{0213}
“You can judge the depths we have been in when even the Major couldn't pull us out,” she retorted. “Without him we should have simply died.”
“And it would have been the liveliest obsequies I ever attended.”
Carmen was not effusive in her greeting; she left that role to Miss Tavish, taking for herself that of confidential friend. She was almost retiring in her manner, but she made Jack feel that she had a strong personal interest in his welfare, and she asked a hundred questions about the voyage and about town and about Edith.
“I'm going to chaperon you up here,” she said, “for Miss Tavish will lead you into all sorts of wild adventures.”
There was that in the manner of the demure little woman when she made this proposal that convinced Jack that under her care he would be perfectly safe—from Miss Tavish.
After cigarettes were lighted she contrived to draw Mavick away to the piazza. She was very anxious to know what Henderson's latest moves were. Mavick was very communicative, and told her nothing that he knew she did not already know. And she was clever enough to see, without any apparent distrust, that whatever she got from him must be in what he did not say. As to Jack's speculations, she made little more progress. Jack gave every sign of being prosperous; he entertained royally on his yacht.
Mavick himself was puzzled to know whether Carmen really cared for Jack, or whether she was only interested as in a game, one of the things that amused her life to play, to see how far he would go, and to watch his ascension or his tumble. Mavick would have been surprised if he had known that as a result of this wholly agreeable and confidential talk, Carmen wrote that night in a letter to her husband:
“Your friend Mavick is here. What a very clever man he is! If I were you I would keep an eye on him.”
A dozen plans were started at the tea for relieving the tedium of the daily drives and the regulation teas and receptions. For one thing, weather permitting, they would all breakfast at twelve on the yacht, and then sail about the harbor, and come home in the sunset.
The day was indeed charming, so stimulating as to raise the value of real estate, and incite everybody to go off in search of adventure, in wagons, in walking parties, in boats. There is no happiness like the anticipation of pleasure begot by such a morning. Those who live there said it was regular Bar Harbor weather.
{0217}
Captain Delancy was on deck to receive his guests, who came out in small boats, chattering and fluttering and “ship-ahoying,” as gay in spirits as in apparel. Anything but high spirits and nonsense would be unpardonable on such a morning. Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning, in sight of the mountains, the green islands, the fringe of breaking sea in the distant opening, the shimmer and sparkle of the harbor, the white sails of pleasure-boats, the painted canoes, the schooners and coal-boats and steamers swinging at anchor just enough to make all the scene alive. “This is my idea,” said the Major, “of going to sea in a yacht; it would be perfect if we were tied up at the dock.”
“I move that we throw the Major overboard,” cried Miss Tavish.
“No,” Jack exclaimed; “it is against the law to throw anything into the harbor.”
“Oh, I expected Miss Tavish would throw me overboard when Mavick appeared.”
Mavick raised his glass and proposed the health of Miss Tavish.
“With all my heart,” the Major said; “my life is passed in returning good for evil.”
“I never knew before,” and Miss Tavish bowed her acknowledgments, “the secret of the Major's attractions.”
“Yes,” said Carmen, sweetly, “he is all things to all women.”
“You don't appear to have a friend here, Major,” Mavick suggested.
“No; my friends are all foul-weather friends; come a bright day, they are all off like butterflies. That comes of being constant.”
“That's no distinction,” Carmen exclaimed; “all men are that till they get what they want.”
“Alas! that women also in these days here become cynical! It was not so when I was young. Here's to the ever young,” and he bowed to Carmen and Miss Tavish.
“He's been with Ponce de Leon!” cried Miss Tavish.
“He's the dearest man living, except a few,” echoed Carmen. “The Major's health.”
The yellow wine sparkled in the glasses like the sparkling sea, the wind blew softly from the south, the sails in the bay darkened and flashed, and the breakfast, it seemed to go along of itself, and erelong the convives were eating ambrosia and sipping nectar. Van Dam told a shark story. Mavick demonstrated its innate improbability. The Major sang a song—a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment. Jack, whose cheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sang when he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen and Miss Tavish joined in the chorus.
“I like the sea,” the Major declared. They all liked it. The breakfast lasted a long time, and when they rose from the table Jack said that presently they would take a course round the harbor. The Major remarked that that would suit him. He appeared to be ready to go round the world.
While they were preparing to start, Carmen and Jack strolled away to the bow, where she perched herself, holding on by the rigging. He thought he had never seen her look so pretty as at that moment, in her trim nautical costume, sitting up there, swinging her feet like a girl, and regarding him with half-mocking, half-admiring eyes.
