VIWITH A CYNIC
There is in Chicago a certain street corner around which the Lake wind, which already has made some progress through the city, swings with a zest that might indicate an intention to illustrate in a grotesque continuous performance the Lake wind’s utter irreverence and frivolity. Most Chicagoans know the wind’s mood at this corner, and when you sit in the window of the club it is quite possible to pick out the frequenters of the district by the mechanical way they grasp their hats as they approach the known border of this current of air. You may tell those who are Chicagoans yet not frequenters of the district by the fact that this gesture is delayed until a hazardous last moment. The foreigner, hit unawares,often is placed in a pitiful plight. I myself, a foreigner to these scenes, staring through the club’s broad French plate, in the space of half an hour saw a dozen hats whirled at a uniform angle across the tumultuous street.
It was while I was sitting at the club window, not a little uncertain whether it was not malicious thus to become the spectator of my fellow creatures’ misfortunes, and wondering whether the municipality did not owe it to itself to place a signpost or a large policeman at an effective angle to this corner, when I saw young Mrs. Fentley approaching. I had time to notice that Mrs. Fentley wore a pretty fall gown, one of those defiantly subdued rich gowns, and that she was holding it inelegantly, for her, as if she were in a hurry, when a most extraordinary thing happened. A great many hats had blown off; but they were not the hats of women, and no precedent or procession of disasters could have prepared me for such a mishap as the sudden careering of Mrs. Fentley’s hat.
In the face of this unspeakable occurrence I sprang up and stood in a moment of doubt as to whether it would not be the more kind to Mrs. Fentley to sit down again; then rushed through the corridor and out-of-doors, across the street, under the nose of an express horse, and found Mrs. Fentley’s hat miraculously whole at the opposite curb, just as strange hands were about to seize it. This might have seemed tragedy enough; but when I looked up toward Mrs. Fentley I saw by an unmistakablegesture of her free hand that her hair was hopelessly loosened.
The affair thus having reached its worst possible stage, I approached Mrs. Fentley, bearing the hat in that tenderly wrong way common to all men who attempt this office, and exhibiting in my countenance a properly profound distress.
The first thing that Mrs. Fentley said was, “Please stop that hansom,” a request to which I attempted to accede without delaying the transfer of the hat.
“You must come a little way,” she said as she slunk gracefully under the hood of the vehicle. I obeyed the command with some incoherent expressions of solicitude, leaving the driver to remind me that he did not know what he was to do with us.
“I am not going home,” said Mrs. Fentley. “Tell him Ammerlin’s. I have several errands, and as you evidently were only mooning at the Vulcan, I think you might go along.”
“And hold your hat.”
“And hold my hat. I was going to that district messenger office back there to send word over to Mrs. Linford that I couldn’t come, but I am going now, just to be obstinate. There, you may let me have my hat. Did you ever see anything so humiliating? I never expected to see it whole again. Why, it seemed to scud right under the feet of a horse. And to think that you should have seen the thing happen—”
“And sprang into the arena to rescue it.”
“Such a thing surely never happened to any one before. I hate wind. It is so vulgar.”
“Yes,” I said, “especially when it is in an ill-bred hurry. But really you have been in Chicago long enough to know that corner.”
“I know. But I was thinking of something else—”
“And hurrying a little yourself.”
“Well, it seems to me that I never knew so many things to come up. And I don’t see why Idohurry. I never get through, and if I did I should think it hadn’t been worth while. There are a great many things a woman would like to do if it were not for the others who are dipping into the same thing. You have no idea how disagreeable some women are, with other women. There is a woman on our advisory board at the Twilight Home who is ingeniously doing everything she can to make the institution ridiculous. If it wasn’t for giving her too much satisfaction I should get out of the board. She is Dick’s aunt, by the way, and I believe it really grieves her that she can’t manage me. There are three old women and four old men in the Home now. There would be as many more if Mrs. Gritts didn’t have a theory of receiving only select indigent. It costs about two thousand apiece to maintain these seven. They are all so particular that it requires the nicest discrimination to shop for them. I have just been buying socks for our oldest and most particular man. Probably he won’t wear them. He says he prefers Englishhose. We have his shirts made to order, and he grumbles that they are infamously devised. If there is anything they don’t grumble at Mrs. Gritts thinks up something new for them.”
