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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Atalanta in the South," Maud Howe Elliott constructs a vivid tapestry that intertwines travel narrative, personal memoir, and social commentary. Set against the backdrop of the American South, Elliott offers readers an intimate portrait of a region steeped in complexity and charm. Her prose is rich with evocative imagery and lyrical elegance, capturing the lush landscapes and dynamic cultures she encounters. The book not only serves as a chronicle of her journeys but also engages with themes of womanhood and societal expectations during the late 19th century, reflecting the author's keen insight into the intersection of gender and geography. Maud Howe Elliott was born into a prominent literary family, and her upbringing undoubtedly informed her literary endeavors. As an advocate for women's rights and a notable public intellectual, she sought to articulate the experiences of women in a rapidly changing society. Her travels through the South were not merely exploratory; they were also a quest for understanding the regional nuances of tradition and progress, reflecting her commitment to social issues of her time. "Atalanta in the South" is a compelling read for those interested in American literature, travel writing, and the evolving role of women in society. Elliott's engaging narrative and insightful observations invite readers to reflect on their perceptions of the South, making this book a valuable addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Atalanta in the South
Table of Contents
Introduction
Driven by the tension between a woman’s desire to move freely and a society intent on pacing her steps, Atalanta in the South contemplates how speed, ambition, and intellect meet the drag of tradition, tracing the frictions between new work and old privilege, sympathy and suspicion, self-fashioning and inherited duty, and asking what kind of future can be made when personal conscience, regional memory, and social expectation pull in different directions while the ground of custom shifts underfoot in a landscape where hospitality and hierarchy often speak in the same voice and where movement itself—of people, ideas, and fortunes—becomes both a promise and a provocation.
Maud Howe Elliott, an American author writing in the late nineteenth century, situates this work in the American South during a period of pronounced social transition. Cast in the mode of the regional, society-minded novel, the book belongs to the broader current of postbellum American prose that examines place, manners, and moral choice through closely observed scenes. Without relying on melodrama, Elliott frames her story within parlors, streets, and meeting rooms where custom exerts real force and change arrives in increments. The publication context places it among contemporaries interested in the textures of daily life as indices of larger cultural shifts.
The narrative follows a capable young woman whose quickness of mind and disposition to act invite comparison to the classical huntress suggested by the title, and whose sojourn in the South draws her into a web of obligations, friendships, and contested ideals. Elliott uses her protagonist’s perspective to register the pacing of a community negotiating continuity and reform, allowing readers to witness both gracious rituals and the intricate calculations that sustain them. The plot unfolds through conversations, social calls, and encounters that test courtesy and conviction, offering an immersive, character-driven experience more interested in the ethic of choices than in sensational turns.
Among the book’s central concerns are the negotiation of gendered expectations, the ethics of loyalty to place and people, and the push and pull between inherited structures and emergent opportunities. Elliott treats civility not as mere ornament but as a pressure system that can shelter or constrain, and she examines how education, work, and artistic taste circulate as social currencies. The story also attends to the varieties of Southern identity, noting differences of class and temperament while resisting caricature. Throughout, the narrative probes how ideals are translated into conduct, asking what integrity looks like when compromise seems both necessary and perilous.
Elliott’s style is measured and lucid, favoring supple sentences, closely rendered dialogue, and a keen eye for setting. The mood alternates between reflective calm and alert scrutiny, permitting moments of humor without sacrificing moral seriousness. Readers encounter a voice that trusts observation and inference, building significance from gesture, decorum, and the inflections of speech. Rather than rushing, the book proceeds at a humane pace that rewards attention to nuance. The result is a reading experience that feels intimate yet sociological, inviting the audience to inhabit rooms, verandas, and streets long enough to perceive how habit becomes history in miniature.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions about mobility, belonging, and the ethics of change remain pertinent. It raises issues that resonate with current debates about regional narratives, cultural misunderstanding, and the complexities of reform within living communities. Readers interested in the history of women’s writing will find a study of agency that is neither programmatic nor naïve, attentive to the costs of choice as well as its exhilarations. Those drawn to regional literature will recognize an inquiry into how landscapes shape imagination and conduct. The novel’s patience with ambiguity models a way of reading society that resists easy verdicts.
