Sometimes the company was largely of down-town Creoles; sometimes of up-town people,—“Americans;” and often equally of the two sorts, talking French and English in most amusing and pleasing confusion. For the father of the family had lately been made president of a small bank, and was fairly boxing the social compass in search of depositors. Marguerite had not yet discovered that—if we may drag the metaphor ashore—to enter society is not to emerge upon an unbroken table-land, or that she was not on its highest plateau. She noticed the frequency with which she encountered unaccomplished fathers, stupid mothers, rude sons and daughters, and ill-distributed personal regard; but she had the common-sense not to expect more of society than its nature warrants, guessed rightly that she would find the same thing anywhere else, and could not know that these elements were less mixed with better here than in many other of the city’s circles, of whose existence she had not even heard. However:
Society, at its very best, always needs, and at its best or worst always contains, a few superior members, who make themselves a blessing by working a constant, tactful redistribution of individuals by their true values, across the unworthy lines upon which society ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat with Marguerite one April evening under a Chinese lantern in the wide, curtained veranda of an Esplanade-street house whose drawing-room and Spanish garden were filled with company.
Marguerite was secretly cast down. This lady had brought her here, having met her but a fortnight before and chosen her at once, in her own private counsels, for social promotion. And Marguerite had played the violin. In her four months’ advanced training she had accomplished wonders. Her German professor made the statement, while he warned her against enthusiastic drawing-room flattery. This evening she had gotten much praise and thanks. Yet these had a certain discriminative moderation that was new to her ear, and confirmed to her, not in the pleasantest way, the realization that this company was of higher average intelligence and refinement than any she had met before. She little guessed that the best impression she had ever made she made here to-night.
Of course it was not merely on account of the violin. She had beauty, not only of face and head, but of form and carriage. So that when she stood with her instrument, turning, as it were, every breath of air into music, and the growing volume of the strains called forth all her good Acadian strength of arms and hand, she charmed not merely the listening ear, but the eye, the reason, and the imagination in its freest range.
But, indeed, it was not the limitations of her social triumphs themselves that troubled her. Every experience of the evening had helped to show her how much wider the world was than she had dreamed, and had opened new distances on the right, on the left, and far ahead; and nowhere in them all could eye see, or ear hear, aught of that one without whom to go back to old things was misery, and to go on to new was mere weariness. And the dear little mother at home!—worth nine out of any ten of all this crowd—still at home in that old tavern-keeping life, now intolerable to think of, and still writing those yearning letters that bade the daughter not return! No wonder Marguerite’s friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her out to the cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda lanterns.
A gentleman joined them, who had “just come,” he said. Marguerite’s companion and he were old friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard each other’s name, nor could see each other’s face more than dimly. He was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and to lay the blame upon an outdoor and out-of-town profession. Such words drew Marguerite’s silent but close attention.
The talk turned easily from this to the ease with which the fair sex, as compared with the other, takes on the graces of the drawing-room. “Especially,” the two older ones agreed, “if the previous lack is due merely to outward circumstances.” But Marguerite was still. Here was a new thought. One who attained all those graces and love’s prize also might at last, for love’s sake, have to count them but dross, or carry them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While she thought, the conversation went on.
“Yes,” said her friend, replying to the bachelor, “we acquire drawing-room graces more easily; but why? Because most of us think we must. A man may find success in one direction or another; but a woman has got to be a social success, or she’s a complete failure. She can’t snap her fingers at the drawing-room.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Marguerite, “she can if she want!” She felt the strength to rise that moment and go back to Opelousas, if only—and did not see, until her companions laughed straight at her, that the lady had spoken in jest.
“Still,” said the bachelor, “the drawing-room is woman’s element—realm—rather than man’s, whatever the reasons may be. I had a young man with me last winter”—