It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow! Every one knows the renovation of feeling—often mistaken for a moral renewal—when the worn dress of the day is exchanged for the fresh evening toilet. The expansiveness of prosperity has a like effect, though the moralist is always piping about the beneficent uses of adversity. The moralist is, of course, right, time enough given; but what does the tree, putting out its tender green leaves to the wooing of the south wind, care for the moralist? How charming the world is when you go with it, and not against it!
It was better than Margaret had thought. When she came to Washington in the winter season the beautiful city seemed to welcome her and respond to the gayety of her spirit. It was so open, cheerful, hospitable, in the appearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks, with the bronze statues which all looked noble—in the moonlight; it was such a combination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately elegance —negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, and flower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth and refinement. The very aspect of the street population was novel; compared to New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and the passers, who have the fashion of walking in the middle of the street upon the asphalt as freely as upon the sidewalks, had a sort of busy leisureliness, the natural air of thousands of officials hived in offices for a few hours and then left in irresponsible idleness. But what most distinguished the town, after all, in Margaret's first glimpse of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it—the slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both sexes—carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a too strict and duty-ridden world.
In the morning, when Margaret looked from the windows of the hotel, the sky was gray and yielding, and all the outlines of the looming buildings were softened in the hazy air. The dome of the Capitol seemed to float like a bubble, and to be as unsubstantial as the genii edifices in the Arabian tale. The Monument, the slim white shaft as tall as the Great Pyramid, was still more a dream creation, not really made of hard marble, but of something as soft as vapor, almost melting into the sky, and yet distinct, unwavering, its point piercing the upper air, threatening every instant to dissolve, as if it were truly the baseless fabric of a vision —light, unreal, ghost-like, spotless, pure as an unsullied thought; it might vanish in a breath; and yet, no; it is solid: in the mist of doubt, in the assault of storms, smitten by the sun, beaten by the tempests, it stands there, springing, graceful, immovable—emblem, let us say, of the purity and permanence of the republic.
"You never half told me, Rodney, how beautiful it all is!" Margaret exclaimed, in a glow of delight.
"Yes," said Henderson, "the Monument is behaving very well this morning.I never saw it before look so little like a factory chimney."
"That is, you never looked at it with my eyes before, cynic. But it is all so lovely, everywhere."
"Of course it is, dear." They were standing together at the window, and his arm was where it should have been. "What did you expect? There are concentrated here the taste and virtue of sixty millions of people."
"But you always said the Washington hotels were so bad. These apartments are charming."
"Yes"—and he drew her closer to him—"there is no denying that. But presently I shall have to explain to you an odd phenomenon. Virginia, you know, used to be famous for its good living, and Maryland was simply unapproachable for good cooking. It was expected when the District was made out of these two that the result would be something quite extraordinary in the places of public entertainment. But, by a process which nobody can explain, in the union the art of cooking in hotels got mislaid."
"Well," she said, with winning illogicality, "you've got me."
"If you could only eat the breakfasts for me, as you can see the Monument for me!"
"Dear, I could eat the Monument for you, if it would do you any good." And neither of them was ashamed of this nonsense, for both knew that married people indulge in it when they are happy.
Although Henderson came to Washington on business, this was Margaret's wedding journey. There is no other city in the world where a wedding journey can better be combined with such business as is transacted here, for in both is a certain element of mystery. Washington is gracious to a bride, if she is pretty and agreeable—devotion to governing, or to legislation, or to diplomacy, does not render a man insensible to feminine attractions; and if in addition to beauty a woman has the reputation of wealth, she is as nearly irresistible here as anywhere. To Margaret, who was able to return the hospitality she received, and whose equipage was almost as much admired as her toilets, all doors were open—a very natural thing, surely, in a good-natured, give-and-take world. The colonel—Margaret had laughed till she cried when first she heard her husband saluted by this title in Washington by his New Hampshire acquaintances, but he explained to her that he had justly won it years ago by undergoing the hardship of receptions as a member of the Governor's staff—the colonel had brought on his horses and carriages, not at all by way of ostentation, but simply out of regard to what was due her as his wife, and because a carriage at call is a constant necessity in this city, whose dignity is equal to the square of its distances, and because there is something incongruous in sending a bride about in a herdic. Margaret's unworldly simplicity had received a little shock when she first saw her servants in livery, but she was not slow to see the propriety and even necessity of it in a republican society, since elegance cannot be a patchwork, but must be harmonious, and there is no harmony between a stylish turnout—noble horses nobly caparisoned—and a coachman and footman on the box dressed according to their own vulgar taste. Given a certain position, one's sense of fitness and taste mast be maintained. And there is so much kindliness and consideration in human nature—Margaret's gorgeous coachman and footman never by a look revealed their knowledge that she was new to the situation, and I dare say that their respectful demeanor contributed to raise her in her own esteem as one of the select and favored in this prosperous world. The most self-poised and genuine are not insensible to the tribute of this personal consideration. My lady giving orders to her respectful servitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious turnout, is not at all the same person in feeling that she would be if dragged about in a dissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of the stable. We take kindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is only the vulgar in soul who become snobbish in it. Little by little, under this genial consideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path of worldliness; and we heard, by the newspapers and otherwise—indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were there for a couple of weeks in the winter—that she was never more sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first season at the capital. I don't know that the town was raving, as they said, about her beauty and wit—there is nothing like the wit of a handsome woman—and amiability and unostentatious little charities, but she was a great favorite. We used to talk about it by the fire in Brandon, where everything reminded us of the girl we loved, and rejoice in her good-fortune and happiness, and get rather heavy-hearted in thinking that she had gone away from us into such splendor.
