XVI
AT Chicago Barney came down the platform to meet Frothingham. “Here you are!” he exclaimed. “Six months in the country, but not a bit changed. And if an American goes over to your side and stays a week he has to learn the language all over again when he gets back.”
It was still daylight, and Barney told his coachman to drive home by way of “the store”—the great “Barney and Company Emporium—seventy stores and a bank, three restaurants, a nursery, and an emergency hospital, all under one roof.” Frothingham watched the throngs pouring torrent-like through the cañons made by the towering buildings. “Don’t it remind you of New York?” asked Barney.
“Yes—and no,” he replied. It seemed to him in the comparison that New York was a titanic triumph, Chicago a titanic struggle; New York a finished or at least definite creation, Chicago a chaos in convulsion. There was in the look and the noise of it an indefinablemenace which oppressed him, filled him with vague uneasiness. When Barney told him the site of it was a swamp a few years before, he thought of a fairy story his nurse had told him—of a magic city that used to rise from an enchanted morass at dusk, live a single night, and vanish with the dawn. And as the daylight waned, he wondered whether this inchoate, volcanic unreality of a city would not soon be again engulfed in the bosom of its mother, the swamp. But he began to note here and there traces of form, civilised form, peering from the chaos to indicate the trend of the convulsion—that it was upward, not downward.
“It is tremendous,” said Frothingham. “Is it bigger than New York?”
“No,” Barney reluctantly answered. Then he added with curious, defiant energy: “But itwillbe! And it’s American, which New York ain’t. It’s full of people that think for themselves, and do as they d——n please. We ain’t got many apes out here. We run more to humans.”
They were now driving past Barney and Company’s—a barrack-like structure, towering story on story from a huge base bounded by four streets, wheresurged a seemingly insane confusion of men, women, children, horses, vans, automobiles, articulate in the demoniac voices of boys shrieking extras and drivers bawling oaths. And the sky blackened suddenly, and from the direction of the lake came a storm, cruelly cold, bitter as hate, seizing the struggling, swearing, shouting mass of men and animals, lashing it with whips of icy rain, and pelting it with bullets of hail.
“That’s my little place,” said Barney, pride oozing through his offhand tone.
“It’s tremendous,” was all Frothingham could say. The “Emporium” and its surroundings dazed him. He muttered under his breath, “And it’s Hell.”
Barney told the story of creation as it read for him. He had been a drummer for a suspender house—eighteen hundred a year for touring the cities and towns of northern Indiana and Illinois; four thousand dollars put by after twelve years of toil; eyes ever alert for a chance to go into business on his own account. One of his towns was Terre Haute—he called it Terry Hut. In it was a dry-goods shop kept by a man named Meakim. Barney found that of all the retailers he visited, Meakim was by far the shrewdest, the most energetic, and, above all, that he had anamazing talent for “dressing” his show windows and show cases. He persuaded Meakim to sell out and adventure Chicago with him. They set up in a small way, and in an obscure corner. But both toiled; Barney was shrewd and almost sleepless, and Meakim “dressed” the windows and displayed the goods on and over the counters. They prospered, spread too rapidly for their capital, failed, gathered themselves together, prospered again. “I’ve built three stores in fourteen years,” said Barney. “This last one was finished only five years ago—the year Meakim died. And already it’s too small—we’re moving our wholesale department to another building.”
Presently they were in Michigan Avenue and at Barney’s house. It was a mass of Indiana limestone which he—with the assistance of a builder, audaciously “branched out” as an architect—had fashioned into a fantastic combination of German mediæval fortress and Italian renaissance villa. “Here’s where I live,” said Barney as the carriage stopped before the huge doors studded with enormous bronze nails. “And don’t you dare back up Nelly when she jeers about it. She says she can’t look at it without laughing, or come into it without blushing. I suppose itisno good, inthe way of art. But it keeps out the rain, and that’s the main point in a house, ain’t it?”
As he was getting out his keys the door was opened by a maid in a black dress, a white apron and cap. “Jessie,” said he, in a tone which suggested that she might be his daughter, “this is the Earl of Frothingham, and I want you to take good care of him, and of the young man who’s coming with his trunks.”
Frothingham took off his hat and bowed vaguely to the maid, who smiled cordially. “I’ll show you your room,” she said.
“Never mind, Jessie,” interrupted Barney. “You needn’t bother. I’ll take him up myself. But I know everything’s all right—Nelly looked after that.”
