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Hajj across Empires

Rishad Choudhury presents a new history of imperial connections

across the Indian Ocean from 1739 to 1857, a period that witnessed
the decline and collapse of Mughal rule and the consolidation of British
colonialism in South Asia. In this highly original and comprehensive
study, he reveals how the hajj pilgrimage significantly transformed
Muslim political culture and colonial attitudes toward it, creating new
ideas of religion and rule. Examining links between the Indian
Subcontinent and the Ottoman Middle East through multilingual
sources – from first-hand accounts to administrative archives of hajj –
Choudhury uncovers a striking array of pilgrims who leveraged their
experiences and exchanges abroad to address the decline and decentral-
ization of an Islamic old regime at home. Hajjis crucially mediated the
birth of modern Muslim political traditions around South Asia. Hajj
across Empires argues they did so by channeling inter-imperial cross-
currents to successive surges of imperial revolution and regional
regime change.

Rishad Choudhury is Assistant Professor of History at Oberlin College.

ASIAN CONNECTIONS
Series editors
Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia
Engseng Ho, Duke University
Iza Hussin, University of Cambridge

Asian Connections is a major series of ambitious works that look

beyond the traditional templates of area, regional or national studies
to consider the trans-regional phenomena which have connected and
influenced various parts of Asia through time. The series will focus on
empirically grounded work exploring circulations, connections, conver-
gences and comparisons within and beyond Asia. Themes of particular
interest include transport and communication, mercantile networks and
trade, migration, religious connections, urban history, environmental
history, oceanic history, the spread of language and ideas, and political
alliances. The series aims to build new ways of understanding funda-
mental concepts, such as modernity, pluralism or capitalism, from the
experience of Asian societies. It is hoped that this conceptual framework
will facilitate connections across fields of knowledge and bridge histor-
ical perspectives with contemporary concerns.

A list of books in the series can be found at the end of the volume.
Hajj across Empires
Pilgrimage and Political Culture after the
Mughals, 1739–1857

Rishad Choudhury
Oberlin College
Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009253703
DOI: 10.1017/9781009253673
© Rishad Choudhury 2024
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2024
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress
ISBN 978-1-009-25370-3 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
In loving memory of Mahmuda Choudhury
(1951–2014)
Many are the societies We have destroyed for persisting in wrongdoing,
leaving them in total ruin. Many are also the abandoned wells and
lofty palaces.
The Pilgrimage 22:45
 Contents

List of Figures page ix

List of Maps x
List of Tables xi
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
Note on Transliterations and Translations xviii
List of Abbreviations xix

Introduction: Hajj in the Crisis of Empire 1

Part I Departures: Experiences and Exchanges in the

Indian Ocean
1 Pilgrim Passages 25
2 The Hajj Bazaar Economy 68

Part II Crossings: Ideologies and Institutions

across Empires
3 The ʿUlama on Hajj 111
4 Hindi Sufis and the Hajj 151

Part III Returns: States between Home and the Haramain

5 The Company Raj and the Hajjis 193
6 Routes of the Muslim State 231

vii
viii Contents

7 Faqirs and Fanatics, or, Reconfiguring Pilgrimage and

Political Culture 269
Conclusion: The Hajj and the Ends of the Mughal World 299

Bibliography 303
Index 343
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 Figures

I.1 A late Mughal view of Mecca between the panoramic

and the particular, circa 1845 page 15
1.1 At the Gate of Mecca: Mughal hajj caravanserai, Surat,
Gujarat, built in 1644 34
1.2 Locus of “revolution”: Rampart, Surat Fortress 43
1.3 Stamping royal status: ʿAbdul Husain’s autographed hajj
diary, 1815–1816 57
2.1 “Gift” for the would-be pilgrim: Mapping Meccan bazaars
in South Asia 75
3.1 A regional Mecca: Interior of a tomb on Makli Hill,
Thatta, Sind 131
3.2 Portrait of a qāzī, flanked by jurisconsult and bailiff 134
4.1 Ablution fountains, “Horhor” Hindi Sufi lodge, Istanbul 158
4.2 Separating Sufis: Interior of the Afghan Sufi Lodge,
Istanbul 167
4.3 Death of a diplomat: Grave of Muhammad Imam Sardar
“Hindi” (d. 1787–1788) 174
6.1 Palace pilgrims: The Nawab of Arcot’s residence, built
in 1768, Madras (Chennai) 233
6.2 A site of sovereignty? Nawabi mosque, built in 1795,
Madras (Chennai) 253

ix
 Maps

1 Hajj routes page xx

2 South Asia, circa 1799 xxi

x
 Tables

2.1 Select Ottoman gifts for the Mughals (circa 1744–1745),

transported via hajj routes page 89
2.2 Select Mughal gifts for the Ottomans (circa 1747),
transported from Delhi to Istanbul through pilgrimage
routes 89
2.3 Some hajj gifts from the Nawab of Arcot, 1825 101

xi
 Preface and Acknowledgments

This is a book about how political cultures of Islam transformed during

an age more often associated with the decline of major Islamic political
powers. Set in the late Mughal world and the Indian Ocean, it shows how
South Asians drew on their exchanges as pilgrims in Arabia and the
Ottoman empire to respond to the disintegration of an old regime, the
formation of regional kingdoms, and the coming of British colonial
overrule at home.
Hajj across Empires is a history of connectivity. Yet it aspires to do
justice to regional realities. Against the breathless generalizations and
synoptic run-throughs that make up much global imperial historiog-
raphy, what follows privileges the perspectives of interregional actors
themselves. By recovering the stories of mobile Muslims, the study sets
forth the varied ways in which long-distance circulatory regimes like the
hajj were thus also laden with “agentive possibilities.”1
Given these driving aims and concerns, it is perhaps fitting then that
the idea for this book originated when, all too literally, I stumbled on one
such mobile Muslim, whose travels were in turn directly propelled by the
problem of political change in eighteenth-century South Asia. In
2012–2013, I spent a year in the ex-imperial capitals of Delhi, London,
and Istanbul, gathering source materials for an inchoate dissertation. At
the time, I knew I wanted to write about interimperial connections, but
I’d yet to consider pilgrimage as the focus of my study. Then, during a
research visit to a Sufi lodge – long in a state of deserted dereliction – a
headstone at the adjacent cemetery caught my eye. Its epitaph told me
that here was the final resting place of an emissary from a post-Mughal
polity in India, a military envoy who had died during a visit to Istanbul in
the late 1780s. I later learned that the envoy was in fact buried at what