"I wish you were here," she wrote to my wife. "I am sure you would enjoy it. There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people—though the distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliant distinguished—and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney is such a favorite. We go everywhere, literally, and all the time. You must not scold, but I haven't opened a book, except my prayerbook, in six weeks—it is such a whirl. And it is so amusing. I didn't know there were so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the world. The other night, at the British Minister's, a French attache, who complimented my awful French—I told him that I inherited all but the vocabulary and the accent—said that if specimens of the different kinds of women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washington could be exhibited, nobody would doubt any more that America is an interesting country. Wasn't it an impudent speech? I tried to tell him, in French, how grateful American women are for any little attention from foreigners who have centuries of politeness behind them. Ah me! I sometimes long for one of the old-fashioned talks before your smoldering logs! What we talk about here, Heaven only knows. I sometimes tell Rodney at night—it is usually morning—that I feel like an extinct piece of fireworks. But next day it is all delightful again; and, dear friend, I don't know but that I like being fireworks."
Among the men who came oftenest to see Henderson was Jerry Hollowell. It seemed to Margaret an odd sort of companionship; it could not be any similarity of tastes that drew them together, and she could not understand the nature of the business transacted in their mysterious conferences. Social life had few attractions for Hollowell, for his family were in the West; he appeared to have no relations with any branch of government; he wanted no office, though his influence was much sought by those who did want it.
"You spend a good deal of time here, Mr. Hollowell," Margaret said one day when he called in Henderson's absence.
"Yes, ma'am, considerable. Things need a good deal of fixing up. Washington is a curious place. It's a sort of exchange for the whole country: you can see everybody here, and it is a good place to arrange matters."
"With Congress, do you mean?" Margaret had heard much of the corruption of Congress.
"No, not Congress particularly. Congressmen are just about like other people. It's all nonsense, this talk about buying Congressmen. You cannot buy them any more than you can buy other people, but you can sort of work together with some of them. We don't want anything of Congress, except to be let alone. If we are doing something to develop the trade in the Southwest, build it up, some member who thinks he is smart will just as likely as not try to put in a block somewhere, or investigate, or something, in order to show his independence, and then he has to be seen, and shown that he is going against the interests of his constituents. It is just as it is everywhere: men have to be shown what their real interest is. No; most Congressmen are poor, and they stay poor. It is a good deal easier to deal with those among them who are rich and have some idea about the prosperity of the country. It is just so in the departments. You've got to watch things, if you expect them to go smooth. You've got to get acquainted with the men. Most men are reasonable when you get well acquainted with them. I tell your husband that people are about as reasonable in Washington as you'll find them anywhere."
"Washington is certainly very pleasant."
"Yes, that's so; it is pleasant. Where most everybody wants something, they are bound to be accommodating. That's my idea. I reckon you don't find Jerry Hollowell trying to pull a cat by its tail," he added, dropping into his native manner.
"Well, I must go and hunt up the old man. Glad to have made your acquaintance, Mrs. Henderson." And then, with a sly look, "If I knew you better, ma'am, I should take the liberty of congratulating you that Henderson has come round so handsomely."
"Come round?" asked Margaret, in amused wonder.
"Well, I took the liberty of giving him a hint that he wasn't cut-out for a single man. I showed him that," and he lugged out his photograph-case from a mass of papers in his breast-pocket and handed it to her.
"Ah, I see," said Margaret, studying the photographs with a peculiar smile.
"Oh, Henderson knows a good thing when he sees it," said Hollowell, complacently.
It was not easy to be offended with Hollowell's kind-hearted boorishness, and after he had gone, Margaret sat a long time reflecting upon this new specimen of man in her experience. She was getting many new ideas in these days, the moral lines were not as clearly drawn as she had thought; it was impossible to ticket men off into good and bad. In Hollowell she had a glimpse of a world low-toned and vulgar; she had heard that he was absolutely unscrupulous, and she had supposed that he would appear to be a very wicked man. But he seemed to be good-hearted and tolerant and friendly. How fond he was of his family, and how charitable about Congress! And she wondered if the world was generally on Hollowell's level. She met many men more cultivated than he, gentlemen in manner and in the first social position, who took, after all, about his tone in regard to the world, very agreeable people usually, easy to get on with, not exacting, or professing much faith in anybody, and mildly cynical —only bitterly cynical when they failed to get what they wanted, and felt the good things of life slipping away from them. It was to take her some time to learn that some of the most agreeable people are those who have succeeded by the most questionable means; and when she came to this knowledge, what would be her power of judgment as to these means?
"Mr. Hollowell has been here," she said, when Henderson returned.
"Old Jerry? He is a character."
"Do you trust him?"
"It never occurred to me. Yes, I suppose so, as far as his interests go.He isn't a bad sort of fellow—very long-headed."
"Dear," said Margaret, with hesitation, "I wish you didn't have anything to do with such men."
"Why, dearest?"
"Oh, I don't know. You needn't laugh. It rather lets one down; and it isn't like you."
Henderson laughed aloud now. "But you needn't associate with Hollowell. We men cannot pick our companions in business and politics. It needs all sorts to keep the world going."
"Then I'd rather let it stop," Margaret said.
"And sell out at auction?" he cried, with a look of amusement.
"But aren't Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fairchild business men?"
"Yes—of the old-fashioned sort. The fact—is, Margaret, you've got a sort of preserve up in Brandon, and you fancy that the world is divided into sheep and goats. It's a great mistake. There is no such division. Every man almost is both a sheep and a goat."
"I don't believe it, Rodney. You are neither." She came close to him, and taking the collar of his coat in each hand, gave him a little shake, and looking up into his face with quizzical affection, asked, "What is your business here?"
Henderson stooped down and kissed her forehead, and tenderly lifted the locks of her brown hair. "You wouldn't understand, sweet, if I told you."
"You might try."
"Well, there's a man here from Fort Worth who wants us to buy a piece of railroad, and extend it, and join it with Hollowell's system, and open up a lot of new country."
