“They say he waltzes like an angel,” said Mamie the irrepressible; and just then the door-bell rang, and the subject of their conversation appeared, with his usual irreproachable exterior. Arthur had never seen him so subdued; he sat next to Miss Mamie, but treated her quite du haut en bas, talking much to Mr. Livingstone. Arthur could see that he was on his best behavior; and his best behavior was extremely unobjectionable, though he came very near being caught in the middle of some airy personality when Mr. Livingstone inaugurated the meal by saying grace.
After tea was over, Miss Mamie manœuvred Charlie into a remote corner, where he seemed to find her more worthy his attention. The evening was very quiet; Mr. Livingstone gravely reading some review, and addressing from time to time a solitary remark to his wife, who sat with her hands folded, placidly. Gracie talked to Arthur of himself, and our hero told her of all that had happened since he came to New York. Her life had, of course, been a quiet one, divided between books, her music, and charitable occupations. In all these Miss Brevier had encouraged and assisted her; Gracie spoke very warmly of her, her intelligence and character. This was after Miss Brevier, in the other room, had begun reading aloud to the old couple, in a low and sweet, but very clearly modulated voice.
“When can I come next?” said Arthur to Gracie as they rose to go. There was a sweetness in her presence that had won his heart a thousand times again; she seemed a rarer being, in this peopled city; he adored her.
“You must not come often, dear Arthur—my aunt thinks it better for us both. She thinks that we are both too young, and that you must try a year or two in society to make sure that you really care for me—and I for you,” she added, in a tone hardly audible. Arthur’s only answer was to press her hand; and so they parted.
When they got into the street, Townley lit a large cigar, with a slight sigh of relief. “Lively little girl, that Miss Livingstone,” said he; “but I say, old man, what an evening! No wonder she wants to come out.”
“I am sorry you found it slow,” said Arthur, testily.
“Oh, well, I know it’s devilish respectable and all that sort of thing,” said Charlie. “Good middle-class domestic life; they’re just like our grandfathers, and our grandfathers were nothing but bourgeois after all; that little girl will sink all that, or I’m mistaken. Come round by Sixth Avenue a minute, will you?”
There was a certain incongruity in Charlie’s words, as it seemed to Arthur; it might have been Wemyss who was speaking, instead of this careless young Epicurean, who usually troubled himself little with abstractions and general categories, but occupied his understanding with perceiving the most practical sort of causes and effects. The fact was that Townley had used the current slang of his set, word-counters for thought, and his mind was already far from the subject, and his lips framed to the whistle of an air from “Iolanthe.” They turned into Sixth Avenue (which is a strange, conglomerate street—insolently disreputable at times, elsewhere commercially prosperous, or even given to small tradesmen and other healthy citizenship, but always, in its earlier days, at least, rakishly indifferent to brown-stone-front respectability) and stopped at a little shop in a tiny two-story brick block. On the left was a little glass door, with the simple legend Rose Marie upon the panel; and in front of them a toy staircase, leading to the imminent upper regions. Through the glass of the door Arthur could see one or two bonnets on pegs in the window, and he divined that the shop was a milliner’s. “Is Miss Starbuck in?” said Charlie to a child who appeared with a candle. The child (who was either deformed or very old-looking for her age) looked keenly at Arthur, whose eyes fell helplessly before her searching gaze.
“She has gone to a concert at the Garden,” said the child. As they spoke, there was a murmur of men’s voices from an adjoining room, and a rough clatter of applause, with knocking of heels and sticks.
“All right,” said Townley. “Good-night.” And after this somewhat inexplicable call the two young men went back to their Fifth Avenue lodgings. Here they found John Haviland, largely reposing himself on two chairs before Arthur’s hospitable hearth.