After a winter in the city the Harts went to live at Shoreham, taking rooms for the season in a cottage near the club. The new station which the railroad was building at Eversley Heights, and the Rainbows' cottage on the ridge just west of the club, had brought the architect considerable reputation. His acquaintance was growing rapidly among the men who rode to and fro each day on the suburban trains of the C. R. and N. It was the kind of acquaintance which he realized might be very valuable to him in his profession.
Between Chicago and Shoreham there was a long line of prosperous suburbs, which exhibited a considerable variety of American society. As the train got away from the sprawling outskirts of the city, every stop marked a pause in social progress. Each little town gathered to itself its own class, which differed subtly, but positively, from that attracted by its neighbor. Shoreham was the home of the hunting set, its society centring in the large club. At Popover Plains there was a large summer hotel, and therefore the society of Popover Plains was considered by her neighbors as more or less "mixed." Eversley Heights was still undeveloped, the home of a number of young people, who were considered very pleasant, even incipiently smart. But of all the more distant and desirable settlements Forest Park had the greatest pride in itself, being comparatively old, and having large places and old-fashioned ugly houses in which lived some people of permanent wealth. At these latter stations many fashionable traps were drawn up at the platforms to meet the incoming afternoon trains, and the coachmen, recognizing their masters, touched their hats properly with their whips. Farther down the line there were more runabouts, and they were driven by wives freshly dressed, who were expecting package-laden husbands. Still nearer the city, the men who tumbled out of the cars to the platform found no waiting carriages, and only occasionally a young woman in starched calico awaited her returning lord.
Nevertheless, all these suburban towns had one common characteristic: they were the homes of the prosperous, who had emerged from the close struggle in the city with ideals of rest and refreshment and an instinct for the society of their own kind. Except for a street of shops near the stations, to which was relegated the service element of life, the inhabitants of these suburbs got exclusively the society of their kind.
The architect went to the city by one of the earlier trains and came back very late. He had all the labor of supervising the construction of his buildings, for the work in the office did not warrant engaging a superintendent. He emerged from the city, after a day spent in running about here and there, with a kind of speechless listlessness, which the wife of a man in business soon becomes accustomed to. But the dinner in the lively dining-room of the club-house, with the chatter about sport and the gossip, the cigar afterward on the veranda overlooking the green, turfy valley golden in the afterglow of sunset, refreshed him quickly. He was always eager to accept any invitation, to go wherever they were asked, to have himself and his wife in the eyes of their little public as much as possible. His agreeable manners, his keen desire to please, his instinct for the conventional, the suitable, made him much more popular than his wife, who was considered shy, if not positively countrified. As the season progressed, Jackson was sure that they had made a wise choice of a place to settle in, and they began to look for a house for the winter.
These were the happiest months the architect had ever known. He was having the exquisite pleasure that a robust nature feels in the first successful bout with life. Then blows, even, are sweet, and the whole brutal surge of the struggle. The very step of him these days as he turned in at his club for a hurried luncheon, his air of polite haste, a quick, hearty manner of greeting the men he knew, proclaimed him as one who had taken his part in the game. The song of the great city sang in his ears all the day, with a sweeter, minor note of his love that was awaiting him.
Yet there were grave risks, anxieties, that pressed as the months passed. In spite of all the apparent prosperity which the little office enjoyed from the start, the profit for the first year was startlingly small. The commission from the Phillips house had long since been eaten; also as much of the fee from Graves as that close contractor could be induced to pay over before the building had been finished. The insatiable office was now devouring the profits from the railroad business. Such commissions as he had got in Forest Park and Shoreham were well-earned: the work was fussy, exacting, and paid very little. When Cook saw the figures, he spoke to the point: "It's just self-indulgence to build houses. We must quit it." If they were to succeed, they must do a larger business,—factories, mills, hotels,—work that could be handled on a large scale, roughly and rapidly.
The Harts were living beyond their means, not extravagantly, but with a constant deficit which from the earliest weeks of their marriage had troubled Helen. Reared in the tradition of thrift, she held it to be a crime to spend money not actually earned. But she found that her husband had another theory of domestic economy. To attract money, he said, one must spend it. He insisted on her dressing as well as the other women who used the club, although they were for the most part wives and daughters of men who had many times his income. At the close of the first ten months of their marriage Helen spoke authoritatively:—
"At this rate we shall run behind at least two thousand dollars for the year. We must go back to the city to live at once!"
They had been talking of renting the Loring place in Forest Park for the coming year. But she knew that in the city she could control the expenditure, the manner of living. The architect laughed at her scruples, however.
"I'll see Bushfield to-day and find out when they are to get at the Popover station."
She still looked grave, having in mind a precept that young married people, barring sickness, should save a fifth of their income.
"And if that isn't enough," her husband added, "why, we must pull out something else. There's lots doing."
He laughed again and kissed her before going downstairs to take the club 'bus. His light-hearted philosophy did not reassure her. If one's income was not enough for one's wants, he said—why, expand the income! This hopeful, gambling American spirit was natural to him. He was too young to realize that the point of expansion for professional men is definitely limited. A lawyer, a doctor, an architect, has but his one brain, his one pair of hands, his own eyes—and the scope of these organs is fixed by nature.
"And we give to others so little!" she protested in her heart that morning. Her mother had given to their church and to certain charities always a tenth of their small income. That might be a mechanical, old-fashioned method of estimating one's dues to mankind, but it was better than the careless way of giving when it occurred to one, or when some friend who could not be denied demanded help....
The architect, as he rode to the early morning train in the club 'bus, was talking to Stephen Lane, a rich bachelor, who had a large house and was the chief promoter of the Hunt Club. Lane grumbled rather ostentatiously because he was obliged to take the early train, having had news that a mill he was interested in had burned down overnight.
"You are going to rebuild?" the architect asked.
"Begin as soon as we can get the plans done," Lane replied laconically.
It shot into the architect's mind that here was the opportunity which would go far to wipe out the deficit he and Helen had been talking about. With this idea in view he got into the smoking car with Lane, and the two men talked all the way to town. Hart did not like Stephen Lane; few at the club cared for the rich bachelor, whose manners carried a self-consciousness of wealth. But this morning the architect looked at him from a different angle, and condoned his tone of patronage. Yet the mill would mean only a few hundred dollars, a mere pot-boiling job, that in his student days he would have scorned, something that Cook or a new draughtsman might bite his teeth on! As the train neared the tangled network of the city terminal, he ventured to say, "What architects do your work, Lane?"
He hated the sound of his voice as he said it, though he tried to make it impersonal and indifferent. Lane's voice seemed to change its tone, something of suspicion creeping in, as he replied:—
"I have always had the Stearns brothers. They do that sort of thing pretty well."
As they mounted the station stairs, Lane asked casually: "Do you ever do that kind of work? It isn't much in your line."