What were they saying? Heaven only knows. What nonsense do people so situated usually talk? Perhaps she was warning him against Miss Tavish. Perhaps she was protesting that Julia Tavish was a very, very old friend. To an observer this admirable woman seemed to be on the defensive—her most alluring attitude. It was not, one could hear, exactly sober talk; there was laughter and raillery and earnestness mingled. It might be said that they were good comrades. Carmen professed to like good comradeship and no nonsense. But she liked to be confidential.
Till late in the afternoon they cruised about among the islands, getting different points of view of the coast, and especially different points of view of each other, in the freedom of talk and repartee permitted on an excursion. Before sunset they were out in the open, and could feel the long ocean swell. The wind had risen a little, and there was a low band of clouds in the south. The skipper told Mr. Delancy that it would be much fresher with the sinking of the sun, but Jack replied that it wouldn't amount to anything; the glass was all right.
“Now the great winds shoreward blow;Now the salt tides seaward flow;Now the wild white horses play,Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.”
Miss Tavish was in the wheel-house, and had taken the wheel. This clever girl knew her right hand from her left, instantly, without having to stop and think and look at her rings, and she knew what port and starboard meant, as orders, and exactly how to meet a wave with a turn of the wheel.
“I say, Captain Delancy,” she cried out, “the steamer is about due. Let's go down and meet her, and race in.”
“All right,” replied Jack. “We can run round her three times and then beat her in.”
The steamer's smoke was seen at that instant, and the yacht was headed for it. The wind was a little fresher, but the tight little craft took the waves like a duck, and all on board enjoyed the excitement of the change, except the Major, who said he didn't mind, but he didn't believe the steamer needed any escort.
By the time the steamer was reached the sun was going down in a band of clouds. There was no gale, but the wind increased in occasional puffs of spite, and the waves were getting up. The skipper took the wheel to turn the yacht in a circle to her homeward course. As this operation created strange motions, and did not interest the Major, he said he would go below and reflect.
In turning, the yacht came round on the seaward side of the steamer, but far behind. But the little craft speedily showed her breeding and overhauled her big rival, and began to forge ahead. The little group on the yacht waved their handkerchiefs as if in good-by, and the passengers on the steamer cheered. As the wind was every moment increasing, the skipper sheered away to allow plenty of sea-room between the boats. The race appeared to be over.
“It's a pity,” said Miss Tavish.
“Let's go round her,” said Jack; “eh, skipper?”
“If you like, sir,” responded the skipper. “She can do it.”
The yacht was well ahead, but the change in the direction brought the vessels nearer together. But there was no danger. The speed they were going would easily bring her round away ahead of the steamer.
But just then something happened. The yacht would not answer to her helm. The wheel flew around without resistance. The wind, hauled now into the east, struck her with violence and drove her sideways. The little thing was like a chip on the sea. The rudder-chain had broken. The yacht seemed to fly towards the long, hulking steamer. The danger was seen there, and her helm was put hard down, and her nose began to turn towards the shore. But it was too late. It seemed all over in an instant. The yacht dashed bow on to the side of the steamer, quivered an instant, and then dropped away. At the same moment the steamer slowed down and began to turn to assist the wounded.
The skipper of the yacht and a couple of hands rushed below. A part of the bow had been carried away and a small hole made just above the waterline, through which the water spurted whenever she encountered a large wave. It was enough to waterlog her and sink her in such a sea. The two seamen grasped whatever bedding was in reach below, rammed it into the opening, and held it there. The skipper ran on deck, and by the aid of the men hauled out a couple of sails and dropped them over the bow. These would aid in keeping out the water. They could float now, but where were they going? “Going ashore,” said Mavick, grimly. And so they were.
“Was there a panic on board?” it was asked afterwards. Not exactly. Among well-bred people a panic is never good form. But there were white faces and trembling knees and anxious looks. The steamer was coming towards them, and all eyes were fixed on that rather than on the rocks of the still distant shore.
The most striking incident of the moment—it seemed so to some of those who looked back upon it—was a singular test of character, or rather of woman's divination of character. Carmen instinctively flew to Jack and grasped and held his arm. She knew, without stopping to reason about it, that he would unhesitatingly imperil his life to save that of any woman. Whatever judgment is passed upon Jack, this should not be forgotten. And Miss Tavish; to whom did she fly in this peril? To the gallant Major? No. To the cool and imperturbable Mavick, who was as strong and sinewy as he was cool? No. She ran without hesitation to Van Dam, and clung to him, recognizing instinctively, with the woman's feeling, the same quality that Jack had. There are such men, who may have no great gifts, but who will always fight rather than run under fire, and who will always protect a woman.
Mavick saw all this, and understood it perfectly, and didn't object to it at the time—but he did not forget it.
The task of rescue was not easy in that sea and wind, but it was dexterously done. The steamer approached and kept at a certain distance on the windward side. A boat was lowered, and a line was brought to the yacht, which was soon in tow with a stout cable hitched to the steamer's anchor windlass.
