Sweet Clover: A Romance of the White City — Old Vienna
"It was a lucky chance," replied Van Tassel.
"Where did you meet?"
The fun in his face gave Clover her first suspicion.
"In the Ferris Wheel.
Wasn't it a coincidence that we should have chosen the same cab?
And I'll tell you in confidence, Clover, that I think Mildred was considerably impressed with his Wheelship."
"Why should you make a confidence of that?"
asked Mildred nonchalantly.
"We are all impressed, aren't we?"
"Not to the verge of pallor, Milly."
"Don't call me Milly.
No one does that but Clover."
"Were you really frightened, Mildred?"
asked her sister with much interest.
"Why do you ask me?
Ask Jack.
He evidently knows all about it."
"No, I insist on referring you to Mildred herself.
She scorns petty deceits of all kinds.
I cannot be relied on to tell the absolute truth."
Mildred looked at the speaker with a dangerous sparkle in her eyes.
"Why don't you give Clover her present?"
she asked suddenly.
"A present for me?
Why, hurry," exclaimed Clover.
"What new extravagance have you been committing, Milly?"
"It isn't I this time, it is Jack.
He has bought you the most adorable little silver hanging-lamp you ever saw.
Open it, Jack; or shall we wait till we are seated in Old Vienna?"
"You told him I wanted it, you naughty girl."
"No, I didn't." Mildred was bubbling over with mischievous satisfaction in Van Tassel's struggles to look bland.
"It was purely spontaneous on his part.
I even went so far as to urge him not to get it.
Didn't I, Jack?"
Van Tassel's reply was scarcely audible; but they had reached the guard, who with puffed sleeves and feathered hat stood motionless, spear in hand, before the entrance to the Vienna of two hundred years ago.
Inside they found the Pages, standing before one of the many open shops which formed the first floors of the weather-stained, peaked, and turreted houses.
"Hilda is buying a spoon," announced Mr. Page as his friends approached;
"but that goes without saying.
I have kept careful count, and this is the seventy-seventh she has purchased while with me.
Of course there may be others.
I can't tell what pleasant surprises may be awaiting me when we get home."
"How was the Chinese theatre?"
asked Gorham, while Clover and Mildred gravitated naturally to Mrs. Page's side to lend her their aid in deciding between the merits of two spoons she was examining.
"Immense; you must go."
"You mustn't go unless you want to be driven crazy with noise," put in Hilda.
"Robert says I am deficient in the sense of humor, but you positively can't think in that place.
There was a Chinese-American in the audience acting as an interpreter, and I suppose he saw that Robert was interested; so he just stayed with us, and put the crowning touch to the confusion by explaining the play at a pitch to be heard above the squealing music and the shrieking actors."
"Women's parts all taken by men, of course," explained her husband, "and they jabber in a high monotonous falsetto without any change of countenance except an occasional attack of pathetic strabismus.
Two lovers meet after a separation of ten years.
They start, then with two simultaneous squeaks fall backward in a swoon, feet to feet, and lie there with their elaborately dressed heads sticking up in the air, while a supe runs in with wooden supports which he tucks under their necks.
The interpreter explained: 'Of course they cannot spoil their hair!'
Ha!
ha!
It was great; and as for the costumes and hangings, they would stand alone for the gold and silver embroidery in them.
Confess, Hilda, they were consoling."
"Yes, they were; and so was the baby we saw upstairs in the Joss-house.
He was ten months old, with a black tuft of hair on top of his head exactly like the Chinese dolls, and was dressed in green silk trousers and a red silk shirt."
"You must have wanted to steal him," said Mildred.
"That is what his mother thought, I am sure.
He lay asleep in a little wagon, and when she heard me exclaim, she flew out from behind a curtain with a very suspicious expression on her pretty face.
Yes, she was really pretty, and dimpled, and young; and her hands were loaded with rings.
Robert, just look here one minute.
Don't you think the filigree handle is the prettier?"
"My dear, I ate too many bananas once, and have never since been able to endure the sight of them.
If you knew the sentiments with which a souvenir spoon inspires me, you would tremble."
"I will take the filigree one," said Mrs. Page, with a sigh of relief.
The six ate supper together at a table pleasantly distant from the fine German orchestra.
Feathery bits of white cloud scudded over the blue above them.
Picturesque gables and weather-beaten facades illuminated with the decorations of a bygone time closed them in from the outside world with such an atmosphere of antiquity, that even the dignified beauty of Handel's Largo, as its stately measures pealed forth on the evening air, seemed an anachronism.
Mildred sat at Jack's right hand.
"What shall I put down for you?"
he asked, looking up from the order he was writing.
