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[Illustration: "HE TOOK OUT HIS EYEGLASS TO STUDY IT."]




BOSTON NEIGHBOURS
IN TOWN AND OUT

BY AGNES BLAKE POOR

[Illustration]

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1898


COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

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CONTENTS

                                                                    PAGE
  OUR TOLSTOI CLUB                                                     1
  A LITTLE FOOL                                                       41
  WHY I MARRIED ELEANOR                                               83
  THE STORY OF A WALL-FLOWER                                         123
  POOR MR. PONSONBY                                                  187
  MODERN VENGEANCE                                                   239
  THREE CUPS OF TEA                                                  274
  THE TRAMPS' WEDDING                                                300

       *       *       *       *       *

The author and the publishers desire to make acknowledgment to the
publishers of the _Century Magazine_ and of the _New England Magazine_
for their courtesy in permitting the re-issue of certain stories which
were originally published in these periodicals.




[Illustration]

OUR TOLSTOI CLUB


I should be glad to tell a story if I only knew one, but I don't. Some
people say that one experience is as interesting as another, and that
any real life is worth hearing about; but I think it must make some
little difference who the person is. But if I really must tell one, and
since you all have told yours, and such nice ones, and anything is
better than nothing when we are kept in all the morning by a pouring
rain, with nothing to do, because we came only for a week, and did not
expect it to rain, I will try and tell you about our Tolstoi Club,
because that was rather like a story--at least it might have been like
one if things had turned out a little differently.

You know I live in a suburb of Boston, and a very charming, delightful
one it is. I cannot call it by its real name, because I am going to be
so very personal; so I will call it "Babyland," which indeed people
often do in fun. There never was such a place for children. The
population is mostly under seven years old, for it was about seven years
ago that young married people began to move into it in such numbers,
because it is so healthy; but it was always a great place for them even
when it was small. The old inhabitants are mostly grandfathers and
grandmothers now, and enjoy it very much; but they usually go into town
in the winter, with such unmarried children as they have left, to get a
little change; for there is no denying that there is a sameness about
it--the sidewalks are crowded with perambulators every pleasant day, and
at our parties the talk is apt to run too much on nursery-maids, and
milkmen and their cows, and drains, to be very interesting to those who
have not learned how terribly important such things are. So in winter
we--I mean the young married couples, of whom I am half a one--are left
pretty much to our own devices.

Though we are all so devoted to our infant families, we are not so much
so as to give up all rational pleasures or intellectual tastes; we could
not live so near Boston, you know, and do that. Our husbands go into
town every day to make money, and we go in every few days to spend it,
and in the evenings, if they are not too tired, we sometimes make them
take us in to the theatres and concerts. We all have a very nice social
circle, for Babyland is fashionable as well as respectable, and we are
asked out more or less, and go out; but for real enjoyment we like our
own clubs and classes the best. We feel so safe going round in the
neighbourhood, because we are so near the children, and can be called
home any time if necessary. There is our little evening dancing-club,
which meets round at one another's houses, where we all exchange
husbands--a kind of grown-up "puss-in-the-corner"; only, as the supply
of dancing husbands is not quite equal to that of wives, we have to get
a young man or two in if we can; and for the same reason we don't ask
any girls, who, indeed, are not very eager to come. Then there is the
musical club, and the sketching-club, and we have a great many morning
clubs for the women alone, where we bring our work (and it is splendid
to get so much time to sew), and read, or are read to, and then talk
over things. Sometimes we stay to lunch, and sometimes not; and we would
have an essay club, only we have no time to write the papers.

Now, many of these clubs meet chiefly at Minnie Mason's--Mrs. Sydney
Mason's. She gets them up, and is president: you see, she has more time,
because she has no children--the only woman in Babyland who hasn't, and
I don't doubt she feels dreadfully about it. She is not strong, and has
to lie on the sofa most of the time, and that is another reason why we
meet there so often; and then she lives right in the midst of us all,
and so close to the road that we can all of us watch our children, when
they are out for their airings, very conveniently. Minnie is very kind
and sympathetic, and takes such an interest in all our affairs, and if
she is somewhat inclined to gossip about them, poor dear, it is very
natural, when she has so few of her own to think about.