It was all done with much less excitement than appeared from the telegraphic accounts, and while the party were being towed home the peril seemed to have been exaggerated, and the affair to look like an ordinary sea incident. But the skipper said that it was one escape in a hundred.
The captain of the steamer raised his hat gravely in reply to the little cheer from the yacht, when Carmen and Miss Tavish fluttered their handkerchiefs towards him. The only chaff from the steamer was roared out by a fat Boston man, who made a funnel of his hands and shouted, “The race is not always to the swift.”
As soon as Jack stepped ashore he telegraphed to Edith that the yacht had had an accident in the harbor, but that no one was hurt. When he reached the hotel he found a letter from Edith of such a tenor that he sent another despatch, saying that she might expect him at once, leaving the yacht behind. There was a buzz of excitement in the town, and there were a hundred rumors, which the sight of the yacht and its passengers landed in safety scarcely sufficed to allay.
When Jack called at the Tavish cottage to say good-by, both the ladies were too upset to see him. He took a night train, and as he was whirled away in the darkness the events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemed like a dream. Even the voyage up the coast was a little unreal—an insubstantial episode in life. And the summer city by the sea, with its gayety and gossip and busy idleness, sank out of sight like a phantom. He drew his cap over his eyes, and was impatient that the rattling train did not go faster, for Edith, waiting there in the Golden House, seemed to stretch out her arms for him to come. Still behind him rose a picture of that bacchanalian breakfast—the Major and Carmen and Mavick and Miss Tavish dancing a reel on the sloping deck, then the rising wind, the reckless daring of the race, and a vision of sudden death. He shuddered for the first time in a quick realization of how nearly it came to being all over with life and its pleasures.
Edith had made no appeal to Jack to come home. His going, therefore, had the merit in his eyes of being a voluntary response to the promptings of his better nature. Perhaps but for the accident at Mount Desert he might have felt that his summer pleasure was needlessly interfered with, but the little shock of that was a real, if still temporary, moral turning-point for him. For the moment his inclination seemed to run with his duty, and he had his reward in Edith's happiness at his coming, the loving hunger in her eyes, the sweet trust that animated her face, the delightful appropriation of him that could scarcely brook a moment's absence from her sight. There could not be a stronger appeal to his manhood and his fidelity.
“Yes, Jack dear, it was a little lonesome.” She was swinging in her hammock on the veranda in sight of the sea, and Jack sat by her with his cigar. “I don't mind telling you now that there were times when I longed for you dreadfully, but I was glad, all the same, that you were enjoying yourself, for it is tiresome down here for a man with nothing to do but to wait.”
“You dear thing!” said Jack, with his hand on her head, smoothing her glossy hair and pushing it back from her forehead, to make her look more intellectual—a thing which she hated. “Yes, dear, I was a brute to go off at all.”
“But you wanted to comeback?” And there was a wistful look in her eyes.
“Indeed I did,” he answered, fervently, as he leaned over the hammock to kiss the sweet eyes into content; and he was quite honest in the expression of a desire that was nearly forty-eight hours old, and by a singular mental reaction seemed to have been always present with him.
“It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the newspaper.”
“Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;” and he made light of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be capable of shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major's seafaring qualities, and Carmen's and Miss Tavish's chaff of the gallant old beau.
Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand was as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.
The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety and made grave by a new interest. It could not well be but that the prospect of the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should create a little uneasiness in Jack's mind as to his own career. Of this future they talked much, and in Jack's attitude towards her Edith saw, for the first time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it came naturally in the contemplation of their future life that she should encourage his discontent at having no occupation. Facing, in this waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, and that idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck of society women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimate ennui. To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune, who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personal satisfaction; but they did not seem to be of much account except in the little circle that they ornamented. Speaking of one of them one day, Father Damon had said that it seemed a pity a fellow of such family and capacity and fortune should go to the devil merely for the lack of an object in life. In this closer communion with Edith, whose ideas he began to comprehend, Jack dimly apprehended this view, and for the moment impulsively accepted it.
“I'm half sorry,” he said one day, “that I didn't go in for a profession. But it is late now. Law, medicine, engineering, architecture, would take years of study.”
“There was Armstrong,” Edith suggested, “who studied law after he was married.”
“But it looks sort of silly for a fellow who has a wife to go to school, unless,” said Jack, with a laugh, “he goes to school to his wife. Then there's politics. You wouldn't like to see me in that.”
“I rather think, Jack”—she spoke musingly—“if I were a man I should go into politics.”
“You would have nice company!”
“But it's the noblest career—government, legislation, trying to do something to make the world better. Jack, I don't see how the men of New York can stand it to be governed by the very worst elements.”
“My dear, you have no idea what practical politics is.”
