Sleeping Fires: A Novel | Page 5

good impression on some one else. What irony!"
She pouted charmingly, but her eyes were wistful. "Now sit down and
talk to me. I've scarcely seen you since we arrived."
"Oh! Remember you are married to this old ruffian. You'll see enough

of me in the next thirty or forty years. Run to bed and get your beauty
sleep. I promised to go to the Union Club."
"The Club? You went to the Club last night and the night before and
the night before that. Every night since we arrived--"
"I haven't seen half my old cronies yet and they are waiting for a good
old poker game. Sleep is what you want after such an exciting day.
Remember, I doctor the nerves of all the women in San Francisco and
this is a hard climate on nerves. Wonder more women don't go to the
devil."
He kissed her again and escaped hurriedly. Those were the days when
women wept facilely, "swooned," inhaled hartshorn, calmed
themselves with sal volatile, and even went into hysterics upon slight
provocation. Madeleine Talbot merely wept. She believed herself to be
profoundly in love with her jovial magnetic if rather rough husband. He
was so different from the correct reserved men she had been associated
with during her anchored life in Boston. In Washington she had met
only the staid old families, and senators of a benignant formality. In
Europe she had run across no one she knew who might have introduced
her to interesting foreigners, and Mrs. Chilton would as willingly have
caressed a tiger as spoken to a stranger no matter how prepossessing.
Howard Talbot, whom she had met at the house of a common friend,
had taken her by storm. Her family had disapproved, not only because
he was by birth a Southerner, but for the same reason that had attracted
their Madeleine. He was entirely too different. Moreover, he would
take her to a barbarous country where there was no Society and people
dared not venture into the streets lest they be shot. But she had
overruled them and been very happy--at times. He was charming and
adorable and it was manifest that for him no other woman existed.
But she could not flatter herself that she was indispensable. He openly
preferred the society of men, and during that interminable sea voyage
she had seen little of him save at the table or when he came to their
stateroom late at night. For her mind he appeared to have a
good-natured masculine contempt. He talked to her as he would to a
fascinating little girl. If he cared for mental recreation he found it in

men.
She went into her bedroom and bathed her eyes with eau de cologne. At
least he had given her no cause for jealousy. That was one
compensation. And a wise married friend had told her that the only way
to manage a husband was to give him his head and never to indulge in
the luxury of reproaches. She was sorry she had forgotten herself
tonight.

IV
Dr. Talbot had confided to Mrs. McLane that his wife was inclined to
be a bas bleu and he wanted her broken of an unfeminine love of books.
Mrs. McLane, who knew that a reputation for bookishness would be
fatal in a community that regarded "Lucile" as a great poem and read
little but the few novels that drifted their way (or the continued stories
in Godey's Lady's Book), promised him that Madeleine's intellectual
aspirations should be submerged in the social gaieties of the season.
She kept her word. Dinners, receptions, luncheons, theatre parties, in
honor of the bride, followed in rapid succession, and when all had
entertained her, the less personal invitations followed as rapidly. Her
popularity was not founded on novelty.
No girl in her first season had ever enjoyed herself more naively and
she brought to every entertainment eager sparkling eyes and dancing
feet that never tired. She became the "reigning toast." At parties she
was surrounded by a bevy of admirers or forced to divide her dances;
for it was soon patent there was no jealousy in Talbot's composition
and that he took an equally naive pride in his wife's success. When
alone with women she was quite as animated and interested, and,
moreover, invited them to copy her gowns. Some had been made in
Paris, others in New York. The local dressmakers felt the stirrings of
ambition, and the shops sent for a more varied assortment of fabrics.
Madeleine Talbot at this time was very happy, or, at least, too busy to

recall her earlier dreams of happiness. The whole-hearted devotion to
gaiety of this stranded little community, its elegance, despite its
limitations, its unbounded hospitality to all within its guarded portals,
its very absence