1
Eric Tagliacozzo, Helen F. Siu, and Peter C. Perdue, “Introduction: Seekers, Sojourners,
and Meaningful Worlds in Motion,” in Eric Tagliacozzo, Helen F. Siu, and Peter
C. Purdue, eds., Asia Inside Out, vol. 3, Itinerant People (Cambridge, MA, 2019),
pp. 1–2.

xiii
xiv Preface and Acknowledgments

was one of a larger complex of built sites that spread across the Middle
East, all of them dedicated to hosting South Asian pilgrims. I learned as
well that his diplomatic suite, which had uncoincidentally arrived to seek
political support at the Ottoman capital as British imperial expansion
picked up pace in India, had detoured to different locations of Muslim
pilgrimage during its journeys through the Middle East, including, to be
sure, Mecca.2
Chancing on that gravesite, and the historical circumstances surround-
ing it, I began considering a series of questions for which I couldn’t find
adequate answers in the literature. How did connections between
Muslim polities evolve as the Islamic empires of the early modern world
entered their protracted periods of decline? What might those connec-
tions also reveal about the regional history of South Asia, which in this
era underwent its historic “transition” from Mughal to colonial rule?
Why was it that pilgrimage featured so prominently in how interregional
links across the Indian Ocean came to be? What, then, could a history of
the hajj reveal about the emergence and evolution of modern global
Muslim political traditions?
Convinced that these questions were crucial enough to deserve their
own study, since that day at the Sufi lodge, I traveled to many other
cities, archives, and historical sites, not to say campuses, libraries, and
scholarly gatherings. The answers I was able to find over that decade-
long intellectual pilgrimage I have tried my best to put down in these
pages, such as they are. But if at any point this work achieves an insight
that pushes past banality, I owe it largely to the support I received from
those I crossed paths with along the way – friends, mentors, colleagues,
librarians, archivists, students, family members, and well-wishers who
exhilarated my experience of discovering and producing ideas by giving
lavishly of their time, knowledge, criticisms, camaraderie, and much
more. This study had its genesis in one of those quiet and ineffably
serene moments of speculative reflection that historical research can
sometimes produce, but that it has been brought to completion is due
in great measure to the lively and dynamic networks I have had the
privilege of being a part of in several countries and continents for over
ten years. I am grateful to everyone who made it possible.
I was very fortunate to have been taught by an extraordinary set of
scholars. As an undergraduate, Michael Fisher introduced me to the
study of South Asia with preternatural patience. I remain deeply

2
The case is discussed in Chapter 4. For a fuller treatment, see Rishad Choudhury, “Tipu
and the Turks: An Islamicate Embassy in the Age of British Expansion,” Itinerario 47:2
(2023), pp. 166–184.
 Preface and Acknowledgments xv

indebted to Mike for those early encouragements. At Cornell University,

where I began this project, Eric Tagliacozzo showed me the ropes in
Indian Ocean history, steering a lead ship with a sense of curiosity that
was infectious. Eric’s own work on the history of the hajj gave formative
fillip to this study. Robert Travers’ mentorship and historical imagination
have been sources of much illumination for me. His guidance on the
history of empires has critically inspired the core contentions of this
book, though this study will likely fall short of his exactingly high stand-
ards. I want to thank Robert also for his friendship, and for conversations
about much else besides history. With an ethic that fluently melds
intellectual integrity with individual graciousness, Durba Ghosh has been
for me a true exemplar of what it means to be a scholar. From her
perceptive advice about academic life, to her penetrating reviews of far
too many drafts of this work, Durba’s generosity over the years has been
an inexhaustible source of sustenance. Durba saw this journey through,
first by putting me on the path, then by realizing where I was headed
before I did.
This project was blessed by the financial backing of several institutions
and agencies. The History Department, the Mario Einaudi Center for
International Studies, and the Society for the Humanities, all at Cornell
University, liberally funded the first phase of research and writing. An
International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science
Research Council allowed me a blissfully extended stint of multisited
research. In 2015–2017, I was extremely lucky to have found myself in
the intellectually invigorating setting that is the Harvard Academy for
International and Area Studies, where a book began to come together with
support and advice from Sunil Amrith, Bruce Jackan, Kathleen Hoover,
the late Roger Owen, and Ajantha Subramanian. I presented a near-
complete draft of the manuscript at a daylong workshop at Harvard in
2017. For according me the generosity of critique at that forum, I am
profoundly grateful to Lâle Can, Barbara Metcalf, Norbert Peabody, and
Philip Stern. At Oberlin College, where I have taught since 2017, I thank
my chairs at the History Department, Renee Romano, Leonard Smith, and
Annemarie Sammartino, for supporting my pedagogical work. A semester
in 2020 at the Institute for Advanced Study, sponsored by the Herodotus
Fund, permitted me a very peaceful spell of writing. For conversations that
made my stay at Princeton so memorable, I thank the attendees of the
European History Seminar. During the dog days of Covid, a 2021 Kluge
Fellowship from the Library of Congress kept things going. I would like to
thank the John W. Kluge Center for allowing me to hold the fellowship
from Toronto, where I finalized the manuscript as an icebound Ontario
winter slowly thawed open from under the lockdown.
xvi Preface and Acknowledgments