"I've never tried it, but of course I should like the chance."
Then Lane, one hand on the door of a waiting cab, remarked slowly: "Well, we'll talk it over perhaps. Where do you lunch?" and gave the architect two fingers of his gloved hand.
He was thinking that Mrs. Hart was a pleasant woman, who always listened to him with a certain deference, and that these Harts must be hard put to it, without old Jackson's pile.
Hart went his way on foot, a taste of something little agreeable in his mouth. That same morning he had to stop at the railroad offices to see the purchasing agent. The railroad did its own contracting, naturally, and it was through this man Bushfield that the specifications for the buildings had to pass. The architect had had many dealings with the purchasing agent, and had found him always friendly. This morning Bushfield was already in his office, perspiring from the August heat, his coat off, a stenographer at his elbow. When Hart came in he looked up slowly, and nodded. After he had finished with the stenographer, he asked:—
"Why do you specify Star cement at Eversley, Hart?"
"Oh, it's about the best. We always specify Star for outside work."
"How's it any better than the Climax?" the purchasing agent asked insistently.
"I don't know anything about the Climax. What's the matter with Star?"
Bushfield scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment.
"I haven't got anything against Star. What I want to know is what you have got against Climax?"
The smooth, guttural tones of the purchasing agent gave the architect no cause for suspicion, and he was dull enough not to see what was in the air.
"It would take time to try a new cement properly," he answered.
The purchasing agent picked up his morning cigar, rolled it around in his mouth, and puffed before he replied:—
"I don't mind telling you that it means something to me to have Climax used at Eversley. It's just as good as any cement on the market. I give you my word for that. I take it you're a good friend of mine. I wish you would see if you can't use the Climax."
Then they talked of other matters. When Hart got back to the office he looked up the Climax cement in a trade catalogue. There were hundreds of brands on the market, and the Climax was one of the newest. Horace Bushfield, he reflected, was Colonel Raymond's son-in-law. If he wished to do the Popover station, he should remain on good terms with the purchasing agent of the road. Some time that day he got out the type-written specifications for the railroad work, and in the section on the cement work he inserted neatly in ink the words, "Or a cement of equal quality approved by the architect."
He had scarcely time to digest this when not many days later the purchasing agent telephoned to him:—
"Say, Hart, the Buckeye Hardware people have just had a man in here seeing me about the hardware for that building. I see you have specified the Forrest makes. Aren't the Buckeye people first-class?"
The architect, who knew what was coming this time, waited a moment before replying. Then he answered coolly, "I think they are, Bushfield."
"Well, the Buckeye people have always done our business, and they couldn't understand why they were shut out by your specifying the Forrest makes. You'll make that all right? So long."
As Hart hung up his receiver, he would have liked to write Raymond, the general manager, that he wanted nothing more to do with the railroad business. Some weeks later when he happened to glance over the Buckeye Company's memoranda of sales for the Eversley station, and saw what the railroad had paid for its hardware, he knew that Horace Bushfield was a thief. But the purchasing agent was Colonel Raymond's son-in-law, and the railroad was about to start the Popover station!
Something similar had been his experience with the contractor Graves.
"Put me up a good, showy building," the contractor had said, when they first discussed the design. "That's the kind that will take in that park neighborhood. People nowadays want a stylish home with elevator boys in uniform.... That court you've got there between the wings, and the little fountain, and the grand entrance,—all just right. But they don't want to pay nothin' for their style. Flats don't rent for anything near what they do in New York. Out here they want the earth for fifty, sixty dollars a month; and we've got to give 'em the nearest thing to it for their money."
So when it came to the structure of the building, the contractor ordered the architect to save expense in every line of the details. The woodwork was cut to the thinnest veneer; partitions, even bearing-walls, were made of the cheapest studding the market offered; the large floors were hung from thin outside walls, without the brick bearing-walls advised by the architect. When Hart murmured, Graves said frankly:—
"This ain't any investment proposition, my boy. I calculate to fill the Graveland in two months, and then I'll trade it off to some countryman who is looking for an investment. Put all the style you want into the finish. Have some of the flats Flemish, and others Colonial, and so on. Make 'em smart."
The architect tried to swallow his disgust at being hired to put together such a flimsy shell of plaster and lath. But Cook, who had been trained in Wright's office, where work of this grade was never accepted, was in open revolt.
"If it gets known around that this is the style of work we do in this office, it'll put us in a class, and it ain't a pleasant one, either.... Say, Jack, how's this office to be run—first-class or the other class?"
"You know, man," the architect replied, wincing at the frank speech, "how I am fixed with Graves. I don't like this business any better than you do, but we'll be through with it before long; and I shan't get into it again, I can tell you."
He growled in his turn to the contractor, who received his protest with contemptuous good humor.
"You'd better take a look at what other men are doing, if you think I am making the Graveland such an awful cheap building. I tell you, there ain't money in the other kind. Why, I worked for a man once who put up a first-class flat building, slow-burning construction, heavy woodwork, and all that. It's old-fashioned by this—and its rents are way down. And I saw by the paper the other day that it was sold at the sheriff's sale for not more than what my bill came to! What have you got to say to that?"
Therefore the architect dismissed the Graveland from his mind as much as he could, and saw little of it while it was under construction, for the contractor did his own superintending. One day, however, he had occasion to go to the building, and took his wife with him. They drove down the vast waste of Grand Boulevard; after passing through that wilderness of painful fancies, the lines of the Graveland made a very pleasant impression.
Hart had induced Graves to sacrifice part of his precious land to an interior court, around which he had thrown his building like a miniature château, thus shutting out the sandy lots, the ragged street, which looked like a jaw with teeth knocked out at irregular intervals. A heavy wall joined the two wings on the street side, and through the iron gates the Park could be seen, just across the street.
"Lovely!" Helen exclaimed. "I'm so glad you did it! I like it so—so much more than the Phillips house."
They studied it carefully from the carriage, and Hart pointed out all the little triumphs of design. It was, as Helen felt, much more genuine than the Phillips house. It was no bungling copy, but an honest answer to a modern problem—an answer, to be sure, in the only language that the architect knew.
Helen wanted to see the interior, although Jackson displayed no enthusiasm over that part of the structure. And in the inside came the disaster! The evidences of the contractor's false, flimsy building darkened the architect's brow.
"The scamp!" he muttered, emerging from the basement. "He's propped the whole business on a dozen or so 'two-by-fours.' And I guess he's put in the rottenest plumbing underground that I ever saw. I don't believe it ever had an inspection."
"Show me what you mean," Helen demanded.
He pointed out to her some of the devices used to skimp the building.
"Even the men at work here know it. You can see it by the way they look at me. Why, the thing is a paper box!"
In some of the apartments the rough work was scarcely completed, in others the plasterers were at work; but the story was the same everywhere.
"I can't see how he escaped the Building Department. He's violated the ordinances again and again. But I suppose he knows how to keep the inspectors quiet."
