Do you suppose that Henderson had never spoken impatiently and sharply to his wife before, that Margaret had never resented it and replied with spirit, and been hurt and grieved, and that there had never been reconciliations? In writing any biography there are some things that are taken for granted with an intelligent public. Are men always gentle and considerate, and women always even-tempered and consistent, simply by virtue of a few words said to the priest?
But this was a more serious affair. Margaret waited in a tumult of emotion. She felt that she would die if she did not see him soon, and she dreaded his coming. A horrible suspicion had entered her mind that respect for her husband, confidence in him, might be lowered, and a more horrible doubt that she might lose his love. That she could not bear. And was Henderson unconscious of all this? I dare say that in the perplexing excitement of the day he did recall for a moment with a keen thrust of regret the scene of the morning-his wife standing there flushed, wounded, indignant. "I might have turned back, and taken her in my arms, and told her it was all right," he thought. He wished he had done so. But what nonsense it was to think that she could be seriously troubled! Besides, he couldn't have women interfering with him every moment.
How inconsiderate men are! They drop a word or a phrase—they do not know how cruel it is—or give a look—they do not know how cold it is—and are gone without a second thought about it; but it sinks into the woman's heart and rankles there. For the instant it is like a mortal blow, it hurts so, and in the brooding spirit it is exaggerated into a hopeless disaster. The wound will heal with a kind word, with kisses. Yes, but never, never without a little scar. But woe to the woman's love when she becomes insensible to these little stabs!
Henderson hurried home, then, more eagerly than usual, with reparation in his heart, but still with no conception of the seriousness of the breach. Margaret heard the key in the door, heard his hasty step in the hall, heard him call, as he always did on entering, "Margaret! where is Margaret?" and she, sitting there in the deep window looking on the square, longed to run to him, as usual also, and be lifted up in his strong arms; but she could not stir. Only when he found her did she rise up with a wistful look and a faint smile. "Have you had a good day, child?" And he kissed her. But her kiss was on her lips only, for her heart was heavy.
"Dinner will be served as soon as you dress," she said. What a greeting was this! Who says that a woman cannot be as cruel as a man? The dinner was not very cheerful, though Margaret did her best not to appear constrained, and Henderson rattled on about the events of the day. It had been a deuce of a day, but it was coming right; he felt sure that the upper court would dissolve the injunction; the best counsel said so; and the criminal proceedings—"Had there been criminal proceedings?" asked Margaret, with a stricture at her heart—had broken down completely, hadn't a leg to stand on, never had, were only begun to bluff the company. It was a purely malicious prosecution. And Henderson did not think it necessary to tell Margaret that only Uncle Jerry's dexterity had spared both of them the experience of a night in the Ludlow Street jail.
"Come," said Henderson—"come into the library. I have something to tell you." He put his arm round her as they walked, and seating himself in his chair by his desk in front of the fire, he tried to draw Margaret to sit on his knee.
"No; I'll sit here, so that I can see you," she said, composed and unyielding.
He took out his pocket-book, selected a slip of paper, and laid it on the table before him. "There, that is a check for seven hundred dollars. I looked in the books. That is the interest for a year on the Fletcher bonds. Might as well make it an even year; it will be that soon."
"Do you mean to say—" asked Margaret, leaning forward.
"Yes; to brighten up the Christmas up there a little."
"—that you are going to send that to Mrs. Fletcher?" Margaret had risen.
"Oh, no; that wouldn't do. I cannot send it, nor know anything about it. It would raise the—well, it would—if the other bondholders knew anything about it. But you can change that for your check, and nobody the wiser."
"Oh, Rodney!" She was on his knee now. He was good, after all. Her head was on his shoulder, and she was crying a little. "I've been so unhappy, so unhappy, all day! And I can send that?" She sprang up. "I'll do it this minute—I'll run and get my check-book!" But before she reached the door she turned back, and came and stood by him and kissed him again and again, and tumbled up his hair, and looked at him. There is, after all, nothing in the world like a woman.
"Time enough in the morning," said Henderson, detaining her. "I want to tell you all about it."
What he told her was, in fact, the case as it had been presented by his lawyers, and it seemed a very large, a constitutional, kind of case. "Of course," he said, "in the rivalry and competition of business somebody must go to the wall, and in a great scheme of development and reorganization of the transportation of a region as big as an empire some individual interests will suffer. You can't help these changes. I'm sorry for some of them—very sorry; but nothing would ever be done if we waited to consider every little interest. And that the men who create these great works, and organize these schemes for the benefit of the whole public, shouldn't make anything by their superior enterprise and courage is all nonsense. The world is not made that way."
The explanation, I am bound to say, was one that half the world considers valid; it was one that squeezed through the courts. And when it was done, and the whole thing had blown over, who cared? There were some bondholders who said that it was rascally, that they had been boldly swindled. In the clubs, long after, you would hear it said that Hollowell and Henderson were awfully sharp, and hard to beat. It is a very bad business, said the Brandon parliament, and it just shows that the whole country is losing its moral sense, its capacity to judge what is right and what is wrong.
I do not say that this explanation, the nature of which I have only indicated, would have satisfied the clear mind of Margaret a year or two before. But it was made by the man she loved, the man who had brought her out into a world that was full of sunlight and prosperity and satisfied desire; and more and more, day by day, she saw the world through his eyes, and accepted his estimate of the motives of people—and a low estimate I fear it was. Who would not be rich if he could? Do you mean to tell me that a man who is getting fat dividends out of a stock does not regard more leniently the manner in which that stock is manipulated than one who does not own any of it? I dare say, if Carmen had heard that explanation, and seen Margaret's tearful, happy acceptance of it, she would have shaken her pretty head and said, "They are getting too worldly for me."
