He spoke with almost desperate energy, for there were some things he had learned to discriminate in his intercourse with Harriet Verveen. He knew when she meant what she said.
“Pooh!” replied Harriet. “Good-night, dear uncle. You give me a month’s board, without wages, and notice to quit. I am very grateful, dear uncle; but henceforth you must allow me to fashion my own life as I choose.”
They stood facing each other. There was no noise and no recrimination. Each knew it would be useless.
“I have nourished a serpent in my bosom,” said Mynheer Mopius, triumphantly getting out his quotation after all. “I can’t keep you here a day longer, Harriet, though you seem to be annoyed about going. It wouldn’t be proper, and, besides, I may have other plans. I treat you generously. Whatever you may elect to do I hope you will repay me by henceforth dropping all pretended relationship to myself. That must be an understood thing. Such conduct as you propose—clandestine love affairs, anonymous love affairs—I consider most scandalous. All the world considers it scandalous. I cannot allow a breath of ill-odor to sully the unspotted name of Mopius. Harriet, I hope you fully agree to that suggestion. If not I should consider myself compelled to retract.”
“Oh, most willingly,” again interrupted Harriet. She steadily sought her uncle’s shifty glances. “I break all relation between us as completely as—I crush this cup!” The costly porcelain fell to the ground in shell-like fragments. Mynheer Mopius darted forward with a shriek. Meanwhile Harriet slipped from the room, her right hand bleeding, her mood somewhat relieved.
Next morning she left the house. After the night’s consideration of circumstances she was not sorry to go. She believed, with a desperate woman’s pertinacity, in the ultimate success of the wide choice she had allowed herself. She would take a husband after her own heart. Already she pictured him to herself, good-looking, with a fair mustache.
In the great city close to Drum—a city which may as well remain nameless—a modest variety may be found of those public entertainments which constitute, to the many, a principal criterion of civilization. In the nineteenth-century march of mind—which, after all, is but the advance of ’Arry—a town with no permanent music-hall troupe is voted “slow.” Drum was distinctly “slow.” Its big sister aspired, in spasms, to be reckoned “fast.”
Occasionally, therefore, when the fit was upon her, the big sister clutched, gasping, at some Parisian form of diversion; a river fête with fireworks, horse-races, or, in winter, a bal costumé et paré. The latter was decidedly a bad spasm, for northern nations can make nothing of the “Veglione.” Still, every season a couple of these picturesque gayeties were organized by indefatigable impresarii (in rose-colored spectacles), the price of admission being fixed at a florin for gentlemen, ladies free. No respectable person over thirty was supposed to attend.