“I've an idea what I'd make it. What is the good of young men of leisure if they don't do anything for the country? Too fine to do what Hamilton did and Jay did! I wish you could have heard my father talk about it. Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!”
“Or a yacht,” suggested Jack.
“Well, I don't see why a man cannot own a yacht and still care something about the decent management of his city.”
“There's Mavick in politics.”
“Not exactly. Mavick is in office for what he can make. No, I will not say that. No doubt he is a good civil servant, and we can't expect everybody to be unselfish. At any rate, he is intelligent. Do you remember what Mr. Morgan said last winter?” And Edith lifted herself up on her elbow, as if to add the weight of her attitude to her words, as Jack was still smiling at her earnestness.
“No; you said he was a delightful sort of pessimist.”
“Mr. Morgan said that the trouble with the governing and legislation now in the United States is that everybody is superficially educated, and that the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, and that we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories and crudities on the statute-book. And then educated people say that politics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to do with it.”
“And how far do you think we could get, my dear, in the crusade you propose?”
“I don't know that you would get anywhere. Yet I should think the young men of New York could organize its intelligence and do something. But you think I'm nothing but a woman.” And Edith sank back, as if abandoning the field.
“I had thought that; but it is hard to tell, these days. Never mind, when we go back to town I'll stir round; you'll see.”
This was an unusual sort of talk. Jack had never heard Edith break out in this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning to think of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties. Not many in his set, he was sure. If Edith had urged him to go into Neighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that. Women and ethical cranks were interested in that. And women were getting queerer every day, beginning, as Mavick said, to take notice. However, it was odd, when you thought over it, that the city should be ruled by the slums.
It was easy to talk about these things; in fact, Jack talked a great deal about them in the clubs, and occasionally with a knot of men after dinner in a knowing, pessimistic sort of way. Sometimes the discussions were very animated and even noisy between these young citizens. It seemed, sometimes, about midnight, that something might be done; but the resolution vanished next morning when another day, to be lived through, confronted them. They illustrated the great philosophic observation that it is practically impossible for an idle man who has nothing to do to begin anything today.
To do Jack justice, this enforced detention in the country he did not find dull exactly. To be sure it was vacation-time, and his whole life was a vacation, and summer was rather more difficult to dispose of than winter, for one had to make more of an effort to amuse himself. But Edith was never more charming than in this new dependence, and all his love and loyalty were evoked in caring for her. This was occupation enough, even if he had been the busiest man in the world-to watch over her, to read to her, to anticipate her fancies, to live with her in that dream of the future which made life seem almost ideal. There came a time when he looked back upon this month at the Golden House as the happiest in his life.
The talk about an occupation was not again referred to. Edith seemed entirely happy to have Jack with her, more entirely her own than he had ever been, and to have him just as he was. And yet he knew, by a sure instinct, that she saw him as she thought he would be, with some aim and purpose in life. And he made many good resolutions.
That which was nearest him attracted him most, and very feeble now were the allurements of the life and the company he had just left. Not that he would break with it exactly; it was not necessary to do that; but he would find something to do, something worth a man's doing, or, at any rate, some occupation that should tax his time and his energies. That, he knew, would make Edith happy, and to make her happy seemed now very much like a worthy object in life. She was so magnanimous, so unsuspicious, so full of all nobility. He knew she would stand by him whatever happened. Down here her attitude to life was no longer a rebuke to him nor a restraint upon him. Everything seemed natural and wholesome. Perhaps his vanity was touched, for there must be something in, him if such a woman could love him. And probably there was, though he himself had never yet had a chance to find it out. Brought up in the expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of “good-for-nothings” in our modern life? If there had been war, he had spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or the highlands of Central Asia. Something uncommon he might do if opportunity offered.
About his operations with Henderson he had never told Edith, and he did not tell her now. Perhaps she divined it, and he rather wondered that she had never asked him about his increased expenditures, his yacht, and all that. He used to look at her steadily at times, as if he were trying to read the secrets of her heart.
“What are you looking at, Jack?”
“To see if I can find out how much you know, you look so wise.”
“Do I? I was just thinking about you. I suppose that made me look so.”
“No; about life and the world generally.”
“Mighty little, Jack, except—well, I study you.”
“Do you? Then you'll presently lose your mind:”
Jack and most men have little idea that they are windows through which their wives see the world; and how much more of the world they know in that way than men usually suspect or wives ever tell!
He did not tell her about Henderson, but he almost resolved that when his present venture was over he would let stocks alone as speculations, and go into something that he could talk about to his wife as he talked about stocks to Carmen.
