"But not in nomine Dei."
"No. But who can say what is most effective? I often wonder, as I watch the congregations coming from the churches on the Avenue, if they are any more solemnized than the audiences that pour out of this house. I confess that I cannot shake off 'Lohengrin' in a good while after I hear it."
"And so you think the theatres have a moral influence?"
"Honestly"—and I heard his good-natured laugh—"I couldn't swear to that. But then we don't know what New York might be without them."
"I don't know," said Margaret, reflectively, "that my own good impulses, such as I have, are excited by anything I see on the stage; perhaps I am more tolerant, and maybe toleration is not good. I wonder if I should grow worldly, seeing more of it?"
"Perhaps it is not the stage so much as the house," Henderson replied, beginning to read the girl's mind.
"Yes, it would be different if one came alone and saw the play, unconscious of the house, as if it were a picture. I think it is the house that disturbs one, makes one restless and discontented."
"I never analyzed my emotions," said Henderson, "but when I was a boy and came to the theatre I well remember that it made me ambitious; every sort of thing seemed possible of attainment in the excitement of the crowded house, the music, the lights, the easy successes on the stage; nothing else is more stimulating to a lad; nothing else makes the world more attractive."
"And does it continue to have the same effect, Mr. Henderson?"
"Hardly," and he smiled; "the illusion goes, and the stage is about as real as the house—usually less interesting. It can hardly compete with the comedy in the boxes."
"Perhaps it is lack of experience, but I like the play for itself."
"Oh yes; desire for the dramatic is natural. People will have it somehow. In the country village where there are no theatres the people make dramas out of each other's lives; the most trivial incidents are magnified and talked about—dramatized, in short."
"You mean gossiped about?"
"Well, you may call it gossip—nothing can be concealed; everybody knows about everybody else; there is no privacy; everything is used to create that illusory spectacle which the stage tries to give. I think that in the country village a good theatre would be a wholesome influence, satisfy a natural appetite indicated by the inquisition into the affairs of neighbors, and by the petty scandal."
"We are on the way to it," said Mr. Morgan, who sat behind them; "we have theatricals in the church parlors, which may grow into a nineteenth century substitute for the miracle-plays. You mustn't, Margaret, let Mr. Henderson prejudice you against the country."
"No," said the latter, quickly; "I was only trying to defend the city. We country people always do that. We must base our theatrical life on something in nature."
"What is the difference, Mr. Henderson," asked Margaret, "between the gossip in the boxes and the country gossip you spoke of?"
"In toleration mainly, and lack of exact knowledge. It is here rather cynical persiflage, not concentrated public opinion."
"I don't follow you," said Morgan. "It seems to me that in the city you've got gossip plus the stage."
"That is to say, we have the world."
"I don't like to believe that," said Margaret, seriously—"your definition of the world."
"You make me see that it was a poor jest," he said, rising to go."By-the-way, we have a friend of yours in our box tonight—a youngEnglishman."
"Oh, Mr. Lyon. We were all delighted with him. Such a transparent, genuine nature!"
"Tell him," said my wife, "that we should be happy to see him at our hotel."
When Henderson came back to his box Carmen did not look up, but she said, indifferently: "What, so soon? But your absence has made one person thoroughly miserable. Mr. Lyon has not taken his eyes off you. I never saw such an international attachment."
"What more could I do for Miss Eschelle than to leave her in such company?"
"I beg your pardon," said Lyon. "Miss Eschelle must believe that I thoroughly appreciate Mr. Henderson's self-sacrifice. If I occasionally looked over where he was, I assure you it was in pity."
"You are both altogether too self-sacrificing," the beauty replied, turning to Henderson a look that was sweetly forgiving. "They who sin much shall be forgiven much, you know."
"That leaves me," Mr. Lyon answered, with a laugh, "as you say over here, out in the cold, for I have passed a too happy evening to feel like a transgressor."
"The sins of omission are the worst sort," she retorted.
"You see what you must do to be forgiven," Henderson said to Lyon, with that good-natured smile that was so potent to smooth away sharpness.
"I fear I can never do enough to qualify myself." And he also laughed.
"You never will," Carmen answered, but she accompanied the doubt with a witching smile that denied it.
"What is all this about forgiveness?" asked Mrs. Eschelle, turning to them from regarding the stage.
"Oh, we were having an experience meeting behind your back, mamma, onlyMr. Henderson won't tell his experience."
"Miss Eschelle is in such a forgiving humor tonight that she absolves before any one has a chance to confess," he replied.
"Don't you think I am always so, Mr. Lyon?"
Mr. Lyon bowed. "I think that an opera-box with Miss Eschelle is the easiest confessional in the world."
"That's something like a compliment. You see" (to Henderson) "how much you Americans have to learn."
"Will you be my teacher?"
"Or your pupil," the girl said, in a low voice, standing near him as she rose.
The play was over. In the robing and descending through the corridors there were the usual chatter, meaning looks, confidential asides. It is always at the last moment, in the hurry, as in a postscript, that woman says what she means, or what for the moment she wishes to be thought to mean. In the crowd on the main stairway the two parties saw each other at a distance, but without speaking.
"Is it true that Lyon is 'epris' there?" Carmen whispered to Henderson when she had scanned and thoroughly inventoried Margaret.
"You know as much as I do."
