Chateau d'Or
9781465679109
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Millfield,” said Hal, “is one of those little New England towns which seem to have been finished up years and years ago, and gone quietly to sleep without a suspicion that anything more could be expected of it. It stands on a spur of the mountains which lie between Pittsfield and Albany, and can be distinctly seen from the car windows, with its spotless houses of white, with fresh green blinds, and the inevitable lilac bushes and sweet syringas in front. I was born there, and when I wish to rest and get away from the noise and turmoil of New York, I go there and grow a younger and a better man amid the Sunday stillness which reigns perpetually in its streets. And yet you would be surprised to find how much intelligence and genuine aristocracy that little village has. There are the Crosbys, who claim relationship with the Adamses, and a real scion of the Washingtons, and a lineal descendant of Lord Cornwallis, and Miss Talleyrand, who prides herself upon having, in her veins, the best blood in New England, though good old Deacon Larkin’s wife once shocked her horribly by saying ‘she didn’t see, for her part, why Polly Talleyrand need to brag so about good blood, when she was as full of erysipelas as she could hold.’” Here I laughed heartily over Miss Talleyrand’s good blood, while Hal lighted a fresh cigar, and continued: “Next to these aristocrats—upper crust, as the deacon’s wife called them—comes the well-to-do class, tradespeople and mechanics, the people whose sons and daughters work in the shoe-shops, for you know the shoe business is nowhere carried on so extensively as in New England, and it gives employment to many girls as well as boys, the former stitching the uppers, as they are called, and the latter putting on the soles. There is a very large shop in Millfield, which employs at least fifty girls, and at the time I am telling you about, there was not in the whole fifty—no, nor in the entire town—so pretty a girl as Annie Strong, the heroine of my story. She was not very intellectual, it is true, or very fond of books, but she was beautiful to look at, with a lithe, graceful figure, and winsome ways, while her voice was sweet and clear as a robin’s. Birdie Strong, we called her, on account of her voice, and when she sang in the gallery of the old brick church, I used to shut my eyes, and fancy I was in Heaven, listening to the music of the sweetest singer there. “Bob I may as well be frank with you. I was in love with Annie Strong, and I am certain she liked me a little, though she never encouraged me in the least. She was not a bit of a coquette, and made no secret of the fact that money, and nothing else, would have any influence with her. Annie was ambitious, and when, from her shoe-bench in the hot work-room, she saw Judge Crosby’s daughter go by in her dainty white dress and sash of blue, she thought hard, bitter things of the humble life she led, and vowed to accept the first man who could give her silks, and lace, and diamonds, and a place in society.