"I found nothing on the card injurious enough to be appropriate."
Mildred smiled slightly as she glanced over the menu.
"You deserved a worse punishment than that," she answered.
"It is true it was no great punishment.
I should like to give Clover all Cairo Street if she wants it."
Clover was sitting opposite between the other men, and the music effectually concealed from her the above colloquy.
"Hurry up, Jack," she said, leaning forward; "they keep you waiting forever here.
Give her bread and milk if she can't decide.
It is good for the young."
While the party were waiting for their meal to be brought, Jack, now at ease in the situation, produced the silver lamp, which received much praise as it was passed about.
Gorham, Mildred's other neighbor, turned to her.
"Your sister suggests that you must have practiced much self-control," he remarked.
"She says this is just the sort of lamp you have been searching for."
"Do you hear that, Jack?"
asked Mildred demurely.
"I am afraid Jack does not appreciate me, Mr. Page."
Mildred, ever since the evening of her confidential talk with Gorham, had carried the half-nettled, wholly amused consciousness that he was regarding her with considerations of her search for that affinity she had described.
She felt sure he would not repeat their talk to Jack;
but if he should!
The thought brought a stinging red to her cheeks.
Page was not thinking of her now, however.
This little circumstance of the gift of the lamp impressed him.
That Jack should, while with Mildred, buy this bauble which the latter coveted and give it to Clover, looked as though Hilda's convictions might be correct.
As he caught a serene glance from Clover's violet eyes it suddenly seemed to him very improbable that an impressionable fellow like his cousin should not dream by day and night of that pure and beautiful face.
Jack was not worthy of her, he could not precisely state to himself why;
and he ran over his acquaintances in his mind to see if he could find one the consideration of whom would rouse less antagonism.
He had not succeeded when the waiter appeared with the supper.
"What are you indefatigable people going to do next?"
asked Robert Page, lighting a cigar when their meal was finished.
"I am extremely comfortable and good-natured now, but I warn you I shall turn dangerous if any one suggests the illumination.
To be asked just to step over from Old Vienna to the Court of Honor sounds pleasant.
It was played on me once when I was a tenderfoot; but I'm not to be roped into any such pilgrimage to-night.
If I wasn't a married man, I should sit right here and listen to the music, and see the Wheel go round, until it was time to go to my little bed."
"What nonsense!"
remarked Hilda.
"If you weren't married you would be urging me to go with you in a gondola."
"My dear, where would be the use?
You know the gondolas are all bespoken by this time.
What a sweet consciousness it is, by the way," added Page, sighing restfully.
"We are going, though, some night," returned his wife.
"Before we leave the White City, you must take me in a gondola and hold my hand."
"See the lengths to which this woman's frenzy for spoons carries her!
Why, I'll hold your hand now, my dear.
Any suggestion which presupposes so little exertion as that will find me in an affirmative state of mind every time."
Hilda glanced at his offered hand scornfully.
"We haven't the stage-setting," she replied.
"Be careful, Robert Page, or you will frighten Mildred out of getting married at all."
"Is that true, Miss Mildred?
Oh, I don't believe it.
You are so level-headed you must see the situation in the right light.
Did you ever hear the simile of the horse-car?
When a man is trying to catch a horse-car and afraid it is going to escape him, he waves his arms, shouts, hurries, and disturbs himself generally.
After he has caught the conveyance, if he continued to behave in the same perturbed fashion he would be set down as a lunatic.
You see the point, of course?"
Mildred pursed her lips and shook her head.
"You are a very audacious man," she answered.
"Now Jack isn't smoking," continued Page argumentatively.
"That indicates the restlessness of the man who is afraid he will arrive too late at the street corner."
"It indicates that I am not going to stay here," returned Van Tassel.
"Whither away, restless one?"
"You will have to ask Miss Bryant.
She is showing me the World's Fair to-day."
"Not after your perfidious behavior," said Mildred.
"I was too sophisticated, was I?
Oh, for shame!"
"Do you speak to me of perfidy!"
exclaimed Jack.
"Well, sha'n't we all go somewhere together?"
suggested Gorham.
"No, I think we sha'n't, dear brother," replied Robert mildly.
"Do you want to stay, Hilda?"
asked Gorham.
"Aren't you growing tired of hearing Zwei Bier?
Come with us."
"No, thanks.
I will stay here until it bores me, and then I will give Robert his choice of selecting another souvenir spoon or taking me out."
So the other four left their seats and moved away to the martial strains of Die Wacht am Rhein.
Clover found herself beside Jack a moment.
"It was a shame about the lamp," she murmured.
"What?"
returned Van Tassel, looking uncomfortably into her roguish eyes.