"Well, you did stay a long time," she said, in a lower tone.
As Margaret's party waited for their carriage she saw Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter enter a shining coach, with footman and coachman in livery. Henderson stood raising his hat. A little white hand was shaken to him from the window, and a sweet, innocent face leaned forward—a face with dark, eyes and golden hair, lit up with a radiant smile. That face for the moment was New York to Margaret, and New York seemed a vain show.
Carmen threw herself back in her seat as if weary. Mrs. Eschelle sat bolt-upright.
"What in the world, child, made you go on so tonight?"
"I don't know."
"What made you snub Mr. Lyon so often?"
"Did I? He won't mind much. Didn't you see, mother, that he was distrait the moment he espied that girl? I'm not going to waste my time. I know the signs. No fisheries imbroglio for me, thank you."
"Fish? Who said anything about fish?"
"Oh, the international business. Ask Mr. Henderson to explain it. The English want to fish in our waters, I believe. I think Mr. Lyon has had a nibble from a fresh-water fish. Perhaps it's the other way, and he's hooked. There be fishers of men, you know, mother."
"You are a strange child, Carmen. I hope you will be civil to both of them." And they rode on in silence.
In real life the opera or the theatre is only the prologue to the evening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins. New York is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After the public duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the artificial comedy and tragedy which imitate life under a mask, and suggest without satisfying, comes the actual experience. My gentle girl—God bless your sweet face and pure heart!—who looked down from the sky-parlor at the Metropolitan upon the legendary splendor of the stage, and the alluring beauty and wealth of the boxes, and went home to create in dreams the dearest romance in a maiden's life, you did not know that for many the romance of the night just began when the curtain fell.
The streets were as light as day. At no other hour were the pavements so thronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars, such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a swirl of pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes and restaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it is just the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which has all of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunity and unlimited possibility.
At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious—all the more serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered. Morgan, who was so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved in it—some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertaining than the daily newspaper—knew the histories of half the people in the room. There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together like lovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public life necessary even when the domestic life is established. There is a man who shot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who rejected him, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy woman who sits opposite him in that convivial party. There is a Russian princess, a fair woman with cool observant eyes, making herself agreeable to a mixed company in three languages. In this brilliant light is it not wonderful how dazzlingly beautiful the women are—brunettes in yellow and diamonds, blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only a bunch of roses for ornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in a radiant glow that even the excitement and the lifted glass cannot heighten? That pretty girl yonder—is she wife or widow?—slight and fresh and fair, they say has an ambition to extend her notoriety by going upon the stage; the young lady with her, who does not seem to fear a public place, may be helping her on the road. The two young gentlemen, their attendants, have the air of taking life more seriously than the girls, but regard with respectful interest the mounting vivacity of their companions, which rises and sparkles like the bubbles in the slender glasses which they raise to their lips with the dainty grace of practice. The staid family parties who are supping at adjoining tables notice this group with curiosity, and express their opinion by elevated eyebrows.
Margaret leaned back in her chair and regarded the whole in a musing' frame of mind. I think she apprehended nothing of it except the light, the color, the beauty, the movement of gayety. For her the notes of the orchestra sounded through it all—the voices of the singers, the hum of the house; it was all a spectacle and a play. Why should she not enjoy it? There was something in the nature of the girl that responded to this form of pleasure—the legitimate pleasure the senses take in being gratified. "It is so different," she said to me, "from the pleasure one has in an evening by the fire. Do you know, even Mr. Morgan seems worldly here."
It was a deeper matter than she thought, this about worldliness, which had been raised in Margaret's mind. Have we all double natures, and do we simply conform to whatever surrounds us? Is there any difference in kind between the country worldliness and the city worldliness? I do not suppose that Margaret formulated any of these ideas in words. Her knowledge of the city had hitherto been superficial. It was a place for shopping, for a day in a picture exhibition, for an evening in the theatre, no more a part of her existence than a novel or a book of travels: of the life of the town she knew nothing. That night in her room she became aware for the first time of another world, restless, fascinating, striving, full of opportunities. What must London be?
If we could only note the first coming into the mind of a thought that changes life and re-forms character—supposing that every act and every new departure has this subtle beginning—we might be less the sport of circumstances than we seem to be. Unnoted, the desire so swiftly follows the thought and juggles with the will.
The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses. Mr. Lyon called. It was a constrained visit. Margaret was cordially civil, and I fancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been less so. If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange of the commonplaces of the day.
"Yes," he was saying to my wife, "perhaps I shall have to change my mind about the simplicity of your American life. It is much the same in New York and London. It is only a question of more or less sophistication."
"Mr. Henderson tells us," said my wife, "that you knew the Eschelles inLondon."
"Yes. Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season."
"Why almost?"
"Well—you will pardon me—one needs for success in these days to be not only very clever, but equally daring. It is every day more difficult to make a sensation."
"I thought her, across the house," Margaret said, "very pretty and attractive. I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon. Do you mean that one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in New York?"
"I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say that there is always the greater competition in the larger market."
"Oh, my pride," Margaret answered, "does not lie in that direction."
"And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. She appears to be more interested now in New York than in London."
He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she be comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at the opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.
"And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?" my wife asked.
"Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it." It was an effort on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I could understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world is to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society for First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. "I have never seen another place," he continued, "where the women are so busy in improving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings, recitations, musicales, classes—it fatigues one to keep in sight of them. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men are capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild."
"And you find they have no time to be agreeable?"
"Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in, nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorb everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as one of them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a most interesting city."
The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had been to see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character, constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.
"I don't suppose," Mr. Morgan said, "a foreigner would understand it; it would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London."
"Yes, I saw it," said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. "It was very odd, and seemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiar with American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while I sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play—almost a part of it, one might say—I doubted if I understood your people as well as I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is the beginning of an American drama."
"Some people say that it is."
"But it is so local!"
"Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with. The only question is, is it true to human nature? What puzzled me in this American play was its raising the old question of nature and art. You've seen Coquelin? Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet, the perfection of training, skill in an art. You never doubt that he is performing in a play for the entertainment of an audience. You have the same enjoyment of it that you have of a picture—a picture, I mean, full of character and sentiment, not a photograph. But I don't think of Denman Thompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school, but as a New Hampshire farmer. I don't admire his skill; I admire him. There is plenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play, plenty of imitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is the natural man. If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me." "Probably to an American audience only he does not," Mr. Lyon remarked.
"Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience."
"I doubt if you will change the laws of art," said Mr. Lyon, rising to go.
"We shall hope to see you again at our house," my wife said.
"You are very good. I should like it; but my time is running out."
"If you cannot come, you may leave your adieus with Miss Debree, who is staying some time in the city," my wife said, evidently to Margaret's annoyance. But she could do no less than give him her city address, though the information was not accompanied by any invitation in her manner.
Margaret was to stay some time with two maiden ladies, old friends of her mother, the Misses Arbuser. The Arbusers were people of consequence in their day, with a certain social prestige; in fact, the excellent ladies were two generations removed from successful mercantile life, which in the remote prospective took on an old-family solidity. Nowhere else in the city could Margaret have come closer in contact with a certain phase of New York life in which women are the chief actors—a phase which may be a transition, and may be only a craze. It is not so much a condescension of society to literature as it is a discovery that literature and art, in the persons of those who produce both, may be sources of amusement, or perhaps, to be just, of the enlargement of the horizon and the improvement of the mind. The society mind was never before so hospitable to new ideas and new sensations. Charities, boards of managers, missions, hospitals, news-rooms, and lodging-houses for the illiterate and the homeless—these are not sufficient, even with balls, dancing classes, and teas, for the superfluous energies of this restless, improving generation; there must be also radical clubs, reading classes, study classes, ethical, historical, scientific, literary lectures, the reading of papers by ladies of distinction and gentlemen of special attainments—an unremitting pursuit of culture and information. Curiosity is awake. The extreme of social refinement and a mild Bohemianism almost touch. It passes beyond the affectation of knowing persons who write books and write for the press, artists in paint and artists in music. "You cannot be sure in the most exclusive circle"—it was Carmen Eschelle who said this—"that you will not meet an author or even a journalist." Not all the women, however, adore letters or affect enthusiasm at drawing-room lectures; there are some bright and cynical ones who do not, who write papers themselves, and have an air of being behind the scenes.
Margaret had thought that she was fully occupied in the country, with her teaching, her reading, her literature and historical clubs, but she had never known before what it was to be busy and not have time for anything, always in pursuit of some new thing, and getting a fragment here and there; life was a good deal like reading the dictionary and remembering none of the words. And it was all so cosmopolitan and all-embracingly sympathetic. One day it was a paper by a Servian countess on the social life of the Servians, absorbingly interesting both in itself and because it was a countess who read it; and this was followed by the singing of an Icelandic tenor and a Swedish soprano, and a recital on the violin by a slight, red-haired, middle-aged woman from London. All the talents seem to be afloat and at the service of the strenuous ones who are cultivating themselves.
The first function at which Margaret assisted in the long drawing-rooms of the Arbusers was a serious one—one that combined the charm of culture with the temptations of benevolence. The rooms were crowded with the fashion of the town, with a sprinkling of clergymen and of thin philanthropic gentlemen in advanced years. It was a four-o'clock, and the assembly had the cheerfulness of a reception, only that the display of toilets was felt to be sanctified by a purpose. The performance opened with a tremendous prelude on the piano by Herr Bloomgarten, who had been Liszt's favorite pupil; indeed, it was whispered that Liszt had said that, old as he was, he never heard Bloomgarten without learning something. There was a good deal of subdued conversation while the pianist was in his extreme agony of execution, and a hush of extreme admiration—it was divine, divine, ravishing—when he had finished. The speaker was a learned female pundit from India, and her object was to interest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunate Hindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands and tens of thousands of them were doomed to early and lifelong widowhood, owing to the operation of cruel caste laws, which condemned even girls betrothed to deceased Brahmins to perpetual celibacy. This fate could only be alleviated by the education and elevation of women. And money was needed for schools, especially for medical schools, which would break down the walls of prejudice and enfranchise the sex. The appeal was so charmingly made that every one was moved by it, especially the maiden ladies present, who might be supposed to enter into the feelings of their dusky sisters beyond the seas. The speaker said, with a touch of humor that always intensifies a serious discourse, that she had been told that in one of the New England States there was a superfluity of unmarried women; but this was an entirely different affair; it was a matter of choice with these highly educated and accomplished women. And the day had come when woman could make her choice! At this there was a great clapping of hands. It was one thing to be free to lead a life of single self-culture, and quite another to be compelled to lead a single fife without self-culture. The address was a great success, and much enthusiasm spread abroad for the cause of the unmarried women of India.