In the morning the letter was despatched to Miss Forsythe, enclosing the check for Mrs. Fletcher—a joyful note, full of affection. "We cannot come," Margaret wrote. "My husband cannot leave, and he does not want to spare me"—the little hypocrite! he had told her that she could easily go for a day "but we shall think of you dear ones all day, and I do hope that now there will not be the least cloud on your Christmas."
It seems a great pity, in view of the scientific organization of society, that there are so many sensibilities unclassified and unprovided for in the otherwise perfect machinery. Why should the beggar to whom you toss a silver dollar from your carriage feel a little grudge against you? Perhaps he wouldn't like to earn the dollar, but if it had been accompanied by a word of sympathy, his sensibility might have been soothed by your recognition of human partnership in the goods of this world. People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of right; but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill to swallow until self-respect is a little broken down. Probably the resentment lies in the recognition of the truth that it is much easier to be charitable than to be just. If Margaret had seen the effect produced by her letter she might have thought of this; she might have gone further, and reflected upon what would have been her own state of mind two years earlier if she had received such a letter. Miss Forsythe read it with a very heavy heart. She hesitated about showing it to Mrs. Fletcher, and when she did, and gave her the check, it was with a sense of shame.
"The insolence of the thing!" cried Mrs. Fletcher, as soon as she comprehended it.
"Not insolence," pleaded Miss Forsythe, softly; "it is out of the kindness of her heart. She would be dreadfully wounded to know that you took it so."
"Well," said Mrs. Fletcher, hotly, "I like that kind of sensibility. Does she think I have no feeling? Does she think I would take from her as a charity what her husband knows is mine by right?"
"Perhaps her husband—"
"No," Mrs. Fletcher interrupted. "Why didn't he send it, then? why didn't the company send it? They owe it. I'm not a pauper. And all the other bondholders who need the money as much as I do! I'm not saying that if the company sent it I should refuse it because the others had been treated unjustly; but to take it as a favor, like a beggar!"
"Of course you cannot take it from Margaret," said Miss Forsythe sadly.
"How dreadful it is!"
Mrs. Fletcher would have shared her last crust with Miss Forsythe, and if her own fortune were absolutely lost, she would not hesitate to accept the shelter of her present home, using her energies to add to their limited income, serving and being served in all love and trust. But this is different from taking a bounty from the rich.
The check had to go back. Even my wife, who saw no insolence in Margaret's attempt, applauded Mrs. Fletcher's spirit. She told Miss Forsythe that if things did not mend they might get a few little pupils for Mrs. Fletcher from the neighborhood, and Miss Forsythe knew that she was thinking that her own boy might have been one of them if he had lived. Mr. Morgan was a little satirical, as usual. He thought it would be a pity to check Margaret's growing notion that there was no wrong that money could not heal a remark that my wife thought unjust to the girl. Mrs. Fletcher was for re-enclosing the check without a word of comment, but that Miss Forsythe would not do.
"My dearest Margaret," she wrote, "I know the kindness of heart that moved you to do this, and I love you more than ever, and am crying as I think of it. But you must see yourself, when you reflect, that Mrs. Fletcher could not take this from you. Her self-respect would not permit it. Somebody has done a great wrong, and only those who have done it can undo it. I don't know much about such things, my dear, and I don't believe all that the newspapers have been saying, but there would be no need for charity if there had not been dishonesty somewhere. I cannot help thinking that. We do not blame you. And you must not take it to heart that I am compelled to send this back. I understand why you sent it, and you must try to understand why it cannot be kept."
There was more of this sort in the letter. It was full of a kind of sorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret's love were slipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet it had in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinster could not conceal. Softened as it was by affectionate words, and all the loving messages of the season, it was like a slap in the face to Margaret. She read it in the first place with intense mortification, and then with indignation. This was the way her loving spirit was flung back upon her! They did not blame her! They blamed her husband, then. They condemned him. It was his generosity that was spurned.
Is there a particular moment when we choose our path in life, when we take the right or the left? At this instant, when Margaret arose with the crumpled letter in her hand, and marched towards her husband's library, did she choose, or had she been choosing for the two years past, and was this only a publication of her election? Why had she secretly been a little relieved from restraint when her Brandon visit ended in the spring? They were against her husband; they disapproved of him, that was clear. Was it not a wife's duty to stand by her husband? She was indignant with the Brandon scrupulousness; it chafed her.. Was this simply because she loved her husband, or was this indignation a little due also to her liking for the world which so fell in with her inclinations? The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossible wholly to condemn or wholly to approve. If Margaret's destiny had been united with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernment in such a case as this? It is such a pity that for most people there is only one chance in life.
She laid the letter and the check upon her husband's desk. He read it with a slight frown, which changed to a smile of amusement as he looked up and saw Margaret's excitement.
"Well, it was a miss-go. Those folks up there are too good for this world. You'd better send it to the hospital."
"But you see that they say they do not blame me," Margaret said, with warmth.
"Oh, I can stand it. People usually don't try to hurt my feelings that way. Don't mind it, child. They will come to their senses, and see what nonsense it all is."
Yes, it was nonsense. And how generous and kind at heart her husband was! In his skillful making little of it she was very much comforted, and at the same time drawn into more perfect sympathy with him. She was glad she was not going to Brandon for Christmas; she would not submit herself to its censorship. The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her aunt was short and almost formal. She was very sorry they looked at the matter in that way. She thought she was doing right, and they might blame her or not, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any distinction to be set up between her and her husband, etc.
Was this little note a severance of her present from her old life? I do not suppose she regarded it so. If she had fully realized that it was a step in that direction, would she have penned it with so little regret as she felt? Or did she think that circumstances and not her own choice were responsible for her state of feeling? She was mortified, as has been said, but she wrote with more indignation than pain.
A year ago Carmen would have been the last person to whom Margaret would have spoken about a family affair of this kind. Nor would she have done so now, notwithstanding the intimacy established at Newport, if Carmen had not happened in that day, when Margaret was still hurt and excited, and skillfully and most sympathetically extracted from her the cause of the mood she found her in. But even with all these allowances, that Margaret should confide such a matter to Carmen was the most startling sign of the change that had taken place in her.
