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Morgesons

<h1 id="id01914" style="margin-top: 6em">CHAPTER XXVIII.</h1> A few days after my arrival, some friends dined with Mrs. Somers. The daughters of a senator, as Ann informed me, and an ex-governor, or I should not have known this fact, for I was not introduced. The dinner was elaborate, and Desmond did the honors. With the walnuts one of the ladies asked for the baby. Mrs. Somers made a sign to Desmond, who pulled the bell-rope—mildly this time. An elderly woman instantly appeared with a child a few months old, puny and anxious-looking. Mrs. Somers took it from her, and placed it on the table; it tottered and nodded to the chirrups of the guests. Ben, from the opposite side of the table, addressed me by a look, which enlightened me. His voyage to India was useless, as the property would stand for twenty-one years more, lacking some months, unless Providence interposed. Adelaide was oblivious of the child, but Desmond thumped his glass on the mahogany to attract it, for its energies were absorbed in swallowing its fists and fretfully crying. When Murphy announced coffee in the parlor, the nurse took it away; and after coffee and sponge cake were served the visitors drove off. That afternoon some friends of Adelaide called, to whom she introduced me as "cousin." She gave graphic descriptions of them, after their departure. One had achieved greatness by spending her winters in Washington, and contracting a friendship with John C. Calhoun. Another was an artist who had painted an ideal head of her ancestor, Sir Roger de Roger, not he who had arrived some years ago as a weaver from Glasgow, but the one who had remained on the family estate. A third reviewed books and collected autographs. The next afternoon one of the Miss Hiticutts from across the way came, in a splendid camel's-hair shawl and a shabby dress. "How is Mr. Somers?" she asked. "He is such a martyr." Here Mrs. Somers entered. "My dear Bellevue, you are worn out with your devotion to him; when have you taken the air?" She did not wait for a reply, but addressed Adelaide with, "This is your young friend, and where is my favorite, Mr. Ben, and little Miss Ann? Have you anything new? I went down to Harris yesterday to tell her she must sweep away her old trash of a circulating library, and begin with the New Regime of Novels, which threatens to overwhelm us." Adelaide talked slowly at first, and then soared into a region where I had never seen a woman—an intellectual one. Miss Hiticutt followed her, and I experienced a new pleasure. Mrs. Somers was silent, but listened with respect to Miss Hiticutt, for she was of the real Belem azure in blood as well as in brain; besides, she was rich, and would never marry. It was a Pickersgill hallucination to be attentive to people who had legacies in their power. Mrs. Somers had a bequested fortune already in hair rings and silver ware. While appearing to listen to Adelaide, her eyes wandered over me with speculation askant in them. Adelaide was so full of esprit that I was again smitten with my inferiority, and from this time I felt a respect for her, which never declined, although she married an Englishman, who, too choleric to live in America, took her to Florence, where they settled with their own towels and silver, and are likely to remain, for her heart is too narrow to comprise any further interest in Belem. Miss Hiticutt chatted herself out, giving us an invitation to tea, for any day, including Ben and Miss Ann, who had not been visible since breakfast. April rains kept us indoors for several days. Ann refused to go to school. She must have a holiday; besides, pa needed her; she alone could take care of him, after all. Her mother said that she must go. "Who can make me, mum?" Desmond ordered the coach for her. When it was ready he put her in it, seated himself beside her, with provoking nonchalance, and carried her to school. Murphy, with his velvet-banded hat, left her satchel at the door, with a ceremonious air, which made Ann slap his cheek and call him an old grimalkin. But she was obliged to walk home in the rain, after waiting an hour for him to come back. Mr. Somers hobbled about his room, with the help of his cane, and said that he should be out soon, and requested Adelaide to put in order some book-shelves that were in the third story, for he wanted to read without confusion. We went there together, and sorted some odd volumes; piles of Unitarian sermons, bound magazines, political works, and a heap of histories. Ben found a seat on a bunch of books, pleased to see us together. "This is a horrid hole," he said. "I have not been up in this floor for ages. How do the shelves look?" A hiccough near us caused us to look toward the door. "It is only Des, in his usual afternoon trim," said Ben. She nodded, as he pushed open the door, thrusting in his head. "What the hell are you doing here? This region is sacred to Chaos and old Night," striking the panels, first one and then the other, with the tassels of his dressing-gown. No one answered him. Adelaide counted a row of books, and Ben whistled. "Damn you, Ben," he said, in a languid voice: "you never seem bored. Curse you all. I hate ye, especially that she-Calmuck yonder—that