In the audience were Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter. Margaret and Carmen were made acquainted, and were drawn together by curiosity, and perhaps by a secret feeling of repulsion. Carmen was all candor and sweetness, and absorbingly interested in the women of India, she said. With Margaret's permission she would come and see her, for she believed they had common friends.
It would seem that there could not be much sympathy between natures so opposed, persons who looked at life from such different points of view, but undeniably Carmen had a certain attraction for Margaret. The New Englander, whose climate is at once his enemy and his tonic, always longs for the tropics, which to him are a region of romance, as Italy is to the German. In his nature, also, there is something easily awakened to the allurements of a sensuous existence, and to a desire for a freer experience of life than custom has allowed him. Carmen, who showed to Margaret only her best side—she would have been wise to exhibit no other to Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves with men—seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinating worldliness which make the world agreeable.
One morning, a few days after the Indian function, Margaret was alone in her own cozy sitting-room. Nothing was wanting that luxury could suggest to make it in harmony with a beautiful woman, nothing that did not flatter and please, or nurse, perhaps, a personal sense of beauty, and impart that glow of satisfaction which comes when the senses are adroitly ministered to. Margaret had been in a mood that morning to pay extreme attention to her toilet. The result was the perfection of simplicity, of freshness, of maiden purity, enhanced by the touch of art. As she surveyed herself in the pier-glass, and noted the refined lines of the morning-gown which draped but did not conceal the more exquisite lines of her figure, and adjusted a rose in her bosom, she did not feel like a Puritan, and, although she may not have noted the fact, she did not look like one. It was not a look of vanity that she threw into the mirror, or of special self-consciousness; in her toilet she had obeyed only her instinct (that infallible guide in a woman of refinement), and if she was conscious of any emotion, it was of the stirring within her of the deepest womanly nature.
In fact, she was restless. She flung herself into an easy-chair before the fire, and took up a novel. It was a novel with a religious problem. In vain she tried to be interested in it. At home she would have absorbed it eagerly; they would have discussed it; the doubts and suggestions in it would have assumed the deepest personal importance. It might have made an era in her thoughtful country life. Here it did not so appeal to her; it seemed unreal and shadowy in a life that had so much more of action than of reflection in it. It was a life fascinating and exciting, and profoundly unsatisfactory. Yet, after all, it was more really life than that placid vegetation in the country. She felt that in the whirl of only a few days of it—operas, receptions, teas, readings, dances, dinners, where everybody sparkled with a bewildering brilliancy, and yet from which one brought away nothing but a sense of strain; such gallantry, such compliments, such an easy tossing about of every topic under heaven; such an air of knowing everything, and not caring about anything very much; so much mutual admiration and personal satisfaction! She liked it, and perhaps was restless because she liked it. To be admired, to be deferred to—was there any harm in that? Only, if one suffers admiration today, it becomes a necessity tomorrow. She began to feel the influence of that life which will not let one stand still for a moment. If it is not the opera, it is a charity; if it is not a lover, it is some endowed cot in a hospital. There must be something going on every day, every hour.
Yes, she was restless, and could not read. She thought of Mr. Henderson. He had called formally. She had seen him, here and there, again and again. He had sought her out in all companies; his face had broken into a smile when he met her; he had talked with her lightly, gayly; she remembered the sound of his voice; she had learned to know his figure in a room among a hundred; and she blushed as she remembered that she had once or twice followed him with her eyes in a throng. He was, to be sure, nothing to her; but he was friendly; he was certainly entertaining; he was a part, somehow, of this easy-flowing life.
Miss Eschelle was announced. Margaret begged that she would come upstairs without ceremony. The mutual taking-in of the pretty street costume and the pretty morning toilet was the work of a moment—the photographer has invented no machine that equals a woman's eyes for such a purpose.
"How delightful it is! how altogether charming!" and Margaret felt that she was included with the room in this admiration. "I told mamma that I was coming to see you this morning, even if I missed the Nestors' luncheon. I like to please myself sometimes. Mamma says I'm frivolous, but do you know"—the girls were comfortably seated by the fire, and Carmen turned her sweet face and candid eyes to her companion—"I get dreadfully tired of all this going round and round. No, I don't even go to the Indigent Mothers' Home; it's part of the same thing, but I haven't any gift that way. Ah, you were reading—that novel."
"Yes; I was trying to read it; I intend to read it."
"Oh, we have had it! It's a little past now, but it has been all the rage. Everybody has read it; that is, I don't know that anybody has read it, but everybody has been talking about it. Of course somebody must have read it, to set the thing agoing. And it has been discussed to death. I sometimes feel as if I had changed my religion half a dozen times in a fortnight. But I haven't heard anything about it for a week. We have taken up the Hindoo widows now, you know." And the girl laughed, as if she knew she were talking nonsense.
"And you do not read much in the city?" Margaret asked, with an answering smile.