From the stranded mariners at Bar Harbor Captain Jack had many and facetious letters. They wanted to know if his idea was that they should stick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if he expected them to walk home. He had already given orders to the skipper to patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised his correspondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in the larder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on any vessel that would take able-bodied seamen. He must be excused from commanding, because he had been assigned to shore duty. Carmen and Miss Tavish wrote that it was unfair to leave them to sustain all the popularity and notoriety of the shipwreck, and that he owed it to the public to publish a statement, in reply to the insinuations of the newspapers, in regard to the sea-worthiness of the yacht and the object of this voyage. Jack replied that the only object of the voyage was to relieve the tedium of Bar Harbor, and, having accomplished this, he would present the vessel to Miss Tavish if she would navigate it back to the city.
The golden autumn days by the sea were little disturbed by these echoes of another life, which seemed at the moment to be a very shallow one. Yet the time was not without its undertone of anxieties, of grave perils that seemed to sanctify it and heighten its pleasures of hope. Jack saw and comprehended for the first time in his life the real nature of a pure woman, the depths of tenderness and self-abnegation, the heroism and calm trust and the nobility of an unworldly life. No wonder that he stood a little in awe of it, and days when he wandered down on the beach, with only the waves for company, or sat smoking in the arbor, with an unread book in his hand, his own career seemed petty and empty. Such moods, however, are not uncommon in any life, and are not of necessity fruitful. It need not be supposed that Jack took it too seriously, on the one hand, or, on the other, that a vision of such a woman's soul is ever without influence.
By the end of October they returned to town, Jack, and Edith with a new and delicate attractiveness, and young Fletcher Delancy the most wonderful and important personage probably who came to town that season. It seemed to Edith that his advent would be universally remarked, and Jack felt relieved when the boy was safely housed out of the public gaze. Yes, to Edith's inexpressible joy it was a boy, and while Jack gallantly said that a girl would have suited him just as well, he was conscious of an increased pride when he announced the sex to his friends. This undervaluation of women at the start is one of the mysteries of life. And until women themselves change their point of view, it is to be feared that legislation will not accomplish all that many of them wish.
“So it is a boy. I congratulate you,” was the exclamation of Major Fairfax the first time Jack went down to the Union.
“I'm glad, Major, to have your approval.”
“Oh, it's what is expected, that's all. For my part, I prefer girls. The announcement of boys is more expensive.”
Jack understood, and it turned out in all the clubs that he had hit upon the most expensive sex in the view of responding to congratulations.
“It used to seem to me,” said the Major, “that I must have a male heir to my estates. But, somehow, as the years go on, I feel more like being an heir myself. If I had married and had a boy, he would have crowded me out by this time; whereas, if it had been a girl, I should no doubt have been staying at her place in Lenox this summer instead of being shipwrecked on that desert island. There is nothing, my dear boy, like a girl well invested.”
“You speak with the feelings of a father.”
“I speak, sir, from observation. I look at society as it is, not as it would be if we had primogeniture and a landed aristocracy. A daughter under our arrangements is more likely to be a comfort to her parent in his declining years than a son.”
“But you seem, Major, to have preferred a single life?”
“Circumstances—thank you, just a drop more—we are the creatures of circumstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation and misunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property was encumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I have reason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-blooded in those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. She was, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I have never seen her equal.”
This was more than the Major had ever revealed about his private life before. He had created an illusion about himself which society accepted, and in which he lived in apparent enjoyment of metropolitan existence. This was due to a sanguine temperament and a large imagination. And he had one quality that made him a favorite—a hearty enjoyment of the prosperity of others. With regard to himself, his imagination was creative, and Jack could not now tell whether this “most beautiful woman of Virginia” was not evoked by the third glass, about which the Major remarked, as he emptied it, that only this extraordinary occasion could justify such an indulgence at this time of day.
The courtly old gentleman had inquired about madam—indeed, the second glass had been dedicated to “mother and child”—and he exhibited a friendly and almost paternal interest, as he always did, in Jack.
“By-the-way,” he said, after a silence, “is Henderson in town?”
“I haven't heard. Why?”
“There's been a good deal of uneasiness in the Street as to what he is doing. I hope you haven't got anything depending on him.”
“I've got something in his stocks, if that is what you mean; but I don't mind telling you I have made something.”
“Well, it's none of my business, only the Henderson stocks have gone off a little, as you know.”
Jack knew, and he asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy, for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the club he wrote to Mavick.
He carried home with him a certain disquiet, to which he had been for months a stranger. Even the sight of Edith, who met him with a happy face, and dragged him away at once to see how lovely the baby looked asleep, could not remove this. It seemed strange that such a little thing should make a change, introduce an alien element into this domestic peace. Jack was like some other men who lose heart not when they are doing a doubtful thing, but when they have to face the consequences—cases of misplaced conscience. The peace and content that he had left in the house in the morning seemed to have gone out of it when he returned at night.
Next day came a reassuring letter from Mavick.