"I saw how it was.
Too bad; but that is another thing she will repent at leisure."
"How did you know?"
"By Mildred's impish dimple.
She has one just above her lip that never shows except when she is in mischief.
At first I was taken in; but after a moment I saw the imp, and then I knew."
"What a wonderful sight the Wheel is with its double row of electric lights," said Mildred to Gorham.
"What--yes; it has been rather warm," he replied; this irrelevance being due to the effect upon him of observing Clover's murmured colloquy with Jack.
Mildred stared.
When she made a remark to a man, she was accustomed to find him attentive.
Page continued with another inexcusable speech.
"I wonder if perhaps Mrs. Van Tassel would like to go somewhere with Jack."
"I believe Jack considers himself otherwise engaged this evening," returned Miss Bryant with hauteur.
"Oh--oh yes."
Gorham's eyes fell upon the speaker with an expression which suggested that he had just become aware of her, and until this moment had been talking to himself.
A light broke upon Mildred.
There was but one possible explanation of such ignoring of her own preeminent right to homage.
"They are both in love with her!"
she thought, and the slight pang that came with the idea surprised her.
Clover and Jack, with the laughter on their lips, stepped forward and joined the others.
"Have you any wish, Mrs. Van Tassel?"
asked Page.
"No, let us drift until something tempts us."
They soon lost sight of Mildred and Jack in that stream of humanity which flowed in both directions along the Midway between the soft arc-moons.
They left behind them the great Wheel, slowly revolving in sparkling light as though, sweeping through the heavens, myriad stars had caught thickly along its edges and were borne on to earth.
"Let me carry that precious lamp," said Page, taking Clover's parcel.
"I would not let Jack keep it, for fear he might give it to Mildred," she explained.
Her companion looked surprised.
"Jack is a little weak and indulgent where Mildred is concerned," said Clover.
Page did not know what to reply.
Hilda had assured him in days past that no one could help seeing that Mrs. Van Tassel was unwilling Jack should ask Mildred to go to the Fair with him, and now this frank avowal of jealousy perplexed him greatly.
"But what--what mystifies me, Mrs. Van Tassel," he said hesitatingly, "is that you should care for a gift--but there are limits to a man's right to express his thoughts."
Clover laughed out mirthfully.
"Analyze me.
I am perfectly willing, only it will necessitate exposing the fact that my sister is a very saucy girl."
Page regarded her so earnestly that he nearly stumbled over a wheeled chair that grazed him.
"I don't understand it at all," he said seriously.
"Of course not.
Well, I will tell you.
Jack bought this lamp for Mildred; and she, to punish him for some offense, forced him to give it to me in the way you heard.
She doesn't know that I saw through it; but now I do not propose that she shall have the fun and the lamp too."
Page found the Midway grow a trifle cheerier under this disclosure.
"Of course not," he answered; then, after a moment's thoughtfulness: "That was a strange prank for your sister to play," he added.
"I fear I shouldn't have known how to yield as easily to the joke as Jack did."
"Oh, he stuttered a good deal, poor fellow," laughed Clover.
"Mildred is a spoiled child."
"Not so superficial, though, as one would at first believe," returned Gorham.
"There is plenty of depth to her nature.
Society educates a girl to seem shallow, that is all."
Clover looked surprised and pleased.
She glanced at Page with quick, responsive feeling.
"It is very nice of you to see through Mildred," she said, and Page felt a strange glow under her approval.
"The folly of Hilda," he thought, "in supposing this woman could be jealous of another!"
There was something too in the quiet joyousness of her sphere which assured him that whatever were her sentiments for Jack, she was not longing for his society now.
She was content, he felt it, and the knowledge was bliss to him.
"I wonder how soon we are going to be attracted," remarked Clover, after they had walked a minute in silence.
Page turned to her suddenly.
"What do you mean by that?"
he asked so eagerly that the surprised color rushed to his companion's face.
"Why, we were waiting, weren't we, for one of these side shows to tempt us beyond the point of resistance," she answered, with the glibness with which a woman can skim over a moment which threatens too much.
"Well, to tell the truth I had forgotten what we were doing beyond sauntering together in this very interesting, motley crowd.
Isn't it strange how completely alone we are in such a place?"
"Or might be, if it were not for the wheeled chairs," said Clover.
"It isn't safe to become introspective here."
"Was I?"
anxiously.
"Have I been silent, Mrs. Van Tassel?
My thoughts often play me tricks.
Hilda is always saying that I am 'queer.'
I
don't know just what she means, but if you would be kind enough to mention it if I do anything you don't like, I should be--it would be a great favor."
"You are very flattering," returned Clover, turning away to smile.
