AUGUSTA returned home at six o’clock, not flushed with triumph, for she was too tired, but with an elated spirit. She had stood on a platform in an East Side hall surrounded by her friends, and to two dozen bedraggled females had made the first speech of her life. And it had been a good speech; she did not need assurance of that. She had stood as well as Alexandra Maitland, but had used certain little emphatic gestures (she was too independent to imitate anyone); and she had, with well-bred lack of patronage, assured her humble sisters, for three quarters of an hour, that they must sign the petition for Woman Franchise, and make all the other women on the East Side sign it: in order that they might be able to put down the liquor trust, reform their husbands, secure good government, and be happy ever after. She flattered herself that she had not used a single long word—and she prided herself upon her vocabulary—that she had spoken with the simplicity and directness which characterized great orators and writers. Altogether, it was an experience to make any girl scorn fatigue; and when she entered her boudoir and found Mabel Creighton, she gave her a dazzling smile of welcome, and embraced her warmly. Mabel responded with a nervous hug and shed a tear.
“He’s here!” she whispered ecstatically.
“Who?—Oh, your Duke. Did he propose right off? Do tell me.” And she seated herself close beside her friend, and forgot that she was reforming the United States.
“No, but he told me that he had come over on purpose to see me.”
“That’s equal to a proposal,” said Augusta decidedly. “Englishmen are very cautious. They are much better brought up than ours. Which is only another warning that we must take ours in hand. It is shocking the way they frivol. I’d rather you married an American for this reason; but if you love the Duke of Bosworth, I have nothing to say. Besides, you’re the vine-and-tendril sort; I don’t know that you’d ever acquire any influence over a man; so it doesn’t much matter. Now tell me about the Duke, dearest; I am so glad that he has come.”
Mabel talked a steady stream for a half-hour, then hurried home to dress for the evening.
Mr. Forbes was standing before the fire in the drawing-room when his daughter entered, apparelled for the opera and subsequent ball. She wore a smart French gown of pale blue satin, a turquoise comb in her pale modishly dressed hair, and she carried herself with the spring and grace of her kind; but she was very pale, and there were dark circles about her eyes.
“You look worn out, my dear,” said her father, solicitously. “What have you been doing?”
Miss Forbes sank into a chair. “I went to two meetings, one at Hal’s and one in the slums. I spoke for the first time, and it has rather taken it out of me.”
“Would the victory of your ‘cause’ compensate for crow’s feet?”
“Indeed it would. I really do not care. I am so glad that I have no beauty to lose. I might not take life so seriously if I had. I am beginning to have a suspicion that Mary Gallatin and several others have merely taken up these great questions as a fad. Here comes mamma, I am glad, for I am hungry. I had no time for tea to-day.”
A portière was lifted aside by a servant, and Mrs. Forbes entered the room. But for the majesty of her carriage she looked younger than her daughter, so exquisitely chiselled were her features, so fresh and vivid her colouring. Virginia Forbes was thirty-nine and looked less than thirty. Her tall voluptuous figure had not outgrown a line of its early womanhood, her neck and arms were Greek. A Virginian by birth, she inherited her high-bred beauty from a line of ancestors that had been fathered in America by one of Elizabeth’s courtiers. Her eyes had the slight fullness peculiar to the Southern woman; the colour, like that of the hair, was a dark brown warmed with a touch of red. Her curved, scarlet mouth was not full, but the lips were rarely without a pout, which lent its aid to the imperious charm of her face. There were those who averred that upon the rare occasions when this lovely mouth was off guard it showed a hint in its modelling of self-will and cruelty. But few had seen it off guard.
She wore a tiara of diamonds, and on her neck three rows of large stones depending lightly from fine gold chains. Her gown was of pale green velvet, with a stomacher of diamonds. On her arm she carried an opera cloak of emerald green velvet lined with blue fox.