Approached on its own terms, Atalanta in the South offers a poised, observant portrait of a society testing its balance and of a heroine learning how to keep her own. Without revealing its later turns, one can say that it promises a quietly gripping journey through drawing rooms and crossroads where the future is negotiated in the present tense. Elliott’s craft rewards the reflective reader with atmosphere, moral texture, and a sense of lived particularity. As an artifact of its literary moment and a mirror for enduring concerns, it invites engagement that is both historically curious and personally searching.
Synopsis
Atalanta in the South follows a young Northern-bred heroine, nicknamed for her quickness of mind and step, as she journeys to the post–Civil War American South. Called there by family ties and curiosity, she travels by rail and ship into a region reshaping itself after conflict. The narrative opens with her first impressions of landscape and manners, noting the mixture of grandeur and loss she encounters. Through a steady, observant lens, the book introduces its central concern: how old customs, new realities, and individual character intersect. The heroine’s stance is exploratory rather than judgmental, setting a tone of inquiry and tempered sympathy.
Her arrival in a prominent coastal city acquaints her with a social circle that reflects varied Southern perspectives. She is welcomed by a traditional household whose codes of hospitality and honor remain intact, while meeting younger figures inclined to commerce, reform, or artistic expression. Conversations at tea tables and verandas reveal practical anxieties—labor, credit, and governance—alongside lingering memories of war. Encounters with Black community leaders and workers underscore the complexity of freedom and responsibility. The heroine learns the unspoken rules that shape speech and behavior, and the narrative balances observation with episodes that lightly test those rules without forcing confrontations or delivering verdicts.
Moving inland to a country estate, she observes the rhythms of plantation life as it adapts to new arrangements. Fields, kitchens, and work sheds become settings for quiet exchanges about wages, schooling, and stewardship. The household’s matriarch embodies continuity; younger relatives question inherited assumptions. The heroine’s tact and curiosity gain trust, and she forms friendships that cross lines of generation and background. A discreet romantic thread develops, less as a courtship than as a measure of values, contrasting rectitude, ambition, and duty. The countryside offers both pastoral calm and signs of economic strain, revealing the fragile balance between tradition and change.
The social season brings gatherings—church services, picnics, musicales—where the heroine witnesses codes of civility under gentle pressure. Polite rivalries and carefully worded debates expose differences over education, political participation, and the role of women. A visiting Northerner introduces brisk ideas; a local notable argues for gradualism. The heroine neither lectures nor withdraws, testing her independence within accepted forms. The narrative turns on small incidents: a misread courtesy, a tactful apology, a promise kept. These moments accumulate, outlining the book’s larger argument—that progress in manners and institutions proceeds by attention to daily conduct as much as by public decrees.
A local crisis—part natural misfortune, part human error—provides a pivot. The event disrupts routines, compresses social distances, and requires unposed service. The heroine’s practical resourcefulness surfaces, earning respect without theatrics. In the aftermath, characters reveal themselves: some evade responsibility, others volunteer labor or funds. A private revelation concerning family obligations complicates allegiances and heightens the story’s personal stakes. The tone remains measured; even in emergency, the narrative avoids melodrama. Instead, it emphasizes the quiet logistics of aid and the negotiations that accompany shared work, showing how necessity can both heal and expose fault lines within a recovering community.
Rebuilding opens space for experiments. The heroine supports a modest initiative—part schoolroom, part workshop—that joins instruction to livelihood. Partnerships form across race and class with cautious candor about aims and limits. Opposition arises from habit and pride, not caricatured villainy, and the book treats resistance as a social fact to be understood and navigated. The romantic element deepens into a question of consonance between principles and prospects. The heroine weighs the claims of affection, place, and vocation without theatrics. Scenes of daily effort, letter writing, and committee work advance the plot while keeping focus on the practical texture of postwar life.
