Her goddaughter, daughter of the friend to whom years ago she described Tommy, was with her. This time Mrs. Carriswood had recently added Florida to her disappointments in climates, and was back, as she told Mrs. Lossing, "with a real sense of relief in a climate that was too bad to make any pretensions."She had brought Miss Van Harlem to see the shops.
It may be that she would not have been averse to Harry Lossing's growing interested in young Margaret. She had seen a great deal of Harry while he was East at school, and he remained her first favorite, while Margaret was as good as she was pretty, and had half a million of dollars in her own right.
They had seen Harry, and he was showing them through the different buildings or "shops," when a man entered who greeted him cordially, and whom he presented to Mrs. Carriswood.
It was Tommy Fitzmaurice, grown into a handsome young man.
He brought his heels together and made the ladies a solemn bow.
"Pleased to meet you, ladies; how do you like the West?" said Tommy.
His black locks curled about his ears, which seemed rather small now;he had a good nose and a mobile, clean-shaven face. His hands were very white and soft, and the rim of linen above them was dazzling.
His black frock-coat was buttoned snugly about his slim waist.
He brushed his face with a fine silk handkerchief, and thereby diffused the fragrance of the best imported cologne among the odors of wood and turpentine. A diamond pin sparkled from his neckscarf.
The truth is, he knew that the visitors were coming and had made a state toilet. "He looks half like an actor and half like a clergyman, and he IS all a politician," thought Mrs. Carriswood; "I don't think I shall like him any more." While she thought, she was inclining her slender neck toward him, and the gentlest interest and pleasure beamed out of her beautiful, dark eyes.
"We like the West, but _I_ have liked it for ten years;this is not my first visit," said Mrs. Carriswood.
"I have reason to be glad for that, madam. I never made another speech so good."He had remembered her; she laughed. "I had thought that you would forget.""How could I, when you have not changed at all?""But you have," says Mrs. Carriswood, hardly knowing whether to show the young man his place or not.
"Yes, ma'am, naturally. But I have not learned how to make a speech yet.""Ah, but you make very good ones, Harry tells me.""Much obliged, Harry. No, ma'am, Harry is a nice boy;but he doesn't know. I know there is a lot to learn, and I guess a lot to unlearn; and I feel all outside;I don't even know how to get at it. I have wished a thousand times that I could talk with the lady who taught me to speak in the first place." He walked on by her side, talking eagerly.
"You don't know how many times I have felt I would give most anything for the opportunity of just seeing you and talking with you; those things you said to me I always remembered."He had a hundred questions evidently stinging his tongue.
And some of them seemed to Mrs. Carriswood very apposite.
"I'm on the outside of such a lot of things," says he.
"When I first began to suspect that I was on the outside was when Iwent to the High School, and sometimes I was invited to Harry's;that was my first acquaintance with cultivated society.
You can't learn manners from books, ma'am. I learned them at Harry's. That is,"--he colored and laughed,--"I learned SOME.
There's plenty left, I know. Then, I went to the University.
Some of the boys came from homes like Harry's, and some of the professors there used to ask us to their houses; and I saw engravings and oil paintings, and heard the conversation of persons of culture.
All this only makes me know enough to KNOW I am outside.
I can see the same thing with the lawyers, too.
There is a set of them that are after another kind of things;that think themselves above me and my sort of fellows.
You know all the talk about this being a free and equal country.
That's the tallest kind of humbug, madam! It is that.
There are sets, one above another, everywhere; big bugs and little bugs, if you will excuse the expression.
And you can't influence the big ones without knowing how they feel.
A fellow can't be poking in the dark in a speech or anywhere else.
Now, these fellows here, they go into politics, sometimes; and there, I tell you, we come the nearest to a fair field and no favor!
It is the best fellow gets the prize there--the sharpest-witted, the nerviest, and stanchest. Oh, talk of machine politics! all the soft chaps who ain't willing to get up early in the morning, or to go out in the wet, THEY howl about the primaries and corruption;let them get up and clean the primaries instead of holding their noses!
Those fellows, I'm not nice enough for them, but I can beat them every time. They make a monstrous racket in the newspapers, but when election comes on they can't touch side, edge, or bottom!"Discoursing in this fashion, with digressions to Harry in regard to the machines, the furniture, and the sales, that showed Mrs. Carriswood that he meant to keep an eye on his twenty odd thousand dollars, he strolled at her side.
To Miss Van Harlem he scarcely said three words. In fact, he said exactly three words, uttered as Miss Margaret's silken skirts swung too near a pot of varnish.
They were "Look out, miss!" and at the same second, Tommy (who was in advance, with really no call to know of the danger), turned on his heel and whisked the skirts away, turning back to pick up the sentence he had dropped.
Tommy told Harry that Miss Van Harlem was a very handsome lady, but haughty-looking. Then he talked for half an hour about the cleverness of Mrs. Carriswood.
"I am inclined to think Tommy will rise." (Mrs. Carriswood was describing the interview to her cousin, the next day.)"What do you think he said to me last of all? 'How,' said he, 'does a man, a gentleman'--it had a touch of the pathetic, don't you know, the little hesitation he made on the word--'how does he show his gratitude to a lady who has done him a great service?'
