CHAPTER VII.
One morning in April we had risen from a leisurely, late breakfast, a luxury which, with our press of work, we did not often allow ourselves, except when, as in this case, we had been up late the previous night.
Hélène brought in the usual bulky bag of mail matter, and we settled ourselves to our morning’s task, I taking charge of all letters that were not of a private nature, and consigning to the waste basket innumerable quires of paper devoted to more or less roundabout appeals for aid, and lectures and advicead libitum.
Occasionally we stopped to read aloud to each other bits of the letters, and discuss or laugh over their contents. This morning I remember I was examining a document in regard to a prison reform society, containing a request that Mildred would allow her name to be used as vice-president of it, when an exclamation from her startled me into dropping the letter and turning round.
“Well, what now?” I asked, in response to the intimation from the puckered forehead and pursed-up lips that something was the matter. “Another love-sick poet? or is it a count this time? It must be time for another suitor; you haven’t had an offer of marriage for at least ten days, have you?”
“Indeed, Ruby, this is no joke, I assure you,” replied Mildred, gazing blankly at the letter in her hand. “It is from General Lawrence.”
“What!” I exclaimed; “that distinguished-looking man who has written all those books upon political economy? He talked with me in such an entertaining way the other night and told the funniest stories. I was afraid he would be awfully erudite and dry, but he wasn’t at all.”
“No; he can be very entertaining,” sighed Mildred. “I have met him several times since we have been in New York. He was a classmate of papa’s at Yale and a gallant soldier in the war. Judge Matthews said he thought him one of the clearest and ablest thinkers in the country, and it seems that years ago he had achieved a European reputation.”
“Yes,” I said, “I have seen his articles in the ‘Fortnightly’ and ‘Edinburgh’ reviews, and he spoke the other night as if he were well acquainted with Browning and Froude and half of the literary people of England.”
“His wife wore fine sapphires, and I overheard her say that she was devoted to German opera,” added Mildred, musingly.
“Well, what of it?” I asked, much mystified at this apparently irrelevant remark.
“Why, only this,” answered Mildred, dryly; “this entertaining society man, this famous political economist, writes to me this morning piteously begging for an immediate loan of ten thousand dollars to keep the sheriff out of his house.”
“Heavens! Mildred. Why, I supposed he had enough money to live on,” I cried, aghast. “He lives in one of those pretty two-thousand-a-year apartments up by the park, does he not? I have heard people say what a charming little home they had, and everything in such good taste. Pray how have they managed it?”
“Oh, in the simplest way in the world—on other people’s money,” replied Mildred, with a shade of scorn in her tone. “The fact is, as all his friends know, he is as poor as a church-mouse. But he has always been accustomed to living well, and he has not the faintest idea of household economy in spite of his fine theories of political economy. He is generous and warm-hearted, and helped papa with a loan when he was in college trying to live on three hundred a year, and I cannot forget a kindness like that. Of course, it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to give him the ten thousand outright. A loan would be a gift for that matter, for he could never repay it, as his income is only three thousand a year, I fancy, and his expenses are at least one or two thousand more.”
“Of course his wife must be the cause of all this,” I remarked. “Any woman who will spend borrowed money on sapphires”—
“Oh, they were probably heirlooms; she came of a rich family,” interrupted Mildred.
“No matter,” I continued; “any woman who will wear sapphires and has the assurance to go to a dinner party with its attendant expenses of dress,carriage, et cetera, when she cannot pay her debts and expects at any minute to be sold out of house and home, is a woman who deserves to have a pretty sharp lesson taught her, and I hope you will do it. Now, don’t let those blue eyes of his and that majestic manner overawe you and cajole you into feeling that you owe him a debt of gratitude to be paid by getting him out of this emergency; for it will serve only to let him teach his children that the highroad to comfort and ease is to go on the principle that the public owes a genius a living.”
