Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig

by Mary Jane Holmes

Amasa Steele never talked much, and now he only muttered something about being “so thundering proud,” and without a word as to where he was going, left the house soon after dinner; and Lottie saw no more of him until the clock was striking eleven. Then he found her at her prayers, for Lottie never omitted any duty of that kind, and when her husband came home she was kneeling by the bedside with her fanciful dressing-gown sweeping the floor, and trying to ask forgiveness for having wounded Kitty Craig. Amasa had not much faith in Lottie’s religion, and without waiting for her devotions to end, he asked “where the deuce his slippers were, that he could never find them?”

This untimely interruption brought Lottie from her knees, feeling indignant and aggrieved, and as if she was persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and she would neither tell her husband where his slippers were nor ask him where he had been so long, although she was dying to know, and felt almost sure he had visited the Craigs. She knew he had the next day, for he told her so, and said so much in praise of Kitty that she felt a pang of something like jealousy, and avenged herself by driving to the store that afternoon and talking with the confidential clerk so long that her father at last suggested that she go home, as “women were out of place in a business office.”

When she and Kitty met again it was at the altar rail, where they knelt side by side, Lottie’s rich velvet cloak brushing against Kitty’s plainer cloth, and the glitter of her rings flashing before Kitty’s eyes. As they rose and turned away Lottie half bowed a recognition, and felt for the remainder of the day as if she were a very good and forgiving woman, inasmuch as Kitty, in her surprise, had not returned the bow.

New York was very gay that winter, and Lottie had no leisure to spare to such as Kitty Craig, who would in time have been wholly forgotten but for an event which occurred just one year from the day when John first brought Kitty home as his bride. Then a new little life came into that house; and Lottie, who chanced to be in the city for a few days, was surprised to hear from her husband that he was to stand sponsor for little Frederic Steele, who was to be baptized that afternoon. Would she go and see it?

There was a shrug of Lottie’s shoulders and a lifting of her eyebrows, but she made no reply, except:

“You and the Craigs must be very intimate to warrant their taking such a liberty. Pray, where have you seen so much of them?”

Amasa did not tell her how many of his evenings when she was away were spent in that nutshell of a house, where they had apple pie and ginger-snaps for dessert, or how the sight of the little round-faced boy which John had shown him with so much pride on the occasion of his last visit had raised in his heart a vague dissatisfaction with the stillness of his grand house, where baby voices were never heard. He himself had suggested Frederic Steele, saying:

“I won’t ask you to inflict upon him such a name as Amasa, but my only brother was Fred, and I’d like the little chap called for him.”

So the baby was christened “Frederic Steele,” and Lottie was there and saw it. She had no fancy for christenings, where the children usually screamed so vigorously, she said, but she did want to see how John looked as a father and how Amasa behaved as sponsor. So she went to the church and mentally criticised Kitty’s dress and the baby’s dress, and thought her husband very awkward and John very handsome, and drove next day to Tiffany’s and selected a silver cup, which was marked, “For little Fred,” and sent it to the address of the Craigs, who wondered greatly whence it came, and wondered, too, what they should do with it, inasmuch as Amasa’s gift was also a silver cup, gold-lined, and looking as if it were the twin of the one which had come no one knew whence, and which Kitty put away as something to be looked at but never used.

And now we pass over a period of more than eighteen months, and come to a time when, wearied out with gayety and dissipation, Lottie Steele was almost glad when the first days of Lent came and put an end to the parties and receptions which had so engrossed her time, and made her grow pale and thin, with dark rings around her eyes. But she would rest now, or at least lead a different kind of life, for though she wore her second-best dresses and kept all the fasts and holy days, and never missed a service, whether on Sunday or week day, she still had a good deal of leisure time for quiet, and kept earlier hours, and hoped to come out at Easter as bright and fresh as the new bonnet which she had in her mind for that occasion. Lent was really beneficial, both to her health and her complexion, she thought, and she kept it religiously, and affected to be greatly shocked when she heard that Kitty Craig had committed the enormity of going to the opera, where a wonderful bird of song was entrancing the people with its melody. Lottie went to elaborate lunches served in darkened rooms, and went to the Philharmonics, and to concerts, and lectures but avoided the opera as if the plague had been rioting there, and felt that the example of consistency she thus set before her husband was infinitely better than that of sinful, opera-going Kitty Craig.