Henderson was going on as usual. It was only a little bear movement, which wouldn't amount to anything. Still, day after day, the bears kept clawing down, and Jack watched the stock-list with increasing eagerness. He couldn't decide to sacrifice anything as long as he had a margin of profit.
In this state of mind it was impossible to consider any of the plans he had talked over with Edith before the baby was born. Inquiries he did make about some sort of position or regular occupation, and these he reported to Edith; but his heart was not in it.
As the days went by there was a little improvement in his stocks, and his spirits rose. But this mood was no more favorable than the other for beginning a new life, nor did there seem to be, as he went along, any need of it. He had an appearance of being busy every day; he rose late and went late to bed. It was the old life. Stocks down, there was a necessity of bracing up with whomever he met at any of the three or four clubs in which he lounged in the afternoon; and stocks up, there was reason for celebrating that fact in the same way.
It was odd how soon he became accustomed to consider himself and to be regarded as the father of a family. That, also, like his marriage, seemed something done, and in a manner behind him. There was a commonplaceness about the situation. To Edith it was a great event. To Jack it was a milestone in life. He was proud of the boy; he was proud of Edith. “I tell you, fellows,” he would say at the club, “it's a great thing,” and so on, in a burst of confidence, and he was quite sincere in this. But he preferred to be at the club and say these things rather than pass the same hours with his adorable family. He liked to think what he would do for that family—what luxuries he could procure for them, how they should travel and see the world. There wasn't a better father anywhere than Jack at this period. And why shouldn't a man of family amuse himself? Because he was happy in his family he needn't change all the habits of his life.
Presently he intended to look about him for something to do that would satisfy Edith and fill up his time; but meantime he drifted on, alternately anxious and elated, until the season opened. The Blunts and the Van Dams and the Chesneys and the Tavishes and Mrs. Henderson had called, invitations had poured in, subscriptions were asked, studies and gayeties were projected, and the real business of life was under way.
To the nurse of the Delancy boy and to his mother he was by no means an old story or merely an incident of the year. He was an increasing wonder—new every morning, and exciting every evening. He was the centre of a world of solicitude and adoration. It would be scarcely too much to say that his coming into the world promised a new era, and his traits, his likes and dislikes, set a new standard in his court. If he had apprehended his position his vanity would have outgrown his curiosity about the world, but he displayed no more consciousness of his royalty than a kicking Infanta of Spain. This was greatly to his credit in the opinion of the nurse, who devoted herself to the baby with that enthusiasm of women for infants which fortunately never fails, and won the heart of Edith by her worship. And how much they found to say about this marvel! To hear from the nurse, over and over again, what the baby had done and had not done, in a given hour, was to Edith like a fresh chapter out of an exciting romance.
And the boy's biographer is inclined to think that he had rare powers of discrimination, for one day when Carmen had called and begged to be permitted to go up into the nursery, and had asked to take him in her arms just for a moment, notwithstanding her soft dress and her caressing manner, Fletcher had made a wry face and set up a howl. “How much he looks like his father” (he didn't look like anything), Carmen said, handing him over to the nurse. What she thought was that in manner and disposition he was totally unlike Jack Delancy.
When they came down-stairs, Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the drawing-room. “I've had such a privilege, Mrs. Blunt, seeing the baby!” cried Carmen, in her sweetest manner.
“It must have been,” that lady rejoined, stiffly.
Carmen, who hated to be seen through, of all things, did not know whether to resent this or not. But Edith hastened to the rescue of her guest.
“I think it's a privilege.”
“And you know, Mrs. Blunt,” said Carmen, recovering herself and smiling, “that I must have some excitement this dull season.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Blunt, with no relaxation of her manner; “we are all grateful to Mrs. Delancy.”
“Mrs. Henderson does herself injustice,” Edith again interposed. “I can assure you she has a great talent for domesticity.”
Carmen did not much fancy this apology for her, but she rejoined: “Yes, indeed. I'm going to cultivate it.”
“How is this privileged person?” Mrs. Blunt asked.
“You shall see,” said Edith. “I am glad you came, for I wanted very much to consult you. I was going to send for you.”
“Well, here I am. But I didn't come about the baby. I wanted to consult you. We miss you, dear, every day.” And then Mrs. Blunt began to speak about some social and charitable arrangements, but stopped suddenly. “I'll see the baby first. Good-morning, Mrs. Henderson.” And she left the room.
Carmen felt as much left out socially as about the baby, and she also rose to go.
“Don't go,” said Edith. “What kind of a summer have you had?”
“Oh, very good. Some shipwrecks.”
“And Mr. Henderson? Is he well?”
“Perfectly. He is away now. Husbands, you know, haven't so much talent for domesticity as we have.”
