With the Procession Part 6

"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to branch out and do something for myself--I've always tried to hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There was only one drawback--another school next door, full of great, rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping.

Now, I never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival inst.i.tution.

Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them to work on single entry.

I don't know whether they learned anything, but _I_ did--enough to keep Granger's books for the first year after we started out."

Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against such confidences as these.

"We were married at the most fas.h.i.+onable church in town--right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception, or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors--all those Terrace Row people, just around the corner. 'We'll get there, too, some time,' I said to Granger. 'This is going to be a big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell _like_ somebody.' So, as I say, we were married at the best church in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future."

"Good for you!" said Jane, who was finding her true self in the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right."

"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally I said to Granger: 'Now, what's the use of inventing things and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the inside of that, and stick there, and--The fact is," she broke off suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime. You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to have been here at the _bal poudre_ I gave last season--lots of pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It was a lovely sight."

"It must have been. I believe Rosy would have looked real pretty fixed up that way."

"Rosy?"

"Our youngest; she's eighteen."

"Is she out?"

"Not quite; but I expect she's on the way."

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes," replied the just Jane. "Yes, Rosy is quite pretty. She's dark. She would look lovely in yellow tulle--with a red rose somewhere."

"Is she clever?"

"H'm," said Jane, thoughtfully, "I suppose so. She's beginning to understand how to get what she wants, anyway."

"And just the least bit selfish and inconsiderate?" insinuated Mrs.

Bates, shrewdly.

"Y--yes, I'm afraid so."

"Well, she might be quite a success; we must think about her. Come; we've had enough of this." Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze spendor. "The next thing will be something else."

V

Jane's guide pa.s.sed swiftly into another large and imposing apartment.

"This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is where I receive my distinguished guests."

"Good!" cried Jane, who knew Irving's _Alhambra_ by heart. "Only it isn't Moorish; it's Baroque--and a very good example."

The room had a heavy panelled ceiling of dark wood, with a cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlantes and crowned by a heavy pediment broken and curled, almost filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over."

"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly; "are you the woman who read about the Decadence of the Renaissance Forms at the last Fortnightly?"

"I'm the woman," responded Jane, modestly.

"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before. But you sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was coming down with something--or so we thought. And the bonnet I was forced to wear--well, it just made me blue.

You didn't notice it?"

"I was too fl.u.s.tered to notice anything. It was my first time there."

"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decorations, then--you think them corrupt and degraded?"

"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, "all these later forms are interesting from an historical and sociological point of view.

And lots of people find them beautiful, too, for that matter." Jane slid over these big words with a practised ease.

"They impressed my notables, anyway," retorted Mrs. Bates. "We entertained a great deal during the Fair--it was expected, of course, from people of our position. We had princes and counts and honorables without end. I remember how delighted I was with my first prince--a Russian. H'm! later in the season Russian princes were as plentiful as blackberries: you stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the English, too. One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the summer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in social things? Do you know Arthur Paston?"

"No. Was he one of them?

"Not exactly. He lives here. We thought we had Americanized him; but now he has slipped back and is almost as bad as he was to start with. Arthur Scodd-Paston--that's the way his cards read to-day. Do you care for paintings?"

"Of course. Is Arthur Scodd-Paston like one?"

"You bad girl! Well, we might just stick our noses in the picture-gallery for a minute.

"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she expounded, as she stood beside Jane in the center of the room under the coldly diffused glare of the skylight. "In my young days it was all Bierstadt and De Haas; there wasn't supposed to be anything beyond. But as soon as I began to hear about Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set to work, as usual. I studied and learned. I _want_ to learn. I want to move; I want to keep right up with the times and the people. I got books and photographs, and I went to all the galleries. I read the artists'

biographies and took in all the loan collections. Now I'm loaning, too.

Some of these things are going to the Art Inst.i.tute next week--that Daubigny, for one. It's little, but it's good; there couldn't be anything more like him, could there?

"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over there is a Corot--at least, we think so. I was going to ask one of the French commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve gave out at the last minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own responsibility. I let him go ahead, for, after all, people of our position would naturally be expected to have a Corot. I don't dare tell you what he paid for it. If I did"--she pointed to their joint reflection in the opposite mirror--"we should have a fretful porcupine here in no time."

"Don't, then," pleaded Jane, looking at her own reflection and clasping her hands across her forehead; "this miserable bang gives me enough trouble as it is."

"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave of her hand towards the opposite wall. "Carolus-Duran; fifty thousand francs; and he wouldn't let me pick out my own costume, either. You have never seen me on dress-parade; take a look at me now." She gathered up the tail of her gown and modestly scuttled out of the room.

Poor dowdy Jane stood in silent awe before this sumptuous canvas, with her long, interlaced fingers strenuously tugging at each other and her wide eyes half popping from her head. She was as completely overpowered and shattered as an uncouth and angular raft under the thunderous downpour of Niagara. Presently she turned; Mrs. Bates stood peeping in from without, her eyes all a-twinkle.

"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs." Jane followed her, too dazed to speak or even to smile.

Mrs. Bates hastened forward, lightfootedly. "Conservatory--_that's_ Moorish," she indicated, casually; "nothing in it but orchids and things.

Come along." Jane followed--dumbly, humbly.

Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway. A huge vase of j.a.panese bronze flanked either newel, and a Turkish lantern depended above her head. The bright green of a dwarf palm peeped over the bal.u.s.trade, and a tempered light strained down through the painted window on the landing-stage.

"There!" she said; "you've seen it all." She stood there in a kind of impa.s.sioned splendor, her jewelled fingers shut tightly and her fists thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and cords of her wrists.

"_We_ did it, we two--just Granger and I. Nothing but our own hands and hearts and hopes, and each other. We have fought the fight--a fair field and no favor--and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there, too; keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you can. I _do_ head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I can't foot it with the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the crows have me. But they'll never get me--never! There's ten more good years in me yet; and if we were to slip to the bottom to-morrow, we should work back to the top again before we finished. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball I was accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show. Well, who would look better in such a role than I, or who has earned a better right to play it? There, child! ain't that success? ain't that glory?

ain't that poetry?--H'm," she broke off suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't by to hear that! He's always taking up his poor mother."

"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded--do you mean?"