He remembered the Canostota: he had no manner of doubt, now, about those I-beams in the Canostota.
"Francis!" Helen exclaimed with sudden passion; "you won't stand it? You won't let him do this kind of thing?"
The architect shrugged his shoulders.
"It's his building. He bought the plans and paid for them."
She was silent, troubled in her mind by this business distinction, but convinced that wrong was being done. A thing like this, a fraud upon the public, should be prevented in some way.
"Can't you tell him that you will report him to the Building Department?" she asked finally.
Hart smiled at her impetuous unpractically.
"That would hardly do, would it, to go back on a client like that? It's none of my business, really. Only one hates to feel that his ideas are wasted on such stuff as this is made of. The city should look after it. And it's no worse than most of these flat buildings. Look at that one across the street. It's the same cheap thing. I was in there the other day.... No, it's the condition of things in this city,—the worst place for good building in the country. Every one says so. But God help the poor devils who come to live here, if a fire once gets started in this plaster-and-lath shell!"
He turned to the entrance and kicked open the door in disgust. Helen's face was pale and set, as if she could not dismiss the matter thus lightly.
"I never thought of fire!" she murmured. "Francis, if anything like that should happen! To think that you had drawn the plans!"
"Oh! it may last out its time," he replied reassuringly. "And it doesn't affect the appearance of the building at present. It's real smart, as Mrs. Rainbow would say. Don't you think so, Nell?"
She was standing with her back to the pleasant façade of the Graveland, and was staring into the Park across the street. Turning around at his words she cast a swift, scrutinizing glance over the building.
"It isn't right! I see fraud looking out of every window. It's just a skeleton covered with cloth."
The architect laughed at her solemnity. He was disgusted with it himself; it offended his workman's conscience. But he was too modern, too practical, to allow merely ideal considerations to upset him. And, after all, in his art, as in most arts, the effect of the work was two-thirds the game. With her it was altogether different. Through all outward aspect, or cover, of things pierced their inner being, from which one could not escape by illusion.
As they were leaving the place the contractor drove up to the building for his daily inspection. He came over to the architect, a most affable smile on his bearded face.
"Mrs. Hart, I presume," he said, raising his hat. "Looking over your husband's work? It's fine, fine, I tell you! Between ourselves, it beats Wright all out."
Helen's stiffness of manner did not encourage cordiality, and Graves, thinking her merely snobbish, bowed to them and went into the building.
"You'll never do anything for him again, will you, Francis? Promise me."
And he promised lightly enough, for he thought it highly improbable that the contractor ever would return to him, or that he should feel obliged to take his work if he offered it.
Nevertheless, the contractor did return to the office, and not long afterward. It was toward the end of the summer, when the architect and his wife were still debating the question of taking a house in the country for the winter. One afternoon Jackson came back from his luncheon to find Graves waiting for him in the outer office. The stenographer and Cook were hard at work in the room beyond, with an air of having nothing to say to the contractor. As Graves followed Hart into his private office, Cook looked up with a curl on his thin lips that expressed the fulness of his heart.
"Say," Graves called out as soon as Hart had closed the door to the outer room, "I sold that Graveland three weeks ago, almost before the plaster was dry. A man from Detroit came in to see me one morning, and we made the deal that day."
"Is that so?" Hart remarked coolly.
"It was a pretty building. I knew I shouldn't have any trouble with it. Now I have something new in mind."
The architect listened in a non-committal manner.
"Part of that trade with the Detroit feller was for a big block of land out west here a couple of miles. I am thinking of putting up some tidy little houses to sell on the instalment plan."
"What do you mean to put into them?" Jackson asked bluntly.
"Well, they'd ought to sell for not more than eight thousand dollars."
"And cost as much less as you can make them hold together for? I don't believe I can do anything for you, Mr. Graves," Jackson replied firmly.
"Is that so? Well, you are the first man I ever saw who was too busy to take on a paying piece of business."
He settled himself more comfortably in the chair opposite Hart's desk, and began to describe his scheme. There was to be a double row of houses, three stories and basement, each one different in style, in a different kind of brick or terra cotta, with a distinguishing "feature" worked in somewhere in the design. They were to be bait for the thrifty clerk, who wanted to buy a permanent home on the instalment plan rather than pay rent. There were many similar building schemes in different parts of the city, the advertisements of which one might read in the street cars.
"Why do you want me to do the job for you?" Hart asked at last. "Any boy just out of school could do what you are after."
"No, he couldn't! He hasn't the knack of giving a fresh face to each house. But it won't be hard work for you!"
This, the architect knew, was true. It would be very easy to have Cook hunt up photographs from French and English architectural journals, which with a little arrangement would serve for the different houses. With a few hours' work he could turn out that individual façade which Graves prized commercially. Here was the large job that could be done easily and roughly, opportunely offering itself.
"I don't like to have such work go through the office. That's all there is about it!" he exclaimed at last.
"Is that so? Too tony already. Well, we won't fight over that. Suppose you make the sketches and let another feller prepare the details?"
There were many objections to this mode of operation, but the contractor met every one. Hart himself thought of Meyer, a clever, dissipated German, to whom he had given work now and then when the office was busy. Meyer would do what he was told and say nothing about it.
It was late when Graves left the office. Cook and the stenographer had already gone. Hart went down into the street with the contractor, and they nodded to each other when they parted, in the manner of men who have reached an understanding. On the way to the train, Jackson dropped into his club for a drink. He stood staring into the street while he sipped his gin and bitters. The roar of the city as it came through the murky windows seemed to him more than commonly harsh and grating. The gray light of the summer evening filtered mournfully into the dingy room.... He was not a weak man; he had no qualms of conscience for what he had made up his mind that afternoon to do. It was disagreeable, but he had weighed it against other disagreeable alternatives which might happen if he could not get the money he needed. His child would be born in a few months, and his wife must have the necessary comforts during her illness. He had too much pride to accept Helen's plan of going to her mother's house for her confinement. By the time he had reached Shoreham he had entirely adjusted his mind to Graves, and he met his wife, who had walked over to the station, with his usual buoyant smile. And that evening he remarked:—
"I guess we had better take the Loring place. It's the only fit one for rent. We'll have to keep a horse—that's all."
They had been debating this matter of the Loring place for several weeks. It was a pleasant old house, near the lake, not far from Mrs. Phillips's in Forest Park. It was Mrs. Phillips who had first called the architect's attention to it. But, unfortunately, it was too far from either station of the railroad to be within walking distance. And it was a large establishment for two young persons to maintain, who were contemplating the advent of a baby and a nurse.
All this Helen had pointed out to her husband, and lately they had felt too poor to consider the Loring place.
"What has happened, Francis?" she asked.