A public occasion—a fair, meeting, or ceremonial—forces choices into view. An old grievance resurfaces and a disputed account of the past is aired, threatening to fracture new cooperation. The heroine maintains composure and declines hasty judgments, encouraging a standard of evidence and fair dealing. Private confidences intersect with civic debate, placing several characters in moral rather than purely social conflict. Outcomes are not settled by a single speech; instead, incremental concessions restore working relationships. The romantic question approaches a hinge, with all parties recognizing that companionship requires more than sentiment: it demands compatibility in temper, duty, and vision for the future.
The narrative reaches its climax in decisions framed as commitments, not grand gestures. The heroine affirms a path that respects local agency while keeping faith with her independent judgment. Relationships crystallize into durable forms—friendships, partnerships, and clearly bounded differences. The book’s title figure, the swift Atalanta, becomes a quiet metaphor: speed transmuted into steadiness, a race transformed into companionable stride. The city and countryside appear again, familiar yet altered by trial and cooperation. Without sensational disclosure, the story closes its central tensions by showing how deliberation, mutual regard, and sustained effort can redefine both personal and communal prospects.
In its closing pages, Atalanta in the South underscores a message of measured reconciliation. The book neither romanticizes loss nor simplifies progress; it presents the South as a living society, negotiating memory and necessity. The heroine departs or remains on terms that honor her growth and the dignity of those she has come to know. The final emphasis falls on continuity—habits gradually reshaped, institutions modestly improved, affections tested and clarified. The synopsis reflects a narrative that privileges observation, courtesy, and practical work over drama, offering readers an account of postwar adjustment where character and community evolve together without forfeiting complexity or hope.
Historical Context
Maud Howe Elliott’s Atalanta in the South, published in the mid-1880s after the formal end of Reconstruction, is set against the transforming landscape of the postbellum American South. The work observes cities and towns reshaped by war, the decline of the plantation order, and the uncertain rise of a commercial, “New South” ethos. Elliott, a Northerner and daughter of abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, writes from an informed vantage that juxtaposes Northern reformist ideals with Southern social realities. The time frame evokes the late 1860s through the 1880s, when federal policy receded, local elites reasserted power, and daily life for freedpeople and white Southerners alike was renegotiated amid ruin, memory, and modernization.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) devastated the South: major battles ravaged Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia; General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea (late 1864) destroyed railroads and supplies and culminated in the burning of Atlanta; and Confederate surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, inaugurated a fraught peace. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, overturning the labor system that sustained the plantation economy. Atalanta in the South reflects this aftermath in landscapes of physical and social ruin, lingering wartime grief, and the dislocation of elites and laborers, using households, estates, and recovering towns as microcosms of a region reckoning with loss and redefinition.
Reconstruction (1865–1877) reorganized Southern governance and citizenship. Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865 to aid former slaves and refugees; the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 placed former Confederate states under military districts, requiring new constitutions recognizing Black suffrage. Constitutional change proceeded via the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments, while Southern legislatures first attempted restrictive Black Codes (1865–1866). Biracial governments briefly expanded public education and infrastructure; Black officeholders such as Hiram Revels of Mississippi (U.S. Senate, 1870) emerged. Elliott’s narrative mirrors this turbulent civic experimentation through depictions of schools, churches, and courthouses as contested arenas where freedpeople negotiated wages, family bonds, and dignity with planters and municipal elites.
Reconstruction provoked paramilitary violence aimed at suppressing Black political power and Republican rule. The Ku Klux Klan, founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865, spread terror from 1868 to 1871; Congress responded with the Enforcement Acts (1870–1871), including the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871). Landmark atrocities included the Colfax Massacre (Louisiana, April 13, 1873), where dozens—likely over 60—African Americans were killed, and the Hamburg Massacre (South Carolina, July 8, 1876). Federal prosecutions were blunted by United States v. Cruikshank (1876), which limited federal authority. Elliott’s book registers the climate of intimidation—night riders, contested elections, and fraught public rituals—emphasizing how private terror and public procedure intertwined to shape everyday choices and allegiances.