In Ithaca, Anne Blackburn was characteristically thoughtful in feed-

back. Iago Gocheleishvili was the ideal Persian instructor. Andrew
Amstutz, Bernardo Brown, Trais Pearson, Natalia Di Pietrantonio,
Osama Siddiqui, and Yasmine Singh were brilliant interlocutors. In
London, Peter Marshall offered peerless guidance on the riches of the
East India Company’s collections. As one might say in Bangla, it was as
though some great mahout were revealing to the blind man the wonder
that is the elephant. In Delhi, a serendipitous meeting with Naimur
Rahman Farooqi made me think that I might be onto something.
Carter Higgins was there for the adventures, and misadventures. In
Istanbul, Suraiya Faroqhi’s legendarily vast erudition was inspirational.
I will never forget the experience of exploring old quarters of the city with
Nida Nebahat Nalçacı. In Bombay, Nidhi Mahajan was the most
amazing friend and host. Nidhi also accompanied me to Gujarat, where
I benefited much from her ethnographic knowledge of the region.
Through the monsoon-streaked warrens of Bombay’s archives, Chhaya
Goswami was a guiding Virgil. In Cambridge/Boston, Sugata Bose and
Sunil Sharma imparted many acts of kindness, including sharing with me
their inimitably interesting perspectives on South Asian history. For
engrossing exchanges on history and anthropology, and for the gift of
friendship, I am grateful also to Xenia Cherkaev, Matthew Ghazarian,
Chris Gratien, and Owen Miller. At Oberlin, Zeinab Abul-Magd good-
naturedly schooled me on the politics that governs the writing of Middle
Eastern history. Jack Jin Gary Lee and Daniel Schultz supplied spirited
sounding boards for some of the theoretical questions I raise in the book.
For the interest they took in my research, sincerest thanks are due to
Seema Alavi, Nile Green, and Ayesha Jalal, scholars whose works were
foundational to the historiographical orientations of this study. Michael
Gilsenan, Jos Gommans, David Ludden, Azfar Moin, and Prasannan
Parthasarathi gave important pointers and suggestions on key ideas.
Sunil Amrith, Khaled Fahmy, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Francesca
Trivellato were insightful readers of different chapters. Munis Faruqui
was always enthusiastic in encouragement. Many others contributed by
reviewing drafts, asking questions, offering criticisms, exchanging ideas,
sharing materials, or responding to queries. Thank you, Nicholas
Abbott, Ismail Fajrie Alatas, Kamran Asdar Ali, Tariq Omar Ali, Rida
Arif, Emilia Bachrach, Jyoti Balachandran, Björn Bentlage, Fahad
Bishara, Bronwen Bledsoe, Holly Case, Vivian Choi, Charmaine Chua,
Sherman Cochran, Duane Corpis, Hardeep Dhillon, Joshua Ehrlich,
Mehmet Ekinci, Susanna Ferguson, Cristina Florea, Darcie Fontaine,
Samyak Ghosh, Usman Hamid, Shireen Hamza, Rehan Rafay Jamil,
Cemal Kafadar, Mahmood Kooria, Alexandra Lane, Malgorzata
 Preface and Acknowledgments xvii

Kurjanska, Elizabeth Lhost, Andrew Liu, Daniel Majchrowicz, Mostafa

Minawi, Timothy Nunan, Teena Purohit, Mircea Raianu, Kevin
Schwartz, Asheesh Siddique, Shawkat Toorawa, Benjamin Weber, and
Seçil Yılmaz. My seminar students at Oberlin brought fresh opinions and
questions that informed fundamentally the final form of the book.
I feel immensely indebted to the many selfless archivists and librarians
who made the research for this study a source of far greater joy than
frustration. My gratitude goes to the staff of the British Library, the
Maharashtra State Archives, the National Archives of India, the Ottoman
Archives, and the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive. I am beholden as well
to the librarians of Columbia, Dhaka, Harvard, New York, and Princeton
universities; Iran Culture House, New Delhi; the Institute for Advanced
Study; İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi; and the Library of Congress. This
book would not have been written were it not for the diligent daily labor of
staff at the libraries of Cornell University and Oberlin College.
With wisdom and vision, Emily Plater and Lucy Rhymer at Cambridge
University Press guided this book to publication. I am especially grateful to
Lucy for her faith in this study, and for her invaluable input on its central
arguments. I also wish to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers, who
were precise and thorough in their evaluations. An earlier version of
Chapter 4 appeared as “The Hajj and the Hindi: The Ascent of the Indian
Sufi Lodge in the Ottoman Empire,” Modern Asian Studies 50:6 (2016),
pp. 1888–1931. Chapter 7 revises materials from “Wahhabis without
Religion; or, A Genealogy of Jihadis in Colonial Law,” Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 42:2 (2022), pp. 404–419.
My sister Mipuli, my brother Shorgo, my cousins Sreshtha, Bishwa,
Shompod, and Sharthok, my cousin-in-law Tahiya, and my aunt Manu,
are incredibly caring, ceaselessly understanding, and riotously funny. My
warmest thanks to them for putting me up, and for putting up with me, in
Toronto, London, and Dhaka. To their affection and concern,
I owe everything.
In the final stages of writing, Palki lit up the difficult days with the glow
of laughter.
I wish my father Reazul Islam Choudhury had lived to read this book.
Knowing him, he would’ve delighted in some of its stories.
Growing up in Bangladesh, my mother Mahmuda Choudhury’s mem-
ories of her childhood and youth in former West Pakistan first stoked my
fascinations for Hindustani culture. I still have in my library a well-
thumbed book from her student years, a volume of recipes from which
I received many warm boons at the dinner table, including a few faltering
lessons in reading Urdu. This is dedicated to her, with my respect and
love; I hope I was able to keep the promise.
 Note on Transliterations and Translations

I use simplified schemas of transliteration for all languages. For Persian,

Indic vernaculars, and Arabic, I use macrons to indicate long vowels. For
Ottoman, I follow modern Turkish orthography. I specify the ʿain and
hamza throughout the book.
I request that readers refer to the contexts in which I invoke all non-
English terms. For example, the cognates qāzī (Persian, Urdu/Hindustani),
qādī (Arabic), kadı (Ottoman Turkish), and kājī (Bengali), all appear in this
work to refer to a judge of Islamic law. These variations reflect language-
specific patterns of pronunciation or regional forms of diction. I apply a
similar set of rules to personal names, to which, however, I do not apply
diacritics. Where loanwords in English exist – Shariʿa, faqir, rupee, and so
on – I use them. I therefore also use “hajji,” or its plural “hajjis,” irrespective
of gender and in the contexts of both the “greater” and “lesser” pilgrimages.
I occasionally bring up-to-date older forms of English punctuation and
capitalization. Save for colonial toponyms like Calcutta, for place names
I generally privilege modern conventions. All Qurʾanic quotations I draw
from Mustafa Khattab’s English interpretation.
I would be humbled if this book generated debate in Middle East
studies, but I both conceived and completed it mainly as a contribution
to South Asian and British colonial historiography. Hence, the following
phonetic chart for select Turkish letters:
C, c “j” as in Jahangir
Ç, ç “ch” as in Chittagong
 ğ
G, “soft” G, left unpronounced, elongates preceding vowel
İ, i with a dot, like “i” of Delhi or “i” of king
I, ı without a dot, close to “u” of Indus, or “io” of nation
Ş, ş “sh” as in shaikh
Unless stated otherwise, all translations are my own.

