Poor Miss Starbruck! She drifted like a gray shadow through Hermia’s rooms, and longed for her modest cottage at Nantucket. She had been an active member of sewing-circles and reading-clubs, and the farther down her past’s perspective did this unexciting environment retreat, the oftener did she sigh as she contrasted its cool shadows with the hot glare into which fate’s caprice had suddenly cast her. But Hermia was considerate—if Miss Starbruck appeared at her niece’s dinners and receptions, and drove with her occasionally, she could sit up in her room and dream of Nantucket and bewail duty as much as she pleased. Mrs. Dykman was chaperon-in-chief.
Hermia wore a gown of white velvet, simply made, and fitting in wrinkleless perfection the free lines and curves of her full, lithe figure. About her throat hung a silver chain of Roman workmanship, and around her waist a girdle of similar but heavier links. The wiry maze of her hair outshone the diamond pins that confined it.
Miss Simms wore a dinner-gown of black tulle and a profusion of chrysanthemums. Her hair was as sleek as a mole.
The conversation was naturally more or less literary, and Hermia drew out her ambitious guests with a good deal of skill. It was hard to curb them when they were started, but she managed to make each feel that he had had an opportunity to shine. Some day, when her personal interest in life had ceased, she intended to have a salon, and this was a pleasant foretaste. She even let Mr. Simms tell a few anecdotes, but after the third gently suppressed him.
It is not easy to check the anecdotal impulse, and both Mr. Langley and Mr. Overton were reminiscent. The former told a tale of a young man who had brought him a manuscript ten years before, and never returned to ask its destiny.
“He looked delicate, and I imagine he died of consumption,” said the great publisher, placidly, as he discussed his pâté. “At all events I have never heard from him since. Our readers unanimously advised us not to publish the manuscript. It was entirely out of our line, and would have involved great risk. We put it aside and forgot all about it. The other day I happened to meet one of the readers through whose hands it passed—he has not been with us for some years—and he asked me why I did not publish the rejected book. ‘That sort of thing has become fashionable now,’ he said, ‘and you would make money out of it.’ I merely mention this as an illustration of how fashion changes in literature as in everything else.”
“You publishers are awful cowards,” said Emmet, in his drawling tones; “you are so afraid of anything new that all authors you introduce are branded Prophets of the Commonplace.”
Mr. Langley’s blonde, pleasant little face took a warmer hue, and he answered somewhat testily: “The publisher was brave, indeed, who presented you to the public, Mr. Emmet.”
In spite of the general laugh, Emmet replied imperturbably: “The best advertisement I had, and the only one which I myself inserted, was that ‘Mrs. Bleeker’ had been refused by every conservative house in New York. My reward is that I have the reputation instead of the firm.”
“No; the firm hasn’t any left—that’s a fact,” retorted Mr. Langley; and Emmet turned to Helen with a pout on his boyish face.