"And isn't it a good piece of road?"
"Yes; that's the trouble. The owners want to keep it to themselves, and prevent the general development. But we shall get it."
"It isn't anything like wrecking, is it, dear?"
"Do you think we would want to wreck our own property?"
"But what has Congress to do with it?"
"Oh, there's a land grant. But some of the members who were not in theCongress that voted it say that it is forfeited."
In this fashion the explanation went on. Margaret loved to hear her husband talk, and to watch the changing expression of his face, and he explained about this business until she thought he was the sweetest fellow in the world.
The Morgans had arrived at the same hotel, and Margaret went about with them in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breath of home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life, gave a new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round of entertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was very interesting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Washington, and to see the shifting panorama through his experience. He had been very much in the city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because it was less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost for him a certain charm it once had.
"I am not sure," he said, as they were driving one day, "that it is not now the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way to be that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets and avenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many stately vistas ending in objects refreshing to the eye—a bit of park, banks of flowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in the distance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups, triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air of distinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrated itself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries that are the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only just begun—the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself to all sorts of magnificence and beauty."
"I declare," said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, "I didn't know that he could be so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress."
"In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature as it used to be. Washington is getting to have a character of its own; it seems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet the process is going on here that is so marked all over the country—the divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years ago, that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism that a democracy cannot make society—there was no more agreeable society in the world than that in Washington even ten years ago: society selected itself somehow without any marked class distinction, and it was delightfully simple and accessible."
"And what has changed it?" Margaret asked.
"Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale has altered. There is so much more display and expense. I remember when a private carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of money didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any company was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the ability to give a costly dinner or a big ball."
"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody says," said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.
"Yes, and they keep more to themselves—withdraw into their studies, or hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality and freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents whether the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized society, or stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It is as easy here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner party—all very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like New York."
"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.
"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board. An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets stupid."
"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of an under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you slander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here."
"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Washington. I should like to live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is going to build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger than the White House."
"I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell."
"But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy that we are coming to."
All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerful city. "You like it as well as anybody," she told him. And in truth he and Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. "Of course I do," he said, "for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged to follow it as a steady business. Washington is a good place to take a plunge occasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon with appreciation."
Margaret had thought when she came to Washington that she should spend a good deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of the Senators and Representatives, and that she should study the collections and the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which she had such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon. But there was little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties. She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up and down, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation was ever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swinging of doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, and concluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, and bargaining, and private interviewing. Morgan asked her if she expected that the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done with the order and decorum of a lyceum debating society. In one of the committee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently an indispensable part of the government machine. Her own husband, who had accompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere. He was sought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed and stunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion. She did not try it again, and very little strolling about the departments satisfied her. The west end claimed her—the rolling equipages, the drawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter in a hundred shining houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of the assemblies, the full flow of the tide of fashion and of enjoyment—what is there so good in life? To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to be loved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented—every Sunday at morning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout, whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hope to be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thanked Heaven for its gifts.
And it went well with Henderson meantime. Surely he was born under a lucky star—if it is good-luck for a man to have absolute prosperity and the gratification of all his desires. One reason why Hollowell sought his cooperation was a belief in this luck, and besides Henderson was, he knew, more presentable, and had social access in quarters where influence was desirable, although Hollowell was discovering that with most men delicacy in presenting anything that is for their interest is thrown away. He found no difficulty in getting recruits for his little dinners at Champolion's—dinners that were not always given in his name, and where he appeared as a guest, though he footed the bills. Bungling grossness has disappeared from all really able and large transactions, and genius is mainly exercised in the supply of motives for a line of conduct. The public good is one of the motives that looks best in Washington.
Henderson and Hollowell got what they wanted in regard to the Southwest consolidation, and got it in the most gentlemanly way. Nobody was bought, no one was offered a bribe. There were, of course, fees paid for opinions and for professional services, and some able men induced to take a prospective interest in what was demonstrably for the public good. But no vote was given for a consideration—at least this was the report of an investigating committee later on. Nothing, of course, goes through Congress of its own weight, except occasionally a resolution of sympathy with the Coreans, and the calendar needs to be watched, and the good offices of friends secured. Skillful wording of a clause, the right moment, and opportune recognition do the business. The main thing is to create a favorable atmosphere and avoid discussion. When the bill was passed, Hollowell did give a dinner on his own invitation, a dinner that was talked of for its refinement as well as its cost. The chief topic of conversation was the development of the Southwest and the extension of our trade relations with Mexico. The little scheme, hatched in Henderson's New York office, in order to transfer certain already created values to the pockets of himself and his friends, appeared to have a national importance. When Henderson rose to propose the health of Jerry Hollowell, neither he nor the man he eulogized as a creator of industries whose republican patriotism was not bound by State lines nor circumscribed by sections was without a sense of the humor of the situation.
And yet in a certain way Mr. Hollowell was conscious that he merited the eulogy. He had come to believe that the enterprises in which he was engaged, that absolutely gave him, it was believed, an income of a million a year, were for the public good. Such vast operations lent him the importance of a public man. If he was a victim of the confusion of mind which mistook his own prosperity for the general benefit, he only shared a wide public opinion which regards the accumulation of enormous fortunes in a few hands as an evidence of national wealth.
Margaret left Washington with regret. She had a desire to linger in the opening of the charming spring there, for the little parks were brilliant with flower beds-tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, violets—the magnolias and redbuds in their prodigal splendor attracted the eye a quarter of a mile away, and the slender twigs of the trees began to be suffused with tender green. It was the sentimental time of the year. But Congress had gone, and whatever might be the promise of the season, Henderson had already gathered the fruits that had been forced in the hothouse of the session. He was in high spirits.