"Yes; in the summer. That is, some do. There is a reading set. I don't know that they read much, but there is a reading set. You know, Miss Debree, that when a book is published—really published, as Mr. Henderson says—you don't need to read it. Somehow it gets into the air and becomes common property. Everybody hears the whole thing. You can talk about it from a notice. Of course there are some novels that one must read in order to understand human nature. Do you read French?"
"Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot."
"Nor can I," said Carmen, with a sincere face. "They are too realistic for me." She was at the moment running over in her mind a "situation" in a paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. "Mr. Henderson says that everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise the novels they don't read."
"You know Mr. Henderson very well?"
"Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of."
"Afraid of?"
"Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes your curiosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you a little uneasy."
Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon the nature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slight expression of pain on Margaret's face.
"But there is your Mr. Lyon—"
Margaret laughed. "You do me too much honor. I think you discovered him first."
"Well, our Mr. Lyon." Carmen was still looking into the fire. "He is such a good young man!"
Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and she replied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, "We all have the highest regard for Mr. Lyon."
"Yes, and he is quite gone on Brandon, I assure you. He intends to do a great deal of good in the world. I think he spends half his time in New York studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproaches me that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldly side. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be"—this with a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation—"but I haven't any call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what she means—dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked, after a moment, turning to Margaret?
Margaret explained that she was neither.
"Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical. There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religious belief."
"I should think not," said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. "It must be a matter of great anxiety to you here."
Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed with merriment as she rose.
"What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deep things. You must not mind what I said about Mr.—(a little pause to read Margaret's face)—Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charming you are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not letting this life tell on one." And she was gone in a shower of compliments and smiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out. Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.
The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did not raise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sort of woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man to whom such a woman would be attracted?
It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses—palaces—that begin to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich. This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich —and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the course must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican simplicity.
Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of servants in livery—shortclothes and stockings—in decorous vacuity—an array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self a part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult to attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to separate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the town that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani—it was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in the music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as an intaglio—indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the costly facts.
The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background: the house swarmed with servants—retainers, one might say. Margaret, who was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women do not cost so much originally as good pictures—that is, good men and women—everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them. Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.
The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity—pure whiteness, the glow of yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and hostess—perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another generation will remove that.
If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up to the level of the dinner and the house—what except that of a circle of wits, who would be out of place there, could be?—the presence of Mr. Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark across the table about a "corner" (it is impossible absolutely here, as well as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening of galleries—anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of the vivacity and persiflage.
"I saw you, Mr. Henderson"—it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice—"the other night in a box with a very pretty woman."
"Yes—Miss Eschelle."
"I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, various places; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be very entertaining—and enterprising."
"Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other lady was her mother. And the man with us—that might interest you more, Mrs. Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm."
"Ah! Then I suppose she has money?"
"I never saw any painful evidence of poverty. But I don't think Mr. Lyon is fortune-hunting. He seems to be after information and—goodness."
Margaret flushed a little, but apparently Henderson did not notice it. Then she said (after Mrs. Laflamme had dropped the subject with the remark that he had come to the right place), "Miss Eschelle called on me yesterday."
"And was, no doubt, agreeable."
"She was, as Mrs. Laflamme says, entertaining. She quoted you a good deal."
"Quoted me? For what?"
"As one would a book, as a familiar authority."
"I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you will excuse the street expression, to have my stock quotable. Perhaps you couldn't tell whether Miss Eschelle was a bull or a bear in this case?"
"I don't clearly know what that is. She didn't offer me any," said Margaret, in a tone of carrying on the figure without any personal meaning.
"Well, she is a bit of an operator. A good many women here amuse themselves a little in stocks."
"It doesn't seem to me very feminine."
"No? But women generally like to' take risks and chances. In countries where lotteries are established they always buy tickets."
"Ah! then they only risk what they have. I think women are more prudent and conservative than men."
"No doubt. They are conservatives usually. But when they do go in for radical measures and risks, they leave us quite behind." Mr. Henderson did not care to extend the conversation in this direction, and he asked, abruptly, "Are you finding New York agreeable, Miss Debree?"
"Yes. Yes and no. One has no time to one's self. Do you understand why it is, Mr. Henderson, that one can enjoy the whole day and then be thoroughly dissatisfied with it?"
"Perfectly; when the excitement is over."
"And then I don't seem to be myself here. I have a feeling of having lost myself."
"Because the world is so big?"
"Not that. Do you know, the world seems much smaller here than at home."
"And the city appears narrow and provincial?"
"I cannot quite explain it. The interests of life don't seem so large —the questions, I mean, what is going on in Europe, the literature, the reforms, the politics. I get a wider view when I stand off—at home. I suppose it is more concentrated here. And, oh dear, I'm so stupid! Everybody is so alert in little things, so quick to turn a compliment, and say a bright thing. While I am getting ready to say what I really think about Browning, for instance, he is disposed of in a sentence."
"That is because you try to say what you really think."
"If one don't, what's the use of talk?"
"Oh, to pass the time."
Margaret looked up to see if Henderson was serious. There was a smile of amusement on his face, but not at all offensive, because the woman saw that it was a look of interest also.
"Then I sha'n't be serious any more," she said, as there was a movement to quit the table.
"That lays the responsibility on me of being serious," he replied, in the same light tone.