“But how does Mrs. Gritts hold her majority of the board?”
“Oh, they all are afraid of her. You see, she got the endowment.”
“And she wishes to see it all spent.”
“It isn’t so much that, as it is that she wants it spent her way.”
“Well, her way seems to be very nice for the old ladies and gentlemen. I am going to keep my eye on your Home. Does Mrs. Gritts have any objection to a literary past?”
“I fancy it would not commend you. The fact is that Mrs. Gritts is much influenced by the candidate’s appearance.”
“How unfortunate!” I said.
“There was an application yesterday in behalf of a desperately needy old fellow, but what hair he has left is red, and Mrs. Gritts put her foot down. He simply did not fit into her scheme of the pictorial effect. All of our people have that silvery, well-bred-pensioner look.”
“But where does your fun come in?” I asked, with real curiosity.
“Oh, I don’t know. I inherited a lot of charities from my mother. Here’s Ammerlin’s. Will you wait for me? I shall only be a moment.”
“More socks?”
“No,—some new curtains for the Directors’ room at the Littlewick Hospital. You must wait. I haven’t seen anything of you, and you will be running back to New York. You might as well wait here. I know how menhatethese stores.”
“If you insist upon my not going with you—”
It was thus that I happened to be sitting in the hansom when Dick Fentley came hustling up the street.
“Hello, old man!” he shouted. “What the deuce are you doing here?”
“Waiting for your wife,” I answered.
“Just like her,” he returned to this. “Where is she taking you?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” I replied. “I fancy nowhere in particular, but I am not sure. Do you think it would be right for me to ask her?”
Dick laughed. “You’re safe! But if she tries to spring any infirmaries or kindergartens on you, just bolt. Tell her I said she was to fetch you home to dinner. Making you comfortable at the club?” and Dick was off up the street just as Mrs. Fentley came out of Ammerlin’s.
“Do you know,” I said as I followed her into the hansom again, “it scarcely seems as if you had had time to transact very much business.”
“I didn’t give you time to become impatient, did I?”
“No; I passed the sixty seconds very pleasantly with your husband.”
“The idea! Dick passed here? That meansthat he is going to spend the afternoon with Bob Haverton somewhere.”
“Isn’t Bob proper?”
“Sometimes. I fancy Dick gets most of his stories from Bob?”
“Aren’t they proper?”
“Sometimes. Oh, Bob is a very handsome fellow. He was in the navy at one time. He was an Ensign—what they call an Insect in the navy. Then his father died and left him a lot of money. Now he is occupied with the problem as to which girl he will let have him.”
“I suppose they all want him?”
“Naturally. Whoever gets him will have a dreadful time. He is very handsome.”
“I have known cases—” I began.
“Yes, but the chances will all be against her. A really handsome man like Bob simply invites disaster. It is not at all the same with a handsome woman. The whole mechanism of society is constructed with a view to watching the handsome woman,—relatives, neighbors, other women in general all watch her. But there is no one to watch the handsome man but his wife.”
“I can see,” I said, “how that might be too much for one woman. And yet I can see chances for assistance from other women.”
“Not from disappointed ones. The disappointed ones hate the handsome man’s wife worse than the others do. No, she is bound to fight the thing out for herself.”
“Well, most people get over it.”
“Get over what?”
“Being handsome.”
“Yet women have the worst of it again. The handsome man lasts longer somehow.”
“Should you call Dick a handsome man?”
“Certainly not. Dick is a good fellow, but no one ever accused him of being handsome. You should have known that I couldn’t possibly be personal.”
“O, I did, from my side.”
