you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Laura. We shall be happy to see you in our parlor, Mr. Vance.” Vance bowed, and complimented the lady on a tea-rose she held in her hand. “Did you ever see anything more beautiful?” she asked.—“Never till now,” he replied.—“Ah! The rose is yours. You’ve fairly won it, Mr. Vance; but there’s a condition attached: you must promise to call and try my new piano.”—“Agreed. I’ll call at an early day.” He bowed, and passed on. “A very charming person,” said Laura.—“Yes, a gentleman evidently,” said the father.—“And he isn’t redolent of cigar-smoke and whiskey, as nine tenths of you ill-smelling men are,” added Laura.—“Tut! Don’t abuse your future husband, my dear.”—“How old should you take Mr. Vance to be?”—“About thirty-five.”—“O no! Not a year over thirty.”—“He’s too old to be caught by any chaff of yours, my dear!”—“Now, papa! I’ll not walk with you another minute!”
A few evenings afterwards, as Laura sat lonely in her private parlor, a waiter put into her hand a card on which was simply written in pencil, “Mr. Vance.” She did not try to check the start of exultation with which she said, “Show him in.”
Laura was now verging on her eighteenth year. A little above the Medicean height, her well-rounded shoulders and bust prefigured for her womanhood a voluptuous fulness. Nine men out of ten would have pronounced her beautiful. Had she been put up at a slave-vendue, the auctioneer, if a connoisseur, would have expatiated thus: “Let me call your attention, gentlemen, to this very superior article. Faultless, you see, every way. In limb and action perfect. Too showy, perhaps, for a field-hand, but excellent for the parlor. Look at that profile. The Grecian type in its perfection! Nose a little retroussé, but what piquancy in the expression! Hair dark, glossy, abundant. Cheeks,—do you notice that little dimple when she smiles? Teeth sound and white: open the mouth of the article and look, gentlemen. Just feel of those arms, gentlemen. Complexion smooth, brilliant, perfect. Did you ever see a head and neck more neatly set on the shoulders?—and such shoulders! What are you prepared to bid, gentlemen, for this very, very superior article?”
Laura was attired in a light checked foulard silk, trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons. Running to the mirror, she adjusted here and there a curl, and lowered the gauze over her shoulders. Then, resuming her seat, she took Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” from the table, and became intensely absorbed in the perusal.
As Vance entered, Laura said to herself, “I know I’m right as to his age!” Nor was her estimate surprising. During the last two lustrums of his nomadic life, he had rather reinvigorated than impaired his physical frame. He never counteracted the hygienic benefits of his Arab habits by vices of eating and drinking. Abjuring all liquids but water, sleeping often on the bare ground under the open sky, he so hardened and purified his constitution that those constantly recurring local inflammations which, under the name of “colds” of some sort, beset men in their ordinary lives in cities, were to him almost unknown. And so he was what the Creoles called bien conservé.
Laura, with a pretty affectation of surprise, threw down her book, and, with extended hand, rose to greet her visitor. To him the art he had first studied on the stage had become a second nature. Every movement was proportioned, graceful, harmonious. He fell into no inelegant posture. He did not sit down in a chair without naturally falling into the attitude that an artist would have thought right. That consummate ease and grace which play-goers used to admire in James Wallack were remarkable in Vance, whether in motion or in repose.