{0247}
“That depends,” Edith replied, simply, but with that spirit and air of breeding before which Carmen always inwardly felt defeat—“that depends very much upon ourselves.”
Naturally, with this absorption in the baby, Edith was slow to resume her old interests. Of course she knew of the illness of Father Damon, and the nurse, who was from the training-school in which Dr. Leigh was an instructor, and had been selected for this important distinction by the doctor, told her from time to time of affairs on the East Side. Over there the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open; work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained and rent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only a climatic increase of hardships. Even an epidemic scare does not essentially vary the daily monotony, which is accepted with a dogged fatality:
There had been no vacation for Ruth Leigh, and she jokingly said, when at length she got a half-hour for a visit to Edith, that she would hardly know what to do with one if she had it.
“We have got through very well,” she added. “We always dread the summer, and we always dread the winter. Science has not yet decided which is the more fatal, decayed vegetables or unventilated rooms. City residence gives both a fair chance at the poor.”
“Are not the people learning anything?” Edith asked.
“Not much, except to bear it, I am sorry to say. Even Father Damon—”
“Is he at work again? Do you see him often?”
“Yes, occasionally.”
“I should so like to see him. But I interrupted you.”
“Well, Father Damon has come to see that nothing can be done without organization. The masses”—and there was an accent of bitterness in her use of the phrase—“must organize and fight for anything they want.”
“Does Father Damon join in this?”
“Oh, he has always been a member of the Labor League. Now he has been at work with the Episcopal churches of the city, and got them to agree, when they want workmen for any purpose, to employ only union men.”
“Isn't that,” Edith exclaimed, “a surrender of individual rights and a great injustice to men not in the unions?”
“You would see it differently if you were in the struggle. If the working-men do not stand by each other, where are they to look for help? What have the Christians of this city done?” and the little doctor got up and began to pace the room. “Charities? Yes, little condescending charities. And look at the East Side! Is its condition any better? I tell you, Mrs. Delancy, I don't believe in charities—in any charities.”
“It seems to me,” said Edith, with a smile calculated to mollify this vehemence, “that you are a standing refutation of your own theory.”
“Me? No, indeed. I'm paid by the dispensary. And I make my patients pay—when they are able.”
“So I have heard,” Edith retorted. “Your bills must be a terror to the neighborhood.”
“You may laugh. But I'm establishing a reputation over there as a working-woman, and if I have any influence, or do any little good, it's owing to that fact. Do you think they care anything about Father Damon's gospel?”
“I should be sorry to think they did not,” Edith said, gravely.
“Well, very little they care. They like the man because they think he shares their feelings, and does not sympathize with them because they are different from him. That is the only kind of gospel that is good for anything over there.”
“I don't think Father Damon would agree with you in that.”
“Of course he would not. He's as mediaeval as any monk. But then he is not blind. He sees that it is never anything but personal influence that counts. Poor fellow,” and the doctor's voice softened, “he'll kill himself with his ascetic notions. He is trying to take up the burden of this life while struggling under the terror of another.”
“But he must be doing a great deal of good.”
“Oh, I don't know. Nothing seems to do much good. But his presence is a great comfort. That is something. And I'm glad he is going about now rousing opposition to what is, rather than all the time preaching submission to the lot of this life for the sake of a reward somewhere else. That's a gospel for the rich.”
Edith was accustomed to hear Ruth Leigh talk in this bitter strain when this subject was introduced, and she contrived to turn the conversation upon what she called practical work, and then to ask some particulars of Father Damon's sudden illness.
“He did rest,” the doctor said, “for a little, in his way. But he will not spare himself, and he cannot stand it. I wish you could induce him to come here often—to do anything for diversion. He looks so worn.”
There was in the appeal to Edith a note of personal interest which her quick heart did not fail to notice. And the thought came to her with a painful apprehension. Poor thing! Poor Father Damon!
Does not each of them have to encounter misery enough without this?
Doesn't life spare anybody?
She told her apprehension to Jack when he came home.
Jack gave a long whistle. “That is a deadlock!”
“His vows, and her absolute materialism! Both of them would go to the stake for what they believe, or don't believe. It troubles me very much.”
“But,” said Jack, “it's interesting. It's what they call a situation. There. I didn't mean to make light of it. I don't believe there is anything in it. But it would be comical, right here in New York.”
“It would be tragical.”
“Comedy usually is. I suppose it's the human nature in it. That is so difficult to get rid of. But I thought the missionary business was safe. Though, do you know, Edith, I should think better of both of them for having some human feeling. By-the-way, did Dr. Leigh say anything about Henderson?”
“No. What?”
“He has given Father Damon ten thousand dollars. It's in strict secrecy, but Father Damon said I might tell you. He said it was providential.”
“I thought Mr. Henderson was wholly unscrupulous and cold as ice.”