"What a temptation you offer me!"
"Then I do offend you?"
he exclaimed with frank consternation.
"No, no, I didn't mean that.
I was only thinking what a temptation you hold out to a woman to mould a fellow-creature into the form she likes.
But I know what an ignis fatuus that alluring idea is.
Men do not alter themselves to please women."
"I should say," returned Page ruminatively, "that you are wrong.
I know that Hilda has changed Robert in many ways, materially."
"By the force of years of influence, yes; but your brother did not know what was going on.
I am certain of that."
"I should suppose," said Page earnestly, "that a man could not rest in the knowledge that he was doing something offensive to the woman he loves."
"Yes, you would suppose so," agreed Clover.
"My knowledge of the truth is gathered from observation, not experience, as you know.
I reverenced Mr. Van Tassel too completely to think of desiring to change him.
In my married life it was myself I wished to alter; but I have seen a good deal of young married people, and--well, tell me, Mr. Page, did you ever hear Hilda say that she would be glad if her husband did not smoke?"
"Yes," replied Gorham, and said no more.
"Now I begin to feel a strong temptation, Mr. Page.
How is it with you?
Are you prepared to resist the Javanese village?"
"I have not been in there."
"Oh, you mustn't miss that.
I wonder you have been able to pass that charming, fantastic, bamboo entrance.
The lightness and simplicity of this life makes it to me the most charming in the Plaisance."
They entered the gateway and came suddenly upon the quiet attractions of the dainty straw village.
Yes, it was still, here; still enough to hear the muffled music of the water-wheel.
Clover and Page stood a moment in the hush, listening to its tinkle, and the plashing of the wavelets.
A
small, soft-footed Javanese occasionally passed them.
"I wish that I smoked," broke out Gorham suddenly.
"Here will be an opportunity," returned Clover.
"You will be offered cigarettes at every turn in Java."
Page's seriousness was unmoved.
"I want you to believe that I would give it up if you asked me."
Mrs. Van Tassel's serene heart quickened its pace, but she laughed.
"Isn't it a pity that I shall have to remain incredulous?"
then she hastened on, vaguely afraid of her companion.
"Don't misunderstand me, please.
I was not criticising your brother a minute ago.
Do you know you have formed a shocking habit of frankness in me?
You have searched out my thoughts and opinions so many times that now you have only to suggest a subject and I pour out my ideas.
I think I ought to have kept my observations to myself on this topic; but since I have said so much, I don't wish to leave you with the notion that I think your brother and men like him monsters of selfishness.
A woman makes an absurd mistake to marry a smoking man, and then to be grieved because he refuses when she artlessly requests him to give up the habit; but a girl nearly always thinks that all she need do is to marry a man in order to make him over into anything she likes.
I tell you, Mr. Page, it is the result of my observations that all the voluntary changes a man makes at the request of his beloved are made before--before he catches the horse-car."
Gorham smiled.
"But I don't think Robert ought to smoke, since Hilda"-- "Pardon me.
I am going to defend the absent.
Did he smoke while they were engaged?"
"Yes."
"Very well.
Now, do you wish to hear some words of wisdom?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Here they are.
If Hilda disliked tobacco, she should have said so, then; and she probably did.
When she found Mr. Page would not give up the habit, she should have weighed the question in her mind as to whether the matter of smoking were going to affect her happiness seriously.
If she thought it would, she should have broken her engagement.
The great point is, that if she decided to marry him she should have realized that she took him as he was, tobacco and all, and would be likely to have rather more than less of it for the rest of her life."
"A man is a selfish brute," remarked Gorham.
"Sometimes; but he has the same right a woman has to choose between his habit and his love; that is, if the woman speaks in time."
"Hilda does not particularly dislike cigar smoke," said Page, "but she thinks smoking is bad for Robert.
I wonder if all men are as thick-skinned as you say.
Now, there is Jack.
Do you believe he would not fling all his cigars into the lake for--for you?"
"Yes, indeed; so long as there were plenty more to be had."
"No, Mrs. Van Tassel, be serious; and for the moment pardon personalities.
If Jack were engaged to you"-- He waited, gazing at Clover.
She smiled at him and said, "Well, if Jack were engaged to me?"
Page swallowed some impediment to speech.
"And you should earnestly ask him not to smoke, can you doubt the result?"
Clover shrugged her shoulders.
"No, I am afraid I can't. Jack is a gentleman, and such an impulsive, affectionate fellow, I know pretty well what he would do, supposing of course that he were very earnestly and deeply in love with me."
"Which he is, of course."
The dismal exclamation broke from Page unawares.
Clover stared at him.
"Oh no, he isn't," she said gently, after a minute.