"Well," said this wise person, after she had wormed out the whole story, and expressed her profound sympathy, and then fallen into an attitude of deep reflection—"well, I wish I could cast my bread upon the waters in that way. What are you going to do with the money?"
"I've sent it to the hospital."
"What extravagance! And did you tell your aunt that?"
"Of course not."
"Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making her feel bad."
"But I don't want to make her feel bad."
"Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldly this way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that."
"You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike," cried Margaret, laughing in spite of herself—"both of you as bad as you can be."
"But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?" asked Carmen, innocently.
To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise, though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with Miss Forsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone filled her with alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did not dare to face.
There was a passage in the letter which she did not show; not that it was unfeeling, she told my wife afterwards, but that it exhibited a worldly-mindedness that she could not have conceived of in Margaret. She could bear separation from the girl on whom she had bestowed her tenderest affection, that she had schooled herself to expect upon her marriage—that, indeed, was only a part of her life of willing self-sacrifice—their paths must lie apart, and she could hope to see little of her. But what she could not bear was the separation in spirit, the wrenching apart of sympathy, the loss of her heart, and the thought of her going farther and farther away into that world whose cynical and materialistic view of life made her shudder. I think there are few tragedies in life comparable to this to a sensitive, trusting soul—not death itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos. Family quarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrong and even indignation to keep up the spirits. There was no family quarrel here, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss. In one sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended, she had lived so in this girl—ever since she came to her a child, in long curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous, affectionate thing. These two then never had had any secrets, never any pleasure, never any griefs they did not share. She had seen the child's mind unfold, the girl's grace and intelligence, the woman's character. Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!
Margaret's little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her, much in the condition she had left it. She might come back at any time, and be a girl again. Here were many of the things which she had cherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of her maidenhood. It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness the morning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslin curtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills. She must be here; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the little Margaret came back to her. Ah, and when she turned, would she hear the quick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangled hair and lift her up and kiss her? There in that closet still hung articles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she became a woman—kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift. How each one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the inner closet was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it was that led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge her grief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little bonnet, a spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she took her first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbons were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almost as fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's delight in the nodding roses!
When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. God help her!
The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the patient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from the vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in domestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel would be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while appearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other—a severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the substitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is certain to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to habituate one to a lower view of human nature.
There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. There was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life. Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to be endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the harder to bear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted it, and had moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great compensation for such loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career that is more and more agreeable. And I had to confess, when occasionally I saw Margaret during that winter, that she did not need us. Why should she? Did not the city offer her everything that she desired? And where in the world are beauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a magnificent establishment better appreciated? I do not know what criterion newspaper notoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney Henderson's movements were as faithfully chronicled as if she had been a visiting princess or an actress of eccentric proclivities. Her name appeared as patroness of all the charities, the balls, the soirees, musical and literary, and if it did not appear in a list of the persons at any entertainment, one might suspect that the affair lacked the cachet of the best society. I suppose the final test of one's importance is to have all the details of one's wardrobe spread before the public. Judged by this, Margaret's career in New York was phenomenal. Even our interested household could not follow her in all the changing splendor of her raiment. In time even Miss Forsythe ceased to read all these details, but she cut them out, deposited them with other relics in a sort of mortuary box of the child and the maiden. I used to wonder if, in the Brandon attitude of mind at this period, there were not just a little envy of such unclouded prosperity. It is so much easier to forgive a failure than a success.
In the spring the Hendersons went abroad. The resolution to go may have been sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to run up and say good-by. The newspapers said that the trip was taken on account of Mrs. Henderson's health; that it was because Henderson needed rest from overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time, pending the settlement of certain complications. There were ugly stories afloat, but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many different sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every word Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression of his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immensely raised. Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humored deference of the world to this sort of success. It is said that the attraction of gravitation lessens according to the distance from the earth, and there seems to be a region of aerial freedom, if one can attain it, where the moral forces cease to be operative.
They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interim made two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it was made public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection with names of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity. Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of her experiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went they commanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune. What most impressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so little interested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressed such a lively desire to see. If she saw them at all, it was from a different point of view than that she formerly had. She did indeed express her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours in London, to whom I had written to call on her—people in very moderate circumstances, I am ashamed to say—but she had not time to see much of them. She and her husband had spent a couple of days at Chisholm —delightful days. Of the earl she had literally nothing to say, except that he was very kind, and that his family received them with the most engaging and simple cordiality. "It makes me laugh," she wrote from Chisholm, "when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport. I've got some ideas for our new house." A note came from "John Lyon" to Miss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in so poor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon. I did not see it, but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.
In Paris Margaret was ill—very ill; and this misfortune caused for a time a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with a disappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of their natures. She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all our apprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession of gayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies. They returned in June. Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and there would be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with us on her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life were more and more divergent.
How could it be otherwise? There were so many topics of conversation that we had to avoid. Even light remarks on current news, comments that we used to make freely on the conduct of conspicuous persons, now carried condemnation that took a personal color. The doubtful means of making money, the pace of fashionable life, the wasteful prodigality of the time, we instinctively shrank from speaking of before Margaret. Perhaps we did her injustice. She was never more gracious, never more anxious to please. I fancied that there was at times something pathetic in her wistful desire for our affection and esteem. She was always a generous girl, and I have no doubt she felt repelled at the quiet rejection of her well-meant efforts to play the Lady Bountiful. There were moments during her brief visit when her face was very sad, but no doubt her predominant feeling escaped her in regard to the criticism quoted from somebody on Jerry Hollowell's methods and motives. "People are becoming very self-righteous," she said.
My wife said to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation of Carmen Eschelle, "The people I cannot stand are those who pretend they are not wicked." If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism has usually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up as Margaret had been could not very well come to her present view of life without a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so lovely —perhaps there is no moral quality in a good temper—that change of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very attractiveness of the worldly sort, I fancied, that pained her aunt, and marked the separateness of their sympathies.