“Don’t be malicious. The first case I ever knew was of a classmate of mine, a lovely girl. Do you know, I was present at the beginning of a most dreadful quarrel, after she had suffered everything. Well, he went to the d— bad, and she went to Lenox; and they both came back and patched it up somehow.”
“I can imagine your balancing in your mind four years ago the arguments in favor of the proposition that Dick was handsome enough to count.”
“Nonsense. I never thought of such a thing then. I have learned a lot in four years. Mother says I am a cynic.”
“What does Dick say you are?”
“Dick says I am a woman.”
“I hope this hasn’t resulted from your coming to Chicago—I mean your being a cynic.”
“I scarcely think so. Do you know, Chicago is much less sentimental than New York. That struck me when I first came here, and every time we go to New York I am freshly impressed by the fact.”
“I have never thought of New York as especially sentimental.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t unless you definitely compared it with some other big city. You know what I mean,—in the matter of the sentiments. Chicago seemed to medésillusionné. It hasn’t had to take time to get through with some things, because it never began with them.”
“I suppose that you feel that Chicago is a little cynical, too.”
“Well, it is awfully hard to fool Chicago.”
“Do you suppose your old ladies and gentlemen think so?”
“I suppose you never will get through laughing at that. They really are a good joke. But we have a certain amount of fun out of them after all. I’m not like those women who only care for the games they can win at. I’m satisfied to squeeze a little chuckle out of circumstances. I don’t expect too much. Take matrimony. Some women think it is a poor game simply because they haven’t been able to win at it. And it is the same even with religion. The other night our bishop was telling me about the diminishing congregations. I told him that the church people were not keeping pace with the spirit of the time. ‘The trouble with you, Bishop,’ I said, ‘is that you don’t advertise. Look at Talmage.’ ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘we do advertise somewhat, and we have one bargain day every week. We call it Sunday. But people are becoming dreadfully exacting. And our stock is very old.’ You can get a good deal of comfort out of the church if you look at it asRenan did—as an institution for keeping other people quiet.”
“And yet,” I ventured to say, “there are folks who think that you young women should go to church more than you do.”
“Oh, I do go to church. But I don’t take it seriously. I’m afraid I only glance at the bargains and go out at the other door.”
“I dare say that you wouldn’t accept heaven unless there is an elevator, a writing-room and an orchestrion.”
“Do you know, I fancy a good many of us think of the church as Mrs. Stellmore feels about her husband. Probably you don’t know Mrs. Stellmore. She is the second wife of one of our wealthiest brokers. The other night she walked up to him right before us all, and putting her hands on his shoulders said, ‘Oh, Tom! if you weren’t so good I couldn’t be so wicked.’”
“I am going to ask as the foreigner who is writing us up so often asks: Is this typical? Are many of your husbands, so to speak, so good as Mr. Stellmore?”
“I suppose you mean, good in the ways that will let us be wicked. I’m afraid a good many of them are. You see they are too busy to bother very much with us, and we are deep in all sorts of charitable and intellectual debaucheries. Then it is too late to try and reform us. But I was going to tell you about Mrs. Stellmore. She is very entertaining, and especially to her husband.”
“Surely that is an admirable trait,” I said.
“Oh, Stellmore knows what he is about when he lets her run around. She fetches him the most interesting stories. One afternoon I heard her say, ‘Well, I must go and chase up something to amuse Tom with.’”
“It seems to me I have heard of that theory before, about the wife not staying home where there will be no news but the ill temper of the cook and the atrocities of the furnace, but going forth into the world, as she does, and bringing home something amusing or instructive.”
“Maybe; but you never saw the scheme worked out so gayly as Mrs. Stellmore works it out. Of course she has a good time.”
“Does she like his being so wonderfully willing?”
“Now that is cynical. No, she doesn’t seem to mind it. She really likes her husband, and his goodness is a continual source of interest to her. She is very shrewd. When I had that dreadful psychological young woman to lecture at the house one afternoon I was telling Mrs. Stellmore what a fizzle the thing had been. ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘she had the most gorgeous recommendations.’ ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Stellmore, ‘are you not aware that no women can get hold of such gorgeous recommendations as those who do not deserve them?’ Yet she is a thoroughly generous woman.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Not especially. She is a very decided blonde.”