Frothingham was impressed by the astonishing difference between the exterior and the interior of the house. He felt at home at once in this interior—handsome, cheerful, the absurd splendours of the architect-builder’s devising softened into comfort and good taste. “We thought you’d like your young man near you,” explained Barney, “so we put a bed in the dressing room.”
“Thank you,” replied Frothingham. “This is charming.”
“Nelly knows her business.” Barney’s good-natured face, with its many dignifying scars from his wars with destiny, beamed paternal enthusiasm. “You needn’t dress for dinner unless you want to,” he went on. “I never do unless we have company or I go out somewhere to something swell and formal. Wickham sometimes does and sometimes don’t.”
“I think I’ll dress, if you don’t mind,” said Frothingham diplomatically.
“Suit yourself. This is Liberty Hall. We ain’t got any rules.” He looked at his watch. “That clock on the mantel there is four minutes fast. It’s seven minutes to seven by the right time. We’re having dinner at half-past seven, but you can come down just as soon as you feel like it.”
Found Nelly alone in the front parlour
Frothingham descended at five minutes before the dinner hour and found Nelly alone in the front parlour. Superficially she was like the women he had met in the Eastern cities. Like them she was dressed in a gown obviously imported from Paris; like them she wore it as only American and French women wear their clothes. He saw instantly that she was a well-bred girl of a most attractive American type. She was tall and long of limb—her arms were almost too long.She had a great deal of dark brown hair shading fascinatingly into black here and there. She had dark eyes—not brown, as he at first glance thought, but dark grey—a humour-loving mouth, a serious brow, a clear, delicate, olive skin. As she and Frothingham were shaking hands, her father and her brother entered—the brother, Wickham, a huge fellow, topping his father by several inches and having his father’s keen, good-natured dark grey eyes and his father’s features, except that the outline was more refined without being less strong.
Barney put his arm round his daughter and, with a foolish-fond expression, said: “Didn’t I tell you, Frothingham? Wasn’t I right?”
If Frothingham had been new to “the States” he would have thought this the strongest kind of a bid for him to enter the family. But he understood the American character in its obvious phases now. “The old chap’s mad about her,” was all Barney’s speech suggested to him. “And,” he admitted to himself, “I think he has reason to be. She’s got the look I like.” He noted the humourous comment on her father’s flattery in Nelly’s dark eyes, as he examined her through his eyeglass with ostentatiously criticalminuteness. “Quite up to the mark, I should say,” he replied with polite audacity, adding apologetically, “though I don’t pretend to be an expert.”
“You see, I did put on my dress suit, after all,” said Barney, looking down at his old-fashioned, ill-fitting evening clothes. “The children would have it. I always feel like a stranded fish in these togs. You see, I never wore ’em in my life till I was past forty.”
Wickham looked a little nervously at Frothingham; Nelly was smiling with frank amusement. Then Wickham looked ashamed of himself—but he carefully observed the peculiar stripes down the legs of Frothingham’s trousers and the curious cut of his waistcoat and coat—“I must find out who’s his tailor,” he thought. “Poole don’t send me over the real thing. I wish I dared wear a monocle. It’s a whole outfit of brains and manners by itself. I don’t believe he takes it out, even at night.”
A maid announced dinner—not “Dinner is served,” but “Dinner, Mr. Barney.” And Barney jumped up with, “I’m glad to hear it. I’m hungry as a wolf.” The dining room was done in old English fashion—and the dinner, too, though an American would havecalled it the American fashion. The feature of its four courses was a huge roast, set before Barney on a great platter, with a mighty carving knife like a cimetar and a fork like a two-pronged spit. Barney himself carved—an energetic performance, lacking in grace perhaps, but swift and sure. On the table between him and the platter was a pile of plates. He put a slice of the roast into the top plate and the waitress removed it, carried it to Nelly’s place and set it down before her. This was repeated until all were served.
Frothingham watched Barney’s movements attentively, surprised that any of the American upper classes condescended to eat in such simplicity. He was almost startled when a bottle of wine was brought, for he had not forgotten Barney’s denunciation of drink and drinkers. He had seen so many concessions of real or reputed principle for his benefit since he had been moving about in American “high life” that he was somewhat cynical as to principle in America. But he had not expected to find this degree, or even kind, of weakness in Barney. “He told me he wouldn’t permit the stuff to come into his house,” he thought, laughing to himself. Then he noticed thatnone of the family drank it. One taste was enough for him—“No wonder he’s opposed to wine,” he said to himself. Then aloud: “If you don’t mind, I’ll just take whiskey—a little Scotch.”