Later they were wandering through the picture-gallery together. A gallery of modern pictures appeals for the most part to the senses—represents the pomps, the color, the allurements of life. It struck Henderson forcibly that this gallery, which he knew well, appeared very different looking at it with Miss Debree from what it would if he had been looking at it with Miss Eschelle. There were some pictures that he hurried past, some technical excellences only used for sensuous effects—that he did not call attention to as he might have done with another. Curiously enough, he found himself seeking sentiment, purity. If the drawing was bad, Margaret knew it; if a false note was struck, she saw it. But she was not educated up to a good many of the suggestions of the gallery. Henderson perceived this, and his manner to her became more deferential and protective. It was a manner to which every true woman responds, and Margaret was happy, more herself, and talked with a freedom and gayety, a spice of satire, and a note of reality that made her every moment more attractive to her companion. In her, animation the charm of her unworn beauty blazed upon him with a direct personal appeal. He hardly cared to conceal his frank admiration. She, on her part, was thinking, what could Miss Eschelle mean by saying that she was afraid of him?
"Does the world seem any larger here, Miss Debree?" he asked, as they had lingeringly made the circuit of the room and passed out through the tropical conservatory to join the rest of the company.
"Yes—away from people."
"Then it is not numbers, I am glad to know, that make a world."
She did not reply. But when he encountered her, robed for departure, at the foot of the stairway, she gave him her hand in good-night, and their eyes met for a moment.
I wonder if that was the time? Probably not. I fancy that when the right day came she confessed that the moment was when she first saw him enter their box at the opera.
Henderson walked down the avenue slowly, hearing the echo of his own steps in the deserted street. He was in no haste to reach home. It was such a delightful evening-snowing a little, and cold, but so exhilarating. He remembered just how she turned her head as she got into the carriage. She had touched his arm lightly once in the gallery to call his attention to a picture. Yes, the world was larger, larger, by one, and it would seem large—her image came to him distinctly—if she were the only one.
Henderson was under the spell of this evening when the next, in response to a note asking him to call for a moment on business, he was shown into the Eschelle drawing-room. It was dimly lighted, but familiarity with the place enabled him without difficulty to find his way down the long suite, rather overcrowded with luxurious furniture, statuary, and pictures on easels, to the little library at the far end glowing in a rosy light.
There, ensconced in a big chair, a book in her hand, one pretty foot on the fender, sat Carmen, in a grayish, vaporous toilet, which took a warm hue from the color of the spreading lamp-shades. On the carved table near was a litter of books and of nameless little articles, costly and coquettish, which assert femininity, even in a literary atmosphere. Over the fireplace hung a picture of spring—a budding girl, smiling and winning, in a semi-transparent raiment, advancing with swift steps to bring in the season of flowers and of love. The hand that held the book rested upon the arm of the chair, a finger inserted in the place where she had been reading, her rounded white arm visible to the elbow, and Carmen was looking into the fire in the attitude of reflection upon a suggestive passage.
Women have so many forms of attraction, different women are attractive in so many different ways, moods are so changing, beauty is so undefinable, and has so many weapons. And yet men are called inconstant!
It was not until Henderson had time to take in the warmth of this domestic picture that Carmen rose.
"It is so good of you to come, with all your engagements. Mamma is excused with a headache, but she has left me power of attorney to ask questions about our little venture."
"I hope the attorney will not put me through a cross-examination."
"That depends upon how you have been behaving, Mr. Henderson. I'm not very cross yet. Now, sit there so that I can look at you and see how honest you are."
"Do you want me to put on my business or my evening expression?"
"Oh, the first, if you mean business."
"Well, your stocks are going up."
"That's nice. You are so lucky! Everything goes up with you. Do you know what they say of you.
"Nothing bad, I hope."
"That everything you touch turns to gold. That you will be one of the nabobs of New York in ten years."
"That's a startling destiny."
"Isn't it? I don't like it." The girl seemed very serious. "I'd like youto be distinguished. To be in the Cabinet. To be minister—go to England.But one needs a great deal of money for that, to go as one ought to go.What a career is open to a man in this country if he has money!"
"But I don't care for politics."
"Who does? But position. You can afford that if you have money enough. Do you know, Mr. Henderson, I think you are dull."
"Thank you. I reckoned you'd find it out."
"The other night at the Nestor ball a lady—no, I won't tell you who she is—asked me if I knew who that man was across the room; such an air of distinction; might be the new British Minister. You know, I almost blushed when I said I did know him."
"Well?"
"You see what people expect of you. When a man looks distinguished and is clever, and knows how to please if he likes, he cannot help having a career, unless he is afraid to take the chances."
Henderson was not conscious of ever being wanting in this direction. The picture conjured up by the ingenious girl was not unfamiliar to his mind, and he understood quite well the relation to it that Carmen had in her mind; but he did not take the lead offered. Instead, he took refuge in the usual commonplace, and asked, "Wouldn't you like to have been a man?"
"Heaven forbid! I should be too wicked. It is responsibility enough to be a woman. I did not expect such a banality from you. Do you think, Mr. Henderson, we had better sell?"
"Sell what?"
"Our stocks. You are so occupied that I thought they might fall when you are up in the clouds somewhere."
"No, I shall not forget."
"Well, such things happen. I might forget you if it were not for the stocks."
"Then I shall keep the stocks, even if they fall."
"And we should both fall together. That would be some compensation. Not much. Going to smash with you would be something like going to church with Mr. Lyon. It might have a steadying effect."
