What cat’s averse to fish?”
Newport female hearts of the summer population despise not, but, several of them at least, do fitly esteem the yellow boys, and Newport cats and those who sail in them are not averse to fishing for fish and taking them. So Waddy smiled with his friends and thought too much of Tootler’s letter. He would watch Belden.
Meantime, Mr. Waddy saw the world continuously,—and continuously was lionised. This has its pleasures and its pains. It does not build up lofty structures of respect towards the lioniser. Mr. Waddy, however, always had the charm of sweet refuge with his cousin, as he called her, Clara, fairest of the fair, and her friend, the divine Diana. Mrs. Waddy made immense dinner parties for the Returned Kinsman, where he met the people one meets in that best world, of which his hostess is so distinguished an ornament, etc.
The particularly distinguished guest of that summer was the Hon. and Rev. Gorgias Pithwitch, the epideiktic sophist of the nadir Orient. Mr. Pithwitch was sometimes called “The Wizard of the North.” He drew immense houses to his pleasant jugglery. He had, that summer, as always, excellent man! some amiable charity to assist—such as to relieve Mahomet’s coffin from the painful uncertainties of its position—or to purchase ashes of roses to fill the cenotaph of Mausolus. Anything elegiac or pensively sepulchral gave him a cue for epideiktics or showing off.
Mr. Pithwitch spoke on the character of Mahomet at Newport at the request of the Ladies’ Coffin Down Society. All the people who figure in this history went. People always go to hear things. The boys and girls thought the oration “thweet,” and so it was—just about. Mr. Belden went with Mrs. Budlong and whispered her safely through, playing meanwhile familiarly with the fringe of her flounces. How they began to eye each other now, those two! Tim Budlong escorted Miss Saccharissa Mellasys. A young poet, Edmund Waller by name, had fallen desperately in love with the soft, startled eyes of Saccharissa. She cast upon him sugar-melting glances, and he loved. Girls like poets and poets like girls. But Edmund, in the intervals of his sonnetteering Miss Mellasys, had been so unfortunate as to beat Tim Budlong regularly at billiards. Tim was in a porcupine state of mind and resolved to be revenged. He devoted himself to Saccharissa and she, well-knowing the cipher of the poet’s fortunes and the chiffre of Tim’s, reciprocated the devotions. They first began to appear together in public at Pithwitch’s oration. People began to whisper. It was at this period of his life that Waller wrote his spasmodic poem, “The Beldame, or Blasted Hope.”
Mrs. Waddie, as has been said, made a dinner for Mr. Pithwitch. It was part of her active business in society to have all the lions properly treated, and this was not the first whom Mr. Waddy had met at her house. Mr. Pithwitch was, of course, an accomplished, gentlemanly person and very much liked.
“So that is your type orator,” Mr. Waddy murmured through his cheroot to Dunstan, as they walked home together; “the best among a myriad talkers from a platform. I suppose he’s not able to balance himself on a stump, and therefore is not out doing his duty to what you call the Cause of Freedom in this campaign. Is he ardent for that Cause? Is he ardent for any cause? Is he a strong fiery spirit? I trow not. Tell me of him.”
Whereupon Dunstan gave Ira that sketch of the character and genius of Mr. Pithwitch which has just been read. Dunstan was quite familiar with the men of this country who had done aught to distinguish themselves, either positively or negatively. The active life he had led had given him an independence of thought not common among scholars. He had already been through some tough political experience in California in the Free State struggle and was now, on his re-establishment at home, nominated for Congress in his North River district to replace a person who had voted for the Nebraska bill. Dunstan was wanted at this very time in the county of his nomination, and on the stump everywhere; he was a young man of fervid and passionate nature, quite untrammelled by any law of life other than his own sense of right. If he was needed elsewhere, why did he stay at Newport? Men will often stay where they should not, longer than they should, for several reasons, but principally for female ones.
Ira and Dunstan were much together. They talked over society and socialisms at much greater length than can be here repeated. The younger man represented the party of confident hope—the elder did not see life, living, and livers in such brilliant colours. Perhaps his sight was jaundiced.
In fact, for all his friends of the best, and for all his lionising, Mr. Waddy did not cease to be often lonely and often forlorn. Was he growing bilious again, or bored, that he found himself uneasy and unhappy, and became again often filled with bitter longing, and was forced to harden his heart with study of a certain old yellow letter? He knew also that it would be well if he looked less at his pistols. It seemed an unworthy thing to be a spy upon Mr. Belden’s movements. He saw that that gentleman avoided him and he indulged himself in interferences with this artful dodger—not spitefully, but because he wished to observe him, and because he did not love that a man he so thoroughly distrusted should have power anywhere with anyone who might confide.