First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

Charlie was growing very nervous about the state of things down-town; and it would be a little too bad to have the prize snatched from him in the moment of fruition. He had had a devilish good time in his life for the last ten years; since in fact he had got out of leading strings; and then he had looked about him with a judicious eye, and carefully selected the rich girl who seemed, on the whole, the best adapted to make him comfortable; and he meant to continue to have a good time for many years to come, please the pigs. A conservative estimate (and Townley knew something of the state of the coffers) placed the Livingstone fortune at a million and a half; there was no entangling family, and both Mamie’s parents were very old.

So he sent her flowers for every evening’s amusement, whether it were concert, ball, or dinner; and called there twice a week; his flowers never came with a card, but always had a sort of trademark of their own. Good judges said that Charlie Townley was compromising himself. Not only this, but all the most recherché little parties that so experienced a fashionable could invent; just the sort of thing that made Mamie’s young friends open their eyes, with envy; club dinners, and private dances at the country clubs, and seats upon the smartest coaches and in the most unquestioned opera-boxes; and these not mere “bud” parties, but with Mrs. Malgam, Pussie De Witt, or Mrs. Gower herself as guests. Thus Townley wooed her millions with his own scarce dollars and the aid of his acquaintance and his worldly wisdom. And Gracie found that Mamie was infatuated.

Something impelled her to make no secret of her troubles to John Haviland; and Haviland had taken Derwent into council. And that audacious gentleman had seriously proposed, first, kidnapping; taking him off for a cruise in a yacht; a month’s delay, he said was all they needed. Then he suggested that they might get him publicly drunk. The enthusiast was no stickler for the commonplace, at best; Derwent was a man of Oriental methods, obvious and frank. But Townley had, unfortunately, no small vices; it would be quite impossible to get him drunk. And Derwent cursed “the bourgeois squeamishness for human life” that prevented as he said, “an honest duel, while making dull misery of all one’s days, and vulgar trash of the nineteenth century’s soul.” And then Derwent hit upon a plan which surely no one but himself would have thought of; and all for Gracie’s sake; and began to frequent Townley’s office.

People began to wonder why Derwent stayed on in New York. It was true he was very attentive to Mamie Livingstone; but it was scarcely possible that the lionized Derwent had met his fate at last in a boarding-school miss. Mamie herself, however, began to think such was the case; and was duly flattered by it. Gracie had many a time told her that a lady need never allow a gentleman to propose to her whom she proposes rejecting;—but, dear me, that was all the zest of a girl’s life—before she was married. She made one or too fitful efforts to discourage him, but the big man would not be discouraged. And really who could have the hardness of heart, even sober Gracie, to forbid a girl her very first offer? And such an interesting one too; Mamie was so anxious to see how he would do it. And she blushed with pleasure as he came to see her.

But all this was rage and desperation to our friend young Townley. He seriously thought of forcing the issue then and there; but he did not quite yet dare. Yet he certainly must do something soon; no one—not even the clairvoyant Derwent—knew better than Charlie Townley that he certainly must do something soon. The strikers down in Pennsylvania were said to be starving; but sooner or later starving men will make a hole in even Tamms’s pockets.

Suppose they had a panic. They could not possibly carry the great railroad, and the margins, and the Starbuck Oil, through a serious trade disturbance. So long as the strikers contented themselves with trying to burn up railway iron and killing an obscure policeman or two—railway iron was cheap enough—in fact, they made it—and a policeman or two could be replaced. But a big, dramatic bit of rapine that would strike terror to the investing public, the comfortable bourgeois, the lambs who sat at home in their carpet-slippers and looked at chromos of old English farmyards—and Remington’s big pile stood no longer ready to support them when things got bad; in fact, he suspected that that obsolete old Christian would like nothing better than to make the public run.

Still, Townley did not dare to ask her at her house. You are at a woman’s mercy, there; she may ring the bell; she may even call her mother; you cannot choose your place, the stage-setting that most becomes you, arrange your lights, and select your own dramatis personæ. Charlie Townley was much like any other man, in the garish afternoon, and by the domestic fireside; in fact there was a certain quite intelligent look in Mamie’s pretty eyes at times which Townley found it hard to face. Yet he was perfectly certain that he had fascinated her. How did he know? Well, he had kissed her. Townley’s maxim was to kiss a woman first and win her afterwards; at the worst, you got but a rebuff for an audacity not in all eyes unadmirable; while, if you formally proposed, and were rejected, you had your value lowered in the eyes of all the world.

He resolved that it must be on his own ground and very late at night, and in the midst of a very gay assemblage. He got up a country party of his own, matronized by Mrs. Malgam; and had meant to settle matters while exhibiting this other pretty woman submissive at his feet. But Mrs. Malgam also had another string to her bow; and the other string was Derwent, whom Townley had to ask: “a damned clumsy Englishman,” said he to her, “who has a cursed knack at getting in the wrong place at the wrong time.”—“In the right time, you mean,” laughed Mrs. Malgam; she knew Townley’s game well enough; but did not conceive it possible that he could mean to marry yet. And this belief was indeed so general that it came to Mamie’s ears; and she began to doubt it, too, and was for the doubt, ten times more infatuated with him than ever.

So Townley made up his mind that his only perfectly certain chance was the Duval ball; and this did not come off for some weeks yet.

For the whole Duval gens was about to celebrate its reception among the immortals and Miss Pussie’s happy marriage, by giving a grand ball, the grandest ball that e’er was known, in our republican simplicity. Two thousand invitations had been sent out addressed to everyone who did not care to go, and to nobody who did. Two smaller packets of tickets had been sent, one to Boston and one to Philadelphia, addressed to Mrs. Weston and Mrs. Rittenhouse respectively, to be distributed by these ladies, where they would do the most good, as they knew best; and old Antoine Duval felt that he had safely bought his social distinction at last as he had bought his membership in clubs from obliged business friends and the legislation for his railroads from Congress and the Legislature of his native State.