"It has all been so delightful, dear!" said Margaret as they rode away in the train, and caught their last sight of the dome. They were in Hollowell's private car, which the good-natured old fellow had put at their disposal. And Margaret had a sense of how delightful and prosperous this world is as seen from a private car.
"Yes," Henderson answered, thinking of various things; "it has been a successful winter. The capital is really attractive. It occurred to me the other day that America has invented a new kind of city, the apotheosis of the village—Washington."
They talked of the city, of the acquaintances of the winter, of Hollowell's thoughtfulness in lending them his car, that their bridal trip, as he had said, might have a good finish. Margaret's heart opened to the world. She thought of the friends at Brandon, she thought of the poor old ladies she was accustomed to look after in the city, of the ragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was a manager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and she thought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so many of the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and looking across to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with a wife's unblushing effrontery, "Dearest, how handsome you are!"
The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in Washington Square. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature of this prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If it came, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that used to be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of money, after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell, but on acquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to her in the newspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's business, but did it differ from that of other men she had known, except that it was on a larger scale? And how much good could be done with money!
On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to which she had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed to "My Wife," and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a card, on which was written, "For Margaret's Easter Charities." Flushed with pleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was descending to breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears in her eyes, cried, "Dearest, how good you are!"
It is such a good and prosperous generation.
Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May, the time of the apple blossoms—just a year from the swift wooing of Margaret—Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in a mourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earl of Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air of profound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought to his own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine him more closely to England. It also contained congratulations—which circumstances had delayed—upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simple wish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been for these purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit to Brandon and the circle of friends there, and it was pervaded by a tone, almost affectionate, towards Miss Forsythe, which touched her very deeply. She said it was such a manly letter.
America, the earl said, interested him more and more. In all history, he wrote, there never had been such an opportunity for studying the formation of society, for watching the working out of political problems; the elements meeting were so new, and the conditions so original, that historical precedents were of little service as guides. He acknowledged an almost irresistible impulse to come back, and he announced his intention of another visit as soon as circumstances permitted.
I had noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude as the country is, and uninteresting according to certain established standards, it seems to have a "drawing" quality, a certain unexplained fascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality that attracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares. that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an American wife, his curiosity about the country is sated. But this is generalizing on narrow premises.
There was certainly in Lyon's letter a longing to see the country again, but the impression it made upon me when I read it—due partly to its tone towards Miss Forsythe, almost a family tone—was that the earldom was an empty thing without the love of Margaret Debree. Life is so brief at the best, and has so little in it when the one thing that the heart desires is denied. That the earl should wish to come to America again without hope or expectation was, however, quite human nature. If a man has found a diamond and lost it, he is likely to go again and again and wander about the field where he found it, not perhaps in any defined hope of finding another, but because there is a melancholy satisfaction in seeing the spot again. It was some such feeling that impelled the earl to wish to see again Miss Forsythe, and perhaps to talk of Margaret, but he certainly had no thought that there were two Margaret Debrees in America.
To her aunt's letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon's loss, Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence. The news had already reached the Eschelles, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written to the new earl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to his change of fortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now enlarged opportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans—a most unworldly note. "I used to think," she had said, when confiding what she had done to Margaret, "that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but you have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work among us fashionable sinners. Do you know," she went on, "that I feel a great deal less worldly than I used to?"
Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all agree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she came back in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with Carmen was one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be more and more companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of character made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact remained that she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried to astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child of her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.
"Margaret," she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of confidence, "seems to have had such a different start in life from mine. Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much in love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is in love with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him—any woman might be that—but, do you know, she actually believes in him."
"Why shouldn't she believe in him?" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in astonishment.
"Oh, of course, in a way," the girl went on. "I like Mr. Henderson—I like him very much—but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now to believe in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get along just as well—and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have any deceptions?"
Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to her that the bottom had fallen out of society.
"Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?" the girl persisted.
"If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in each other, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from a woman."
"Oh, it isn't any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe," Carmen continued, sweetly. "Society is a great deal pleasanter when you are not anxious and don't expect too much."
Miss Forsythe told Margaret that she thought Miss Eschelle was a dangerous woman. Margaret did not defend her, but she did not join, either, in condemning her; she appeared to have accepted her as a part of her world. And there were other things that Margaret seemed to have accepted without that vigorous protest which she used to raise at whatever crossed her conscience. To her aunt she was never more affectionate, never more solicitous about her comfort and her pleasure, and it was almost enough to see Margaret happy, radiant, expanding day by day in the prosperity that was illimitable, only there was to her a note of unreality in all the whirl and hurry of the busy life. She liked to escape to her room with a book, and be out of it all, and the two weeks away from her country life seemed long to her. She couldn't reconcile Margaret's love of the world, her tolerance of Carmen, and other men and women whose lives seemed to be based on Carmen's philosophy, with her devotion to the church services, to the city missions, and the dozens of charities that absorb so much of the time of the leaders of society.
"You are too young, dear, to be so good and devout," was Carmen's comment on the situation.
To Miss Forsythe's wonder, Margaret did not resent this impertinence, but only said that no accumulation of years was likely to bring Carmen into either of these dangers. And the reply was no more satisfactory to Miss Forsythe than the remark that provoked it.
That she had had a delightful visit, that Margaret was more lovely than ever, that Henderson was a delightful host, was the report of Miss Forsythe when she returned to us. In a confidential talk with my wife she confessed, however, that she couldn't tell whither Margaret was going.