xviii
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 Abbreviations

Add. MSS Additional Manuscripts

AHR The American Historical Review
APAC Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, British Library
Bd Board of Revenue Records and Consultations
CSSH Comparative Studies in Society and History
EI2 Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed., Leiden, 2012)
H. Year in the lunar Hijri calendar (Anno Hegirae)
IESHR The Indian Economic and Social History Review
IO Islamic India Office Islamic Manuscripts
IOR India Office Records
MAS Modern Asian Studies
MSA Maharashtra State Archives
MSS Eur. European Manuscripts
NAI National Archives of India
NCHI New Cambridge History of India
OA Ottoman Archives (Osmanlı Arşivi)
OMS Or. Oriental Manuscripts
PC Persian Correspondence

xix
 Map 1 Hajj routes

xx
Map 2 South Asia, circa 1799

xxi
 Introduction
Hajj in the Crisis of Empire

As one Muslim’s journey from late Mughal India showed, the Meccan
pilgrimage connected empires. On his way to Arabia from Delhi in
1744, a certain Saiyid ʿAtaullah was unexpectedly summoned to the
Mughal court, where authorities tasked him to convey a message to their
Ottoman counterparts. Though in itself never a political act, the hajj
from the Indian Subcontinent had long been transimperial by definition
given its itinerary, taking pilgrims across the Indian Ocean between two
great Islamic empires of the early modern world. For Saiyid ʿAtaullah, it
was going also to be transimperial in political purpose.
This pilgrim’s passage occurred in the wake of empire’s upheaval.
Only five years prior, an Iranian army led by the ruler-warlord Nadir
Shah had barreled onto the plains of northern India and sacked the
Mughal capital of Delhi. The invasion in 1739 brought decades of
internal factionalisms, regional uprisings, and fiscal crises to a climax in
South Asia. It was also the moment when the governing powers of the
Mughals effectively eclipsed, long before British colonial authorities
dissolved the Timurid dynasty in 1857.1 Facing their most challenging
phase at home, an embattled empire now began looking abroad.
As an agent from Mughal Delhi, Saiyid ʿAtaullah was received in
Ottoman Istanbul with assurances of interimperial friendship, “made
manifest due to religious and doctrinal unity.” Recent instabilities in
both empires might have unsettled rapport, but theirs was an “old”
relationship.2 Yet, from the Ganges to the Bosphorus, further disturb-
ances were in the offing. As Saiyid ʿAtaullah had come to inform, the
Iranians had lately laid waste to Delhi. Their expansion, now, was
readying to tear into Ottoman lands, where war and decentralization on

1
Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab,
1707–48 (1st ed., 1988, repr. Delhi, 2013), pp. 52–53.
2
Süleyman ʿİzzi, Tarih-i ʿİzzi (Kostantaniye, 1784–1785), pp. 13–14, “ittihat-ı dini ve
mezhebi.”

1
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 “MAID? NEVER HAD SUCH A THING IN MY
LIFE,” LAUGHED
CECILY; “AND WHAT WOULD HA’ BEEN THE
USE, WHEN MR.
LENVALE WOULD INSIST ON ESCORTING ME.”
 The

Carcellini Emerald
With Other Tales

BY

MRS. BURTON HARRISON

HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
MDCCCXCIX
 COPYRIGHT 1899 BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

THE PUBLISHERS ACKNOWLEDGE THE COURTESY OF

THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY (THE SATURDAY
EVENING POST), MAST, CROWELL AND KIRKPATRICK
(THE WOMAN’S HOME COMPANION), AND HARPER AND
BROTHERS, IN ALLOWING THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS
 C O N T E N TS
PAGE

The Carcellini Emerald 3

An Author’s Reading and its Consequences 77
Leander of Betsy’s Pride 103
The Three Misses Benedict at Yale 123
A Girl of the Period 169
The Stolen Stradivarius 205
Wanted: A Chaperon 287
 L I S T O F I L L U S T R AT I O N S
PAGE

“MAID? NEVER HAD SUCH A THING IN MY LIFE,”