“No, I do not mean to do that,” replied Mildred, thoughtfully; “but I cannot let this disgrace come to them when I can help it as well as not, and it is a rather awkward thing for me to dictate conditions to a man who is old enough to be my father, one who has risked his life on many a battlefield, and is a genius and a famous scholar. I cannot lay the blame on his wife. She adores him, and he thinks her failures are better than other people’s successes. The whole family in fact forms the most genuine mutual admiration society. They seem utterly oblivious of the fact that in letting their milkman’s bill go unpaid, and in giving their children money to go riding in the goat carriage in the park, they are doing anything dishonorable.
“Every one who knows them says they have no more wisdom in bringing up their children than two babies. They let them eat and drink what they like, sit up as late as they like, and care moreabout their speaking French and German well than about their knowing the multiplication table, or anything practical.
“If they were not such devout churchpeople, one would not be so amazed at this extravagance,” ejaculated Mildred warmly, “though perhaps genius may be pardoned for lacking common sense and common honesty,” she added, grimly.
Then rising, she continued, as she put on her hat and gloves: “I know what I shall do. I have a scheme for helping him in a way that will be something more than merely giving him immediate material aid. I know a dear old lady who used to be papa’s friend and his, and I will go at once to see her. She can tell me some facts that I need to know.”
Two hours later, she had but just returned when the General called.
He looked nervous and flushed, and I never saw Mildred seem more embarrassed. In an adjoining room I awaited with some impatience the close of the interview.
At last she came into my room, and throwing herself down on the white bear-skin rug before the grate, she exclaimed, with a little groan, “There, I’ve done it, though it was the most painful thing I ever did in my life. I felt that I must seem so mean and arrogant to make myself the arbiter of the fate of a man like him, and to dictate terms which must have been horribly humiliating. Think of my setting myself up to instruct a man who hasdeserved the honor of the friendship of men like Mazzini and Von Moltke and Carlyle and Sumner.”
“How did you begin?” I queried, realizing for the first time what a difficult thing this must have been to a generous-hearted girl like Mildred.
“Oh,” she said, “I began by reminding him of his kindness to papa, and assuring him that I was ready and glad to be of assistance to him. He looked so grateful that I found it almost impossible to screw up my courage to continue. But, after stammering over it a minute, I put on a bold front and went on to say that I felt it my duty to make my gift, for it was to be a gift, not a loan, upon certain stringent conditions in order that similar circumstances might not occur again. I would state what they were, and then he might consult with his family and let me know whether he would accept them or not.
“He replied sadly, ‘I am in your hands, Miss Brewster. There is no question of my volition in the matter.’
“It almost brought the tears to my eyes, Ruby, for he did look so grand and noble, and it was so pathetic to think of a man of his powers forced to humble himself before a girl like me. He said that for years this shadow of debt had been over him, making life a purgatory for him, which is true enough. I hear that he has long been borrowing from every one of his own and his wife’s relatives, and has mortgaged everything they own, even her jewels. One wonders what he can be made ofto have endured such shame and yet to have counted it less shame than to live in a small, economical way within his income. But he spoke of his debts with all the ingenuousness of a child, just as though they were an affliction sent by Providence, for which he was in no wise responsible, and I really think that he felt them so.
“‘My first condition,’ I said, ‘is that you shall give me a full and accurate statement of your financial affairs, including old debts which are not pressing, insurance, mortgages, and everything of a money nature.’
“Secondly, I asked that none of his children should receive private lessons in dancing, French, or anything else, which were not paid for in full in advance. I could see that this was a very bitter thing for the General. One of his daughters is a girl of artistic talent, and he has been giving her expensive lessons in painting, for which, as I knew, he has never paid.
“I asked General Lawrence pretty pointedly,” continued Mildred, “if, so long as a fair education could be had in our schools without cost, he felt justified in taking other people’s money to give his children accomplishments.”
“And pray what did he say to that?” I inquired.
“Why, nothing,” answered Mildred. “He looked absolutely dazed, as if it were a totally new idea. In fact, I do not think that it had occurred to him that children could be brought up respectably without knowing French and dancing.