How could it be otherwise than that our interests should diverge? It was a very busy summer with the Hendersons. They were planning the New York house, which had been one of the objects of Henderson's early ambition. The sea-air had been prescribed for Margaret, and Henderson had built a steam-yacht, the equipment and furnishing of which had been a prolific newspaper topic. It was greatly admired by yachtsmen for the beauty of its lines and its speed, and pages were written about its sumptuous and comfortable interior. I never saw it, having little faith in the comfort of any structure that is not immovably reposeful, but from the descriptions it was a boudoir afloat. In it short voyages were made during the summer all along the coast from New York to Maine, and the arrival and departure of the Henderson yacht was one of the telegraphic items we always looked for. Carmen Eschelle was usually of the party on board, sometimes the Misses Arbuser; it was always a gay company, and in whatever harbor it dropped anchor there was a new impetus given to the somewhat languid pleasure of the summer season. We read of the dinners and lunches on board, the entertainments where there were wine and dancing and moonlight, and all that. I always thought of it as a fairy sort of ship, sailing on summer seas, freighted with youth and beauty, and carrying pleasure and good-fortune wherever it went. What more pleasing spectacle than this in a world that has such a bad name for want and misery?
Henderson was master of the situation. The sudden accumulation of millions of money is a mystery to most people. If Henderson had been asked about it he would have said that he had not a dollar which he had not earned by hard work. None worked harder. If simple industry is a virtue, he would have been an example for Sunday-school children. The object of life being to make money, he would have been a perfect example. What an inspiration, indeed, for all poor boys were the names of Hollowell and Henderson, which were as familiar as the name of the President! There was much speculation as to the amount of Henderson's fortune, and many wild estimates of it, but by common consent he was one of the three or four great capitalists. The gauge of this was his power, and the amounts he could command in an emergency. There was a mystery in the very fact that the amount he could command was unknown. I have said that his accumulation was sudden; it was probably so only in appearance. For a dozen years, by operations, various, secret, untiring, he had been laying the foundations for his success, and in the maturing of his schemes it became apparent how vast his transactions had been. For years he had been known as a rising man, and suddenly he became an important man. The telegraph, the newspapers, chronicled his every movement; whatever he said was construed like a Delphic oracle. The smile or the frown of Jay Hawker himself had not a greater effect upon the market. The Southwest operation, which made so much noise in the courts, was merely an incident. In the lives of many successful men there are such incidents, which they do not care to have inquired into, turning-points that one slides over in the subsequent gilded biography, or, as it is called, the nickel-plated biography. The uncomfortable A. and B. bondholders had been settled with and silenced, after a fashion. In the end, Mrs. Fletcher had received from the company nearly the full amount of her investment. I always thought this was due to Margaret, but I made no inquiries. There were many people who had no confidence in Henderson, but generally his popularity was not much affected, and whatever was said of him in private, his social position was almost as unchallenged as his financial. It was a great point in his favor that he was very generous to his family and his friends, and his public charities began to be talked of. Nothing could have been more admirable than a paper which appeared about this time in one of the leading magazines, written by a great capitalist during a strike in his "system," off the uses of wealth and the responsibilities of rich men. It amused Henderson and Uncle Jerry, and Margaret sent it, marked, to her aunt. Uncle Jerry said it was very timely, for at the moment there was a report that Hollowell and Henderson had obtained possession of one of the great steamship lines in connection with their trans-continental system. I thought at the time that I should like to have heard Carmen's comments on the paper.
The continued friendly alliance of Rodney Henderson and Jerry Hollowell was a marvel to the public, which expected to read any morning that the one had sold out the other, or unloaded in a sly deal. The Stock Exchange couldn't understand it; it was so against all experience that it was considered something outside of human nature. But the explanation was simple enough. The two kept a sharp eye on each other, and, as Uncle Jerry would say, never dropped a stitch; but the simple fact was that they were necessary to each other, and there had been no opportunity when the one could handsomely swallow the other. So it was beautiful to see their accord, and the familiar understanding between them.
One day in Henderson's office—it was at the time they were arranging the steamship "scoop" while they were waiting for the drafting of some papers, Uncle Jerry suddenly asked:
"By the way, old man, what's all this about a quarter of a million for a colored college down South?"
"Oh, that's Mrs. Henderson's affair. They say it's the most magnificent college building south of Washington. It's big enough. I've seen the plan of it. Henderson Hall, they are going to call it. I suggested Margaret Henderson Hall, but she wouldn't have it."
"What is it for?"
"One end of it is scientific, geological, chemical, electric, biological, and all that; and the other end is theological. Miss Eschelle says it's to reconcile science and religion."
"She's a daisy-that girl. Seems to me, though, that you are educating the colored brother all on top. I suppose, however, it wouldn't have been so philanthropic to build a hall for a white college."
Henderson laughed. "You keep your eye on the religious sentiment of theNorth, Uncle Jerry. I told Mrs. Henderson that we had gone long on thecolored brother a good while. She said this was nothing. We could endow aHenderson University by-and-by in the Southwest, white as alabaster, andI suppose we shall."
"Yes, probably we've got to do something in that region to keep 'em quiet. The public is a curious fish. It wants plenty of bait."
"And something to talk about," continued Henderson. "We are going down next week to dedicate Henderson Hall. I couldn't get out of it."
"Oh, it will pay," said Uncle Jerry, as he turned again to business.
The trip was made in Henderson's private car; in fact, in a special train, vestibuled; a neat baggage car with library and reading-room in one end, a dining-room car, a private car for invited guests, and his own car—a luxurious structure, with drawing-room, sleeping-room, bath-room, and office for his telegrapher and type-writer. The whole was a most commodious house of one story on wheels. The cost of it would have built and furnished an industrial school and workshop for a hundred negroes; but this train was, I dare say, a much more inspiring example of what they might attain by the higher education. There were half a dozen in the party besides the Hendersons—Carmen, of course; Mr. Ponsonby, the English attache; and Mrs. Laflamme, to matronize three New York young ladies. Margaret and Carmen had never been so far South before.