"A lot more business has come in,—a block of houses. They will be very profitable," he answered vaguely, remembering Helen's antipathy to the contractor. "Did you lunch with Venetia? I saw her this morning at the station. She is growing up fast, isn't she?"
Two years passed and they were still living in the Loring place, which the architect had remodelled comfortably to suit his modern taste. Occasionally he talked of building, and they looked at land here and there. But it was clearly out of the question at present, for each year the family budget went leaping upward, and the income came tagging after.
"Jack," so Everett Wheeler expressed the situation in the raw phrase of the ordinary man, "Jack's got a champagne appetite. But he's a pretty good provider."
The architect was a good provider: he enjoyed heartily the luxury that his money brought him, and he wanted his wife to enjoy it with him. He worked at high pressure and needed his bread and meat well seasoned with excitement. Once, early in their married life, Mrs. Phillips had volunteered to explain to Helen the philosophy of this masculine temperament.
"Some men need more food than others. They'd mope and grow thin if they dined at home on a chop and went to bed at ten every night. They must have something to make steam. Your young man was born to be a spender."
The second winter the Phillipses had gone to Europe, where the widow was still adding to her collection for the new house,—Forest Manor as she had dubbed it. Leaving Venetia in Paris with some friends, she had descended upon Italy, the rage for buying in her soul. There she gathered up the flotsam of the dealers,—marbles, furniture, stuffs,—a gold service in Naples, a vast bed in Milan, battered pictures in Florence. Mrs. Phillips was not a discriminating amateur; she troubled her soul little over the authenticity of her spoil. To San Giorgio, Simonetti, Richetti, and their brethren in the craft she came like a rich harvest, and they put up many a prayer for her return another season.
In March of that year, Jackson Hart, struggling with building strikes in Chicago, had a cablegram from the widow. "Am buying wonderful marbles in Florence. Can you come over?" The architect laughed as he handed the message to his wife, saying lightly, "Some one ought to head her off, or she'll be sending over a shipload of fakes." Helen, mindful of the widow's utterances about Jackson, and thinking that he needed the vacation after two years of hard work, urged him generously to accept the invitation and get a few weeks in Italy. But there was no time just then for vacation: he was in the grip of business, and another child was coming to them.
From time to time Mrs. Phillips's purchases arrived at Forest Park and were stored in the great hall of her house. Then late in the spring the widow telephoned the architect.
"Yes, I am back," came her brisk, metallic tones from the receiver. "Glad to be home, of course, with all the dirt and the rest of it. How are you getting on? I hear you are doing lots of things. Maida Rainbow told me over there in Paris that you were building the Bushfields an immense house. I am so glad for you—I hope you are coining money."
"Not quite that," he laughed back.
"I want you to see all the treasures I have bought. I've ruined myself and the children! However, you'll think it's worth it, I'm sure. You must tell me what to do with them. Come over Sunday, can't you? How is Mrs. Hart? Bring her over, too, of course."
Thus she gathered him up on her return with that dexterous turn of the wrist which exasperated her righteous brother-in-law. On the Sunday Jackson went to see the "treasures," but without Helen, who made an excuse of her mother's weekly visit. He found the widow in the stable, directing the efforts of two men servants in unpacking some cases.
"Ah, it's you! How are you?"
She extended a strong, flexible hand to Hart, and with the other motioned toward a marble that was slowly emerging from the packing straw.
"Old copy of a Venus, the Syracuse one. It will be great in the hall, won't it?"
"It's ripping!" he exclaimed warmly. "But where did you get that picture?"
"You don't like it?"
"Looks to be pure fake."
"And Simonetti swore he knew the very room where it's hung for over a hundred years."
"Oh, he probably put it there himself!"
"Come into the house and see the other things. I have some splendid chairs."
For an hour they examined the articles she had bought, and the architect was sufficiently approving to satisfy Mrs. Phillips. Neither one had a pure, reticent taste. Both were of the modern barbarian type that admires hungrily and ravishes greedily from the treasure house of the Old World what it can get, what is left to get, piling the spoil helter-skelter into an up-to-date American house. Mediæval, Renaissance, Italian, French, Flemish—it was all one! Between them they would turn Forest Manor into one of those bizarre, corrupt, baroque museums that our lavish plunderers love,—electric-lighted and telephoned, with gilded marble fireplaces, massive bronze candelabra, Persian rugs, Gothic choir stalls, French bronzes—a house of barbarian spoil!
A servant brought in a tray of liquors and cigarettes; they sat in the midst of pictures and stuffs, and sipped and smoked.
"Now," Mrs. Phillips announced briskly, "I want to hear all about you!"
"It's only the old story,—more jobs and more strikes,—the chase for the nimble dollar," he answered lightly. "You have to run faster for it all the time."
"But you are making money?" she questioned directly.
"I'm spending it."
He found it not difficult to tell her the state of his case. She nodded comprehendingly, while he let her see that his situation, after two years of hard work, was not altogether as prosperous as it appeared on the surface. Payments on buildings under construction were delayed on account of the strikes; office expenses crept upward; and personal expenses mounted too. And there was that constant pressure in business—the fear of a cessation in orders.
"We may have to move back to town after all. That Loring place is pretty large to swing, and in town you can be poor in obscurity."
"Nonsense! You must not go back. People will know then that you haven't money. You are going to get bigger things to do when the strikes are over. And you are so young. My! not thirty-five."
Her sharp eyes examined the man frankly, sympathetically, approving him swiftly. His clay was like hers; he would succeed, she judged—in the end.
"Come! I have an idea. Why shouldn't you build here, on my land? Something pretty and artistic; it would help you, of course, to have your own house. I know the very spot, just the other side of the ravine—in the hickories. Do you remember it?"
In her enthusiasm she proposed to go at once to examine the site. Pinning a big hat on her head, she gathered up her long skirt, and they set forth, following a neat wood-path that led from the north terrace into the ravine, across a little brook, and up the other bank.
"Now, here!" She pointed to a patch of hazel bushes. "See the lake over there. And my house is almost hidden. You would be quite by yourselves."
He hinted that to build even on this charming spot a certain amount of capital would be needed. She frowned and settled herself on the stump of a tree.
"Why don't you try that Harris man? You know him. He made a heap of money for me once,—corn, I think. He knew just what was going to happen. He's awfully smart, and he's gone in with Rainbow, you know. I am sure he could make some money for you."
"Or lose it?"
She laughed scornfully at the idea of losing.
"Of course you have got to risk something. I wouldn't give a penny for a man who wouldn't trust his luck. You take my advice and see Harris. Tell him I sent you."
She laughed again, with the conviction of a successful gambler; it became her to laugh, for it softened the lines of her mouth.
She was now forty-one years old, and she appeared to Jackson to be younger than when he had first gone to see her after his uncle's death. She had come back from Europe thinner than she had been for several years. Her hair was perfectly black, still undulled by age, and her features had not begun to sharpen noticeably. She had another ten years of active, selfish woman's life before her, and she knew it. Meantime he had grown older rapidly, so that they were much nearer together. She treated him quite as her equal in experience, and that flattered him.