One of the worries of modern life is the perplexity where to spend the summer. The restless spirit of change affects those who dwell in the country, as well as those who live in the city. No matter how charming the residence is, one can stay in it only a part of the year. He actually needs a house in town, a villa by the sea, and a cottage in the hills. When these are secured—each one an establishment more luxurious year by year—then the family is ready to travel about, and is in a greater perplexity than before whether to spend the summer in Europe or in America, the novelties of which are beginning to excite the imagination. This nomadism, which is nothing less than society on wheels, cannot be satirized as a whim of fashion; it has a serious cause in—the discovery of the disease called nervous prostration, which demands for its cure constant change of scene, without any occupation. Henderson recognized it, but he said that personally he had no time to indulge in it. His summer was to be a very busy one. It was impossible to take Margaret with him on his sudden and tedious journeys from one end of the country to the other, but she needed a change. It was therefore arranged that after a visit to Brandon she should pass the warm months with the Arbusers in their summer home at Lenox, with a month—the right month—in the Eschelle villa at Newport; and he hoped never to be long absent from one place or the other.
Margaret came to Brandon at the beginning of June, just at the season when the region was at its loveliest, and just when its society was making preparations to get away from it to the sea, or the mountains, or to any place that was not home. I could never understand why a people who have been grumbling about snow and frost for six months, and longing for genial weather, should flee from it as soon as it comes. I had made the discovery, quite by chance—and it was so novel that I might have taken out a patent on it—that if one has a comfortable home in our northern latitude, he cannot do better than to stay in it when the hum of the mosquito is heard in the land, and the mercury is racing up and down the scale between fifty and ninety. This opinion, however, did not extend beyond our little neighborhood, and we may be said to have had the summer to ourselves.
I fancied that the neighborhood had not changed, but the coming of Margaret showed me that this was a delusion. No one can keep in the same place in life simply by standing still, and the events of the past two years had wrought a subtle change in our quiet. Nothing had been changed to the eye, yet something had been taken away, or something had been added, a door had been opened into the world. Margaret had come home, yet I fancied it was not the home to her that she had been thinking about. Had she changed?
She was more beautiful. She had the air—I should hesitate to call it that of the fine lady—of assured position, something the manner of that greater world in which the possession of wealth has supreme importance, but it was scarcely a change of manner so much as of ideas about life and of the things valuable in it gradually showing itself. Her delight at being again with her old friends was perfectly genuine, and she had never appeared more unselfish or more affectionate. If there was a subtle difference, it might very well be in us, though I found it impossible to conceive of her in her former role of teacher and simple maiden, with her heart in the little concerns of our daily life. And why should she be expected to go back to that stage? Must we not all live our lives? Miss Forsythe's solicitude about Margaret was mingled with a curious deference, as to one who had a larger experience of life than her own. The girl of a year ago was now the married woman, and was invested with something of the dignity that Miss Forsythe in her pure imagination attached to that position. Without yielding any of her opinions, this idea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little, I thought, to the amusement of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to whom marriage took on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from a renewed sense of the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had been, and enriched as it was by observation.
In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of the country, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations of trades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply called attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent was attributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury and reckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said that the strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious to those who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railway manipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but to exact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this could be shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet the impression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong in the way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of individual rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into account ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that was discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities, who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly compensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and the advantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefit of half a dozen insolent men.
In discussing these things in our little parliament we were not altogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing of interests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger of disappearing for the "public good," Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune was nearly all invested in that sound "rock-bed" railway in the Southwest that Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. She was assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sort of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if he would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on the situation these personalities were not referred to, for although Margaret was silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.
Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money dishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.
"I had this question referred to me the other day," he said. "A gambler —not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendid establishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for his liberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics—offered the president of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow a professorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it was made?"
"Wouldn't the money do good—as much good as any other hundred thousand dollars?" asked Margaret.
"Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would be the moral effect of that?"
"Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get it without using the gambler's name?"
"I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on a general principle."
"But wouldn't it be a sneaking thing to take a man's money, and refuse him the credit of his generosity?"
"But was it generosity? Was not his object, probably, to get a reputation which his whole life belied, and to get it by obliterating the distinction between right and wrong?"
"But isn't it a compromising distinction," my wife asked, "to take his money without his name? The president knows that it is money fraudulently got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the gambler would feel that if the president takes it, he cannot think very disapprovingly of the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would be more honest and straightforward to take his name with the money."
"The public effect of connecting the gambler's name with the college would be debasing," said Morgan; "but, on the contrary, is every charity or educational institution bound to scrutinize the source of every benefaction? Isn't it better that money, however acquired, should be used for a good purpose than a bad one?"
"That is a question," I said, "that is a vital one in our present situation, and the sophistry of it puzzles the public. What would you say to this case? A man notoriously dishonest, but within the law, and very rich, offered a princely endowment to a college very much in need of it. The sum would have enabled it to do a great work in education. But it was intimated that the man would expect, after a while, to be made one of the trustees. His object, of course, was social position."
"I suppose, of course," Margaret replied, "that the college couldn't afford that. It would look like bribery."
"Wouldn't he be satisfied with an LL.D.?" Morgan asked.
"I don't see," my wife said, "any difference between the two cases stated and that of the stock gambler, whose unscrupulous operations have ruined thousands of people, who founds a theological seminary with the gains of his slippery transactions. By accepting his seminary the public condones his conduct. Another man, with the same shaky reputation, endows a college. Do you think that religion and education are benefited in the long-run by this? It seems to me that the public is gradually losing its power of discrimination between the value of honesty and dishonesty. Real respect is gone when the public sees that a man is able to buy it."
This was a hot speech for my wife to make. For a moment Margaret flamed up under it with her old-time indignation. I could see it in her eyes, and then she turned red and confused, and at length said:
"But wouldn't you have rich men do good with their money?"
"Yes, dear, but I would not have them think they can blot out by their liberality the condemnation of the means by which many of them make money. That is what they are doing, and the public is getting used to it."
"Well," said Margaret, with some warmth, "I don't know that they are any worse than the stingy saints who have made their money by saving, and act as if they expected to carry it with them."
"Saints or sinners, it does not make much difference to me," now put in Mrs. Fletcher, who was evidently considering the question from a practical point of view, "what a man professes, if he founds a hospital for indigent women out of the dividends that I never received."
