"Well, be careful how you get mixed up with him, then, Basil," said his wife, who had the natural misgiving concerning the friends of her husband"s youth that all wives have. "You know the Germans are so unscrupulously dependent. You don"t know anything about him now."
"I"m not afraid of Lindau," said March. "He was the best and kindest man I ever saw, the most high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand in the war that helped to save us and keep us possible, and that stump of his is character enough for me."
"Oh, you don"t think I could have meant anything against him!" said Mrs.
March, with the tender fervor that every woman who lived in the time of the war must feel for those who suffered in it. "All that I meant was that I hoped you would not get mixed up with him too much. You"re so apt to be carried away by your impulses."
"They didn"t carry me very far away in the direction of poor old Lindau, I"m ashamed to think," said March. "I meant all sorts of fine things by him after I met him; and then I forgot him, and I had to be reminded of him by Fulkerson."
She did not answer him, and he fell into a remorseful reverie, in which he rehabilitated Lindau anew, and provided handsomely for his old age.
He got him buried with military honors, and had a shaft raised over him, with a medallion likeness by Beaton and an epitaph by himself, by the time they reached Forty-second Street; there was no time to write Lindau"s life, however briefly, before the train stopped.
They had to walk up four blocks and then half a block across before they came to the indistinctive brownstone house where the Dryfooses lived. It was larger than some in the same block, but the next neighborhood of a huge apartment-house dwarfed it again. March thought he recognized the very flat in which he had disciplined the surly janitor, but he did not tell his wife; he made her notice the transition character of the street, which had been mostly built up in apartment-houses, with here and there a single dwelling dropped far down beneath and beside them, to that jag-toothed effect on the sky-line so often observable in such New York streets. "I don"t know exactly what the old gentleman bought here for," he said, as they waited on the steps after ringing, "unless he expects to turn it into flats by-and-by. Otherwise, I don"t believe he"ll get his money back."
An Irish serving-man, with a certain surprise that delayed him, said the ladies were at home, and let the Marches in, and then carried their cards up-stairs. The drawing-room, where he said they could sit down while he went on this errand, was delicately, decorated in white and gold, and furnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was nothing to object to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money too plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoa.r.s.e whispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try to talk away the interval of waiting in such circ.u.mstances; they conjectured from what they had heard of the Dryfooses that this tasteful luxury in no wise expressed their civilization. "Though when you come to that," said March, "I don"t know that Mrs. Green"s gimcrackery expresses ours."
"Well, Basil, I didn"t take the gimcrackery. That was your--"
The rustle of skirts on the stairs without arrested Mrs. March in the well-merited punishment which she never failed to inflict upon her husband when the question of the gimcrackery--they always called it that--came up. She rose at the entrance of a bright-looking, pretty-looking, mature, youngish lady, in black silk of a neutral implication, who put out her hand to her, and said, with a very cheery, very ladylike accent, "Mrs. March?" and then added to both of them, while she shook hands with March, and before they could get the name out of their months: "No, not Miss Dryfoos! Neither of them; nor Mrs.
Dryfoos. Mrs. Mandel. The ladies will be down in a moment. Won"t you throw off your sacque, Mrs. March? I"m afraid it"s rather warm here, coming from the outside."
"I will throw it back, if you"ll allow me," said Mrs. March, with a sort of provisionality, as if, pending some uncertainty as to Mrs. Mandel"s quality and authority, she did not feel herself justified in going further.
But if she did not know about Mrs. Mandel, Mrs. Mandel seemed to know about her. "Oh, well, do!" she said, with a sort of recognition of the propriety of her caution. "I hope you are feeling a little at home in New York. We heard so much of your trouble in getting a flat, from Mr.
Fulkerson."
"Well, a true Bostonian doesn"t give up quite so soon," said Mrs. March.
"But I will say New York doesn"t seem so far away, now we"re here."
"I"m sure you"ll like it. Every one does." Mrs. Mandel added to March, "It"s very sharp out, isn"t it?"
"Rather sharp. But after our Boston winters I don"t know but I ought to repudiate the word."
"Ah, wait till you have been here through March!" said Mrs. Mandel. She began with him, but skillfully transferred the close of her remark, and the little smile of menace that went with it, to his wife.
"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.