"Yes," she continued, in love with her project, "there isn't a nicer spot all along the shore. And you would be next door, so to say. You could pay for the land when you got ready, of course."
She gave him her arm to help her in descending the steep bank of the ravine, and she leaned heavily on him. Beneath the bluff the lake lapped at the sandy shore in a summer drowse, and the June sun lay warmly about the big house as they returned to it. The shrubbery had grown rankly around the terrace, doing its best in its summer verdancy to soften the naked walls. The architect looked at the house he had built with renewed pride. It was pretentious and ambitious, mixed in motive like this woman, like himself. He would have fitted into the place like a glove, if his uncle had done the right thing. Somewhat the same thought was in the widow's mind.
"It was a shame that old Powers treated you so shabbily! They haven't done anything yet about that school, have they?"
"No; I thought I should be drawing the plans before this. Rather counted on it."
They stood for a moment on the terrace, looking at the house. Yes, it was like them both! They loved equally the comforts and the luxuries and the powers of this our little life. And they were bold to snatch what they wanted from the general feast.
"You must make Harris do something for you," she mused. "You can't bury yourself in a stuffy flat." Then in a few moments she added: "How's that handsome wife of yours? I hear she's going to have another child." She continued with maternal, or, perhaps, Parisian, directness: "Two babies, and not on your feet yet! You mustn't have any more. These days children are no unmixed blessing, I can tell you.... Venetia? I left her in the East with some friends she made over there. She's too much for me already. She needs a husband who can use the curb." ...
When Jackson reported to his wife the widow's offer, Helen said very quickly, "I had rather go back to the city to live, Francis, than do that."
"Why?" he asked with some irritation.
"Because, because—"
She put her arms about his neck in her desire to make him feel what she could not say. But he was thinking of Mrs. Phillips's advice to see the broker, and merely kissed her in reply to her caress. The widow had spoken wisely; it would be foolish to retreat now, to hide himself in the city. Instead, he would venture on with the others. It was the year of the great bull market, when it seemed as if wealth hung low on every bough, and all that a bold man had to do to win a fortune was to pick his stock and make his stake.
Forest Park was very gay that summer. There were perpetual dinners and house parties and much polo at the Shoreham Club. The architect, who was very popular, went about more than ever, sometimes with his wife, and often alone, as her health did not permit much effort. Occasionally he played polo, taking the place of one of the regular team, and usually when there was a match he stopped at the club on his way from the city.
One of these polo Wednesdays, late in August, Helen strolled along the shore-path in the direction of the Phillipses' place, with an idea of calling on Venetia Phillips, if her strength held out. The path followed the curves of the bluff in full view of the lake, from which rose a pleasant coolness like a strong odor. Back from the edge of the bluff, in the quiet of well-spaced trees, stood the houses. They seemed deserted on this midsummer afternoon, for those people who had the energy to stir had gone to the polo grounds. The Phillips house, also, was apparently asleep in the windless heat, as Helen crossed the lawn that stretched from the edge of the bluff to the terrace; but when she reached the stone steps she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Phillips seated in the farther corner of the terrace, where luxuriant vines curtained a sheltered nook. Beyond was the outline of a man's form, and little rings of blue cigar smoke curled upward. The widow was leaning forward, her elbows resting comfortably on her knees, and in the animation of her talk she had put one hand on her companion's arm to emphasize her words. It lay there, while she looked into the man's face with her eager, flashing eyes.
Before Helen could take another step Mrs. Phillips turned her head, as if disturbed unconsciously by the presence of an intruder.
"Oh, is that you, Mrs. Hart?" the older woman asked after a moment of scrutiny. "Did you walk in all this heat? Come over here."
"Helen!" Jackson exclaimed, rising, a trace of annoyance in his tone, as though he had been interrupted in some important business matter.
"Don't get up, Mrs. Phillips," Helen said quickly, and the coldness of her voice surprised her. "I am looking for Venetia."
And without further words she opened the terrace door and stepped into the hall.
"You'll find her about somewhere. Ask John!" Mrs. Phillips called after her coolly.
While the servant departed in search of Venetia, Helen moved restlessly about the long drawing-room, which oppressed her with its close array of dominating furniture, thinking of the two outside upon the terrace. She had no suspicion of wrong between them, or, indeed, any jealousy of this woman, who she well knew liked men—all men. Yet an unfamiliar pain gripped her heart. Slowly, for many months, she had felt some mysterious and hostile force entering her field, and now she seemed to see it pictured, dramatized here before her in this little scene,—a man and a woman with chairs pulled close together, their faces aglow with eager thoughts. The other part of her husband, that grosser side of him which she dimly felt and put forth from her mind with dread, was on intimate terms with this woman, who fed his ambitions. And the wife, suddenly, instinctively, hated her for it.
There was nothing evil, however, between those two on the terrace. The architect had come from town by an early train to see the polo, and there Mrs. Phillips had found him, and had brought him home in her automobile. She had just learned a piece of news that concerned the architect closely, and they were discussing it in the shade and quiet of the north terrace.
"I know they're going to start soon. The judge let it out at dinner last night. He's no friend of yours, of course, because I like you. But he won't take the trouble to fight you. You must get hold of your cousin and the other trustees."
It was here that Mrs. Phillips, in her eagerness for his success, laid her hand on the young man's arm. Jackson murmured his thanks, thinking less of the widow than of the trustees of the Powers Jackson bequest.
"It'll be the biggest thing of its kind we have had in this city for years. It's only right that you should have it, too. Can't your wife win over the judge? He's always talking about her," she resumed after Helen's departure.
It was not strange that in the end the man should take the woman's hand, and hold it while he expressed his gratitude for all her good offices to him. It was a pleasant hand to hold, and the woman was an agreeable woman to have in one's confidence. Naturally, he could not know that she considered all men base,—emotionally treacherous and false-hearted, and would take her amusement wherever she could get it.
Venetia found Helen in the drawing-room, very white, her lips trembling, and beads of perspiration on her forehead.
"What's the matter?" Venetia demanded quickly. "Have you seen a ghost anywhere?"
"It's nothing," the older woman protested. "I shouldn't have walked so far. And now I must go back at once,—yes, really I must. I'm so sorry."
"Let me call Mr. Hart," Venetia said, troubled by the woman's white face. "I saw him come in with mamma a little while ago."
"No, no, I prefer not, please. It would worry him."
Then Venetia insisted on driving her home, and left her calmer, more herself, but still cold. She kissed her, with a girl's demonstrativeness, and the older woman burst into tears.
"I am so weak and so silly. I see things queerly," she explained, endeavoring to smile.