Morgan laughed. "Don't you think, Mrs. Fletcher, that it is a good sign of the times, that so many people who make money rapidly are disposed to use it philanthropically?"
"It may be for them, but it does not console me much just now."
"But you don't make allowance enough for the rich. Perhaps they are under a necessity of doing something. I was reading this morning in the diary of old John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon this sentence: 'It was a saying of Navisson, a lawyer, that no man could be valiant unless he hazarded his body, nor rich unless he hazarded his soul.'"
"Was Navisson a modern lawyer?" I asked.
"No; the diary is dated 1648-1679."
"I thought so."
There was a little laugh at this, and the talk drifted off into a consideration of the kind of conscience that enables a professional man to espouse a cause he knows to be wrong as zealously as one he knows to be right; a talk that I should not have remembered at all, except for Margaret's earnestness in insisting that she did not see how a lawyer could take up the dishonest side.
Before Margaret went to Lenox, Henderson spent a few days with us. He brought with him the amounding cheerfulness, and the air of a prosperous, smiling world, that attended him in all circumstances. And how happy Margaret was! They went over every foot of the ground on which their brief courtship had taken place, and Heaven knows what joy there was to her in reviving all the tenderness and all the fear of it! Busy as Henderson was, pursued by hourly telegrams and letters, we could not but be gratified that his attention to her was that of a lover. How could it be otherwise, when all the promise of the girl was realized in the bloom and the exquisite susceptibility of the woman? Among other things, she dragged him down to her mission in the city, to which he went in a laughing and bantering mood. When he had gone away, Margaret ran over to my wife, bringing in her hand a slip of paper.
"See that!" she cried, her eyes dancing with pleasure. It was a check for a thousand dollars. "That will refurnish the mission from top to bottom," she said, "and run it for a year."
"How generous he is!" cried my wife. Margaret did not reply, but she looked at the check, and there were tears in her eyes.
The Arbuser cottage at Lenox was really a magnificent villa. Richardson had built it. At a distance it had the appearance of a mediaeval structure, with its low doorways, picturesque gables, and steep roofs, and in its situation on a gentle swell of green turf backed by native forest-trees it imparted to the landscape an ancestral tone which is much valued in these days. But near to, it was seen to be mediaevalism adapted to the sunny hospitality of our summer climate, with generous verandas and projecting balconies shaded by gay awnings, and within spacious, open to the breezes, and from its broad windows offering views of lawns and flower-beds and ornamental trees, of a great sweep of pastures and forests and miniature lakes, with graceful and reposeful hills on the horizon.
It was, in short, the modern idea of country simplicity. The passion for country life, which has been in decadence for nearly half a century, has again become the fashion. Nature, which, left to itself, is a little ragged, not to say monotonous and tiresome, is discovered to be a valuable ally for aid in passing the time when art is able to make portions of it exclusive. What the Arbusers wanted was a simple home in the country, and in obtaining it they were indulging a sentiment of returning to the primitive life of their father, who had come to the city from a hill farm, and had been too busy all his life to recur to the tastes of his boyhood. At least that was the theory of his daughters; but the old gentleman had a horror of his early life, and could scarcely be dragged away from the city even in the summer. He would no doubt have been astonished at the lofty and substantial stone stables, the long range of greenhouses, and at a farm which produced nothing except lawns and flower-beds, ornamental fields of clover, avenues of trees, lawn-tennis grounds, and a few Alderneys tethered to feed among the trees, where their beauty would heighten the rural and domestic aspect of the scene. The Arbusers liked to come to this place as early as possible to escape the society exactions of the city. That was another theory of theirs. All their set in the city met there for the same purpose.
Margaret was welcomed with open arms.
"We have been counting the days," said the elder of the sisters. "Your luggage has come, your rooms are all ready, and your coachman, who has been here some days, says that the horses need exercise. Everybody is here, and we need you for a hundred things."
"You are very kind. It is so charming here. I knew it would be, but I couldn't bear to shorten my visit in Brandon."
"Your aunt must miss you very much. Is she well?"
"Perfectly."
"Wouldn't she have come with you? I've a mind to telegraph."
"I think not. She is wedded to quiet, and goes away from her little neighborhood with reluctance."
"So Brandon was a little dull?" said Miss Arbuser, with a shrewd guess at the truth.
"Oh no," quickly replied Margaret, shrinking a little from what was in her own mind; "it was restful and delightful; but you know that we New England people take life rather seriously, and inquire into the reason of things, and want an object in life."
"A very good thing to have," answered this sweet woman of the world, whose object was to go along pleasantly and enjoy it.
"But to have it all the time!" Margaret suggested, lightly, as she ran up-stairs. But even in this suggestion she was conscious of a twinge of disloyalty to her former self. Deep down in her heart, coming to the atmosphere of Lenox was a relief from questionings that a little disturbed her at her old home, and she was indignant at herself that it should be so, and then indignant at the suggestions that put her out of humor with herself. Was it a sin, she said, to be happy and prosperous?
On her dressing-table was a letter from her husband. He was detained in the city by a matter of importance. He scratched only a line, to catch the mail, during a business interview. It was really only a business interview, and had no sort of relation to Lenox or the summer gayety there.
Henderson was in his private office. The clerks in the outer offices, inthe neglige of summer costumes, winked to each other as they saw oldJerry Hollowell enter and make his way to the inner room unannounced.Something was in the wind.
"Well, old man," said Uncle Jerry, in the cheeriest manner, coming in, depositing his hat on the table, and taking a seat opposite Henderson, "we seem to have stirred up the animals."
"Only a little flurry," replied Henderson, laying down his pen and folding a note he had just finished; "they'll come to reason."