Is it not agreeable to have sweet charity silver shod? This sumptuous special train caused as much comment as the errand on which it went. Its coming was telegraphed from station to station, and crowds everywhere collected to see it. Brisk reporters boarded it; the newspapers devoted columns to descriptions of it; editorials glorified it as a signal example of the progress of the great republic, or moralized on it as a sign of the luxurious decadence of morals; pointing to Carthage and Rome and Alexandria in withering sarcasm that made those places sink into insignificance as corrupters of the world. There were covert allusions to Cleopatra ensconced in the silken hangings of the boudoir car, and one reporter went so far as to refer to the luxury of Capua and Baiae, to their disparagement. All this, however, was felt to add to the glory of the republic, and it all increased the importance of Henderson. To hear the exclamations, "That's he!" "That's him!" "That's Henderson!" was to Margaret in some degree a realization of her ambition; and Carmen declared that it was for her a sweet thought to be identified with Cleopatra.
So the Catachoobee University had its splendid new building—as great a contrast to the shanties from which its pupils came as is the Capitol at Washington to the huts of a third of its population. If the reader is curious he may read in the local newspapers of the time glowing accounts of its "inaugural dedication"; but universities are so common in this country that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies of this sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy on himself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundred young men and women of various colors and invited guests—a eulogy which no one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that she refused to take the affair seriously.
"I felt for you, Mr. Henderson,"; she said, after the exercises were over. "I blushed for you. I almost felt ashamed, after all the president said, that you had given so little."
"You seem, Miss Eschelle," remarked Mr. Ponsonby, "to be enthusiastic about the education and elevation of the colored people."
"Yes, I am; I quite share Mr. Henderson's feeling about it. I'm for the elevation of everything."
"There is a capital chance for you," said Henderson; "the university wants some scholarships."
"And I've half a mind to found one—the Eschelle Scholarship of Washing and Clear-starching. You ought to have seen my clothes that came back to the car. Probably they were not done by your students. The things looked as if they had been dragged through the Cat-a-what-do-you-call-it River, and ironed with a pine chip."
"Could you do them any better, with all your cultivation?" askedMargaret.
"I think I could, if I was obliged to. But I couldn't get through that university, with all its ologies and laboratories and Greek and queer bottles and machines. You have neglected my education, Mr. Henderson."
"It is not too late to begin now; you might see if you could pass the examination here. It is part of our plan gradually to elevate the whites," said Henderson.
"Yes, I know; and did you see that some of the scholars had red hair and blue eyes, quite in the present style? And how nice the girls looked," she rattled on; "and what a lot of intelligent faces, and how they kindled up when the president talked about the children of Israel in the wilderness forty years, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon! And you, sir" —she turned to the Englishman—"I've heard, were against all this emancipation during the war."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Ponsonby, "we never were against emancipation, and wanted the best side to win."
"You had a mighty queer way of showing it, then."
"Well, honestly, Miss Eschelle, do you think the negroes are any better off?"
"You'd better ask them. My opinion is that everybody should do what he likes in this world."
"Then what are you girding Mr. Henderson for about his university?"
"Because these philanthropists, like Mr. Henderson and Uncle Jerry Hollowell, are all building on top; putting on the frosting before the cake rises."
"Haven't you found out, Mr. Ponsonby," Margaret interrupted, "that if there were eight sides to a question, Miss Eschelle would be on every one of them?"
"And right, too. There are eight sides to every question, and generally more. I think the negro question has a hundred. But there is only one side to Henderson Hall. It is a noble institution. I like to think about it, and Uncle Caesar Hollowell crossing the Rubicon in his theological seminary. It is all so beautiful!"
"You are a bad child," said Margaret. "We should have left you at home."
"No, not bad, dear; only confused with such a lot of good deeds in a naughty world."
That this junketing party was deeply interested in the cause of education for whites or blacks, no one would have gathered from the conversation. Margaret felt that Carmen had exactly hit the motives of this sort of philanthropy, and she was both amused and provoked by the girl's mockery. By force of old habit she defended, as well she might, these schools.
"You must have a high standard," she said. "You cannot have good lower schools without good higher schools. And these colleges, which you think above the colored people, will stimulate them and gradually raise the whole mass. You cannot do anything until you educate teachers."
"So I have always heard," replied the incorrigible. "I have always been a philanthropist about the negro till I came down here, and I intend to be again when I go back."
Mrs. Laflamme was not a very eager apostle either, and the young ladies devoted themselves to the picturesque aspects of the population, without any concern for the moral problems. They all declared that they liked the negro. But Margaret was not to be moved from her good-humor by any amount of badgering. She liked Henderson Hall; she was proud of the consideration it brought her husband; she had a comfortable sense of doing something that was demanded by her opportunity. It is so difficult to analyze motives, and in Margaret's case so hard to define the change that had taken place in her. That her heart was not enlisted in this affair, as it would have been a few years before, she herself knew. Insensibly she had come to look at the world, at men and women, through her husband's eyes, to take the worldly view, which is not inconsistent with much good feeling and easy-going charity. She also felt the necessity—a necessity totally unknown to such a nature as Carmen's—of making compensation, of compounding for her pleasures. Gradually she was learning to play her husband's game in life, and to see no harm in it. What, then, is this thing we call conscience? Is it made of India-rubber? I once knew a clever Southern woman, who said that New England women seemed to her all conscience—Southern women all soul and impulse. If it were possible to generalize in this way, we might say that Carmen had neither conscience nor soul, simply very clever reason. Uncle Jerry had no more conscience than Carmen, but he had a great deal of natural affection. Henderson, with an abundance of good-nature, was simply a man of his time, troubled with no scruples that stood in the way of his success. Margaret, with a finer nature than either of them, stifling her scruples in an atmosphere of worldly-mindedness, was likely to go further than either of them. Even such a worldling as Carmen understood this. "I do things," she said to Mrs. Laflamme—she made anybody her confidant when the fit was on her—"I do things because I don't care. Mrs. Henderson does the same, but she does care."