LAUGHED CECILY; “AND WHAT WOULD HA’ BEEN THE
USE, WHEN MR. LENVALE WOULD INSIST ON
ESCORTING ME.” Frontispiece

“AN OPPORTUNITY TO DECK OUT HER BOARD WITH AN

EFFECT.” 80
“MR. BLUDGEON HAD BETTER BE READ THAN SEEN.” 88

“NEED I SAY THAT IT GOES TO MY INMOST—” 98

THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE. 124

“AND WITH GLOOM IN HIS HEART HE WENT BACK TO

HIS LONELY ROOM AND LIFE.” 154
“RUSSELL REAPPEARED, BRINGING WITH HIM THE
SODDEN FORM OF AGNES.” 162

“MY DEAR KATE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD PUT TO

IT I AM TO MAKE ENDS MEET. I AM SO POOR IT IS A
SCANDAL.” 288
THE CARCELLINI EMERALD
 THE CARCELLINI EMERALD

How did Ashton Carmichael come by his aristocratic and decidedly

individual place as a dictator in New York’s smart society? Nobody
knew; nobody really cared. In his set it was sufficient for one sheep
to jump, and all the rest would follow. He was as much a power as
was Beau Brummell over modish London in the days of the Regency.
Asked everywhere, deferred to with bated breath by new aspirants,
he was seen only at the houses of authenticated fashion. In the
clubs to which he belonged—and the list of them was long, following
his name in the Social Register—some men affected to pooh-pooh
his right to membership; but rarely was there a member of a
committee on admissions found to vote against him on the score of
fitness. Good-looking, gentlemanlike, amusing when it suited him to
be so, sarcastic—and, on occasion, offensively snobbish—his
uncertainties of mood lent zest to pursuit by his admirers. He had no
known income beyond that derived from a nebulous business in real
estate in which he was alleged to hold a partnership. His place of
residence was in a couple of cheapish rooms in an out-of-the-way
neighborhood. But all the good things of life seemed to fall easily to
his share; and winter and summer, on land, at sea, he was heard of,
in ripe enjoyment of luxuries earned or inherited by other people.
As a matter of fact, while the general public languished in
ignorance of Carmichael’s antecedents, there were two or three
individuals in New York who could have told his story from A to Z,
but preferred for various reasons to keep their mouths shut. One of
these was Tom Oliver, Carmichael’s chum at college and his sponsor
in the initiatory steps of worldly progress. Another was Tom’s sister
Eunice, now pretty Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who, in days of lang
syne, had been engaged to her brother’s handsome friend.
The third was a brave, hard-working young woman journalist on
the staff of a great city newspaper; a girl who never troubled
Carmichael with her presence, although she bore his name, and had
given all her little patrimony to help her only brother through the
university and provide him a start in life.
It was at the beginning of senior year, when Tom Oliver came back
to college to surprise his friends by the announcement of his rich
father’s insolvency. Up to that time Tom had been regarded as a
prince of generosity and good-fellowship. His liberal allowance was
lavished upon college subscriptions and other fellows’ debts as soon
as it came into his hands. Before the end of the month he was as
impecunious as the rest of them. The blow of his sudden change of
prospects did not, therefore, afflict him as much as might have been
expected. As for the democratic, happy-go-lucky band who for three
years had made him their hero, it seemed, if anything, to bring him
nearer to their level. As a rule, the chaps of their brotherhood were
the sons of toilers, accustomed to scant means and modest ways of
life, who looked forward to opening the world’s oyster with their own
swords, or nobody’s. The man who appeared most to feel the hero’s
altered circumstances was his room-mate, known as Ash Carmichael,
a fellow the crowd had taken in among them through a not
unnatural delusion that his being so intimate with Tom made him of
Tom’s sort. Oliver and he had drifted together in freshman year, and
Ash was indebted to Tom for a long list of solid benefits bestowed
with the same recklessness of consequences and loyalty of affection
that had marked every kind action of the young man’s life.
On all occasions when it was possible Tom had taken Ashton home
to New York with him for the holidays and flying visits. The latter
had spent two months of the summer preceding senior year at the
Olivers’ house at Newport, where he had made acquaintance with
some of the people who were afterward to be his sponsors in
fashionable life. The stress he laid upon these individuals, their
homes and habits, had elicited from his chum a great deal of good-
natured fun at Carmichael’s expense. But as that was the only thing
he ever enjoyed at the expense of that individual, Tom was entitled
to make the most of it.
For Tom himself the smart people who forever dined and drove
and yachted and gave incessant dinners had no attraction. Mrs.
Oliver, a devotee of the gay world, and Charlotte, her older daughter,
who followed in the mother’s footsteps, had ceased chiding their
recreant brother, and were rather inclined to hustle him out of the
observation of their all-important circle. Eunice, the younger girl,
who adored Tom, used often to fall behind in the fashionable
procession for the pleasure of sharing her brother’s pastimes. In
athletics Tom had trained her well, and here Ash Carmichael had first
elicited her girlish admiration, for he was an adept in all sports
requiring grace and activity.
But then even Mrs. Oliver told her son that his chum was the only
“possible” college-mate he had ever brought under the patrimonial
roof-tree!
When the crash of Tom’s prospects came as to finances
Carmichael was disagreeably taken by surprise. The manifestation to
his friend of the exact condition of his feelings on this subject was,
on the whole, more trying to Tom than the original blow.
The first public move in the disintegration of their friendship was
Tom’s withdrawal from the expensive rooms they had occupied
together since freshman year into much cheaper lodgings.
Ash promptly installed in his place a wealthy and inane classmate
whom the “crowd” had antecedently styled “Miss Willie.” There was
a groan of derision among the fellows for this substitute for Tom;
and at an impromptu meeting of leading spirits in Tom’s new rooms,
in an old and shabby quarter, it was voted to give Carmichael
henceforth what they called the “icy nod.”
After the Christmas holidays, which Ash spent with “Miss Willie’s”
family, something occurred to bring upon Tom’s former chum a ban
more serious than what had preceded it. The offense, the discovery
of it, the discussion, and the verdict were known to only a few of
Tom Oliver’s most devoted henchmen. Outsiders, aware of some
dark mystery in process of solution, talked of it—speculated curiously
—but got no farther. That Carmichael had done something awfully
shady was generally believed. What that something was nobody
could find out. But during the whole time of the agitation Tom went
about black as a thunder-cloud and silent as the grave.
If the Faculty knew anything of these proceedings it was based
upon vague rumor only, or came by intuition. They had nothing to
take hold of, on which to condemn Carmichael. It was generally
believed, among them and the undergraduates, that a few men
under Oliver’s leadership had rectified whatever wrong was done;
had saved Carmichael from disgrace and exposure; and had then
agreed to hush the matter up.
Before graduating, Carmichael took a prize for an uncommonly
clever essay, which he delivered with ease and distinction before an
audience of whom the strangers applauded him to the echo. When
he took his degree, and the class was about to scatter, he was so
much alone that nobody thought of asking what he meant to do in
the future. When next heard from by his late associates Mr.
Carmichael had set out on a journey to Europe to end in the circuit
of the globe, as the companion of “Miss Willie,” whose family
defrayed all expenses.
About this time Tom Oliver, in a suit of greasy overalls, was
beginning his labors in the repair-shops of a great railway in a little
Pennsylvania town, to obtain intimate personal knowledge of all
parts of the mighty motor that was henceforward to control his
destiny. For, at the advice of a friend of his father, he had
determined to work up from the bottom of the railroad business to
as near the top as ambition and energy might ultimately carry him.
Tom had need of all his pluck during the summer of this first
apprenticeship to toil. His father, overworried and outworn, was
stricken with apoplexy in New York, and suddenly passed away.
Simply because he could not tell what better to do for them, Tom
transferred his mother and sisters to live in a cottage in the suburbs
of the town where he was employed.
Oh, the tragedy of life when small souls meet larger ones in
everyday friction! Mrs. Oliver and Charlotte, banded against Tom and
Eunice, made those summer days in the hot little house twice their
ordinary length. And Tom saw, in spite of her persistent effort to
make the best of things, that little Eunice was carrying a burden
more heavy for her shoulders than the loss of a great house, a troop
of friends, servants, and finery. Nor was it her mourning for the
father she had loved tenderly that oppressed her. Of him she and
Tom talked together frequently, and with honest feeling. But there
was something else—something she hugged to her heart in silence,
that grew worse as the summer waned.
Just when matters were at their worst with the little household—
when petty domestic trials beat like billows over poor Tom’s head—
when Eunice began to look like an image of hope deferred—a visitor
arrived. Tom heartily welcomed Arden Farnsworth, a man much
older than himself, who in years past had been often at their home.
A dim idea that Farnsworth had come after Chatty penetrated the
brother’s head. It occurred to him that among his mother’s abundant
lamentations for lost joys she had mentioned the fact that last winter
she had been almost sure Farnsworth would propose for Chatty, but
that he had gone abroad and made no sign. And Farnsworth, as
everybody knew, would be a husband in a hundred—well born, well
placed, of such character, means, and position as would anchor the
whole Oliver family away from the quick-sands of their present
uncertainties.
Then it came out it was Eunice, not Charlotte, whom Farnsworth
wanted for a wife—whom he had loved for a year past, and left
because he feared she would laugh at the disparity between their
ages—nineteen and thirty-five—whom he had now come back to
America resolved to secure, if earnest pleading would avail.
 But Eunice, urged to the front by her mother, who philosophically
made up her mind that one, if not the one she had counted upon of
her daughters, should recoup their lost fortune and position,
disappointed all the family hopes. She told Arden Farnsworth that it
was impossible for her to marry him, and sent him away pierced
with sorrow at his failure. His generous nature longed for an
opportunity to place the dainty little beauty back in the niche where
she belonged. For her sake he was prepared to make any provision
for Mrs. Oliver and Chatty, short of offering them the hospitality of
his houses and yacht and other such covetable spots where the
Farnsworth Penates were enshrined.
In the tempest that broke over Eunice after Farnsworth’s
departure, Tom learned his sister’s secret. She came to him,
trembling and tearful, nestled in his breast, and told him that for a
year she had considered herself engaged to Ashton Carmichael.
“What!” shouted Tom, loosening his hold of her, his eyes darting
angry lightning. “That ——! Why, Eunice, it is impossible! You cannot
have met him since I broke with him last autumn a year ago.”
“Oh, Tom! How dreadful you look! Of course I knew you were no
longer friends. It was just after poor papa’s troubles began when
Ashton wrote to me that you had separated, and that pride would
not allow him to correspond with me after what had taken place
between you. Then once, during the Christmas holidays, I met him
in the street, and we took a walk together, and he begged me to be
true to him and all would come out right. But still we did not write,
until—”
“Don’t tell me he dared approach you after February!” exclaimed
Tom, white to the lips with anger.
“Yes. He said there had been such a bad quarrel between you he
feared it could not be made up; but he asked me to meet him in
town—in a picture-gallery—and I did. Don’t be angry, Tom. He
wanted to let me off from our engagement; indeed he did; but I saw
he was in great trouble, and so told him I would never give him up
so long as my love was worth anything to him; that he needn’t write
—I should understand. After this he began coming down to town to
walk with me, which took place several times—I couldn’t refuse him
that comfort, Tom.”
“Comfort! He was laughing in his sleeve, the infernal scoundrel,
that he was so outwitting me! And I at that very time was holding
him up like a rock, to save him from utter ruin before the world! But
go on; for Heaven’s sake, tell me all!”
“That is all, Tom. He sent me a clipping about his essay, and I was
proud. Then he came once again, in June, to tell me he was going to
sail with Billy Innis around the world—and from that day to this I
have never heard from him.” Her head dropped forward forlornly
upon her breast. Large tears flooded her blue eyes and streamed
down her childish face. Tom’s tender heart smote him for having so
increased her grief.
“My dear,” he said, gently, “I would give anything on earth if you
had confided in me before. In my desire to shelter a false and
contemptible fellow I have let you run into a trouble that makes my
blood boil to think of it. Now listen, Eunice, and believe I speak plain
truth. Not only did Ash Carmichael throw me overboard the minute
our father lost his money, but last February he was guilty of a
transaction involving me that might have landed him in state’s prison
if I had not consented to hush it up. Judge, then, if he is likely to
present himself before you again. No, Eunice, he will never come
back. He was a coward, a cad, a sneak, to gratify himself at your
expense in that way; and my heart aches for you, dear. But now that
you know him as he is you will never care for him again. Think how
much worse suffering was his sister’s, to whom he wrote confessing
all, when he was in abject fear that I’d expose him. He had the
cunning to make her come East to beg for him. For, at the first sight
of that brave, tortured girl I was disarmed of my thoughts of
punishment for him. For her sake, not his, I and two or three other
men he had involved in the affair resolved to let him go and never to
speak of it. Except to you, now, the matter has not passed my lips.
And you best know why I have broken our vow of secrecy.”
Again Eunice hung her head. The crimson of deep shame
deepened upon her face. For a time her voice was stifled by the sobs
that shook her frame.
“Don’t cry, little sister,” Tom went on, distressfully. “You make me
feel like an ogre or an executioner. But in this case there was no
such thing as being merciful; I had to tell you to cure you, Eunice.
Heaven knows the task was not to my taste. Some day, if the
opportunity ever comes in your way, I should like you to say a kind
word or do a kind act to that girl. She is a perfect heroine; and, if
she did not fancy herself under such tremendous obligations to me
already, I’d like to look Alice Carmichael up and try to help her.”
“You are bigger and more generous than I am, Tom,” cried Eunice,
between gasps of pain. “As I feel now, I pray God never to let me
look upon one of their blood again!”