Well, in the autumn before last, Minnie said we must get up a Tolstoi
Club; she said the Russians were the coming race, and Tolstoi was their
greatest writer, and the most Christian of moralists (at least she had
read so), and that everybody was talking about him, and we should be
behindhand if we could not. So we turned one of our clubs, which had
nothing particular on hand just then, into one; and, besides Tolstoi, we
read other Russian novelists, Turgenieff and--that man whose name is so
hard to pronounce, who writes all about convicts and--and other
criminals. We did not read them all, for they are very long, and we can
never get through anything long; but we hired a very nice lady
"skimmer," who ran through them, and told us the plots, and all about
the authors, and read us bits. I forget a good deal, but I remember she
said that Tolstoi was the supreme realist, and that all previous
novelists were romancers and idealists, and that he drew life just as it
was, and nobody else had ever done anything like it, except indeed the
other Russians; and then we discussed. In discussion we are very apt to
stray off to other topics, but that day I remember Bessie Milliken
saying that the Russians seemed very queer people; she supposed that if
every one said these authors were so true to life, they must be, but she
had never known such an extraordinary state of things. Just as soon as
ever people were married--if they married at all--they seemed wild to
make love to some one else, or have some one else make love to them.

"They don't seem to do so here," said Fanny Deane.

"_We_ certainly do not," said Blanche Livermore. "I think the reason
must be that we have no time. I have scarcely time to see anything of my
own husband, much less to fall in love with any one else's."

We all laughed, but we felt that it was odd. In Babyland all went on in
an orderly and respectable fashion. The gayest girls, the fastest young
men, as soon as they were married and settled there, subsided at once
into quiet, domestic ways. At our dances each of us secretly thought
her own husband the most interesting person present, and he returned the
compliment, and after a peaceful evening of passing them about we were
always very thankful to get them back to go home with. Were we, then, so
unlike the rest of humanity?

"Are we sure?" asked Minnie Mason, always prone to speculation. "It is
not likely that we are utterly different from the rest of the world. Who
knows what dark tragedies lie hidden in the recesses of the heart? Who
knows all her neighbour's secret history?" This was being rather
personal, but no one took it home, for we never minded what Minnie said;
and as many of the club were, as always occurred, detained at home by
domestic duties, we thought it might apply to one of them. But I can't
deny that we, and especially Minnie, who had a relish for what was
sensational, and was pleased to find that realistic fiction, which she
had always thought must be dull, was really exciting, felt a little
ashamed at our being so behind the age--"provincial," as Mr. James would
call it; "obsolete," as Mr. Howells is fond of saying--at Babyland as
not to have the ghost of a scandal among us. None of us wished to give
cause for the scandal ourselves; but I think we might not have been as
sorry as we ought to be if one of our neighbours had been obliging
enough to do so. We did not want anything very bad, you know. Of course
none of us could ever have dreamed of running away with a fascinating
young man--like Anna Karenina--because in the first place we all liked
our husbands, and in the next place, who could be depended upon to go
into town to do the marketing, and to see that the children wore their
india-rubbers on wet days? But anything short of that we felt we could
bear with equanimity.

That same fall we were excited, though only in our usual harmless,
innocent way, by hearing that the old Grahame house was sold, and
pleased--though no more than was proper--that it was sold to the
Williamses. It was a pretty, old farm-house which had been improved upon
and enlarged, and had for many years been to let; and being as
inconvenient as it was pretty, it was always changing its tenants, whom
we despised as transients, and seldom called upon. But now it was
bought, and by none of your new people, who, we began to think, were
getting too common in Babyland. We all knew Willie Williams: all the men
were his old friends, and all the women had danced with him, and liked
him, and flirted with him; but I don't think it ever went deeper, for
somehow all the girls had a way of laughing at him, though he was a
handsome fellow, and had plenty of money, and was very well behaved,
and clever too in his way; but we could not help thinking him silly. For
one thing, he would be an artist, though you never saw such dreadful
daubs as all his pictures were. It was a mercy he did not have to live
by them, for he never sold any; he gave them away to his friends, and
Blanche Livermore said that was why he had so many friends, for of
course he could not work off more than one apiece on them. He was very
popular with all the other artists, for he was the kindest-hearted
creature, and always helped those who were poor, and admired those who
were great; and they never had anything to say against him, though they
could not get out anything more in his praise than that he was "careful
and conscientious in his work," which was very likely true. Then he was
vain; at least he liked his own good looks, and, being aesthetic in his
tastes, chose to display them to advantage by his attire. He wore his
hair, which was very light, long, and was seldom seen in anything less
fanciful than a boating-suit, or a bicycle-suit, though he was not given
to either exercise, but wanted an excuse for a blouse, and
knee-breeches, and tights, and a soft hat--and these were all of a more
startling pattern than other people's; while as to the velvet
painting-jackets and brocade dressing-gowns, in which he indulged in
his studio, I can only say that they made him a far more picturesque
figure than any in his pictures. It was a shame to waste such materials
on a man. Then he lisped when he was at all excited, which he often was;
and he had odd ways of walking, and standing, and sitting, which looked
affected, though I really don't think they were.