After the girl had gone, Helen tried to recover her ordinary calm. She played with the little Francis, who was beginning to venture about the walls and chairs of his nursery, testing the power in his sturdy legs. This naïve manifestation of his masculine quality touched the mother strangely. She saw in this mark of manhood the future of the boy. What other of man's instincts would he have? Would he, too, hunger and fight for his share in the spoil of the world?
The terrible hour of her woman's agony was fast approaching, when she should put forth another being into the struggle with its mates. She did not shrink from the pain before her, although she began to wonder if it might not end her own life, having that dark foreboding common to sensitive women at this crisis. If death came now, what had she done with her life? She would leave it like a meal scarce tasted, a task merely played with—something seen but not comprehended. What had she done for the man she loved? This afternoon when she saw her husband, so remote from her, travelling another road, a bitter sense of the fruitlessness of all living had entered her heart. This husband whom she had so passionately loved!
An hour later, as the architect was taking his leave of Mrs. Phillips, a servant brought him a telephone message from his house. His wife was suddenly taken ill. He raced home through the leafy avenues in the big touring car, which fortunately stood ready before the door. He found Helen white and exhausted, her eyes searching the vacant horizon of her bedroom.
"Why, Nell! Poor girl!" he exclaimed, leaning over her, trying to kiss her. "The walk was too much for you in all this heat. Why didn't you let me know?"
Her lips were cold and scarcely closed to his caress. She pushed him gently from her, wishing to be alone in her trial. But shortly afterward, purging her heart of any suspicion or jealousy,—still haunted by that fear of death,—she drew him to her and whispered:—
"You were talking with Mrs. Phillips. I didn't want to—it's all right, Francis. I love you, dear! Oh! I love you!"
Rumor had it that the Powers Jackson trust was about to be fulfilled. It had become known among the friends of the trustees that during these prosperous times the fund for the educational project had grown apace, and was now estimated to be from five to six millions of dollars. It was understood that some of the trustees were in favor of handing over this munificent bequest to a large local university, with the stipulation that a part of the money should be devoted to maintaining a school on the West Side where some form of manual training or technology should be taught.
One morning, not long after Helen's confinement, Jackson read aloud from the newspaper an item to the effect that negotiations were under way with the university.
"So that's their game!" he exclaimed to Helen gloomily, seeing in this move an unexpected check to his ambition.
"How can they even think of it!" she responded warmly, unwontedly stirred at the thought that the old man's design had already become thus blurred in the minds of his nearest friends. "That wasn't in the least what uncle meant should be done. I wish I could see Everett, or Judge Phillips, and find out the truth in all this talk."
"Yes," Jackson assented. "I should like to know what they mean to do."
Then he went to the train, trying to recall the names of the influential trustees of the university, and wondering whether after all there would be any monumental building erected with his uncle's money. Fate seemed disposed to keep from his touch the smallest morsel of the coveted millions!
It was not long before Helen had the opportunity she desired of finding out from the trustees what was the truth beneath the newspaper gossip. Judge Phillips with Mr. Pemberton took the seat behind her in the car of the Chicago train one morning, and the judge leaning forward inquired about the children. Before he settled back into his newspaper, Helen ventured to mention the current report about the Powers Jackson bequest.
"I hope it isn't true," she protested warmly. "Mr. Jackson was not interested in universities, I know,—at least especially. He didn't believe very much in theoretical education; I don't think he would have wanted his money used that way."
"What is that?" Pemberton asked with interest.
The judge, who preferred to talk babies or shrubs with a pleasant young woman, answered briefly:—
"Well, we haven't settled anything yet. Mr. Hollister seems to be against the university plan, and I don't know that I favor it. But you'll have to talk to Pemberton here. It was his idea."
"Why do you think Mr. Jackson would have objected?" Pemberton inquired gravely.
"We often used to discuss college education," Helen replied quickly, turning to the younger trustee. "And he had very positive ideas about what was needed nowadays. He thought that colleges educated the leaders, the masters, and that there would always be enough left for that kind of institution. So many people are interested in colleges. But he wanted to do something with his money for the people."
"Yes, of course, it must be a free technical school," Pemberton replied literally, "and it must be out there on the West Side."
"But planned for the people, the working people," she insisted.
"Naturally. But we are all the 'people,' aren't we, Mrs. Hart? I haven't much sympathy with this talk nowadays about the 'people' as opposed to any other class."
"That's the unions," the judge nodded sagely. "We are all the 'people.' There is no class distinction in educational matters. We want to offer the best kind of education for the poor boy or the rich boy. What was Powers himself? His school must be a place to help boys such as he was, of course."
They were both completely at sea as to the donor's real intentions, Helen felt sure, and she was eager to have them see the matter as she saw it. Suddenly ideas came to her, things she wished to say, things that seemed to her very important to say. She remembered talks that she had had with the old man, and certain remarks about college education which had dropped from him like sizzling metal.
"But a technological school like the one in Boston,"—Pemberton had instanced this famous school as an example they should follow,—"that's a place to educate boys out of their class, to make them ambitious, to push them ahead of their mates into some higher class."
"Well?" asked Pemberton. "What's the matter with that idea? Doesn't all education do just that for those who are fitted for it?"
"Uncle wanted something so different! He wanted to make boys good workmen, to give them something to be contented with when they had just labor before them, daily labor, in the factories and mills."
The judge's face puckered in puzzle over this speech. He was of an older generation, and he could see life only in the light of competition. Free competition in all the avenues of life—that was his ideal. And the constant labor disputes in Chicago had thickened his prejudices against the working people as a class. He believed, in common with his associates, that their one aim was to get somebody's money without working for it.
But the other man, who was younger and less prejudiced, was more responsive. He felt that this woman had an idea, that she knew perhaps what the benefactor really wanted, and so they talked of the school until the train reached Chicago. As they rose to leave the cars, Pemberton said warmly:—
"I am glad we have had this talk, Mrs. Hart. I think I see what you mean, although I am not at all clear how to attain the objects that you describe as the donor's intention. But you have modified my ideas very materially. May I call on you some day and continue this discussion?"
"If you would!" Helen exclaimed, glowing with an enthusiasm unfelt for a long time.
"Well," the judge concluded, "I hope we can get the thing settled pretty soon and start on the building. I want to see something done before I die."
"Yes," Helen assented, "I should think you would want to see the school go up. And I hope Jackson will have the building of it."
She expressed this wish very simply, without considering how it might strike the trustees. It was merely a bit of sentiment with her that her husband, who had got his education from Powers Jackson, might, as a pure labor of love, in gratitude, build this monument to the old man. It did not then enter her mind that there would be a very large profit in the undertaking. She assumed that the architect would do the work without pay!
It was not until Pemberton's thin lips closed coldly and the judge stared at her in surprise that she realized what she had said. Then her face turned crimson with the thought of her indelicacy, as Judge Phillips replied shortly:—
"We haven't got that far yet, Mrs. Hart. It's probable that if we build we shall have a competition of designs."