Four or five years later saw Mr. Ashton Carmichael a conqueror in

the lists of New York’s smart society. Among all the portals that flew
open at his magic touch there was one that remained obstinately
closed. This was the very fine front door belonging to the new
mansion up town in which Arden Farnsworth had, two years after
her refusal to marry him, installed his bride, recently Miss Eunice
Oliver.
For Eunice, expanding into rare beauty during her exile from the
gay world, had come back to take her place as a power in its
councils, with a new understanding of people and things. Her grave
husband was valued for his truth and loyalty and virile force,
immeasurably beyond what her earlier love had been for his youthful
graces of exterior. With all her heart she loved and was grateful to
Farnsworth for “waiting till she came to her senses,” as she often
laughingly told him. Long, long ago the sting of Carmichael’s
treatment had ceased to pain her. Her fancy for him, in truth,
expired that day when poor, blundering Tom had revealed her lover’s
treachery.
With the marriage of Eunice the pressure of adverse
circumstances had been lifted from the Olivers. A former admirer of
Miss Chatty’s, a Mr. Ringstead, first discouraged by her mamma
because she did not want her daughter to remove to Philadelphia,
had gallantly come forward and offered himself anew. Mrs. Oliver,
clearing her throat, suavely remarked to Chatty that she had always
considered Ringstead a most excellent young man. To which Chatty
pertly replied that his excellence was secondary to the fact that he
was going to take her out of that hole of a provincial town where
Tom had buried them alive. Mrs. Oliver, after the second nuptials in
her family, gave it out that she meant to divide her time between
her two married daughters and “dear Tom,” whenever he could be
persuaded to settle in a decent place; and a short time after went
abroad, to the relief of all concerned.
Tom, during most of these early years a bird of passage between
different headquarters of the railway that had annexed his services,
was rarely in New York. When occasionally he had fallen in with
some of his old college-mates they had dined and talked together till
well into next morning, and word was passed along the line of
alumni of their year to this effect: “Tom is all there, every inch of
him”; “The same glorious old fellow”; “True as steel”; “Deserves his
luck in business”; and the like.
But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost
dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at last
coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the world
that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see
some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present at,
for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin, Mrs.
Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison, rather a
foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend an
invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair of thirty
guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome brother.
“For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care who
knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into
prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her
schemes.