Margaret would be a sadder woman, but not a better woman, when the time came that she did not care. She had come to the point of accepting Henderson's methods of overreaching the world, and was tempering the result with private liberality. Those were hypocrites who criticised him; those were envious who disparaged him; the sufficient ethics of the world she lived in was to be successful and be agreeable. And it is difficult to condemn a person who goes with the general opinion of his generation. Carmen was under no illusions about Henderson, or the methods and manners of which she was a part. "Why pretend?" she said. "We are all bad together, and I like it. Uncle Jerry is the easiest person to get on with." I remember a delightful, wicked old baroness whom I met in my youth stranded in Geneva on short allowance—European resorts are full of such characters. "My dear," she said, "why shouldn't I renege? Why shouldn't men cheat at cards? It's all in the game. Don't we all know we are trying to deceive each other and get the best of each other? I stopped pretending after Waterloo. Fighting for the peace of Europe! Bah! We are all fighting for what we can get."
So the Catachoobee Henderson Hall was dedicated, and Mr. Henderson got great credit out of it.
"It's a noble deed, Mr. Henderson," Carmen remarked, when they were at dinner on the car the day of their departure. "But"—in an aside to her host—"I advise the lambs in Wall Street to look alive at your next deal."
We can get used to anything. Morgan says that even the New England summer is endurable when you learn to dress warmly enough. We come to endure pain and loss with equanimity; one thing and another drops out of our lives-youth, for instance, and sometimes enthusiasm—and still we go on with a good degree of enjoyment. I do not say that Miss Forsythe was quite the same, or that a certain zest of life and spring had not gone out of the little Brandon neighborhood.
As the months and the years went by we saw less and less of Margaret —less and less, that is, in the old way. Her rare visits were perfunctory, and gave little satisfaction to any of us; not that she was ungracious or unkindly, but simply because the things we valued in life were not the same. There was no doubt that any of us were welcome at the Hendersons' when they were in the city, genuinely, though in an exterior way, but gradually we almost ceased to keep up an intercourse which was a little effort on both sides. Miss Forsythe came back from her infrequent city visits weary and sad.
Was Margaret content? I suppose so. She was gay; she was admired; she was always on view in that semi-public world in which Henderson moved; she attained a newspaper notoriety which many people envied. If she journeyed anywhere, if she tarried anywhere, if she had a slight illness, the fact was a matter of public concern. We knew where she worshiped; we knew the houses she frequented, the charities she patronized, the fetes she adorned, every new costume that her wearing made the fashion. Was she content? She could perhaps express no desire that an attempt was not made to gratify it. But it seems impossible to get enough things enough money, enough pleasure. They had a magnificent place in Newport; it was not large enough; they were always adding to it—awning, a ballroom, some architectural whim or another. Margaret had a fancy for a cottage at Bar Harbor, but they rarely went there. They had an interest in Tuxedo; they belonged to an exclusive club on Jekyl Island. They passed one winter yachting among the islands in the eastern Mediterranean; a part of another sailing from one tropical paradise to another in the West Indies. If there was anything that money could not obtain, it seemed to be a place where they could rest in serene peace with themselves.
I used to wonder whether Margaret was satisfied with her husband's reputation. Perhaps she mistook the newspaper homage, the notoriety, for public respect. She saw his influence and his power. She saw that he was feared, and of course hated, by some—the unsuccessful—but she saw the terms he was on with his intimates, due to the fact that everybody admitted that whatever Henderson was in "a deal," privately he was a deuced good fellow.
Was this an ideal married life? Henderson's selfishness was fully developed, and I could see that he was growing more and more hard. Would Margaret not have felt it, if she also had not been growing hard, and accustomed to regard the world in his unbelieving way? No, there was sharpness occasionally between them, tiffs and disagreements. He was a great deal away from home, and she plunged into a life of her own, which had all the external signs of enjoyment. I doubt if he was ever very selfish where she was concerned, and love can forgive almost any conduct where there is personal indulgence. I had a glimpse of the real state of things in a roundabout way. Henderson loved his wife and was proud of her, and he was not unkind, but he might have been a brute and tied her up to the bedpost, and she never would have shown by the least sign to the world that she was not the most happy of wives.
When the Earl of Chisholm was in this country it was four years after Margaret's marriage—we naturally saw a great deal of him. The young fellow whom we liked so much had become a man, with a graver demeanor, and I thought a trace of permanent sadness in his face; perhaps it was only the responsibility of his position, or, as Morgan said, the modern weight that must press upon an earl who is conscientious. He was still unmarried. The friendship between him and Miss Forsythe, which had been kept alive by occasional correspondence, became more cordial and confidential. In New York he had seen much of Margaret, not at all to his peace of mind in many ways, though the generous fellow would have been less hurt if he had not estimated at its real value the life she was leading. It did not need Margaret's introduction for the earl to be sought for by the novelty and pleasure loving society of the city; but he got, as he confessed, small satisfaction out of the whirl of it, although we knew that he met Mrs. Henderson everywhere, and in a manner assisted in her social triumphs. But he renewed his acquaintance with Miss Eschelle, and it was the prattle of this ingenuous creature that made him more heavy-hearted than anything else.