“Redemption” returned conservative Democrats to power, culminating in the Compromise of 1877 that resolved the Hayes–Tilden election and withdrew remaining federal troops. The Mississippi Plan (1875) and similar tactics institutionalized intimidation and fraud, while economic change imposed the crop-lien system and sharecropping on both Black and poor white farmers. Cotton prices declined in the 1870s, and the convict lease system spread, especially in Georgia and Alabama. Atalanta in the South tracks these transformations as former planters confront indebtedness, urban merchants and factors gain influence, and tenants become trapped in cycles of credit and harvest. The narrative’s attention to household economies and neighborhood markets exposes the material mechanisms that replaced slavery with new forms of dependency.
By the mid-1880s, the “New South” creed sought reconciliation and investment. Henry W. Grady’s 1886 New York speech promoted a region of industry, railroads, and textiles; Atlanta’s International Cotton Exposition (1881) and Birmingham’s iron and steel boom symbolized this transition. Urban boosters promised modern amenities, while tourism commodified antebellum nostalgia. Elliott’s work juxtaposes lapsed aristocratic codes with commercial ambition, tracing how civic clubs, newspapers, and fairs recast public identity. Scenes of train depots, hotels, and parlors highlight the negotiation between tradition and progress, as Northern capital and Southern respectability collide, revealing winners and losers in a modernization that often left rural districts and Black communities marginal to celebrated growth.
The consolidation of Jim Crow took legal form after Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Cases (1883) curtailed federal protection against private discrimination; Southern states implemented segregation and, by the 1890s, disfranchisement through poll taxes, literacy tests, and the Mississippi Constitution of 1890. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) later sanctioned “separate but equal,” while lynching surged in the 1890s, documented by Ida B. Wells. Though some developments postdate publication, Elliott’s narrative anticipates them in its portrayal of rigid social etiquette, contested access to public space, and the ritualization of racial boundaries. The book’s attention to church pews, conveyances, and civic ceremonies foreshadows the codification of separation and the eclipse of Reconstruction’s egalitarian promise.
Atalanta in the South functions as social and political critique by interrogating caste, race, gender, and class in the era’s daily life. It exposes the moral evasions of paternalism, the economic coercion of crop-lien credit, and the corrosive effects of political violence on civic trust. Elliott challenges romanticized “Lost Cause” narratives by juxtaposing nostalgia with the material poverty and curtailed citizenship of freedpeople. Through a mobile, observant protagonist, she questions the terms of reconciliation, highlighting how women’s agency expands in social networks yet remains constrained by law and custom. The work’s measured attention to institutions—schools, courts, markets—renders a sober indictment of inequality masked by manners and booster rhetoric.
Atalanta in the South
By the same Author.
A NEWPORT AQUARELLE.
A Society Novelette. 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.00.
THEA Novel.16mo. Cloth. Price $1.25.
ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers,BOSTON.
Atalanta in the South.
A Romance.
ByMAUD HOWE,
AUTHOR OF "A NEWPORT AQUARELLE" AND "THE SAN ."
BOSTON:ROBERTS BROTHERS.1886.
TO
THOSE DEAR SOUTHERN FRIENDS
Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after, And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span, With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labor and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty, and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.
Atlantia in Calydon: Swinburne.
ATALANTA IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
The time, a December afternoon within the memory of a child of ten; the place, Jackson Square, better known to history as the old Place d'Armes[1], the centre of all that is most interesting in the French quarter of New Orleans.