The two men raised their hats and disappeared into the black flood pouring across the bridge, while she got into an omnibus. That remark of hers, she felt, might have undone all the good of the talk they had had about the old man's plan. Her cheeks burned again as she thought of hinting for business favors to her husband. It seemed a mean, personal seeking, when she had been thinking solely of something noble and pure.
This idea distressed her more and more until she was ingulfed in that mammoth caravansary where one-half of Chicago shops and, incidentally, meets its acquaintances and gossips. She hurried hither and thither about this place in the nervous perturbation of buying. Finally, she had to mount to the third floor to have a correction made in her account. There, in the centre of the building, nearly an acre of floor space was railed off for the office force,—the bookkeepers and tally clerks and cashiers. Near the main aisle thirty or forty girls were engaged in stamping little yellow slips. Each had a computation machine before her and a pile of slips. Now and then some girl would glance up listlessly from her work, let her eyes wander vacantly over the vast floor, and perhaps settle her gaze for a moment on the face of the lady who was waiting before the cashier's window. This store boasted of the excellent character of its employees. They were of a neater, more intelligent, more American class than those employed in other large retail stores. Even here, however, they had the characteristic marks of dull, wholesale labor.
Helen was hypnotized by the constant punch, click, and clatter of the computation machines, the repeated movements of the girls' arms as they stretched out for fresh slips, inserted them in the machines, laid them aside. This was the labor of the great industrial world,—constant, rhythmic as a machine is rhythmic, deadening to soul and body. Standing there beside the railing, she could hear the vast clatter of our complex life, which is carried on by just such automata as these girls. What was the best education to offer them, and their brothers and fathers and lovers? What would give their lives a little more sanity, more joy and human interest?—that was the one great question of education. Not what would make them and their fellows into department managers or proprietors.
The receipted bill came presently, with a polite bow. She stuffed the change into her purse and hurried away, conscious that the girl nearest the railing was looking languidly at the back of her gown.
On her way to the Auditorium to meet some women who were to lunch with her there, and afterward go to the afternoon concert, she stopped at her husband's office. The architect had moved lately to the top story of a large new building on Michigan Avenue, where his office had expanded. He had taken a partner, a pleasant, smooth-faced young man, Fred Stewart, who had excellent connections in the city, which were expected to bring business to the firm. Cook was still the head draughtsman, but there were three men and a stenographer under him now. His faith in Hart had been justified, and yet at times he shook his head doubtfully over some of the work which passed through the office.
Cook recognized Helen when she entered the outer office, and opened the little wicket gate for her to step inside.
"Your husband's busy just now, been shut up with a contractor most all the morning. Something big is on probably. Shall I call him?"
"No," she answered. "I'll wait awhile. Is this the new work?" She pointed in surprise to the water-color sketches and photographs on the walls. "It's so long since I have been in the office. I had no idea you had done so much."
"More'n that, too. There's some we don't hang out here," the draughtsman answered with suppressed sarcasm. "We've kept pretty busy."
He liked his boss's wife. She had a perfectly simple, kindly manner with all the world, and a face that men love. The year before she had had Cook and his younger brother in the country over Sunday, and treated them "like distinguished strangers," as Cook expressed it.
"That's the Bushfields' house—you know it, perhaps? This is Arnold Starr's residence at Marathon Point—colonial style. That's an Odd Fellows hall in Peoria. I did that myself."
Helen said something pleasant about the blunt elevation of the Odd Fellows hall.
"That's the Graveland," he continued, pointing to a dingy photograph that Helen recognized. "It was called after the contractor's name. We did that the first year."
"Yes, I think I remember it," she murmured, passing on quickly. That was the building her husband had done for the disreputable contractor, who had made it a mere lath-and-plaster shell.
She kept on around the room, glancing at the photographs and sketches. Among the newer ones there were several rows of semi-detached houses that, in spite of the architect's efforts, looked very much as if they had been carved out of the same piece of cake. Some of these were so brazen in their commonplaceness that she thought they must be the work of the Cooks. Probably Jackson had reached that point of professional success where he merely "criticised" a good many of the less important sketches, leaving the men in the office to work them out.
She sat down to wait, her interest in the office sketches easily dulled. They were much like the products of the great emporium that she had just left,—of all marketable kinds to suit all demands. The architect worked in all the "styles,"—Gothic, early English, French château, etc. There was little that was sincere, honest, done because the man could do it that way and no other. It was all clever contrivance.
Men came and went in the offices, the little doors fanning back and forth in an excitement of their own. The place hummed with business; messengers and clerks came in from the elevators; contractors exchanged words with the busy Cook; and through all sounded the incessant call of the telephone, the bang of the typewriter. A hive of industry! It would have pleased the energetic soul of the manager of Steele's emporium.
Meantime the wife was thinking, "What does it mean tohim?" When they began their married life in a flat on the North Side, Jackson had brought his sketches home; and she had kept for his use a little closet-like room off the hall where he worked evenings. But from the time they had moved into the Loring house he had rarely brought home his work; he was too tired at night and felt the need for distraction when he left the office. Had he lost his interest in the art side of his profession? Was he turning it into a money-making business, like Steele's? She reproached herself as the mere spender and enjoyer, with the children, of the money, which came out of these ephemeral and careless buildings, whose pictures dotted the walls.
She was roused by the sound of her husband's voice. He was coming through the inner door, and he spoke loudly, cheerily, to his companion.
"Well, then, it's settled. Shall I have Nelson draw the papers?" A thick, cautious voice replied in words that were unintelligible, which caused the architect to laugh. Then they emerged into the outer office. The stranger's square, heavy face, his grizzled beard, and thick eyebrows were not unknown to Helen.
"So long, Hart," the contractor murmured, as he disappeared into the hall.
"Why, Helen! You here!" the architect exclaimed when he caught sight of his wife. "Why didn't you let me know? Always tell Miss Fair to call me."
He took her hand, and putting his other hand under her chin he gave her a little caress, like a busy, indulgent husband.
"Who was that man, Francis?" she asked.
"The one who came out with me? That was a contractor, a fellow named Graves."
She had it on her lips to say, "And you promised me once that you would never have any more business with him." But she was wise, and said simply, "I came away this morning without enough money, and I have those women at luncheon, you know."
"Of course. Here! I'll get it for you in a minute." He rang a bell, and pulling out a little check-book from a mass of papers, letters, memoranda, that he carried in his pocket, wrote a check quickly with a fountain pen as he stood.
"There, Miss Fair!" He handed the check to the waiting stenographer. "Get that cashed at the bank downstairs and give the money to Mrs. Hart."
When the young woman, with an impersonal glance at the husband and wife, had disappeared, the architect turned to Helen and pulled out his watch.
"I may have to go to St. Louis to-night. If you don't see me on the five two, you'll know I have gone. I'll be back to-morrow night, anyway. That's when we dine with the Crawfords, isn't it?"