“I wanted to tell him,” said Mildred, “that I counted the best part of my education to be the years that I spent studying geography and arithmetic with both boys and girls, with white and black, with rich and poor, with Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, in a public school, where success was gauged by individual merit alone, and where we little bigots and partisans learned to be tolerant and respectful toward one another. One of the most salutary things I ever learned was that the son of a ragpicker, in my class, was a better mathematician than I, and that a mulatto girl across the aisle usually outranked me.
“I told General Lawrence it was my firm conviction that his children would be far more benefited by a few years’ study of ordinary English branches with ordinary children than by anything else he could do for them educationally, for I feared that they were growing up to know only one side of life and only one class of people, and their knowledge and sympathies would be narrow. He nodded assent, and I went on.
“My third condition was, that he and his wife should sign a paper promising for the next three years to allow no debts to any one but me, or some agent authorized by me, to run beyond a month’s time. Any failure to meet such debts promptly must be immediately reported to me for settlement, for which I should take a mortgage on his furniture and personal effects.
“I told him that my intention was not merely tohelp his immediate and pressing need, but to entirely free him from debt. Nevertheless, I was unwilling to undertake this, unless he were ready to rigidly insist upon living within his income, thus teaching his children some lessons of self-sacrifice and thrift. I told him plainly that I was sure a little different management would reduce his doctor’s bills, for I had reason to think that his children’s constant ailing was due to the foolish way in which they had been indulged. He looked amazed and annoyed at this, and begged me to specify.
“I replied, ‘Mrs. Lawrence herself told me of three parties which her eight-year-old Gladys attended within a single week, and she afterwards remarked incidentally that the child had a tendency to insomnia and dyspepsia and was taking medicine all the time. Moreover, your older daughter privately informed me that she had begun a diet of vinegar and slate-pencils to reduce her plumpness.
“‘No,’ I said, ‘I shall not presume to dictate to you as to the methods which you are to pursue with your children. But I have seen them several times and have an interest in them, and I believe that their character will receive a permanent injury from the irregular life which they are living and the false notions they have imbibed in regard to keeping up a style which they cannot afford. So for their sake, and in addition to paying all your debts, I am willing to send the oldest to good boarding-schools where simple diet, regular hours, andsystematic work can help to make of them a stronger man and woman than there is prospect of their becoming now.’
“I could see that it was terribly galling for him to have me sit there and arraign him, as it were, for his conduct; but he clenched his teeth, kept silence, and heard me to the end. Then he cleared his throat, and after a moment said, hoarsely, without looking up:
“‘Miss Brewster, you are very kind. With your permission I will call on you to-morrow at eleven.’”
The next morning, a half hour after the time appointed, General Lawrence and his wife appeared, both looking as if they had passed a restless night. Mrs. Lawrence, clad in an elegant gown, quite outshone Mildred, who wore a quiet street costume of gray serge. That costly dress and the queenly air of its owner nettled me.
“Mildred,” I whispered, as she came back for a pencil, “do think twice before you squander your thousands on saving those people from the just penalty of their folly and sin.”
“I am not thinking of them so much as of their children,” said she gravely; “and it is far more folly than sin. Mrs. Lawrence is a Southern woman, sweet-tempered and charming, but despising little economies as petty Yankee meanness, and she will have to submit to receiving instruction from me on that score, or else I shall let the sheriff come.”
But Mildred certainly did seem somewhat disconcertedwhen she learned that the ten-thousand-dollar loan which had been asked for was less than half of General Lawrence’s indebtedness. He confessed, she told me afterward, that his expenses last year were over five thousand dollars, while his receipts from his literary work, his sole income, were only twenty-eight hundred. “We were obliged, actually obliged, to go into society more or less on account of the General’s position,” said his wife, apologetically. “General Lawrence is continually meeting important people in the literary and political world, and can’t you see, my dear Miss Brewster, how essential this is for his writing? And, of course, if we are always well entertained ourselves, we have to treat people decently when they come to see us. I have been my own seamstress, and have economized in every way, but it is absolutely impossible for us to live on three thousand a year. My husband’s writings would bring us three times that if he could get what he deserves. But it is always so with men of genius; their own generation never appreciates them,” she added bitterly, while her husband fidgeted and took a turn around the room.