The bronze effigy of the hero whose name the square now bears is surrounded by a group of belated rose-bushes full of a sober wintry bloom. Outside of these runs the shell-strewn path, dazzling white, and harsh to tread upon. The flowers are all dead, save the hardy northern roses, but the orange-trees are heavy with their golden fruit. A group of black-skinned children are playing at leap-frog, and their young voices sound cheerfully in the ears of Philip Rondelet as he sits at the window of his modest apartment high up in one of the famous Pontalba buildings. Two sides of the square are flanked by long brick houses of a somewhat imposing character, alike in all particulars to the very monogram of their owner, wrought in fine ironwork above the central windows, where the façade rises to a high peak. The lower floors are now occupied by shops of a more or less unsavory aspect, for fashion, which once was at its height in Jackson Square, has flown to a newer and less attractive part of the city. Among the tenants of the fine old Pontalba buildings there are few to-day who claim any connection with polite society. Rondelet might have been classed with the exceptionals in this respect, as he should be in many others. He certainly was exceptional in his appearance, and no less so in his tastes, if we may judge by the glimpse we catch of him sitting in his small study under the leads, staring dreamily out into the square below. There were very few articles of furniture in the room, and the floor lacked a carpet. A third of the space, that part where the sun lay longest, was devoted to a miniature garden, where the flowers bore all the marks of a careful and loving hand. Rare and splendid orchids hung from the wall, and a superb oriental flower, looking like a vast vegetable butterfly, bloomed serenely forth from the neck of a broken wine-bottle. A row of Japanese dwarf-oaks made a sombre background for a vivid staff of Mexican cactus-flowers. In the midst of all this tropical bloom stood a large aviary, where a dozen birds twittered and trilled and dipped their dainty wings in a tiny fountain playing in the centre of the cage. A bare deal table, a lounge which had lost its cover, a worn horsehair armchair, and a set of unpainted pine shelves laden with books, completed the contents of the apartment, with one notable exception. On the mouldy, unpapered wall hung an unframed picture representing the head and shoulders of a man. At the first glance it might have passed for an ancient copy or original study of a head of Christ. On closer examination it was seen to be only the portrait of a man whose features bore the stamp of the highest intellectual beauty,—a long, delicate face, with a broad, unruffled forehead, large eyes of that indefinable gray-blue tint which neither color describes, a thin, delicate nose, and a mouth of rare beauty and sensitiveness. The hair and beard, of a golden brown, fell about the shoulders, and below, folded upon the breast, were the white, nervous hands, with a delicate blue tracery of veins. If any one unsatisfied with this examination should have looked more closely at the picture, he would have been able to make out this inscription: "Philip Rondelet, from his friend Hans Makart." By the fading light of that short winter day let us look into the face of the man who is still gazing out into the sunlight slowly waning from the square below. It is the same face as that in the picture; Hans Makart, friend to Philip Rondelet, having painted the man as he was, with that superficial resemblance to the Master which at a second glance was almost lost. The beauty, the gentleness, the love, are all there; but the power which raises these elements to achieve the salvation of man is lacking.
It is already dark on the stairway, though the last sunbeam is resting for a moment on the golden cross of the cathedral over the way. A sound of stumbling in the passage causes Rondelet to glance rather nervously towards the door. He is not in the mood for visitors, if we may judge from the impatient sigh which escapes him. The sound of voices in altercation reaches him, a silence follows, and from an inner door his black servant enters the apartment.
"Well, Hero?"
"A gentleman to speak with you, sar."
"Say that I am not at home."
"I did, Marse Philip; but he says he knows yer are."
"Tell the gentleman that you have searched the extensive apartment, and that I positively am not to be found."
"Very good, sar."
Hero disappeared. Rondelet listened. There was the sound of a dispute, then a scuffle in the passage, a noise as of a person falling heavily against the wall, an exclamation in Hero's voice; and the door was thrown violently open, a stranger stood upon the threshold bowing civilly, hat in hand.
"Dr. Rondelet?"
"Rondelet is my name, sir."
"I have forced myself into your presence, in spite of your servant's refusal of admittance, because I must speak with you on a matter of the utmost importance."
Rondelet bowed and remained silent. His visitor continued,—
"You are a physician?"
"I have my degree as doctor of medicine, but I am not a practising physician."
"I was told that, Doctor, by Mr. Robert Feuardent, at whose instance I have come to ask your services in a matter of the strictest confidence."
The two men had remained standing. At the mention of Feuardent's name, Rondelet motioned his visitor to his solitary arm-chair and took his seat upon the coverless sofa.
