It was the Tuesday before Lent. The gay season was drawing to a close,
for Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Miller, who led the fashionable world of Camden
before Ethelyn's introduction to it, were the highest kind of
church-women, and while neglecting the weightier matters of the law
were strict to bring their tithes of mint, and anise, and cummin. They
were going to wear sackcloth and ashes for forty days and stay at home,
unless, as Mrs. Miller said to Ethelyn, they met occasionally in each
other's house for a quiet game of whist or euchre. There could be no
harm in that, particularly if they abstained on Fridays, as of course
they should. Mr. Bartow himself could not find fault with so simple a
recreation, even if he did try so hard to show what his views were with
regard to keeping the Lenten fast. Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Howard intended
to be very regular at the morning service, hoping that the odor of
sanctity with which they would thus be permeated would in some way atone
for the absence of genuine heart-religion and last them for the
remainder of the year. First, however, and as a means of helping her in
her intended seclusion from the world, Mrs. Howard was to give the
largest party of the season--a sort of carnival, from which the revelers
were expected to retire the moment the silvery-voiced clock on her
mantel struck the hour of twelve and ushered in the dawn of Lent. It was
to be a masquerade, for the Camdenites had almost gone mad on that
fashion which Ethelyn had the credit of introducing into their midst;
that is, she was the first to propose a masquerade early in the season,
telling what she had seen and giving the benefit of her larger
experience in such matters.
It was a fashion which took wonderfully with the people, for the
curiosity and interest attaching to the characters was just suited to
the restless, eager temperament of the Camdenites, and they entered into
it with heart and soul, ransacking boxes and barrels and worm-eaten
chests, scouring the country far and near and even sending as far as
Davenport and Rock Island for the necessary costumes. Andy himself had
been asked by Harry Clifford to lend his Sunday suit, that young scamp
intending to personate some raw New England Yankee; and that was how
Mrs. Markham, senior, first came to hear of the proceedings which, to
one of her rigid views, savored strongly of the pit, especially after
she heard one of the parties described by an eye-witness, who mentioned
among other characters his Satanic Majesty, as enacted by Harry
Clifford, who would fain have appeared next in Andy's clothes! No wonder
the good woman was enraged and took the next train for Camden, giving
her son and daughter a piece of her mind and winding up her discourse
with: "And they say you have the very de'il himself, with hoofs and
horns. I think you might have left him alone, for I reckon he was there
fast enough if you could not see him."