“Well, and what did you say to such rubbish as that?” I inquired of Mildred.
“I said,” answered she, “that Emerson and many others had found ‘plain living and high thinking’ quite compatible, and that I thought a residence in some suburban town would obviate the burdens of society, and allow them to live within their income. At all events,” I said, “although Istood ready to offer, as a gift, their entire immunity from debt, this could not be done except by a strict construction of the conditions which I had laid down. However, I offered General Lawrence an opportunity to lay up a little money, telling him that I had various projects in view, and should need the assistance of the pen of a ready writer in carrying out many of them. I told him that I would put to his credit in the bank ten dollars for every newspaper column which he would write on subjects that I should give him: at the end of three years this amount should be turned over to him, and meanwhile he must ‘cut his coat according to his cloth,’ and manage in some way to live strictly within his income.”
“And what did Madam say to that?” I asked.
“Oh, her pride kept the tears back; they both said nothing and signed the papers; but I know that she must think me a hateful, close-fisted Yankee, with no conception of granting a favor graciously and without cruelly wounding the recipient’s feelings.”
We saw very little of the Lawrences after this. It was understood that little Gladys’s health required country air, and a cottage out of town was engaged. The children were not sent to school, but kept up French and read history and literature at home with their mamma, and although they would have found it difficult to bound Missouri or do an example in long division, they could talk glibly of Louis XI. and the Cid.
Whether a beneficial reform was wrought in the domestic economy of the family, I never knew, and I think Mildred had her doubts, though she was not called upon to pay any more debts.
We heard incidentally that the General’s cigar bills and physician’s fees had not decreased, and that his last work on the Philosophy of the Greek Tragedians had received unqualified praise from Professor Curtius.
This little episode was only one of the many which marked our brief stay in New York, and gave me an opportunity to study the many-sided character of my friend. She had some aristocratic acquaintances in the city who were only too happy to lionize her, and she was soon overwhelmed with invitations to lunch parties, theatre parties, et cetera, in which I was also kindly included.
“You must go, dear; I want some one to back me up,” she used to say at first. “I have courage enough to go into a pulpit and preach a sermon, or to go down into the slums alone, or to do a thousand things which would make most girls horrified, but I fairly shake in my shoes when I have to be the target of the eyes of all these society women and dollar-hunters. I know they would not care a jot for me were it not for my money, and I cannot help thinking of it all the time. I feel suspicious of every one in a way that makes me blush.
“I can’t talk society small talk; I never could. I wonder how people manage to do it and wax so eloquent over nothing,” she once said. “But I supposeI must try to learn how,” she added, with a comical wry face.
“Why try to learn, why not act your natural self?” I protested, for I had quietly observed that Mildred’s simple and unaffected bearing and transparent sincerity had proved far more attractive in society than the persiflage and repartee of more brilliant women, though I knew that she herself felt conscious of shyness and a sense that she was out of her proper element.
“Why not act my natural self?” repeated Mildred. “Because, my dear, I like to be liked, and my natural, unconventional self would lead me to talk of all sorts of things which society would not like. If I talked as much as I wished to on the subjects that interest me most, I should be voted a Boston bore, a woman with a mission, with hobbies, with theories,—altogether a very unlikable person aside from my ducats.”
“Nonsense, Mildred!” I cried. “I have seen a hundred times as much of society as you have, and I can say that the greatest boon in the way of novelty would be a little bit of the independence and freshness so natural to you. You are a woman to whom real things mean something. You are earnest. You like to talk about earnest things, and why should you feel obliged to condescend to the level of society small talk and meaningless compliments?”
“Oh, I don’t propose to be a hypocrite,” said Mildred, with a little amused laugh, at my unaccustomedvehemence in this line of thought. She sat for a minute absently picking in pieces the Jacqueminot rose in her corsage; then she said, “But you know, Ruby, there is such a thing as being a doctrinaire and a dull dogmatist, and, on the other hand, being full of tact and sympathy and wit, accomplishing the best results in an indirect way, when no amount of direct preaching could do it. A woman of character can make even her small talk a tremendous power if she only knows how to go to work.