"Feuardent assured us of your great skill, especially in a case of this description."
"Surgical?"
"Yes."
"A wound?"
"It is feared a fatal one."
"It is an affair?—"
"Of honor."
"It would be wiser to seek some one of the established physicians here.[1q] I have not as yet undertaken any practice since my return from Paris. I am almost a stranger in my native city."
"It is for this reason that you would not be suspected of any connection with the affair, should it come out."
"There is danger, then, of a thorough investigation?"
"Possibly."
"I do not like the business. Besides, I don't see how I can go. I have an engagement at six o'clock which I cannot break."
"A dinner?"
"Yes."
"At Mrs. Darius Harden's?"
Rondelet looked somewhat annoyed at this cross-questioning, but nodded assent.
"Feuardent was to have been of the party. I am to carry his excuses. It is now half past five. At exactly a quarter past six I shall call for you at the Hardens'. A physician is always liable to be called away, and you will be absolved of all blame if you only put in an appearance at six."
The visitor rose, and Rondelet noticed for the first time that he wore evening-dress. His linen was crushed and tumbled, and as he buttoned his over-coat closer across his breast, the doctor's eye caught a dark-red stain on the shirt.
"The affair took place this morning?"
"Yes; I drove out from the ball."
The man was going. Rondelet made a struggle to free himself from this mystery into which he was being forced against his will.
"Monsieur, neither you nor Robert Feuardent have the right to ask this thing of me. Your name I do not even know. I refuse to be accessory to this affair. You must have had some other practitioner upon the field."
"A mere boy, who has lost his nerve and insists upon a consultation with some one less unskilled and timid than himself."
Philip flushed, and his visitor, with a formal bow, vanished.
"Till a quarter past six," he called from the lower hall.
The two men had begun their conversation in English, but had quickly lapsed into French, after the manner of their kind under all strong excitements.
To these people, with whom the two languages are spoken indifferently from the cradle, the Latin tongue is the natural expression of all strong emotions.
Mechanically Rondelet changed his dress; and as he was about to go forth, he paused irresolute, unlocked a drawer beneath the bookshelves, and took out a case of surgical instruments[2]. The dust was thick upon the box. He touched the spring, to make sure that everything was in its place; and at the sight of the shining steel the old repugnance came over him with stronger force than ever. He closed the box with a quick movement of disgust, and threw it back into the drawer. At that moment the stranger's words echoed in his ear: "Some one less timid than himself." That decided him. He slipped the instruments into the pocket of his over-coat and ran lightly down stairs into the street. It was very cold; the wind spitefully wrenched open the garments of the few people who were abroad, and rattled the great iron gates of the ancient court-house. It had come from the northern ice-fields, and gloried that the South could not rob it of all its fierce pain. Enough was left to pinch the faces of the poor folk, wretchedly housed for such weather, and to make the rich wish regretfully that their fireplaces were more in accordance with Northern notions. At Mr. Darius Harden's comfortable house on Esplanade Street, however, there was little needed to complete the air of warmth and cheer.
The large drawing-room was lighted comfortably, though not brilliantly. The guests already assembled had drawn into a semicircle before the fire, and were listening to Mrs. Harden's last good story, when the door opened, and Philip Rondelet entered.
"Forgive me if I am late, kind hostess," he said; "and," he added, looking over Mrs. Harden's shoulder, "tell me, while she is not looking, who that young girl in white is. Do I know her?"
"No; it is Miss Margaret Ruysdale, a stranger from the North,—here for the winter with an invalid papa, the gentleman with one arm. I will present you to her, as you are to take her in to dinner. Miss Ruysdale, Mr. Philip Rondelet."
The young man made a deep obeisance, and the girl bowed simply to him, with nothing of the drooping of the lids or sudden uplooking into his eyes which he had often noticed in his introductions to young women in society. This Margaret Ruysdale from the North looked at him as quietly and civilly as she would have looked into the face of his grandmother.
"I have seen you before, Mr.—should I not say Dr. Rondelet?"