“Young lady from the Epoch waiting to see you, sir,” said the
servant at Carmichael’s lodgings, encountering him in the hallway of
that domicile, as he let himself in by a pass-key late one afternoon
after a round of calls.
Carmichael was the picture of self-satisfied complacency. In attire,
in bearing, he knew himself to be above criticism by the well
informed; and yet his vanity did not disdain the looks of heartfelt
admiration cast upon him by the hand-maidens to whom his
landlady paid small wages for the promiscuous service of her house.
“Another reporter!” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Did I not tell you
never to let them wait for me?”
“She’s in there, sir, not in your sittin’-room,” went on the girl,
pointing to the closed door of the boarding-house parlor. “She said it
was very important, Mr. Carmichael.”
Smiling at the awe-struck expression of the domestic, whose class
can never rid itself of respect for private individuals “wanted” by the
press, he opened the door of a long, narrow apartment with
abundant cheap draperies, spindle-work furniture, and artificial
palms, to find himself confronted by an unwelcome apparition.
“You!” he said, in a tone from which all self-complacency had fled.
“Yes, I. I was assigned to you, and I had to come. Until now I
have been fortunate in avoiding such a contingency.”
“I did not know you were in New York,” he stammered, to gain
time.
“I got this appointment on the Epoch last season, through a
friend. But I came here first in summer, when you were cruising on
Mr. Compton’s yacht. You see it is not difficult for me to keep
account of your movements, you are such a great man now; and
besides, the others tell me you are very good in giving them items
about your plans.”
Carmichael colored. He could not believe that the cool, satiric,
self-reliant speaker was the orphaned sister who for years had made
him the god of her idolatry.
“You are looking well,” he said; “your profession seems to agree
with you. I hope you have comfortable quarters. And if there is
anything I can do for you now, perhaps you will tell me as soon as
may be, since I am engaged for dinner and have some letters to
write before dressing.”
“They sent me to ask you the correct date of the Bachelor’s Ball,
and any items about the affair you may wish to publish,” she
answered, fixing upon his evasive eyes a pair of clear, bright orbs.
“That is easily done,” he replied, with an air of relief. “Or stop;
leave me your address, and I will send you the full data to-morrow
after the committee meets.”
“Send it to me at the office, please. But now that our business is
so satisfactorily disposed of there is another little matter about which
I should like to speak to you in a more private place.”
“But I am pressed for time, I tell you!” he exclaimed, uneasily.
“It is something in the nature of a warning,” she said, with a
mocking intonation. “But just as you choose, of course.”
“Come to my sitting-room on the floor above, then,” he
responded, ungraciously, leading the way up the stairs.
The room into which he ushered her was a curious combination of
elemental homeliness and the little belongings of advanced luxury,
which littered it from wall to wall. Alice Carmichael’s quick eye did
not fail to discern this discrepancy, which she set down at once to
her brother’s habitual unwillingness to enjoy anything that was not a
gift from some one who could afford to pay the piper. But despite
her calm bearing, her heart was torn at sight of him. A thousand
recollections, tender and poignant, arose to overwhelm her. To
Ashton’s infinite relief, however, she continued to sit as unbending as
marble upon the edge of the cane-bottomed chair he had offered
her. He knew well enough that after the first drop into sentiment she
would soon be herself again.
“I have always regarded it as a particular piece of good fortune,”
she began, presently, “that so far as I have followed your
fashionable career fate has not brought you into contact with any of
the Olivers. When Mrs. Farnsworth returned here to live it must have
been a considerable embarrassment to you to know how to avoid
meeting her. But that, I suppose, might have been left to her
woman’s tact to dispose of. I am quite sure that neither she nor any
one of her family would ever voluntarily come to look you in the
face.”
Her victim winced, and she saw that he felt the sting implied.
“Just now, with the omniscience of my fraternity, I am in a
position to know the list of guests expected at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner
for her débutante daughter to-night. Not only are Mr. and Mrs. Arden
Farnsworth to be there, but Mr. Thomas Oliver himself, who is in
town stopping with his sister for a few days.”
“The devil he is!” cried Carmichael, much perturbed.
“You can hardly have expected to go on forever escaping the
sword of Damocles. Though, as you know, you are perfectly safe
from Mr. Oliver and the Farnsworths, too; indeed, I don’t believe
they would turn on their heels to look a second time if they saw you
lying in the gutter. But I have a feeling for them—a feeling that I
can’t ask you to understand—which makes me wish to spare them
the annoyance of your presence. It will be the first time in years that
Mr. Oliver has appeared in the society of his old friends. He has had
a life of work and care beyond his deserts. I should like to think that
this one evening’s enjoyment is not to be spoiled for him.”
 “I believe you are in love with that—— monolith!” said her brother,
with an oath.
Miss Carmichael looked at him with undisturbed equanimity.
“What Mr. Oliver did for me in my hour of greatest need would
entitle him to the best my heart could give. But you forget, I think,
that this and other experiences have made of me a machine, not a
woman. No need, however, to tell you what he did for me, or what I
am. Will you stay away from the Ellisons’ dinner, or will you not?”
“I shall go,” said Carmichael, stubbornly. “I am to take in Miss
Ellison, and to lead their cotillon afterward. I could not be guilty of
such a departure from good form as to throw over the Ellisons
because this assorted lot of paragons of yours are going to be there.
Among thirty people it is hardly likely I shall run counter to them.
And should I do so, I fancy my position is assured beyond any
attempt at a slight they could put upon me. My dear girl, your
attitude in all this is in the last degree strained and goody-goody.
Leave me to paddle my own canoe, as I have left you. We shall
continue to do without each other, I do not doubt. No man alive
could endure to have a Lady Macbeth kind of female arise and stalk
about him indulging in remorseful soliloquies about his past. I am
sorry that the only visit you have done me the honor to make me
should have been devoted to such a ridiculous and futile enterprise.
And you will permit me to suggest once more that I am really very
much afraid you are indulging in a schoolgirl passion for your hero,
the doughty and horny-handed Tom.”
“Good evening,” said the reporter, briskly. “You won’t forget to
send that stuff about ‘The Bachelor’s’ to me not later than to-
morrow?”
She was up and off before he could intercept her. The little
servant-maid in the pink cotton frock, with cap askew, was hovering
outside his door as Miss Carmichael went out of it.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” she said, with frank pride. “I s’pose you’ll put
another one o’ them pieces a-praisin’ him into your paper? There’s
lots of the newspaper folks come here to see him; and no wonder—
an’ him keepin’ company with all the high ’ristocrats o’ the city.”
A moment more and Alice was upon the street mingling with the
throng of workers like herself. Although well in check about matters
of mere sentiment, for which there was no longer time in her hurried
existence, her thoughts had filled with a vision of two children at
their mother’s knee, who shared everything in common until time
and the mother’s death and subsequent hard circumstances had
forced them apart forever. Ah, well! she did not begrudge Ashton
anything she had done for him. But she was glad their mother had
not lived.
 II