"How nice it is of you, Mr. Lyon—may I call you so, to bring back the old relations?—to come here and revive the memory of the dear old days when we were all innocent and happy! Dear me, I used to think I could patronize that little country girl from Brandon! I was so worldly—don't you remember?—and she was so good. And now she is such a splendid woman, it is difficult for the rest of us to keep pace with her. The nerve she has, and the things she will do! I just envy her. I sometimes think she will drive me into a convent. And don't you think she is more beautiful than ever? Of course her face is a little careworn, but nobody makes up as she does; she was just ravishing the other night. Do you know, I think she takes her husband too seriously."
"I trust she is happy," the earl had said.
"Why shouldn't she be?" Carmen asked in return. "She has everything she wants. They both have a little temper; life would be flat without that; she is a little irritable sometimes; she didn't use to be; and when they don't agree they let each other alone for a little. I think she is as happy as anybody can be who is married. Now you are shocked! Well, I don't know any one who is more in love than she is, and that may be happiness. She is becoming exactly like Mr. Henderson. You couldn't ask anything more than that."
If Margaret were really happy, the earl told Miss Forsythe, he was glad, but it was scarcely the career he would have thought would have suited her.
Meantime, the great house was approaching completion. Henderson's palace, in the upper part of the city, had long been a topic for the correspondents of the country press. It occupied half a square. Many critics were discontented with it because it did not occupy the whole square. Everybody was interested in having it the finest residence on the continent. Why didn't Henderson take the whole block of ground, build his palace on three sides, with the offices and stables on the fourth, throw a glass roof over the vast interior court, plant it with tropical trees and plants, adorn it with flower-beds and fountains, and make a veritable winter-garden, giving the inhabitants a temperate climate all the cold months? He might easily have summer in the centre of the city from November to April. These rich people never know what to do with their money. Such a place would give distinction to the city, and compel foreigners to recognize the high civilization of America. A great deal of fault was found with Henderson privately for his parsimony in such a splendid opportunity.
Nevertheless it was already one of the sights of the town. Strangers were taken to see it, as it rose in its simple grandeur. Local reporters made articles on the progress of the interior whenever they could get an entrance. It was not ornate enough to please, generally, but those who admired the old Louvre liked the simplicity of its lines and the dignity of the elevations. They discovered the domestic note in its quiet character, and said that the architect had avoided the look of an "institution" in such a great mass. He was not afraid of dignified wall space, and there was no nervous anxiety manifested, which would have belittled it with trivial ornamentation.
Perhaps it was not an American structure, although one could find in it all the rare woods and stones of the continent. Great numbers of foreign workmen were employed in its finishing and decoration. One could wander in it from Pompeii to Japan, from India to Versailles, from Greece to the England of the Tudors, from the Alhambra to colonial Salem. It was so cosmopolitan that a representative of almost any nationality, ancient or modern, could have been suited in it with an apartment to his taste, and if the interior lacked unity it did not lack a display of variety that appealed to the imagination. From time to time paragraphs appeared in English, French, and Italian journals, regarding the work of this and that famous artist who was designing a set of furniture or furnishing the drawings of a room, or carving the paneling and statuary, or painting the ceiling of an apartment in the great Palazzo Henderson in New York —Washington. The United American Workers (who were half foreigners by birth) passed resolutions denouncing Henderson for employing foreign pauper labor, and organized more than one strike while the house was building. It was very unpatriotic and un-American to have anything done that could not be done by a member of the Union. There was a firm of excellent stone-cutters which offered to make all the statuary needed in the house, and set it up in good shape, and when the offer was declined, it memorialized Congress for protection.
Although Henderson gave what time he could spare to the design and erection of the building, it pleased him to call it Margaret's house, and to see the eagerness with which she entered into its embellishment. There was something humorous in the enlargement of her ideas since the days when she had wondered at the magnificence of the Washington Square home, and modestly protested against its luxury. Her own boudoir was a cheap affair compared with that in the new house.
"Don't you think, dear," she said, puzzling over the drawings, "that it would better be all sandalwood? I hate mosaics. It looks so cheap to have little bits of precious woods stuck about."
"I should think so. But what do you do with the ebony?"
"Oh, the ebony and gold? That is the adjoining sitting-room—such a pretty contrast."
"And the teak?"
"It has such a beautiful polish. That is another room. Carmen says that will be our sober room, where we go when we want to repent of things."
"Well, if you have any sandal-wood left over, you can work it into yourBoys' Lodging-house, you know."
"Don't be foolish! And then the ballroom, ninety feet long—it looks small on the paper. And do you think we'd better have those life-size figures all round, mediaeval statues, with the incandescents? Carmen says she would prefer a row of monks—something piquant about that in a ballroom. I don't know that I like the figures, after all; they are too crushing and heavy."
"It would make a good room for the Common Council," Henderson suggested. "Wouldn't it be prettier hung with silken arras figured with a chain of dancing-girls? Dear me, I don't know what to do. Rodney, you must put your mind on it."
"Might line it with gold plate. I'll make arrangements so that you can draw on the Bank of England."
Margaret looked hurt. "But you told me, dear, not to spare anything —that we would have the finest house in the city. I'm sure I sha'n't enjoy it unless you want it."
"Oh, I want it," resumed Henderson, good-humoredly. "Go ahead, little wife. We shall pull through."
"Women beat me," Henderson confessed to Uncle Jerry next day. "They are the most economical of beings and the most extravagant. I've got to look round for an extra million somewhere today."
"Yes, there is this good thing about women," Uncle Jerry responded, with a twinkle in his eyes, "they share your riches just as cheerfully as they do your poverty. I tell Maria that if I had the capacity for making money that she has for spending it I could assume the national debt."
To have the finest house in the city, or rather, in the American newspaper phrase, in the Western world, was a comprehensible ambition for Henderson, for it was a visible expression of his wealth and his cultivated taste. But why Margaret should wish to exchange her dainty and luxurious home in Washington Square for the care of a vast establishment big enough for a royal court, my wife could not comprehend. But why not? To be the visible leader in her world, to be able to dispense a hospitality which should surpass anything heretofore seen, to be the mistress and autocrat of an army of servants, with ample room for their evolution, in a palace whose dimensions and splendor should awaken envy and astonishment—would this not be an attraction to a woman of imagination and spirit?