"I hardly know, mademoiselle; this is the second time to-day I have been so called. I had thought that I had left my title, along with my profession, on the other side."
"In Paris; it was there I saw you."
"In Paris?" Rondelet smiled, his whole face lighting up with a look of unspeakable pleasure. It was as if a lover had suddenly heard the name of his absent mistress.
"Yes; ah, how you miss it! I feel it in your voice," said Miss Ruysdale, her own voice growing, in sympathy, a trifle less like the murmur of cool running water than at first.
"Miss it? Ye gods, how I miss it! I suffer for it. Where did you see me? I never can have seen you; I should not have forgotten your face."
"It was at the hospital, where I went once to make the portrait of a dying child for its mother. You took care of the little fellow André; don't you remember him,—the son of your concierge?"
"To be sure, poor little soul! How bravely he bore it all! It was better that he died; he could never have walked again. You, then, mademoiselle, are the young art student who paid—"
Miss Ruysdale interrupted him,—
"Yes, yes, I was his friend. How long is it since you left Paris?"
"A month, a year, a cycle,—I cannot say. It seemed very long ago this morning; but you have brought it back to me so vividly, it might have been yesterday. Have you neglected your profession as I have mine? You were modelling in those days, were you not?"
"Yes, I am a sculptor, and am always at work."
Looking down, Rondelet noticed that her small, bare hands, lying loosely clasped, were unusually firm-looking for those of so young a person. Margaret Ruysdale, sculptor, could hardly have more than attained her first score of years. He was ten years her senior, and since his last birthday had known the pain of finding himself no longer in the twenties. His feet were still hesitating what life-path to tread, and this slim girl quietly claimed the profession which had counted among its followers some of the greatest men the world has known. Her assertion had been made very simply and without assumption. She was a sculptor, and used as best she could the tools of Phidias and Angelo.
"I am to take you in to dinner," said Rondelet, as a general move was made in the direction of the dining-room.
"I am very glad," answered Margaret Ruysdale, sculptor, laying her small white hand upon his arm with the air of a comrade. She had put aside all coquetry, if she had ever possessed it, which to Philip Rondelet seemed very doubtful; and yet nothing could be more feminine than her face and figure, her well-modelled white gown and appropriate ornaments of yellow gold.
"Tell me, is Mr. Robert Feuardent among the guests? I heard I was to meet him to-night."
Robert Feuardent! Rondelet started at the name and glanced at the clock. It was nearly half-past six. At that moment the door-bell was violently rung, and immediately afterwards a servant whispered a message in Mrs. Harden's ear.
"Mr. Rondelet, a messenger has come for you, summoning you to a sick person; can you not send him for some other physician?"
Philip set down untasted the glass of wine he had raised to his lips, and said, "Tell the person that it is not possible for me to leave at present. He should summon another physician. Dr. N—— lives half a block from here."
In two minutes the man returned. "The gentleman says, sir, that he can wait, but that you will hardly like to keep a lady waiting in the carriage on such a night as this."
"Mrs. Harden, you must excuse me. Mademoiselle, I cannot express to you my regrets at being forced to lose the pleasure of knowing you better."
"I am very sorry too; but of course your professional duties must take precedence of everything else. Good night, and god-speed to you," said Margaret Ruysdale, sculptor, with a smile, the first she had given him. Her smiles were not plentiful, and this one was to the unwilling Samaritan like a draught of the rich strong wine he had left untasted.
In the hall he found the young man, who was still a stranger to him, looking wan and pale beside the merry circle he had just quitted.
"You look ill yourself, my friend; you are not fit to be out on such a night."
The stranger made an impatient gesture of dissent and threw open the door. A whiff of the chill north wind burst in at the opening, and fanned the flame in the chandelier, and blew into the face of the girl from the North, as if it bore her a greeting from her home. Outside, the street was empty and silent. A chill dense rain was beginning to fall, and the horses of the carriage which awaited them were fretting and tramping uneasily. "Get in as quickly as you can," said the stranger; "there is one person on the back seat."
