Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ 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. ”

“ Five millions seem a small price to have her back. But to pay them, unfortunately, means the free gift of my self-respect. What is to come? What is to come? I had believed at times that this woman read my very soul and touched it. Her intuitions, her sympathy, her subtle comprehension of the highest wants of a man’s nature and reverence for them amounted to something like genius. Indeed, she had a genius for loving—a most uncommon gift. Or so it seemed to me. But I think that few men would appreciate that they were idealising a woman like Virginia Forbes. ”

“ The next day Cuyler took the Duke to call on Mrs. Forbes in her house. It was five o’clock and the lamps were lit. Augusta’s particular set were there, talking Socialism over their tea, and enlightening a half-dozen young men and elderly club roués, who listened with becoming gravity. Mrs. Forbes sat somewhat apart by the tea-table talking to three or four men on any subject but Socialism. She wore a gown of dark-red velvet with a collar of Venetian lace and sat in a large high-backed chair of ebony, inlaid with ivory. ”

“ A woman with her beauty and brain and style and charm could bring any society in the world to her feet, and keep it there once she had those feet planted beyond the door-mat. Now she is patronised pleasantly as one of many pretty American women who flit back and forth. You’ve got a powerful ally, and one that’s bound to win. Now pull up that long face or I’ll hold you under the cold water spout!”
“I believe you have put new life into me,” said his Grace, the Duke of Bosworth. ”

“ Forbes was gazing into the fire through the sticks of a fan. Her face was without its usual colour and her lips were contracted.
“Not a line from your father, and it is three weeks,” she said abruptly.
“You did not expect him—father!—to come round in a whirl, I suppose. But why do you worry so? You know that it can end in one way only. We are all he has, and he adores us, and cannot live without us. It isn’t as if he were fast, like so many New York men. ”

“ One is used to that. It’s like knowing that lots of people come to your house because you give good dinners; but you don’t like them any the less; in fact, don’t think about it. We have to take the world as we find it. If you regard the Duke as a fortune-hunter I wonder you can still love him.”
Mabel turned her head and regarded Miss Forbes with a haughty stare. ”

“ We must awaken the soul in our men—that is what they lack. The germ is there, but it has not been developed; perhaps I should say that the soul of the American people rose to its full flower during the Civil War, and then withered in the reaction, and in the commercial atmosphere which has since fitted our nation closer than its own skin. Miss Belmont says that nothing will arouse the men but another war; that they will be nothing but a well-fed body with a mental annex until they once more have a ‘big atmosphere’ to expand in. ”

“ Little Miss Creighton, with her meagre and neutral make-up is about all I am equal to. This woman might have lifted me up once; but more likely I should have dragged her down. She is all woman, the kind that is controlled and moulded by the will of a man.”
His eyes rested on her mouth. “She will hurt Forbes some day, give him a pretty nasty time; but it won’t be because she doesn’t love him. And—she’ll make him forget—when she gets ready. A man would forgive a woman like that anything.” ”

“ The halls and dining-room of the Forbes mansion were hung with tapestries; all the rooms, though home-like, were stately and imposing, subdued in colour and rich in effect. But if the house had been designed in the main as a proper setting for a very great lady, one boudoir and bedroom were the more personal encompassment of a beautiful and luxurious woman. The walls and windows and doors of the boudoir were hung with raw silk, opal hued. The furniture was covered with the same material. On the floor was a white velvet carpet, touched here and there with pale colour. ”

“ Forbes laid down his newspaper, and looked with slightly extended mouth at his daughter who leaned forward in an attitude of suppressed energy, her hands clasped on the edge of the breakfast-table. The heiress of many millions was not handsome: her features were large and her complexion dull; but she had the carriage and ‘air’ of the New York girl of fashion, and wore a French morning-toilette which would have ameliorated a Gorgon. ”

