First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

Again Tamms looked to Remington. There was a silence of some minutes, rather embarrassing to two of the company, at least.

“Well, well,” said Remington, at last, “I may have done you wrong, Tamms. But now you’ve got my stock.” And without the formalities of leave-taking, he rose and shuffled out of the shop.

Tamms watched him almost regretfully, and when he disappeared down the street, turned to Charlie.

“There, I fear, goes a man who will be a chronic bear upon the Allegheny Central,” said he. Tamms had fallen into a way of making these semi-confidences to Charlie; and the latter was struck with the justice of this remark.

This scene was fresh in Charlie’s mind to-day when driving with Mamie through the calm, deep woods that clothe the Berkshire hills. Charlie was afraid of the Deacon; and sought Mamie’s money’s aid against him. Ah! Shakespeare’s heroines had a simple time enough; what would they do in these days, when Shylock masks as Romeo, and Othello, turned soldier of fortune, seeks distinction at his mistress’s mouth? I fear me even Portia would have found her match.

But Mamie would go to the meet—yes, she would. Where love, inclination, and social ambition coincide, what prudent counsels of a country girl like Gracie could resist them? She wrote that evening, thanking Mrs. Gower for her invitation, and only on the next day told Gracie what she had done. Gracie knew Mrs. Gower only slightly; though, had she known her a thousand years, she would not have known her well. The kennels were at the “Bogardus Farm,” and after the meet there was to be a hunt dinner and a hunt ball. Mrs. Gower had many mansions, many places in which to lay her pretty head—and the heads of her guests—and now, it seems, she had a cottage near by, in which Mamie was to go. And the other guests, as Flossie wrote, were to be only Lord Birmingham, Kitty Farnum—and Mr. Wemyss.

For this meeting was indeed “select;” only of the very gayest, smartest few, those of whose prominence there could be no question in the race after pleasure, only those whose purses and whose persons kept the pace that fashion, for the time, demanded. And both the horses and the dogs were also of the choicest breed and blood, and were worth, each and all, his hundreds or his thousands; and the human beings, too, if of their blood we dare not say so much, were of breeding à la mode, and worth, I dare say, any sums you like. John Haviland was not here, nor Lionel Derwent, nor even poor Arthur yet—but only those who made, or seemed to make, the very lightest little game of life.

When newspapers describe all this, they speak a little of the ladies’ dresses—but chiefly of the horses. For this fashionable life of ours, the life of so many of those with whom our lines have, thus far, been cast, seems founded, in its last analysis, upon the horse alone. That noble animal, in all his varied uses, under the saddle, in a four-in-hand, at Mrs. Gower’s carriage traces—take him all-in-all, he stands for everything; he is almost the protagonist of Flossie Gower’s little play. Sculptors, historians, students of social science, would, in ages yet to come, I am sure, term this the age of the Horse; they would, I say, if Mrs. Gower and her set shall even leave a wrack behind. But the wracks they leave behind are, alas! too often not their own. And to others, perhaps, to Jem Starbuck and the workers in the Allegheny country, as well as to the future historian, this age may rather seem the age of Coal.

So Mamie Livingstone went to the show, and the show was very fine indeed. First there was a pack of fox-hounds—real fox-hounds—and then there was a pack of beagles, sixteen or more, with little curly tails; and the gentlemen and ladies rode some miles behind them, on a scented track, and jumped several fences. And Charlie looked very smart in his pink coat, and took the leaps most daringly; and thereupon Mamie did admire him very much, and therefore begin to think seriously of him for a husband.

And the dinner was exquisitely cooked, and quite bright and gay; and the men had all red coats and the women all white throats; and when the ladies left the table the fun was even faster. For when the stories were all told, and they could not talk of the ladies, both because many of the husbands were there and because the subject was a bore at best—and the best of it is surely tête-à-tête—and when even horses had been talked about enough, they went into the ball-room, did these merry dogs, and danced with these fine ladies; only some of them chose to walk in the lawns and over the turf steeple-chase course, where there was shrubbery, and hurdles, and much helping over of carefully preserved stone wails.