“The wicked dye young.”
“But she is the real thing. That is the way with a good many of her other traits. She is more genuine than she gets credit for being. If it comes to that, society is very cynical. It is always suspecting a bleach.”
“I am sorry to have suggested the cynicism of society. I fancy you feel toward Mrs. Stellmore as I sometimes feel toward Stenson. Stenson—Dick knows him—is one of the cleverest men you ever would be likely to meet. He has been everywhere, has seen everything and everybody, and has the most entertaining stories to tell of any place or any person you are likely to mention. Now, of some people you have a fashion of saying to yourself, ‘He is probably lying.’ But with Stenson you have an uneasy feeling at the thought that probably he is telling the truth.”
“Then I should call Stenson a sort of personified newspaper. That is the way I always feel about newspapers. It is very annoying.”
“But that is an unwholesome attitude of mind. Every woman should believe one man and one newspaper, just as every man should, and I believe generally does, believe one woman and one newspaper.”
“What an extraordinary theory.”
“Mrs. Fentley, that is a good working philosophy. There may not be either one man or one woman who is worthy of such an unvarying faith, and for the same reason it is possible that there is not one newspaper that uniformly is worthy of belief.But that does not affect the matter. It is a case of being comfortable.”
“Pardon me, but it looks to me more like a case of being fooled. Now my theory—”
“As a cynic.”
“—as a cynic, is to have reservations. Of course I never could quite believe my mother, for when I was wicked she never quite carried out her threats. I can see now that she was wise in having her reservations, too. Her theory was dangerously severe. Her practice was wiser.”
“You judge by the results. She would value your praise.”
“Oh, I often have said this to her. Then, my teachers were frequently mistaken.”
“Did you tell them, too?”
“Certainly,—in my nice way, you know. Then Dick,—I never could be so much in love with him that I should not know that he had reservations. Once, when we had been married about a year, Dick came home very late, and I asked where he had been. You know how young I was when I was married. ‘Why, Ethel,’ said Dick, ‘you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’ ‘I should,’ I said, ‘tell me where you have been.’ ‘Now Ethel, why do you ask me that? I know you wouldn’t believe me.’ But I persisted. ‘I promise you, Dick, that I shall believe just what you tell me.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have been down to the Young Men’s Christian Association.’ I never bothered Dick again. That is the next best thing to yourphilosophy, I suppose. It is about my mother’s point of view. She used to say that a good way to make a child a liar was to force an issue when there was nothing to be gained by it.”
“That is why you do not force issues with Dick?”
“Precisely. And that is why Dick lets me alone pretty much.”
“I see; this is what we may call applied cynicism. Though I should think that Dick might have more than one reason for not asking you where you have been. You never could finish the story. And by the way, do you mind telling me where we are going? You are keeping me in dread lest this pleasure should be interrupted.”
“We shall be at Mrs. Linford’s in two minutes.”
“What shall you do there?”
“I shall assist Mrs. Linford in managing a British lion.”
“A what?”
“They say he is dreadfully brutal. It will be so nice to have you to help stroke him.”
“But—”
“Oh, Mrs. Linford will be delighted. Though perhaps you had better not mention books to him. They say he simplyhatesother literary people. And Mrs. Linford warned me not to speak of railroads. It seems that he grows absolutely cataleptic at the mention of American railroads.”
“That is one of my favorite themes. You had better leave me outside or let me go back to the Vulcan.”
“Nonsense! Here we are.”
The lion had not come, and was not coming. They said it was just like him. Yet they seemed quite unhappy.
“So that now,” said Mrs. Fentley an hour later, “you are going home to dinner with me.”
“Yes,” I returned, “Dick said I was to bid you fetch me. It is very nice to have you guess his wishes this way. But mind you, I shall be quite unmanageable if you mention the subject of Lake winds!”