"What has come over you tonight, Carmen?" Henderson asked, leaning forward with an expression of half amusement, half curiosity.
"I've been thinking—doesn't that astonish you?—about life. It is very serious. I got some new views talking with that Miss Debree from Brandon. Chiefly from what she didn't say. She is such a lovely girl, and just as unsophisticated—well, as we are. I fear I shocked her by telling her your opinion of French novels."
"You didn't tell her that I approved of all the French novels you read?"
"Oh no! I didn't say you approved of any. It sort of came out that you knew about them. She is so downright and conscientious. I declare I felt virtuous shivers running all over me all the time I was with her. I'm conscientious myself. I want everybody to know the worst of me. I wish I could practice some concealment. But she rather discourages me. She would take the color out of a career. She somehow doesn't allow for color, I could see. Duty, duty—that is the way she looks at life. She'd try to keep me up to it; no playing by the way. I liked her very much. I like people not to have too much toleration. She would be just the wife for some nice country rector."
"Perhaps I ought to tell her your plan for her? I dined with her last night at the Stotts'."
"Yes?" Carmen had been wondering if he would tell her of that. "Was it very dull?"
"Not very. There was music, distant enough not to interfere with conversation, and the gallery afterwards."
"It must have been very exhilarating. You talked about the Duchess of Bolinbroke, and the opera, and Prince Talleyrand, and the corner in wheat—dear me, I know, so decorous! And you said Miss Debree was there?"
"I had the honor of taking her out."
"Mr. Henderson"—the girl had risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged to turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose the right object.
"Who taught me?" He raised his left hand. She did not respond to the overture, except to snap the hand with her index-finger, and was back in her chair again, regarding him demurely.
"I think we shall go abroad soon." The little foot was on the fender again, and the face had the look of melancholy resolution.
"And leave Mr. Lyon without any protection here?" The remark was made in a tone of good-humored raillery, but for some reason it seemed to sting the girl.
"Pshaw!" she said. "How can you talk such nonsense? You," and she rose to her feet in indignation—"you to advise an American girl to sell herself for a title—the chance of a title. I'm ashamed of you!"
"Why, Carmen," he replied, flushing, "I advised nothing of the sort. I hadn't the least idea. I don't care a straw for Mr. Lyon."
"That's just it; you don't care," sinking into her seat, still unappeased. "I think I'll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupation enough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that scheme you were talking over the other night."
Henderson was in turn annoyed. "You can tell him anything you like. I'm no more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic concerns."
"Now you are offended. It's not nice of you to put me in the wrong when you know how impulsive I am. I wish I didn't let my feelings run away with me." This said reflectively, and looking away from him. And then, turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes: "Do you know, I sometimes wish I had never seen you. You have so much power to make a person very bad or very good."
"Come, come," said Henderson, rising, "we mustn't quarrel about anEnglishman—such old friends."
"Yes, we are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him her hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal sweetness. "You are not offended?"
"Not a bit; not the least in the world," said Henderson, heartily, patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.
When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation, and there were hard lines in her sweet face. "What an insensible stick!" Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to condemn.
"Well?"
"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I told him we were going abroad."
"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as amusing."
"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"
"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you—"
"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really ought to be civil."
One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, the new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will be different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it never repeats itself.
Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall—making money and making love.
Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he found the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? he sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never stand in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her conscience would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Would she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? She would be if she had a heart.
He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simply because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessary to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his advancement, but he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure. And if there are men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness in a woman, Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not dictated, his brain would have told him the value of the sympathy of a good woman.
He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great fortune. It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve all the methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success, and the thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would approve what he did.
He saw much of her in those passing days—days that went like a dream to one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but he saw little of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a volume; a word is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other. And then passion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence of the object. Imagination then has free play. A little separation sometimes will fan it into a flame.
The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say that the leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of hope. Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business there. The Misses Arbuser said, "Of course." And Margaret said he must not forget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers an affectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.
Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it on the roadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret, neglecting the book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window, felt it in all her veins.
It is said that the world is created anew for every person who is in love. There is therefore this constant miracle of a new heavens and a new earth. It does not depend upon the seasons. The subtle force which is in every human being, more or less active, has this power, as if love were somehow a principle pervading nature itself, and capable of transforming it. Is this a divine gift? Can it be used more than once? Once spent, does the world to each succeeding experimenter in it become old and stale? We say the world is old. In one sense, the real sense to every person, it is no older than the lives lived in it at any given time. If it is always passing away, it is always being renewed. Every time a youth looks love in a maiden's eyes, and sees the timid appealing return of the universal passion, the world for those two is just as certainly created as it was on the first morning, in all its color, odor, song, freshness, promise. This is the central mystery of life.
Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle. Never before did the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such a color on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never before did her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine ecstasy in the coming of spring.
