In Blanche’s hearing no one could comment openly upon what had passed. But there were significant whispers and wondering looks, and by the time the gossips reached the street, much and prolonged discussion with regard to this episode in the history of “opening day.”
For the eccentric old lady who could afford to defy the dictate of SOCIETY, and exercised her right, was Mrs. Horatio Harding, whose own veins were full of old, rich Dutch blood, and whose husband was a merchant prince, and Mr. Harding Walford was her nephew-in-law. If she had set her mind upon making the Hiller girls the fashion, she had carried her point triumphantly. With a sort of insolent grace, perhaps, at which people grumbled while they obeyed her, but she had had her way, as usual. Mrs. Horatio Harding had “opinions,” and it was not always safe or pleasant to oppose her.
“You may not know that you have done us a great service—one for which we can never pay you aright,” said Imogen to her at the close of “the season’s” work. “But you have! That we have succeeded beyond our most sanguine expectations is due, in a large measure, to the foothold you gave us that first day. If other women who have as much influence would use it to free, not enslave, their sex; to overcome, instead of strengthening the prejudices that bear so hardly upon us already, what a change would be wrought in homes where the few strive and toil, and the many are served!”
The strong white hand with the glittering solitaire, was raised threateningly.
“What did I tell you? I will not be praised for doing a simple act of justice, especially when my heart, as well as my conscience, moved me to it. And you, my sweet child, may not know that you have had a narrow escape from marrying a man who has proved himself no more worthy to mate with you than am I with one of the holy men of old—those of whom the world was not worthy. But you have. That is all I shall ever say on the subject. But I think the more for my reserve when with you. And Harding Walford knows that I do. I am not reticent in his hearing. Don’t attempt to defend him! He has lost you, and that ought to be punishment enough for one who is capable of appreciating you. Not that he ever was.”
“I don’t want him to be punished, dear Mrs. Harding,” replied Imogen, gently. “He only swam with the tide.”
“Precisely! and to deserve such a wife as you would make, a man ought to be strong of soul and right of purpose. Don’t talk to me about moral cowards! I think I was born hating them!”
Two years later, this steady friend dropped in to see the sisters on a gloomy afternoon in February. The light from the front windows made long, clean cuts in the clinging yellow fog without, across the rimy pavement to the carriage, with its liveried coachman and fine horses. Passers-by, on their way to humble homes, lifted eyelids beaded with the icy damp, and thought how lucky were the dwellers in the stately house; how much-to-be envied the guest who rode in state above the mire of the common ways. Those who recognized the liveries, and knew whose was the dwelling, pondered, more or less wonderingly, upon the incongruity of the unabated intimacy, and speculated, perhaps, upon the probabilities that the Harding pride would have revolted at a matrimonial alliance between a scion of their house and one of the “reduced” family, for all Mrs. Horatio’s show of friendship. It was a lucky thing, decided eight out of ten of those who considered the matter, that young Walford had not committed himself irrevocably before the “misfortune” that showed him how near he was to the edge of the abyss. He had made a desirable match last fall, and was now travelling in Europe with his heiress bride.
Little cared guest or hostesses what the outside world thought or believed respecting their intercourse. Emma’s boys were building block houses on the back parlor floor. The three sisters were gathered about the centre-table in the other room, talking in low voices over their work. Mrs. Harding stopped in the doorway on seeing their grave faces, and that they were making black crêpe bonnets.
“A mourning order!” she said, in her unceremonious way. “Anybody that I know?”