“ For the matter of that there’s one clever old parvenu here who has never handled more than a million and a half—as I happen to know, for I’m her lawyer—and who entertains with the best of them. Her house, clothes, jewels, are gorgeous. A shrewd old head like that can do a lot on an income of seventy thousand dollars a year. But Forbes, I should say, is worth his twenty millions—that’s allowing for all embellishments—if he’s worth a dollar, and Augusta is the only child. Unless America goes bankrupt, she’ll come in for two-thirds of that one of these days, and an immense dot meanwhile. ”

“ I agree with all that Miss Maitland has [Pg 25] said to you—with the exception of her views on Socialism, I don’t believe Socialism to be the solution of our loathsome municipal degradation nor of the universal social evil. But I have no time to go into that question to-day. The other part—that you must awaken the soul of the men of your class—I most heartily endorse. The gentlemen alone can save this country—snatch it from the hands of plebeians and thieves. In them alone lies the hope of American regeneration. ”

“ A war would rouse these young men, as Miss Maitland suggests; I haven’t the slightest doubt that they would fight magnificently, and that those who survived would be serious and useful men for the rest of their lives. But we don’t want war, and you must do the rousing. Make them vote—vote—nullify the thieving lying cormorants who are fattening on your country, and ruining it morally and financially, as well as making it the scorn and jest of Europe. And make them vote, not only this year, but every year for the rest of their lives, and on every possible question. ”

“ The large drawing-room, which was to be the scene of operations, was a marvellous combination of every pale colour known to nature and art, and looked expectant of white-wigged dames, sparkling with satin and diamonds, tripping the mazes of the minuet with gentlemen as courtly as their dress was rich and colourous. But only a half-dozen extremely smart young women of the hoary Nineteenth Century sat in a group, talking as fast as seals on a rock ”

“ It is a horrifying thing that we on this narrow island of New York city should live like hothouse plants in the midst of a malarious swamp: that almost at our back doors the poor are living, whole families in one room, and on one meal a day. ”

“ I am so used to being taken care of that I feel as if I were doing the wrong thing all the time, and Marie is merely a toilette automaton. This morning the clothes were half off the bed when I woke up, and the window was open; and yesterday Marie gave me the wrong wrap, and I was cold all the afternoon.”
“Good heavens, mother!” cried Miss Forbes. “Fancy being thirty-nine and such a baby. I feel years older than you.” ”

“ You couldn’t convince one of them that we are not all watching the foreign horizon with spy-glasses, waiting to make a break for the first title that appears, and that they have not got to be content with the leavings. But if they saw that we really desired to marry Americans, and, above all, men that we could love and respect, I believe they would make an effort to be worthy of us. That would certainly be one great step gained. The next thing for us to do is to be able to love hard enough to awaken the right kind of love in men.”
“Well?” asked Augusta. ”

“ One of them remarked after a few moments:
“I thought that all American women were beautiful. So far, I see only one.”
“These are the New York fashionettes, my dear boy. Their pedigree is too short for aristocratic outline. You will observe that the pug is as yet unmitigated. Not that blood always tells, by any means: some of your old duchesses look like cooks. Our orchids travel on their style, grooming, and health, and you must admit that the general effect is stunning. Who is your beauty?” ”

“ THE LILAC SUNBONNET. Eighth edition.
“A love story pure and simple, one of the old-fashioned, wholesome, sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half so sweet has been written this year, it has escaped our notice.”—New York Times. ”

“ I believe that the higher qualities in man can be roused more surely by woman than by bloodshed, and that if we, the women of New York, the supposed orchids, butterflies, or whatever people choose to call us, whose luxury is the cynosure and envy of the continent, could be instrumental in giving back to the nation its lost spiritual quality—understand, please, that I do not use the word in its religious sense—it would be a far greater achievement than any for which the so-called emancipated women are vociferating. The vote is a minor consideration. ”