Besides, they had outgrown the old house. There was no longer room for the display, scarcely for the storage, of the works of art, the pictures, the curiosities, the books, that unlimited money and the opportunity of foreign travel had collected in all these years. "We must either build or send our things to a warehouse," Henderson had long ago said. Among the obligations of wealth is the obligation of display. People of small means do not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with the accumulation of property. It was only natural that Margaret, who might have been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a country clergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed a world too large for the country girl.
"I don't see how you could do with less room," Carmen said, with an air of profound conviction. They were looking about the house on its last uninhabited day, directing the final disposition of its contents. For Carmen, as well as for Margaret, the decoration and the furnishing of the house had been an occupation. The girl had the whim of playing the part of restrainer and economizer in everything; but Henderson used to say, when Margaret told him of Carmen's suggestions, that a little more of her economy would ruin him.
"Yes," Margaret admitted, "there does not seem to be anything that is not necessary."
"Not a thing. When you think of it, two people require as much space as a dozen; when you go beyond one room, you must go on. Of course you couldn't get on without a reception-room, drawing-rooms, a conservatory, a music-room, a library, a morning-room, a breakfast-room, a small dining-room and a state dining-room, Mr. Henderson's snuggery, with his own library, a billiard-room, a picture-gallery—it is full already; you'll have to extend it or sell some pictures—your own suite and Mr. Henderson's suite, and the guest-rooms, and I forgot the theatre in the attic. I don't see but you have scrimped to the last degree."
"And yet there is room to move about," Margaret acknowledged, with a gratified smile, as they wandered around. "Dear me, I used to think the Stotts' house was a palace."
It was the height of the season before Lent. There had been one delay and another, but at last all the workmen had been expelled, and Margaret was mistress of her house. Cards for the house-warming had been out for two weeks, and the event was near. She was in her own apartments this pale, wintry afternoon, putting the finishing touches to her toilet. Nothing seemed to suit. The maid found her in a very bad humor. "Remember," she had said to her husband, when he ordered his brougham after breakfast, "sharp seven, we are to dine alone the first time." It lacked two hours yet of dinner-time, but she was dressing for want of other occupation.
Was this then the summit of her ambition? She had indeed looked forward to some such moment as this as one of exultation in the satisfaction of all her wishes. She took up a book of apothegms that lay on the table, and opened by chance to this, "Unhappy are they whose desires are all ratified." It was like a sting. Why should she think at this moment of her girlhood; of the ideals indulged in during that quiet time; of her aunt's cheerful, tender, lonely life; of her rejection of Mr. Lyon? She did not love Mr. Lyon; she was not satisfied then. How narrow that little life in Brandon had been! She threw the book from her. She hated all that restraint and censoriousness. If her aunt could see her in all this splendor, she would probably be sadder than ever. What right had she to sit there and mourn—as she knew her aunt did—and sigh over her career? What right had they to sit in judgment on her?
She went out from her room, down the great stairway, into the spacious house, pausing in the great hall to see opening vista after vista in the magnificent apartments. It was the first time that she had alone really taken the full meaning of it—had possessed it with the eye. It was hers. Wherever she went, all hers. No, she had desires yet. It should be filled with life—it should be the most brilliant house in the world. Society should see, should acknowledge the leadership. Yes—as she glanced at herself in a drawing-room mirror—they should see that Henderson's wife was capable of a success equal to his own, and she would stop the hateful gossip about him. She set her foot firmly as she thought about it; she would crush those people who had sneered at them as parvenu. She strayed into the noble gallery. Some face there touched her, some landscape soothed her. No, she said to herself, I will win them, I do not want hateful strife.
Who knows what is in a woman? how many moods in a quarter of an hour, and which is the characteristic one? Was this the Margaret who had walked with Lyon that Sunday afternoon of the baptism, and had a heart full of pain for the pitiful suffering of the world?
As she sat there she grew calmer. Her thoughts went away in a vision of all the social possibilities of this wonderful house. From vaguely admiring what she looked at, she began to be critical; this and that could be changed to advantage; this shade of hanging was not harmonious; this light did not fall right. She smiled to think that her husband thought it all done. How he would laugh to find that she was already planning to rearrange it! Hadn't she been satisfied for almost twenty-four hours? That was a long time for a woman. Then she thought of the reception; of the guests; of what some of them would wear; how they would look about; what they would say. She was already in that world which was so shining and shifting and attractive. She did not hear Henderson come in until his arm was around her.
"Well, sweet, keeping house alone? I've had a jolly day; lucky as old Mr.Luck."
"Have you?" she cried, springing up. "I'm so glad. Come, see the house."
"You look a little pale," he said, as they strolled out to the conservatory together.
"Just a little tired," she admitted. "Do you know, Rodney, I hated this house at five o'clock—positively hated it?"
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know; I was thinking. But I liked it at half-past six. I love it now. I've got used to it, as if I had always lived here. Isn't it beautiful everywhere? But I'm going to make some changes."
"A hanging garden on the roof?" Henderson asked, with meekness.
"That would be nice. No, not now. But to make over and take off the new look. Everything looks so new."
"Well, we will try to live that down."
And so they wandered on, admiring, bantering, planning. Could Etienne Debree have seen his descendant at this moment he would have been more than ever proud of his share in establishing the great republic, and of his appreciation of the promise of its beauty. What satisfies a woman's heart is luxury, thought Henderson, in an admiring cynical moment.
They had come into his own den and library, and he stood looking at the rows of his favorite collection shining in their new home. For all its newness it had a familiar look. He thought for a moment that he might be in his old bachelor quarters. Suddenly Margaret made a rush at him. She shook the great fellow. She feasted her eyes on him.
"What's got into you to look so splendid? Do you hear, go this instant and dress, and make yourself ten times as fascinating."