First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

Then there came in two prying matrons, of those whom Flossie had defeated in the world’s esteem, so many years ago. They had lived to see their fiats disregarded, and their reception-rooms depleted, and their daughters put out and their sons dazzled, all by this little Flossie Starbuck; and they loved her accordingly. Would their hour of triumph never come again? Flossie wondered why they came to-day; they had not been to see her, save in the most symbolical of paste-board calls, since three months after her marriage. But they had never, since that first triumphant season, dared to question her divine right, by wit and beauty and style, to rule. Could it be that they really meant to bury the hatchet and surrender unconditionally? Or did they scent, like envious ravens, her coming overthrow? She was indifferently polite to them; but made little effort to conceal that she was bored.

Dear me, will a man never come? Mrs. Gower rose, when they had gone, and pressed her feverish brow against the mirror. How marked the wrinkles were beneath the eyes! Men’s voices were heard at last, and Flossie turned her back to the window. It was only a silly fellow, an artist, whom Mrs. Gower had made, and who now presumed upon it; and with him a dancing boy. The boy was nice enough at germans; and was at least a gentleman, but the other was only a swell, which even Flossie Gower realized to be a different thing. Genius soars above birth, so Van Smeer disowned his mother; but he preferred to be known as a gentleman rather than as an artist, and only painted the portraits of his fair friends carelessly, à la Congreve, and by way of flirtation, as it were.

It was fun for Flossie to snub this man, and see his color change. Mrs. Wilton Hay had come in, the woman to whom Flossie had suspected Van Smeer of transferring his incense. “I have been thinking for some time of setting up an establishment in England,” said he to Mrs. Hay, who was going back. “My friend Lord Footlight is by way of having a sort of historical pageant in his theatre at his place in Surrey, and is very keen to have me come.” To which Mrs. Hay made no reply, but Mrs. Gower did. “Do, Mr. Van Smeer,” she said; “I should think her native air would do your poor mother so much good.”

Van Smeer turned livid and ugly, but had to turn and smile to Kitty Farnum, who entered then, for Kitty was said to be that season’s card. “Who was his mother?” whispered Mrs. Hay. “An English ballet-girl,” said Flossie in reply, and Van Smeer knew she did, and had to leave her unavenged. But I know not what he said to Mrs. Hay, when those two left together.

Mahlon Blewitt came in. He represented yet another period in Mrs. Gower’s life, and she had been his Beatrice. But this Dante had been born in Western Ohio, and she had taught him a profound disbelief in all divine comedies, the Inferno even with the rest. He had come from his father’s vast wheat-fields and the infinite prairies, to New York, full of dreams of Shelley and of Chatterton; and Mrs. Gower had taken him up. Then he had gone back from her to his dreams. But he had really fancied him in love with her, and somehow her presence had remained with him and made his dreams absurd. Now he was a man of fashion, and turned his white ties more carefully than the sonnets he still peddled in large quantities to all the magazines; and he cynically talked about his country’s decadence like any Caryl Wemyss, whom he chiefly envied, and of whose verses he wrote bitter reviews upon the sly. Had he really loved his clever patroness, the Inferno at least might have been left him to do; but he knew now that he had not loved her—only his dreams had seemed a poorer thing since Flossie Gower had shared them. The Polish minister came in; he knew his Flossie well and liked her much; he had seen women something like her in continental courts, but known none so bright, so good-natured, or half so free from danger. With him was young Harvey Washburn, a civil-service-reformer who had been sent to Congress to reform the world, and whom Von Hillersdorf was forming for it. Flossie would have liked to go to Washington, and have political power, and vulgarize that too; but there the mighty middle class control, who did not understand her; by the time they do, perhaps, the myriads who make no play of life will have their say, and break her, with other butterflies. Poor Flossie! she does amount to much, after all, in all America; and is angrily conscious of it.

And now comes in our hero, Arthur Holyoke; no one, even Von Hillersdorf, is more perfect a man of the world than he. Well he places his bow and smile, his outspoken compliment here, his whispered word of adoration there; his coat is as well cut as Jimmy De Witt’s, who has also come, some time later than his bride. But no one of these is earnest, thinks Flossie, and is bored again, and glad when they all go, and Mr. Killian Van Kull appears. Here at last is her peer, one who can understand her. Van Kull is a frank libertine; and she likes him for it; he does not play with foils; he is a viveur, like the puissant Guy Livingstone who was the hero that her youth adored. Mamie Livingstone, by the way, has come in too, and gone out with Charlie Townley. Charlie has come to present to Flossie his partner’s lady, Mrs. Tamms, and her marriageable daughters; and Mrs. Gower will have a new pleasure to-morrow, when she meets and cuts them, driving in the Park.

Killian stays some time; there is a dark devil in his eye to-day, and Mrs. Gower thinks his pale face never looked so handsome. When Mr. Wemyss is announced, he rises with a slight smile, and he too goes away.

Mrs. Gower is rude to Wemyss; she throws herself upon a sofa, and has the migraine; he assumes his devotional manner and makes bold to take her hand. She draws it away impatiently.

“Have you a headache?” says he. “I hoped you would let me go to drive with you.”

The carriage is ordered; the pony-carriage that Mrs. Gower drives herself. He gets into it, and she after him and takes the reins. It is her whim to have no footman behind them; and Caryl does not dare remonstrate, though he thinks of it. He supposes she is going to the Park; but she turns down Thirty-fourth Street and drives toward the East River. They come to the ferry; and she sends Wemyss out to get the ticket. “Wherever are you going?” says he, returning.