“ I am sure they are hopeless so long as they eat and drink so much.”
“I suppose all we girls will have to marry,” remarked one of them.
“Well, you would, anyhow,” said Mrs. Burr, consolingly.
“I shall not marry until I find the right man,” said Augusta firmly, “not if I die an old maid. But father would be a splendid convert, and his name would carry great weight.”
“You mean for Socialism,” replied her hostess. “No man does his political duty more religiously than Mr. Forbes. But let us send Socialism to—ahem—and just work at the other thing. I am dying to see how Latimer will take it.” ”

“ It has been said that the Civil War took our best blood, and that that is the reason we have no great men now; all the most gallant and high-minded and ambitious were killed—although I don’t forget that Mr. Forbes could be anything that he chose. I suppose he thinks that American statesmanship has fallen so low that he scorns to come out avowedly as the head of his party, and merely amuses himself pulling the wires. But I feel positive that if a tremendous crisis ever arose, it would be Mr. Forbes who would unravel the snarl. [Pg 22] You can tell him that, Augusta, with my compliments. ”

“ For the first time she wished that she had never seen the Duke of Bosworth—retreated before the ambitions of a lifetime in detestation and terror. Every part of her concentrated into longing for the man who had made the happiness of her life. ”

“ There may be a tussle, but Forbes is bound to cave in the end. He is infatuated with his wife and she knows her power. She is as set on this match as you could be. She’s had the bee in her bonnet for a good many years, to cut as great a dash in London as she does in New York. Of course she’s in it in a way when she’s over there for a month or two during the season, but she wants a long sight more than that. Her ancestry does her no good because the English trunk of the family died out two hundred years ago. ”

“ After a woman has once let herself go, she is good for nothing else for the rest of her life. She eats, [Pg 152] drinks, sleeps, thinks English aristocracy. Even you, if I gave you your head, would find it in you to become a veritable coronet-chaser—you!—my God! Well, it won’t be in my time; and if Augusta runs off with this debased dishonoured little wretch she’ll not get one cent of mine. And there will be no breaking of wills; I’ll dispose of my fortune before I die. I shall take good care to let him know this at once, for I make no doubt he’s desperate——”
Mrs. Forbes sprang to her feet. ”

“ I cannot believe—I shall, on the tenth day of March, turn over all my own property to the Duke: my houses in Newport and Asheville, my horses and yacht, and my jewels. Two days later they will marry. I stand pledged to these two people that they shall marry, and nothing will induce me to break my word.
“I sail to-day with Augusta on the Brétagne; I go to Paris first to order the trousseau. My address will be the ‘Bristol’; but I shall only be in Paris a week. From there I shall go to London—to the ‘Bristol.’ The Duke and Fletcher Cuyler sail to-day on the Majestic. ”

“ The Duke leaned over Miss Forbes’ chair with an air of languor, which was due to [Pg 67] physical fatigue, contemplating her absently, and not taking the trouble to more than answer her remarks. Nevertheless, his prolonged if indifferent stare disturbed the girl who had known little susceptibility to men. There was something in the cold regard of his eye, the very weariness of his manner, which had its charm for the type of woman who is responsive to the magnetism of inertia, whom a more vital force repels. ”

“ What are the real old women like, I wonder? They must merely fade out like an old photograph. I can’t imagine one of them a substantial corpse. I shall feel as if I were married to a dissolving view. She is charming now, but—oh, well, that is not the only thing to be taken into consideration.”
The Creighton house was on Murray Hill. He crossed over to Fifth Avenue and walked down toward the Waldorf, absently swinging his stick, regardless of many curious [Pg 44] glances. “I wonder,” he thought, “I wonder if I ever dreamed of a honeymoon with the one woman. ”

“ A touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of such qualities. With all its elevation of utterance and spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor. ”

“ Another historical romance of the vividness and intensity of ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ has never come from the pen of an American. Mr. Parker’s latest work may, without hesitation, be set down as the best he has done. From the first chapter to the last word interest in the book never wanes; one finds it difficult to interrupt the narrative with breathing space. ”