A Virginia Cousin, & Bar Harbor Tales

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

At that moment, he allowed himself to remember a series of occasions during the years of their friendship, upon any one of which he believed he might have spoken as he now meant to speak, and that she would have answered as he now expected her to answer. Ah! what had he not lost? In her gentle, equable companionship, he would have been a better, a higher, a less discontented fellow. All the virtues, charms, desirable qualities, of this fine and high-bred young woman, who had been more patient, more forgiving, than he deserved, were concentrated into one small space of thought, like the Lord's Prayer engraved upon a tiny coin. But even as his foot touched the lowest step of her father's portal, he experienced a shock of doubt of himself and of his own stability. He tarried; he turned away, and strolled, whither he knew not.

In the adjoining street lived Mrs. Myrtle, an aunt of his, to whom, it must be said, Vance rarely paid the deference considered by that excellent lady her just due. She inhabited the brown-stone dwelling in which, as a bride, she had gone to housekeeping when New York society was still within limits of visitors on foot. Not that that made any difference to Mrs. Myrtle, who had always kept her carriage, and had, about twenty years back, been cited as a leader of the metropolitan beau monde.

In those days, whether on wheels or a-foot, everybody went to Mrs. Myrtle's Thursdays. Her spacious drawing-rooms, papered in crimson flock paper, with their massive doors and mouldings and mirror-frames and curtain-tops of ebonized wood with gold scroll decorations, their furniture in the same wood, with red satin damask coverings, had, in their time, contained the elect of good society. The pictures upon Mrs. Myrtle's walls, and the statuary scattered on pedestals about the rooms, were then quoted by the newspapers, and by those so favored as to see them, as a rare display of the highest art, accumulated by an American householder. One of the earliest affronts of many unintentionally put upon his aunt by Vance had been his contemptuous shrug of the shoulders when called upon by her, shortly after his return from his first winter spent in Italy, to view her "statuary."

Since then, Mrs. Myrtle had, little by little, come to a perception of the fact that her "art collection" was not, any more than its mistress, an object of the first importance to New York. But Vance had been always associated in her mind with the incipient stages of enlightenment, and she loved him accordingly. Her love for Vance's sister, Mrs. Clifton, who refused to pay her tribute, and belonged to the new "smart set," was even less.

Upon Mrs. Myrtle, Vance now resolved to pay a long-deferred duty-call. Admitted by an old negro butler, he was left alone in the large darkling drawing-room, in the shade of the crimson curtains, amid the ghostly ranks of the statues, to ruminate until Mrs. Myrtle should make her appearance. Little thought did he bestow upon the duration of this ordeal. He was well occupied, and, for once in his life, heartily ashamed,——first, of his indecision upon the Ainger door-steps, and, secondly, of the fact that he had put in here to gain courage to return there.

Mrs. Myrtle's heavy tread upon her own parquet floor aroused him from meditation. His aunt was a massive lady, who wore black velvet, with a neck-ruff of old point-lace; who, never pretty, and no longer pleasant to look upon, yet carried herself with a certain ease born of assurance in her own place in life, and cultivated by many years of receiving visitors. Her small white hand, twinkling with diamonds, was extended to him with something of the grand air he remembered his mother, who was the beauty of her family, to have possessed; and then Mrs. Myrtle, seating herself, fixed an unsmiling gaze upon her nephew.

"I—ah—thought I would look in and see how you are getting on," he said, with an attempt at jocularity.

"But it is not Thursday," she answered, cold as before. "I make it a point to see no one except on Thursday, or after five. And it is not yet after five."

Townsend, who could not dispute this fact, was at a loss how to go on. But Mrs. Myrtle, having put things upon the right footing, launched at once into an exposition of her grievances against him, his sister, and the ruling society of latter-day New York.

"I am sure if any one had told your mother and me, when we first came out, what people were to push us against the wall, and to have all New York racing and tearing after their invitations, we should never have believed it. It's enough to make your poor mother come back from the dead, to revise Anita Clifton's visiting-list. And I suppose the next thing to hear of will be your marriage into one of these bran-new families. I must say, Theodore, although it is seldom my opinion is listened to, I was pleased when I heard, the other day, that you were reported engaged to Katherine Ainger. The Aingers are of our own sort; and her fortune, although it is not so important to you, will be handsome. She is one of the few girls who go much into the world who still remember to come to see me; and she has been lunching here to-day."