He made enthusiastic, but very brief, love to all of us in turn. I don't
know whether any of us could have had him; if one could, all could; but,
supposing we could, I don't believe any of us would have had the courage
to venture on Willie Williams. But we expected that his marriage would
be romantic and exciting, and his wedding something out of the common.
Opinions were divided as to whether his ardent love-making would induce
some lovely young Italian or Spanish girl of rank to run away from a
convent with him, or whether he would rashly take up with some artist's
model, or goose-girl, or beggar-maid. We were much disappointed when,
after all, he married in the most commonplace manner a very ordinary
girl named Loulie Latham.

We all knew Loulie too; she went to school at Miss Woodberry's, in the
class next below mine; and she was a nice girl, and we all liked her
well enough, but there never was a girl who had less in her. She was not
bad-looking, but no beauty; not at all the kind of looks to attract an
artist. Blanche Livermore said that he might have married her for her
red hair if only there had been more of it. The Lathams were very well
connected, and knew everybody, and she went about with the other girls,
and had a fair show of attention at parties; but she never had friends
or lovers. She had not much chance to have any, indeed, for she married
very young.

She was a very shy, quiet girl, and I used to think that perhaps it was
because she was so overcrowed by her mother. Mrs. Latham was a large,
striking-looking if not exactly handsome, lady-like though loud, woman,
who talked a great deal about everything. She was clever, but eccentric,
and took up all manner of fads and fancies, and though she was a
thoroughly good woman, and well born and well bred, she did know the
very queerest people--always hand in glove with some new crank. Hygiene,
as she called it, was her pet hobby. Fortunately she had a particular
aversion to dosing; but she dieted her daughter and herself, which, I
fear, was nearly as bad. All her bread had husks in it, and she was
always discovering that it was hurtful to eat any butter or drink any
water, and no end of such notions. She dressed poor Loulie so
frightfully that it was enough to take all the courage out of a girl:
with all her dresses very short in the skirt, and big at the waist, and
cut high, even in the evening, and thick shoes very queerly shaped, made
after her own orders by some shoemaker of her own, and loose cotton
gloves, and a mushroom hat down over her eyes. Finally she took up the
mind-cure, and Loulie was to keep thinking all the time how perfectly
well she was, which, I think, was what made her so thin and pale. Mrs.
Latham always said that no one ever need be ill, and indeed she never
was herself, for she was found dead in her bed one morning without any
warning.

This happened at Jackson, New Hampshire, where they were spending the
summer. Of course poor Loulie was half distracted with the shock and the
grief. There was no one in the house where they were whom she knew at
all, or who was very congenial, I fancy, and Willie Williams, whom they
knew slightly, was in the neighbourhood, sketching, and was very kind
and attentive, and more helpful than any one would ever have imagined he
could be. He saw to all the business, and telegraphed for some cousin or
other, and made the funeral arrangements; and the end of it was that in
three months he and Loulie Latham were married, and had sailed for
Europe on their wedding tour.

This was ten years ago, and they had never come back till now. They
meant to come back sooner, but one thing after another prevented. They
had no children for several years, and they thought it a good chance to
poke around in the wildest parts of Southern Europe--Corsica, and
Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles, and all that--and made their winter
quarters at Palermo. Then for the next six years they lived in less
out-of-the-way places. They had four children, and lost two; and one
thing or another kept them abroad, until they suddenly made up their
minds to come home.

We had not heard much of them while they were gone. Loulie had no one to
correspond with, and Willie, like most men, never wrote letters; but we
all were very curious to see them, and willing to welcome them, though
we did not know how much they were going to surprise us. Willie
Williams, indeed, was just the same as ever--in fact, our only surprise
in him was to see him look no older than when he went away; but as for
Mrs. Williams, she gave us quite a shock. For my part, I shall never
forget how taken aback I was, when, strolling down to the station one
afternoon with the children, with a vague idea of meeting Tom, who might
come on that train, but who didn't, I came suddenly upon a tall,
splendidly shaped, stately creature, in the most magnificent clothes;
at least they looked so, though they were all black, and the dress was
only