"They've got to." Mr. Hollowell drew out a big bandanna and mopped his heated face. "I've just got a letter from Jorkins. There's the certificates that make up the two-thirds-more than we need, anyway. No flaw about that, is there?"
"No. I'll put these with the balance in the safe. It's all right, if Jorkins has been discreet. It may make a newspaper scandal if they get hold of his operations."
"Oh, Jorkins is close. But he is a little overworked. I don't know but it would do him good to have a little nervous prostration and go abroad for a while."
"I guess it would do Jorkins good to take a turn in Europe for a year or so."
"Well, you write to him. Give him a sort of commission to see the English bondholders, and explain the situation. They will appreciate that half a loaf is better than no bread. What bothers me is the way the American bondholders take it. They kick."
"Let 'em kick. The public don't care for a few soreheads and impracticables in an operation that is going to open up the whole Southwest. I've an appointment with one of them this morning. He ought to be here now."
At the moment Henderson's private secretary entered and laid on the table the card of Mr. John Hopper, who was invited to come in at once. Mr. Hopper was a man of fifty, with iron-gray hair, a heavy mustache, and a smooth-shaven chin that showed resolution. In dress and manner his appearance was that of the shrewd city capitalist—quiet and determined, who is neither to be deceived nor bullied. With a courteous greeting to both the men, whom he knew well, he took a seat and stated his business.
"I have called to see you, Mr. Henderson, about the bonds of the A. andB., and I am glad to find Mr. Hollowell here also."
"What amount do you represent, Mr. Hopper?" asked Henderson.
"With my own and my friends', altogether, rising a million. What do you propose?"
"You got our circular?"
"Yes, and we don't accept the terms."
"I'm sorry. It is the best that we could do."
"That is, the best you would do!"
"Pardon me, Mr. Hopper, the best we could do under the circumstances. We gave you your option, to scale down on a fair estimate of the earnings of the short line (the A. and B.), or to surrender your local bonds and take new ones covering the whole consolidation, or, as is of course in your discretion, to hold on and take the chances."
"Which your operations have practically destroyed."
"Not at all, Mr. Hopper. We offer you a much better security on the whole system instead of a local road."
"And you mean to tell me, Mr. Henderson, that it is for our advantage to exchange a seven per cent. bond on a road that has always paid its interest promptly, for a four and a half on a system that is manipulated nobody knows how? I tell you, gentlemen, that it looks to outsiders as if there was crookedness somewhere."
"That is a rather rough charge, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with a smile.
"But we are to understand that if we do not accept your terms, it's a freeze-out?"
"You are to understand that we want to make the best arrangement possible for all parties in interest."
"How some of those interests were acquired may be a question for the courts," replied Mr. Hopper, resolutely. "When we put our money in good seven per cent. bonds, we propose to inquire into the right of anybody to demand that we shall exchange them for four and a half per cents. on other security."
"Perfectly right, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with imperturbable good-humor; "the transfer books are open to your inspection."
"Well, we prefer to hold on to our bonds."
"And wait for your interest," interposed Hollowell.
Mr. Hopper turned to the speaker. "And while we are waiting we propose to inquire what has become of the surplus of the A. and B. The bondholders had the first claim on the entire property."
"And we propose to protect it. See here, Mr. Hopper," continued Uncle Jerry, with a most benevolent expression, "I needn't tell you that investments fluctuate—the Lord knows mine do! The A. and B. was a good road. I know that. But it was going to be paralleled. We'd got to parallel it to make our Southwest connections. If we had, you'd have waited till the Gulf of Mexico freezes over before you got any coupons paid. Instead of that, we took it into our system, and it's being put on a permanent basis. It's a little inconvenient for holders, and they have got to stand a little shrinkage, but in the long-run it will be better for everybody. The little road couldn't stand alone, and the day of big interest is about over."
"That explanation may satisfy you, Mr. Hollowell, but it don't give us our money, and I notify you that we shall carry the matter into the courts. Good-morning."
When Mr. Hopper had gone, the two developers looked at each other a moment seriously.
"Hopper 'll fight," Hollowell said at last.
"And we have got the surplus to fight him with," replied Henderson.
"That's so," and Uncle Jerry chuckled to himself. "The rats that are on the inside of the crib are a good deal better off than the rats on the outside."
"The reporter of The Planet wants five minutes," announced the secretary, opening the door. Henderson told him to let him in.
The reporter was a spruce young gentleman, in a loud summer suit, with a rose in his button-hole, and the air of assurance which befits the commissioner of the public curiosity.
"I am sent by The Planet," said the young man, "to show you this and ask you if you have anything to say to it."
"What is it?" asked Henderson.
"It's about the A. and B."
"Very well. There is the president, Mr. Hollowell. Show it to him."
The reporter produced a long printed slip and handed it to Uncle Jerry, who took it and began to read. As his eye ran down the column he was apparently more and more interested, and he let it be shown on his face that he was surprised, and even a little astonished. When he had finished, he said:
"Well, my young friend, how did you get hold of this?"
"Oh, we have a way," said the reporter, twirling his straw hat by the elastic, and looking more knowing than old Jerry himself.
"So I see," replied Jerry, with an admiring smile; "there is nothing that you newspaper folks don't find out. It beats the devil!"
"Is it true, sir?" said the young gentleman, elated with this recognition of his own shrewdness.
"It is so true that there is no fun in it. I don't see how the devil you got hold of it."
"Have you any explanations?"
"No, I guess not," said Uncle Jerry, musingly. "If it is to come out, I'd rather The Planet would have it than any, other paper. It's got some sense. No; print it. It'll be a big beat for your paper. While you are about it—I s'pose you'll print it anyway?" (the reporter nodded)—"you might as well have the whole story."
"Certainly. We'd like to have it right. What is wrong about it?"
"Oh, nothing but some details. You have got it substantially. There's a word or two and a date you are out on, naturally enough, and there are two or three little things that would be exactly true if they were differently stated."