“I want to be a power, I honestly confess that, but I have little worldly wisdom, and I have much to learn. I have lived in a world of books and ideas, and now I am thrown into this perplexing, brilliant, kaleidoscopic world of society, and I feel as unsophisticated as a girl of sixteen.”
“But there is plenty of homage given you,” I remarked. “You were the envy of every woman in the room the other night when Lord H—— took you out to dinner.”
“Homage tome? Homage to my money, you ought to say,” replied Mildred, with a touch of bitterness, as she shook the rose-leaves from her lap into the waste-basket. “I wore opals and satin, and am, as the papers say, a ‘great catch;’ but how much attention do you suppose my lord would have paid me six months ago if he had met me running down Joy Street with my bag of books, to take a Cambridge car?”
“But plenty of women are admired who are not rich,” I remarked; “it doesn’t follow”—
“No,” said Mildred, breaking in impetuously; “but women are not admired for their real worth. It always used to madden me to see how the nice, sensible girls, who really had original ideas and could say something worth saying, were always left to be the wall-flowers.
“Nine men out of ten actually like a little, helpless doll of a creature who can talk by the hour and say nothing; and they don’t care for a brave, self-helpful girl who has any independence of spirit, and who does not flatter a man by demanding his attention and referring to his opinion on every subject which requires more thought than crocheting or tennis.
“No,” after a moment’s pause. “Men do not find thoughtful women interesting. I learned that long ago. I went to a mixed high school, and when we young folks went on picnics or sleigh-rides, it was always the poorest scholar in the class who had the smallest waist and wore the most bracelets, a good-natured little society girl, who received the most attention from the young men. But they were all callow boys, and I did not think or care much about them. I knew a few men of the finest sort who showed me what men could be, and I did not think then, what I am coming to believe now, that many of the real gentlemen who mean to be chivalrous, and who imagine that they give the highest honor to women, actually admire the Howells-farce-type of woman above every other,—that is to say, a pretty, prattling, conscientious, irrational little goose.”
“I don’t know anything about Howells’s women,” said I, rather surprised at this outburst; “and I didn’t suppose you ever condescended to anything less than Hawthorne or George Eliot.”
“Oh yes, I always read everything of Howells’s, though I abominate his women. But he is so inimitably droll and bright, and then the local Boston flavor of his stories is rather fascinating to a Bostonian, you know.”
“Very likely he does not admire his women himself; he may simply wish to show up that type,” I suggested.
“Yes, and a pretty common type I am finding it to be after all, though I once used to scorn the idea,” said Mildred, despondingly.
Then she added, as she nervously twirled the little silver Maltese cross, the badge of the King’s Daughters, which she always wore, “I suppose I have known as little and cared as little about men as any girl who ever lived. But I have lived too much like a nun,” she sighed; “this new life of these past few weeks has awakened me; I feel that I have missed something.
“I wish”—
“Well, dear, what do you wish?” I asked, as she hesitated.
“I wish,” said she decidedly, “that I could meet some thoroughly fine men with brains and heart who liked me for myself, who liked what was best in me. I honestly confess it is pleasant to be liked and sought after, pleasanter than I usedto think. I can see now how easy it is to get one’s head turned.” Then, after a little pause:
“But in society we can never be sure what the attraction is. Everything, vulgarity, ignorance, immorality,—everything is pardonable with wealth.”
“Hush, dear, you are getting desperate,” I said. “There are, no doubt, many grades of New York society where all that may be pardoned on the score of wealth; but you have not seen much of that, so far, and we have met many really fine, cultivated people who have traveled and studied and have real character. You spoke enthusiastically of the talk about Art which you had the other night over in the bay window with Professor Stuart and that English artist with all the letters after his name.”
“Yes, indeed, they were as entertaining as possible, and gave me ideas I had never thought of by myself; but then they were graybeards of fifty. I was thinking of younger men whom one might”—and Mildred hesitated and looked out of the window, blushing.
“Why don’t you finish it,” I said mischievously; “whom one might marry?”
But Mildred only laughed and said nothing.