Siberian-steppe-natured, malachite-hearted girl, our sister." "Oh come away, Mr. Desmond. What are the poor things doing that you should harry them?" and the woman who had brought in the baby the day of the dinner laid her hands on him and pulled him away. "Sarah will never give him up," said Ben. "She swears there is good in him. I think he is a wretch," turning over the leaves of a book with her beautiful hand, such a hand as I had just seen beating the door—such a hand as clasped its fellow in Ben's hair. Adelaide was not embarrassed at my presence. She neither sought nor avoided my look. But Ben said, "You are thinking." "Is she?" And Adelaide raised her eyes. "You are all so much alike," I said. "You are right," she answered seriously. "Our grandfather—" "Confound him!" broke in Ben. "I wish he had never been born. Are you proud, Addie, of being like the Pickersgills? But I know you are. Remember that the part of us which is Pickersgill hates its like. I am off; I am going to walk." Adelaide coolly said, after he had gone, that he was very visionary, predicting changes that could not be, and determined to bring them about. "Why did he bring me here?" I asked, as if I were asking in a dream. "Ben's hospitality is genuine. He is like pa. Besides, you are related to us—on the Somers side, and are the first visitor we ever saw, outside of mother's connection. Do you not know, too, that Ben's friendship is very sincere—very strong?" "I begin to comprehend the Pickersgills," I remarked as if in a dream. "How words with any meaning glance off, when addressed to them. How impossible it is to return the impression they give. How incapable they are of appreciating what they cannot appropriate to the use of their idiosyncrasies." She gazed at me, as if she heard an abstract subject discussed, with a slight interest in her black eyes. "Are they vicious to the death?" I went on with this dream. "It is not fair—their overpowering personality—it is not fair to others. It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious." "I am ignorant of Ethical Philosophy." "Miss Somers," said Murphy, knocking, "if Major Millard is below?" "I am coming." She smiled when she looked at me again. I stared at her with a singular feeling. Had I touched her, or had I made a fool of myself? "There is some nice gingerbread in the closet. Sha'n't I get you a piece?" I fell out of my dream. "Major Millard is an old beau. Come down and captivate him. He likes fair women." Declining the gingerbread, I accepted the Major. He was an old gentleman, in a good deal of highly starched linen, amusing himself by teazing Ann, who liked it, and paid him in impertinence. Adelaide played chess with him. Desmond sauntered in about nine, threw himself into a chair behind the sofa where I sat, and swung his arm over the back. The chessboard was put aside, and a gossipy conversation was started, which included Mrs. Somers, who was on a sofa across the room, but he did not join in it. I watched Mrs. Somers, as her fingers moved with her Berlin knitting, feeling more composed and settled as to my identity, in spite of my late outburst, than I had felt at any moment since my arrival in Belem. They were laughing at a funny description, which Ann was giving of a meeting she had witnessed between Miss Hiticutt and Mr. Pearsall, a gentleman lately arrived from China, after a twenty years' residence, with several lacs of rupees. Her delineation of Miss Hiticutt, who attempted to appear as she had twenty years before, was excellent. Ben, who was rolling and unrolling his mother's yarn, laughed till the tears ran, but Major Millard looked uneasy, as if he expected to be served à-la-Hiticutt by the satirical Ann after his departure. Before the laughter subsided, I heard a low voice at my ear, and felt a slight touch from the tip of a finger on my cheek. "How came those scars?" I brushed my cheek with my handkerchief, and answered, "I got them in battle." He left his chair, and walked slowly through the room into the dark front parlor. Major Millard took leave, and was followed by Mrs. Somers and Ann, neither of whom returned. As Ben stretched himself on his sofa with an air of relief, Desmond emerged from the dark and stood behind him, leaning against a column, with his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes searchingly fixed upon me. Ben, turning his head in my direction, sprang up so suddenly that I started; but Desmond's eyes did not move till Ben confronted him; then he gave him a haughty smile, and begged him to take his repose again. I went to the piano and ran my fingers over the keys. "Do you play? Can you sing?" asked Adelaide, rousing herself. "Yes." "Do sing. I never talk music; but I like it." "Some old song," said Ben. Singing "Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine," I became conscious that Desmond was near me. With a perfectly pure voice he joined in the song: "The thirst that from the soul doth rise, Doth ask a drink divine." As the tones of his voice floated through the room, I was where I saw the white sea-birds flashing between the blue deeps of our summer sea and sky, and the dark rocks that rose and dipped in the murmuring waves. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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