“It was so good of you to come early,” murmured Carmichael’s

hostess to him, when her guests for the dinner were beginning to
drop in. “Now that you are here I feel a great weight off my mind.
This kind of thing is rather a tax when there is no man at the head
of the house, don’t you think so? Please manage to slip off and look
into the dining-room to see if the lights and ventilation are all right. I
arranged the cards myself, so I know that is as it should be. You
take in Gertrude, and on your other side I have put the very prettiest
young matron of my acquaintance—Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who
married my cousin, don’t you know? I knew your fastidious taste
would be pleased by her, and it would be a sort of reward for your
leading our cotillon afterward. Here comes another raft of people.
Do look at the table, won’t you, and tell my butler if you want any
changes made?”
Carmichael was accustomed to be deputy sovereign in many fine
houses. But he had never felt as grateful for the privilege as now.
His plan was executed quickly. So eager was he to effect a transfer
of the cards of Eunice and her companion away over to the other
side of the broad oval of damask bedecked with pallid orchids in
silver vases, silver flagons, and platters of hothouse grapes, he did
not think to notice for whom was reserved the place next Miss
Ellison, whom he was to take in.
“What an escape!” he murmured inwardly, when Mrs. Farnsworth’s
cards were safely exchanged for two others, taken at hazard from
the opposite side. “Our good hostess will think it was her own
carelessness, but I am safe. I wish I had dared face the music, and
sit next to my late betrothed. There isn’t a woman of the year that
compares with her, and I’d like to force her to notice me again.
However, all comes to him who knows how to wait, and Eunice may
once again be made to thrill at my words of—”
 He started guiltily; but it was only Mrs. Ellison’s sleek butler asking
at his elbow if all was to the dictator’s fancy.
“Very good, Masters, though I see you have taken on a little red-
headed cub of a waiter who spilled champagne down my neck at the
last Assembly supper. If I were you I wouldn’t have the little brute at
any price.”
“Beg pardon, Mr. Carmichael, the man shall not be engaged here
again,” said Masters, in deep humility. And Ashton, having partially
settled his score with a poor menial who had had the temerity to
smile when he was laying down the law about the terrapin at a
subscription ball, returned to the drawing-room.
It was quite filled up now with guests who had come in—the
women complacent in gorgeous gowns, the men lagging, beginning
to be bored, eager for food, and inclined to take pessimistic views of
life by and large. They were waiting for some one, it appeared; and
presently, as the door was thrown open, “Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth
and Mr. Oliver” were heralded.
Eunice, hurrying forward to explain to the hostess that one of their
horses had slipped and fallen upon the asphalt, was royal in her
young beauty. In her robes of shimmering rose color, her head,
neck, and bodice coruscating with jewels, she stirred Carmichael’s
selfish heart as nothing in woman’s shape had done before. He had
to turn away to avoid showing his emotion.
“Don’t stare after Mrs. Farnsworth and forget you’ve got to take
me in,” said, in his ear, the piqued voice of Miss Gertrude Ellison. “I
declare, she has just bewitched all the men. I wish mamma hadn’t
thought it necessary to put her next to you. At this rate I shan’t get
the least notice taken of me. Luckily, I’ve got on my other hand her
brother, Tom Oliver, who is as much a beauty as she is, in his way.”
Carmichael could not repress a movement of tremor. At that
moment he saw going in ahead of them Oliver, who had been his
dearest friend, his most loyal benefactor, whom he had betrayed.
And for an hour and a half he was to sit so near him that their
glances could not fail to meet. He wished now he had taken the
advice of his sister, and stayed at home.
“Dear me!” exclaimed little Miss Ellison, coming to a halt behind
their places. “It’s Mrs. Dick Anstey who’s next to you, after all. I
suppose mamma changed her mind about Mrs. Farnsworth.”
“I suppose so,” said Carmichael, stooping mechanically to tuck in a
corner of Mrs. Anstey’s apple-green velvet skirt, as that lady took her
chair, having permitted a servant to advance it toward her and the
table. “That gown of yours should be treasured, Mrs. Anstey,” he
added. “It is the most charming you have worn this season, and that
is saying much.”
Mrs. Anstey, who lived to dress, fluttered with excitement at this
compliment. It was unlooked for from Carmichael, who, until now,
had snubbed her unmercifully wherever they had met. He followed it
up by devoting himself to her so exclusively that three courses of the
dinner had passed before he gave heed to the heroine of the feast.
“You are civil,” said Gertrude, finally. “I don’t care, though; I have
been well taken care of. Do you know Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Oliver?”
she went on, with a coquettish glance back at her right-hand
neighbor, to include the two.
“I know Mr. Carmichael,” was the answer. Full upon his false
friend’s countenance flashed Tom’s gaze of scorn. Little Miss Ellison,
whose attention was distracted by some one opposite, did not
observe this by-play. Carmichael was enraged at himself for dropping
his eyes upon his plate. When he gained courage to lift them, Tom
had entered into close conversation with Miss Cowper, who for some
moments had been awaiting attention on his other side.
“What’s the matter with you? You look quite pale and rattled,”
went on Miss Ellison, who had a talent for attack. “One would think
you had seen a ghost. See, there is Mrs. Farnsworth looking this
way, to make sure I am taking good care of her big brother, I
suppose. Let us both nod to her and she’ll know—Goodness! What