His mind gave her only a superficial attention, and yet he seemed happy in spite of the pressure of his affairs. The intoxication of mere activity, the excitement of "doing," so potent in our country, had got its grip on him. In his brown eyes there burned a fire of restless thoughts, schemes, combinations, which he was testing in his brain all his waking moments. Yet he chatted courteously while they waited for the stenographer to return.
"By the way," he remarked, "I telephoned Everett this morning, and he says there's nothing in that story about their giving the university the money. He says Hollister knows uncle wouldn't have wanted it, and Hollister is dead set against it."
"Judge Phillips and Mr. Pemberton were on the train with me this morning, and they talked about it. They don't seem altogether clear what the trustees will do with the money. I hope they won't do that. It would be too bad."
"I should say so," Jackson assented warmly.
He accompanied his wife downstairs and bought her some violets from the florist in the vestibule. They parted at the street corner, for he was already late in meeting an appointment. She watched him until he was swallowed up by the swift-flowing stream on the walk, her heart a little sad. He was admirable toward her in every way. And yet—and yet—she hated the bustle of the city that had caught up her husband and set him turning in its titanic, heartless embrace. There rose before her the memory of those precious days on the sea when they had begun to love, and in some inexplicable manner it seemed to her that after these years of closest intimacy they were essentially farther apart than then.
Being a sensible woman, however, she dismissed her transient disagreement with life and presented to her guests a smiling, cordial face.
Mrs. Horace Bushfield was already waiting for her in the foyer of the hotel, where a number of suburban luncheon parties were assembling. Presently the others came: Mrs. Rainbow, who was still toiling to better heights of social prestige and regarded her acceptance of this invitation as a concession to the fine arts; Mrs. Ollie Buchanan, a young married woman, who was already a power on the St. Isidore hospital board; the younger Mrs. Crawford and a guest of hers from out of town; and Mrs. Freddie Stewart, the wife of Jackson's partner,—six in all. They were soon seated about a table, eating their oysters and spying over the large dining-room for familiar faces.
"There's Betty Stuart over there," Mrs. Rainbow remarked, proud of the ease with which she handled the nickname. "My, how ill she looks! You know she had typhoid pneumonia in New York. She looks as if she were going to walk into her grave."
"Perhaps it wasn't just typhoid," Mrs. Bushfield added; "they tell strange stories. Her husband didn't go on once while she was ill."
"Couldn't get away, poor man!"
The two laughed, while Mrs. Buchanan looked at them coldly.
"Yes, this is the best restaurant we have," Mrs. Bushfield explained apologetically to the guest from out of town. "Chicago has miserable hotels. Wretched food, too. You can't help it, my dear,"—she turned good-humoredly to Helen, and then concluded with the comfortable superiority of abuse,—"but Chicago is still a village."
Men and women were moving noiselessly to and fro over the thickly carpeted floor that seemed to give off an odor of stale food. The dull red walls were already streaked here and there by soot, and the coarse lace curtains at the windows had been washed to a dirty gray in fruitless effort to make them clean. Behind their folds on the window-ledges there had gathered a thick sediment of ashes and coal dust, and beneath this the white paint was smutched with soot. Nevertheless, the ladies accustomed to the unconquerable dirt of the city ate their luncheon undisturbed.
With the coming of the sweetbreads Mrs. Buchanan was saying confidentially to Mrs. Rainbow:—
"She's quite done for herself, you know. Mrs. Antony Crawford says that she will not have her again at her house. I should think that her mother would take her away. They say that Stanwood Phillips, too, has disgraced himself at Yale—awfully fast. But Venetia must be a perfect little fool. She might have had Stephen Lane."
"So might any girl who had money these ten years," Mrs. Freddie Stewart remarked positively.
"Beast of a temper, that man. I pity the girl he gets." ...
"I must tell you,—they were at the Ritz last summer when we were, and positively they didn't know enough French to order their food. Their chauffeur used to take them about, and he would go anywhere he had a mind to, you know. Positively helpless. So we took pity on them, you know, and showed them things for a time."
On the other side of the table Mrs. Crawford's voice was raised in protest to Helen.
"You can't shop in this place. Steele's has got as bad as the rest. I go to New York for everything." ...
"Isn't Sembrich getting too fat to sing?" ...
"Who is that new tenor? I heard him in London last spring. He was fine." ...
At last Helen ventured to say, "We should be starting, if we are to hear the Leonore overture."
"Oh! bother the overture. Let's stay here and talk until it's time for Sembrich. The rest of it is such a bore," Mrs. Rainbow protested, nursing covetously her ice.
Finally the company got under way and proceeded to the concert hall, much to Helen's relief. She had no complaint to make of her guests, who had been got together for Mrs. Stewart's pleasure. They were quite as intelligent women as she was, and all of them more important than she in the sphere where they lived. They were good wives, and two of them good mothers. Their talk, however, had seemed to her intolerably petty and egotistical, reflecting a barren life of suburban gossip and city sprees. Their husbands, working furiously here in the resounding city, maintained them in luxury for their relaxation and amusement, and provided they kept on the broad avenues of married life cared little how they spent their days. In Steele's great store, and in a thousand other stores and factories of the vast city, girls and women were mechanically pounding their machines hour after hour. The fine flower of all their dead labor in life was the luxury of these women, who ate and dressed, loved, married, and had children in idleness and ease....
The waiter came with the bill,—eighteen dollars and thirty cents, and two dollars to the waiter who stood eying the tray. Helen had been rather ashamed, too, of the simplicity of the food. She had not offered them wine, which she knew Mrs. Crawford was used to having at luncheon. Jackson would have laughed at her economy or been irritated by it. They often entertained friends in this same restaurant after the theatre, and she had seen the waiter carry off two twenty-dollar bills and return with very little change. It seemed to her plain nature simply wicked to pay so much money—the blood of human beings—merely to eat. They paid, she knew, for the tarnished ceilings, the heavy carpets, the service—all the infinite tawdry luxe of modern life.
"And why not?" Jackson demanded impatiently when she protested. "Don't I make it? If I want to spend it on champagne and crab-meat, why shouldn't I? I hustle hard enough to get it."
The argument was positive, but she felt that it was imperfect. Yet all their friends lived as they did, or even better: the bill for pleasure with them all was a large one....
By the time they had reached Mrs. Phillips's box, which they were to occupy, the concert was well advanced. The massive chords of the Tschaikowscy's symphony broke through the low chatter of the boxes.
"One of those bangy Russian things," Mrs. Rainbow whispered ruefully, as she tugged at her wrap in fat helplessness.
Helen helped her to disengage her lace and then arranged the chairs for her guests. While the women opened their opera-glasses and took a preliminary survey of the hall, she sank into the rear seat, pulled the chenille portière half over her face, and closed her eyes.