Barney showed amused embarrassment; Nelly and Wickham laughed. “We don’t have anything to drink,” she explained. “Father doesn’t approve. But he told us you’d been brought up differently—that you must have wine. So we’ve got wine, but there isn’t any whiskey.”
Frothingham looked vague—he was relieved to find that his friend Barney was not quite so weak as he had feared. “It doesn’t in the least matter,” he replied. “I shall get on famously with this.”
“I’ll take you down to the club after a while,” said Wickham, “and you can have all you want. And to-morrow—eh, father?”
“Yes—yes—of course,” answered Barney. “I never do try to put on style that I don’t get left.”
He winked at one of the maids significantly, and when she drew near and bent her head whispered to her. She left the dining room; in about five minutes she reappeared with a decanter of Scotch whiskey, atall glass, a bowl of ice, and a bottle of imported soda on her tray.
“Why, father!” exclaimed Nelly, “where did that come from?”
Barney beamed, triumphant. “We’ve got neighbours, haven’t we?”
“But whatwillthey think of you?” she asked, pretending to be shocked.
“I don’t know—and I don’t care,” he answered. “I never did spend much time in worrying about what my neighbours thought of me. Probably that’s why we’re here, and not in the poorhouse.”
After dinner Frothingham stayed with Nelly in the parlour instead of going to the club with Wickham. He had found many girls in America who thought they were natural or who affected naturalness as a pose: but here was the first girl, it so happened, who was really natural, without thinking anything about it. She had all the charm of the girls of his own country for him—he liked ingenuousness; and in addition she had the charm of knowledge. She knew the world, but she looked at it with ingenuous eyes—and he would not have believed this a possible combination. “How do these Americans manage it?” he said tohimself. “Her father comes from well down in the lower classes, yet he has all the assurance of an aristocrat. And as for the girl, she reminds me of Evelyn—and Gwen.”
“Do you know,” he said to her, “you don’t suggest an American girl at all—that is, you do and you don’t. You women over here are cleverer than ours, but a good many of ’em lack a certain something—a—I don’t know just what to call it. It seems to me that—well, they are ladies, of course. But many of ’em—not all—but a great many of those I’ve chanced to meet—make me feel as if they were not exactly sure of themselves, as if they were trying to live up to something they’d read about or seen somewhere. I don’t know that I make myself clear.”
“Perfectly,” replied Nelly. “You mean that they act as if they weren’t satisfied with being the kind of lady they were born, and are trying to be some other kind—and don’t succeed at it especially well.”
“Exactly,” said Frothingham. “I feel like saying to them, ‘Oh, come now, chuck it, won’t you, and let’s see what you’re really like.’ But you—you remind me of our women, except that they’re so ghastly dull—the most of ’em. Gad, they sit about in thecountry until they’re feeble-minded. After a certain age, about all there is left of ’em is the match-making instinct. You’d understand if you’d been over there.”
“I have been there,” answered Nelly. “I spent more than a year in Europe—nearly half of it in your country. I liked it, but—well, one likes one’s own country best, of course.”
“I thought you American women preferred the other side.”
“Oh, a few of us do—those who aren’t happy unless they have somebody bowing and scraping to them or are bowing and scraping to somebody. You know, the poor we have always with us—the poor in spirit as well as the other kind of poor.”
Before they had talked an hour Frothingham felt that the outlook for his campaign in the Barney house was not promising. Nelly was frank and friendly, and he saw that she liked him. But there was something in her atmosphere which made him know that she cared little for the things which were everything to him and which must be everything to the woman he might hope to win. He feared that she was not for him. “She ain’t in my class—or perhaps I’d better say, I ain’t in hers.”
When Wickham came, at half-past ten, she left them. After suppressing yawns for fifteen minutes he said: “I’m off to bed. I was at a dance last night and owe myself five hours sleep. You see, father and I get up at half-past six. We have to be at the store at eight.”
At the store! At eight! “And he hasn’t in the least the look of that sort of chap,” thought Frothingham. As for rising at half-past six, one might do it to hunt or shoot. But to do it morning after morning “merely to set a lot of bounders to selling a lot of cloth”—preposterous!