Take this one bright December day for instance; he rises in his comfortable bachelor apartment; his head still full of dreams of bright eyes from the night before; for it is his fortune to be petted by women. He has a few hours so-called work, to be sure; but the work is among Millions, which it is pleasant to think may yet be his some day.
He left early in the afternoon and took his drive in his own pretty cart, glad to see and be seen by all he called his friends. Then he went to dine with a millionaire, Mrs. Malgam, and Mamie Livingstone; in the evening to the opera, and to the first great subscription ball. He was a manager of the last, and wears his honors with much grace; and he has the offer of a partnership in a rich young firm.
Late in the afternoon sat Gracie in her room. We have not seen so much of Gracie, lately, as I, for one, should like; she does not do much in these pages, perhaps. When women have the nobler lives they ask for now, our heroine shall perchance do more; now she merely lifts the men about her to their higher selves. She is a power wrought out most in other lives—Derwent’s, Mamie’s, Haviland’s. I own I am unable to describe her; I cannot print the fragrance of a lily on these pages; those who have seen the lily do not need it. Perhaps, if Helen, Heloise, are the women that Flossie Gower, clever Flossie Gower, in these days of women’s rights still envies most, I may have still some maiden readers—my courteous greeting go to them—who think the nobler Helens and the purer Cleopatras may yet not have too small a part in life, and dream their sweet heart-dreams of Una and Elaine.
In her bed-room, then (for our hand is on the door-knob and we must enter now)—sat Gracie, through this afternoon. Mamie has been in, from time to time, and had close talks with her; and she has promised Gracie she will keep her word with Derwent, and wait, although she is sure she cannot care for him. But now she is gone, to dress for Arthur’s dinner, and Gracie sits alone.
The house is silent; and she knows the old people are down below, and she must go and read to them. But the vault of heaven has been unfathomably blue, that day; and she has been looking into it, over the crowded city walls. She knows that Arthur is not thinking of it, or of her. And now the air has faded to the lilac winter twilight, and all men are going, tired, to their homes. But she is idle; and idle hours she finds so hard to fill! She took a book she loved, and read; but gradually the dark came, and the book fell from her hand; and now her hands are on her face, and her soft eyes closed, and she is crying, silently.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE FINANCIER’S DINNER.
THE new year has come; and all the world has been celebrating, with children’s dances and with children’s dinners and with a multiplicity of costly toys, the birth of Christ. Grown-up people who have been good-natured have assisted, and helped their boys play with candles and with evergreens as they helped them play with fire-crackers on the fourth of July, that other great feast or holy-day our calendar still keeps. Grown people who have not been good-natured have kept to their clubs, mostly, men to men; and the women have snatched the chance to get a week of resting and a little early sleep. For now the children’s play is over; and the winter’s balls are to begin in earnest, a serious business, as we have said.
On the evening of December thirty-first, young Townley was invited to dine with his partner, Mr. Phineas Tamms, in Brooklyn. He never liked these dinners; but yet he learned too much from them to stay away. A voyage to Brooklyn combined all the discomforts of a trip to Europe, without the excitement and rewards—as he said at his favorite Columbian Club, where he stopped to take a modest tonic on his way down-town. “I wish I were going,” said one of the circle, who dallied a little in stocks, “and had your chance of getting points.” For these dinners of Tamms, the great street leader, were known as meetings where many schemes were laid, and information gleaned, as Tamms unbended after dinner, worth many thousands for each syllable, in gold.
“Yes,” said old Mr. Townley, wagging his gray head sagely, “my partner is a very able young man—a very able young man indeed.” He was taking nothing; but it was his usual hour to be at the club; and the New Year’s time inclined the old gentleman to kindliness for all the world; so he had left his private and particular seat by the window and joined the group of younger fellows, to see how “his Boys” (as he called all young men he knew) were getting along. As such, he was liked by them; and treated with but the faintest tinge of patronage his age made necessary.