"Yes," said Mrs. March, "or April, either: Talk about our east winds!"
"Oh, I"m sure they can"t be worse than our winds," Mrs. Mandel returned, caressingly.
"If we escape New York pneumonia," March laughed, "it will only be to fall a prey to New York malaria as soon as the frost is out of the ground."
"Oh, but you know," said Mrs. Mandel, "I think our malaria has really been slandered a little. It"s more a matter of drainage--of plumbing. I don"t believe it would be possible for malaria to get into this house, we"ve had it gone over so thoroughly."
Mrs. March said, while she tried to divine Mrs. Mandel"s position from this statement, "It"s certainly the first duty."
"If Mrs. March could have had her way, we should have had the drainage of our whole ward put in order," said her husband, "before we ventured to take a furnished apartment for the winter."
Mrs. Mandel looked discreetly at Mrs. March for permission to laugh at this, but at the same moment both ladies became preoccupied with a second rustling on the stairs.
Two tall, well-dressed young girls came in, and Mrs. Mandel introduced, "Miss Dryfoos, Mrs. March; and Miss Mela Dryfoos, Mr. March," she added, and the girls shook hands in their several ways with the Marches.
Miss Dryfoos had keen black eyes, and her hair was intensely black. Her face, but for the slight inward curve of the nose, was regular, and the smallness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken her face, but gave it a curious effect of fierceness, of challenge. She had a large black fan in her hand, which she waved in talking, with a slow, watchful nervousness. Her sister was blonde, and had a profile like her brother"s; but her chin was not so salient, and the weak look of the mouth was not corrected by the spirituality or the fervor of his eyes, though hers were of the same mottled blue. She dropped into the low seat beside Mrs.
Mandel, and intertwined her fingers with those of the hand which Mrs.
Mandel let her have. She smiled upon the Marches, while Miss Dryfoos watched them intensely, with her eyes first on one and then on the other, as if she did not mean to let any expression of theirs escape her.
"My mother will be down in a minute," she said to Mrs. March.
"I hope we"re not disturbing her. It is so good of you to let us come in the evening," Mrs. March replied.
"Oh, not at all," said the girl. "We receive in the evening."
"When we do receive," Miss Mela put in. "We don"t always get the chance to." She began a laugh, which she checked at a smile from Mrs. Mandel, which no one could have seen to be reproving.
Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan, and looked up defiantly at Mrs.
March. "I suppose you have hardly got settled. We were afraid we would disturb you when we called."
"Oh no! We were very sorry to miss your visit. We are quite settled in our new quarters. Of course, it"s all very different from Boston."
"I hope it"s more of a sociable place there," Miss Mela broke in again.
"I never saw such an unsociable place as New York. We"ve been in this house three months, and I don"t believe that if we stayed three years any of the neighbors would call."
"I fancy proximity doesn"t count for much in New York," March suggested.
Mrs. Mandel said: "That"s what I tell Miss Mela. But she is a very social nature, and can"t reconcile herself to the fact."
"No, I can"t," the girl pouted. "I think it was twice as much fun in Moffitt. I wish I was there now."
"Yes," said March, "I think there"s a great deal more enjoyment in those smaller places. There"s not so much going on in the way of public amus.e.m.e.nts, and so people make more of one another. There are not so many concerts, theatres, operas--"
"Oh, they"ve got a splendid opera-house in Moffitt. It"s just grand,"
said Miss Mela.
"Have you been to the opera here, this winter?" Mrs. March asked of the elder girl.
She was glaring with a frown at her sister, and detached her eyes from her with an effort. "What did you say?" she demanded, with an absent bluntness. "Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father took a box at the Metropolitan."
"Then you got a good dose of Wagner, I suppose?" said March.
"What?" asked the girl.
"I don"t think Miss Dryfoos is very fond of Wagner"s music," Mrs. Mandel said. "I believe you are all great Wagnerites in Boston?"
"I"m a very bad Bostonian, Mrs. Mandel. I suspect myself of preferring Verdi," March answered.
Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan again, and said, "I like "Trovatore"
the best."
"It"s an opera I never get tired of," said March, and Mrs. March and Mrs.
Mandel exchanged a smile of compa.s.sion for his simplicity. He detected it, and added: "But I dare say I shall come down with the Wagner fever in time. I"ve been exposed to some malignant cases of it."
"That night we were there," said Miss Mela, "they had to turn the gas down all through one part of it, and the papers said the ladies were awful mad because they couldn"t show their diamonds. I don"t wonder, if they all had to pay as much for their boxes as we did. We had to pay sixty dollars." She looked at the Marches for their sensation at this expense.
March said: "Well, I think I shall take my box by the month, then. It must come cheaper, wholesale."
"Oh no, it don"t," said the girl, glad to inform him. "The people that own their boxes, and that had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollars apiece for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever there"s a performance, whether they go or not."
"Then I should go every night," March said.
"Most of the ladies were low neck--"
March interposed, "Well, I shouldn"t go low-neck."
The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at his drolling. "Oh, I guess you love to train! Us girls wanted to go low neck, too; but father said we shouldn"t, and mother said if we did she wouldn"t come to the front of the box once. Well, she didn"t, anyway. We might just as well "a" gone low neck. She stayed back the whole time, and when they had that dance--the ballet, you know--she just shut her eyes. Well, Conrad didn"t like that part much, either; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we brazened it out right in the front of the box. We were about the only ones there that went high neck. Conrad had to wear a swallow-tail; but father hadn"t any, and he had to patch out with a white cravat. You couldn"t see what he had on in the back o" the box, anyway."
Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was waving her fan more and more slowly up and down, and who, when she felt herself looked at, returned Mrs. March"s smile, which she meant to be ingratiating and perhaps sympathetic, with a flash that made her start, and then ran her fierce eyes over March"s face. "Here comes mother," she said, with a sort of breathlessness, as if speaking her thought aloud, and through the open door the Marches could see the old lady on the stairs.
She paused half-way down, and turning, called up: "c.o.o.nrod! c.o.o.nrod! You bring my shawl down with you."
Her daughter Mela called out to her, "Now, mother, Christine "ll give it to you for not sending Mike."
"Well, I don"t know where he is, Mely, child," the mother answered back.
"He ain"t never around when he"s wanted, and when he ain"t, it seems like a body couldn"t git shet of him, nohow."
"Well, you ought to ring for him!" cried Miss Mela, enjoying the joke.
Her mother came in with a slow step; her head shook slightly as she looked about the room, perhaps from nervousness, perhaps from a touch of palsy. In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs. March confessed in the affection with which she took her hard, dry, large, old hand when she was introduced to her, and in the sincerity which she put into the hope that she was well.
"I"m just middlin"," Mrs. Dryfoos replied. "I ain"t never so well, nowadays. I tell fawther I don"t believe it agrees with me very well here, but he says I"ll git used to it. He"s away now, out at Moffitt,"
she said to March, and wavered on foot a moment before she sank into a chair. She was a tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and her gray hair had a memory of blondeness in it like Lindau"s, March noticed. She wore a simple silk gown, of a Quakerly gray, and she held a handkerchief folded square, as it had come from the laundress. Something like the Sabbath quiet of a little wooden meeting-house in thick Western woods expressed itself to him from her presence.
"Laws, mother!" said Miss Mela; "what you got that old thing on for? If I"d "a" known you"d "a" come down in that!"
"c.o.o.nrod said it was all right, Mely," said her mother.
Miss Mela explained to the Marches: "Mother was raised among the Dunkards, and she thinks it"s wicked to wear anything but a gray silk even for dress-up."