Mr. Forbes’ cold brilliant eyes softened and smiled as she came toward him, flirting her lashes and lifting her chin. For this man, whose eyes were steel during all the hours of light, who controlled the destinies of railroads and other stupendous enterprises and was the back-bone of his political party, who had piled up millions as a child piles up blocks, and who had three times refused the nomination of his party for the highest gift of the nation, had worshipped his wife for twenty-two years. He turned toward his home at the close of each day with a pleasure that never lost its edge, exulting in the thought that ambition, love of admiration, and the onerous duties of the social leader could not tempt his wife to neglect him for an hour. He lavished fortunes upon her. She had an immense allowance to squander without record, a palace at Newport and another in the North Carolina mountains, a yacht, and jewels to the value of a million dollars. In all the years of their married life he had refused her but one dear desire—to live abroad in the glitter of courts, and receive the homage of princes. He had declined foreign missions again and again. “The very breath of life for me is in America,” he had said with final decision. “And if I wanted office I should prefer the large responsibilities of the Presidency to the nagging worries of an Ambassador’s life. The absurdities of foreign etiquette irritate me now when I can come and go as I like. If they were my daily portion I should end in a lunatic asylum. They are a lot of tin gods, anyhow, my dear. As for you, it is much more notable to shine as a particular star in a country of beauties, than to walk away from a lot of women who look as if they had been run through the same mould, and are only beauties by main strength.” And on this point she was forced to submit. She did it with the better grace because she loved her husband with the depth and tenacity of a strong and passionate nature. His brain and will, the nobility and generosity of his character, had never ceased to exercise their enchantment, despite the men that paid her increasing court. Moreover, although the hard relentless pursuit of gold had aged his hair and skin, Mr. Forbes was a man of superb appearance. His head and features had great distinction; his face, when the hours of concentration were passed, was full of magnetism and life, his eyes of good-will and fire. His slender powerful figure betrayed little more than half of his fifty-one years. He was a splendid specimen of the American of the higher civilisation: with all the vitality and enthusiasm of youth, the wide knowledge and intelligence of more than his years, and a manner that could be polished and cold, or warm and spontaneous, at will.
For her daughter, Mrs. Forbes cared less. She had not the order of vanity which would have dispensed with a walking advertisement of her years, but she resented having borne an ugly duckling, one, moreover, that had tiresome fads. She had been her husband’s confidante in all his gigantic schemes, financial and political, and Augusta’s intellectual kinks bored her.
She crossed the room and gave her husband’s necktie a little twist. Mr. Forbes sustained the reputation of being the best-groomed man in New York, but it pleased her to think that she could improve him. Then she fluttered her eyelashes again.
“Do I look very beautiful?” she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her.
“When you two get through spooning,” remarked Miss Forbes in a tired voice, “suppose we go in to dinner.”
“Don’t flatter yourself that it is all for you,” Mrs. Forbes said to her husband, “I am to meet an English peer to-night.”
“Indeed,” replied Mr. Forbes, smiling, “Have we another on the market? What is his price? Does he only want a roof? or will he take the whole castle, barring the name and the outside walls?”
“You are such an old cynic. This is the Duke of Bosworth, a very charming man, I am told. I don’t know whether he is poverty-stricken or not. I believe he paid Mabel Creighton a good deal of attention in the autumn, when she was visiting in England.”
“He wouldn’t get much with her: Creighton is in a tight place. He may pull out, but he has three children besides Mabel. However, there are plenty of others to snap at this titled fish, no doubt.”
“I hope not,” said Augusta. “Dear Mabel is very fond of him; I am sure of that. He only arrived to-day, and is going with them to the opera to-night. How are you to meet him?”
“Fletcher Cuyler will bring him to my box, of course. Are not all distinguished foreigners brought to my shrine at once?”
“True,” said Miss Forbes. “But are we going in to dinner? I have never heard Maurel in Don Giovanni, and I don’t want to lose more than the first act.”
“There is plenty of it. But let us go in to dinner, by all means.”