For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is over, is apt to be dull. The mind is so occupied with other emotions that the friends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and the routine is tame. Out of such a whirl of new experiences to return and find that nothing has happened; that the old duties and responsibilities are waiting! Margaret had eagerly leaped from the carriage to throw herself into her aunt's arms-what a sweet welcome it is, that of kin!—and yet almost before the greeting was over she felt alone. There was that in the affectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that seemed to chill the glow and fever of passion in her new world. And she had nothing to tell. Everything had changed, and she must behave as if nothing had happened. She must take up her old life—the interests of the neighborhood. Even the little circle of people she loved appeared distant from her at the moment; impossible it seemed to bring them into the rushing current of her life. Their joy in getting her back again she could not doubt, nor the personal affection with which she was welcomed. But was the New England atmosphere a little cold? What was the flavor she missed in it all? The next day a letter came. The excuse for it was the return of a fan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket from the opera. What a wonderful letter it was—his handwriting, the first note from him! Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness. For Margaret it outweighed the town of Brandon. It lay in her lap as she sat at her chamber window looking out over the landscape, which was beginning to be flushed with a pale green. There was a robin on the lawn, and a blackbird singing in the pine. "Go not, happy day," she said, with tears in her eyes. She took up the brief letter and read it again. Was he really hers, "truly"? And she answered the letter, swiftly and with no hesitation, but with a throbbing heart. It was a civil acknowledgment; that was all. Henderson might have lead it aloud in the Exchange. But what color, what charming turns of expression, what of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him such a thrill of pleasure when he read it? What secret power has a woman to make a common phrase so glow with her very self?
Here was something in her life that was her own, a secret, a hope, and yet a tremulous anticipation to be guarded almost from herself. It colored everything; it was always, whatever she was doing or saying, present, like an air that one unconsciously hums for days after it has caught his fancy. Blessed be the capacity of being fond and foolish! If that letter was under her pillow at night, if this new revelation was last in her thought as she fell asleep, if it mingled with the song of the birds in the spring morning, as some great good pervading the world, is there anything distinguishing in such an experience that it should be dwelt on? And if there were questionings and little panics of doubt, did not these moments also reveal Margaret to herself more certainly than the hours of happy dreaming?
Questionings no doubt there were, and, later, serious questionings; for habit is almost as strong as love, and the old ways of life and of thought will reassert themselves in a thoughtful mind, and reason will insist on analyzing passion and even hope.
Gradually the home life and every-day interests began to assume their natural aspect and proportions. It was so sweet and sane, this home life, interesting and not feverish. There was time for reading, time for turning over things in the mind, time for those interchanges of feeling and of ideas, by the fireside; she was not required to be always on dress parade, in mind or person, always keyed up to make an impression or receive one; how much wider and sounder was Morgan's view of the world, allowing for his kindly cynicism, than that prevalent in the talk where she had lately been! How sincere and hearty and free ran the personal currents in this little neighborhood! In the very fact that the daily love and affection for her and interest in her were taken for granted she realized the difference between her position here and that among newer friends who showed more open admiration.
Little by little there was a readjustment. In comparison, the city life, with its intensity of action and feeling, began to appear distant, not so real, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing part of this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by? It could not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now and again, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no more letters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse, the nexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly like a letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the little excitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three times, four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is such a blank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill? Has he changed? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between lovers. Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her that it had not gone so far as that. But she should see him. She felt sure of that. And the thought filled all the vacant places in her imagination of the future.
And yet she thought she was seeing him more clearly than when he was with her. Oh wise young woman! She fancied she was deliberating, looking at life with great prudence. It must be one's own fault if one makes a radical mistake in marriage. She was watching the married people about her with more interest-the Morgans, our own household, Mrs. Fletcher; and besides, her aunt, whose even and cheerful life lacked this experience. It is so wise to do this, to keep one's feelings in control, not to be too hasty! Everybody has these intervals of prudence. That is the reason there are so few mistakes.
I dare say that all these reflections and deliberations in the maidenly mind were almost unconscious to herself; certainly unacknowledged. It was her imagination that she was following, and scarcely a distinct reality or intention. She thought of Henderson, and he gave a certain personality, vivid maybe, to that dream of the future which we all in youth indulge; but she would have shrunk from owning this even to herself. We deceive ourselves as often as we deceive others. Margaret would have repudiated with some warmth any intimation that she had lost her heart, and was really predicting the practical possibilities of that loss, and she would have been quite honest with herself in thinking that she was still mistress of her own feeling. Later on she would know, and delight to confess, that her destiny was fixed at a certain hour, at a certain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to that like links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong in that; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would have faded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and more convinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon deep reflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would have us believe, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations; and that men and women know themselves much less thoroughly than they suppose they do. There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced, about the inward struggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that Margaret was hopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that charming girl would have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant humiliation if she had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more, if Henderson had at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand, her impulse would have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by anything that had taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that impulse.
But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but which did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simply the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter—far enough from that—but one in which there was a certain tone and intention that the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside from the announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it was significant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interested in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need have been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran on con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, was the excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her a business visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about his daily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people in which she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and there were slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in the Government; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and there were little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no special mystery about all this travel and hurrying from place to place, but it gave Margaret a sense of varied and large occupations that she did not understand. Through it all there was the personality that had been recently so much in her thoughts. He was coming. That was a very solid fact that she must meet. And she did not doubt that he was coming to see her, and soon. That was a definite and very different idea from the dim belief that he would come some time. He had signed himself hers "faithfully."
It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to think that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; he had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that. Therefore she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have in dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was conscious of being judicially reflective.
But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what was the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success. Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did not go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking in these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing that he were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some one solid occupation.
In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last, was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed, any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become millionaires.