"Would you mind telling me what they are?"
"No," said Jerry, with a little reluctance; "might as well have it all out—eh, Henderson?"
And the old man took his pencil and changed some dates and a name or two, and gave to some of the sentences a turn that seemed to the reporter only another way of saying the same thing.
"There, that is all I know. Give my respects to Mr. Goss."
When the commissioner had withdrawn, Uncle Jerry gave vent to a long whistle. Then he rose suddenly and called to the secretary, "Tell that reporter to come back." The reporter reappeared.
"I was just thinking, and you can tell Mr. Goss, that now you have got onto this thing, you might as well keep the lead on it. The public is interested in what we are doing in the Southwest, and if you, or some other bright fellow who has got eyes in his head, will go down there, he will see something that will astonish him. I'm going tomorrow in my private car, and if you could go along, I assure you a good time. I want you to see for yourself, and I guess you would. Don't take my word. I can't give you any passes, and I know you don't want any, but you can just get into my private car and no expense to anybody, and see all there is to be seen. Ask Goss, and let me know tonight."
The young fellow went off feeling several inches higher than when he came in. Such is the power of a good address, and such is the omnipotence of the great organ. Mr. Jerry Hollowell sat down and began to fan himself. It was very hot in the office.
"Seems to me it's lunch-time. Great Scott! what a lot of time I used to waste fighting the newspapers! That thing would have played the devil as it stood. It will be comparatively harmless now. It will make a little talk, but there is nothing to get hold of. Queer, about the difference of a word or two. Come, old man, I'm thirsty."
"Uncle Jerry," said Henderson, taking his arm as they went out, "you ought to be President of the United States."
"The salary is too small," said Uncle Jerry.
Of all this there was nothing to write to Margaret, who was passing her time agreeably in the Berkshire hills, a little impatient for her husband's arrival, postponed from day to day, and full of sympathy for him, condemned to the hot city and the harassment of a business the magnitude of which gave him the obligations and the character of a public man. Henderson sent her instead a column from The Planet devoted to a description of his private library. Mr. Goss, the editor, who was college bred, had been round to talk with Henderson about the Southwest trip, and the conversation drifting into other matters, Henderson had taken from his desk and shown him a rare old book which he had picked up the day before in a second-hand shop. This led to further talk about Henderson's hobby, and the editor had asked permission to send a reporter down to make a note of Henderson's collection. It would make a good midsummer item, "The Stock-Broker in Literature," "The Private Tastes of a Millionaire," etc. The column got condensed into a portable paragraph, and went the rounds of the press, and changed the opinions of a good many people about the great operator—he wasn't altogether devoted to vulgar moneymaking. Uncle Jerry himself read the column with appreciation of its value. "It diverts the public mind," he said. He himself had recently diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the Norembega Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the fact conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer, his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerry who are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs tacked on to the item.
Margaret was not alone in finding the social atmosphere of Lenox as congenial as its natural beauties. Mrs. Laflamme declared that it was the perfection of existence for a couple of months, one in early summer and another in the golden autumn with its pathetic note of the falling curtain dropping upon the dream of youth. Mrs. Laflamme was not a sentimental person, but she was capable of drifting for a moment into a poetic mood—a great charm in a woman of her vivacity and air of the world. Margaret remembered her very distinctly, although she had only exchanged a word with her at the memorable dinner in New York when Henderson had revealed her feelings to herself. Mrs. Laflamme had the immense advantage—it seemed so to her after five years of widowhood of being a widow on the sunny side of thirty-five. If she had lost some illusions she had gained a great deal of knowledge, and she had no feverish anxiety about what life would bring her. Although she would not put it in this way to herself, she could look about her deliberately, enjoying the prospect, and please herself. Her position had two advantages—experience and opportunity. A young woman unmarried, she said, always has the uneasy sense of the possibility—well, it is impossible to escape slang, and she said it with the merriest laugh—the possibility of being left. A day or two after Margaret's arrival she had driven around to call in her dog-cart, looking as fresh as a daisy in her sunhat. She held the reins, but her seat was shared by Mr. Fox McNaughton, the most useful man in the village, indispensable indeed; a bachelor, with no intentions, no occupation, no ambition (except to lead the german), who could mix a salad, brew a punch, organize a picnic, and chaperon anything in petticoats with entire propriety, without regard to age. And he had a position of social authority. This eminence Mr. Fox McNaughton had attained by always doing the correct thing. The obligation of society to such men is never enough acknowledged. While they are trusted and used, and worked to death, one is apt to hear them spoken of in a deprecatory tone.
"You hold the reins a moment, please. No, I don't want any help," she said, as she jumped down with an elastic spring, and introduced him to Margaret. "I've got Mr. McNaughton in training, and am thinking of bringing him out."
She walked in with Margaret, chatting about the view and the house and the divine weather.
"And your husband has not come yet?"
"He may come any day. I think business might suspend in the summer."
"So do I. But then, what would become of Lenox? It is rather hard on the men, only I dare say they like it. Don't you think Mr. Henderson would like a place here?"
"He cannot help being pleased with Lenox."
"I'm sure he would if you are. I have hardly seen him since that evening at the Stotts'. Can I tell you?—I almost had five minutes of envy that evening. You won't mind it in such an old woman?"
"I should rather trust your heart than your age, Mrs. Laflamme," saidMargaret, with a laugh.
"Yes, my heart is as old as my face. But I had a feeling, seeing you walk away that evening into the conservatory. I knew what was coming. I think I have discovered a great secret, Mrs. Henderson to be able to live over again in other people. By-the-way, what has become of that quiet Englishman, Mr. Lyon?"
"He has come into his title. He is the Earl of Chisholm."
"Dear me, how stupid in us not to have taken a sense of that! And theEschelles—do you know anything of the Eschelles?"