“Yes, he's got a reputation for freeze-outs. If the Street knew this it would say it was insurance money. And he is so cynical that he wouldn't care what the Street said.”
“Do you think it came about through Mrs. Henderson?”
“I don't think so. She was speaking of Father Damon this morning in the Loan Exhibition. I don't believe she knows anything about it. Henderson is a good deal shut up in himself. They say at the Union that years ago he used to do a good many generous things—that he is a great deal harder than he used to be.”
This talk was before dinner. She did not ask anything now about Carmen, though she knew that Jack had fallen into his old habit of seeing much of her. He was less and less at home, except at dinner-time, and he was often restless, and, she saw, often annoyed. When he was at home he tried to make up for his absence by extra tenderness and consideration for Edith and the boy. And this effort, and its evidence of a double if not divided life, wounded her more than the neglect. One night, when he came home late, he had been so demonstrative about the baby that Edith had sent the nurse out of the room until she could coax Jack to go into his own apartment. His fits of alternate good-humor and depression she tried to attribute to his business, to which he occasionally alluded without confiding in her.
The next morning Father Damon came in about luncheon-time. He apologized for not coming before since her return, but he had been a little upset, and his work was more and more interesting. His eyes were bright and his manner had quite the usual calm, but he looked pale and thinner, and so exhausted that Edith ran immediately for a glass of wine, and began to upbraid him for not taking better care of himself.
“I take too much care of myself. We all do. The only thing I've got to give is myself.”
“But you will not last.”
“That is of little moment; long or short, a man can only give himself. Our Lord was not here very long.” And then Father Damon smiled, and said “My dear friend, I'm really doing very well. Of course I get tired. Then I come up again. And every now and then I get a lift. Did Jack tell you about Henderson?”
“Yes. Wasn't it strange?”
“I never was more surprised. He sent for me to come to his office. Without any circumlocution, he asked me how I was getting on, and, before I could answer, he said, in the driest business way, that he had been thinking over a little plan, and perhaps I could help him. He had a little money he wanted to invest—RR” 'In our mission chapel?' I asked.
“'No,' he said, without moving a muscle. 'Not that. I don't know much about chapels, Father Damon. But I've been hearing what you are doing, and it occurred to me that you must come across a good many cases not in the regular charities that you could help judiciously, get them over hard spots, without encouraging dependence. I'm going to put ten thousand dollars into your hands, if you'll be bothered with it, to use at your discretion.'
“I was taken aback, and I suppose I showed it, and I said that was a great deal of money to intrust to one man.
“Henderson showed a little impatience. It depended upon the man. That was his lookout. The money would be deposited, he said, in bank to my order, and he asked me for my signature that he could send with the deposit.
“Of course I thanked him warmly, and said I hoped I could do some good with it. He did not seem to pay much attention to what I was saying. He was looking out of the window to the bare trees in the court back of his office, and his hands were moving the papers on his table aimlessly about.
“'I shall know,' he said, 'when you have drawn this out. I've got a fancy for keeping a little fund of this sort there.' And then he added, still not looking at me, but at the dead branches, 'You might call it the Margaret Fund.'”
“That was the name of his first wife!” Edith exclaimed.
“Yes, I remember. I said I would, and began to thank him again as I rose from my chair. He was still looking away, and saying, as if to himself, 'I think she would like that.' And then he turned, and, in his usual abrupt office manner, said: 'Good-morning, good-morning. I am very much obliged to you.'”
“Wasn't it all very strange!” Edith spoke, after a moment. “I didn't suppose he cared. Do you think it was just sentiment?”
“I shouldn't wonder. Men like Henderson do queer things. In the hearts of such hardened men there are sometimes roots of sentiment that you wouldn't suspect. But I don't know. The Lord somehow looks out for his poor.”
Notwithstanding this windfall of charity, Father Damon seemed somewhat depressed. “I wish,” he said, after a pause, “he had given it to the mission. We are so poor, and modern philanthropy all runs in other directions. The relief of temporary suffering has taken the place of the care of souls.”
“But Dr. Leigh said that you were interesting the churches in the labor unions.”
“Yes. It is an effort to do something. The church must put herself into sympathetic relations with these people, or she will accomplish nothing. To get them into the church we must take up their burdens. But it is a long way round. It is not the old method of applying the gospel to men's sins.”
“And yet,” Edith insisted, “you must admit that such people as Dr. Leigh are doing a good work.”
Father Damon did not reply immediately. Presently he asked: “Do you think, Mrs. Delancy, that Dr. Leigh has any sympathy with the higher life, with spiritual things? I wish I could think so.”
“With the higher life of humanity, certainly.”
“Ah, that is too vague. I sometimes feel that she and those like her are the worst opponents to our work. They substitute humanitarianism for the gospel.”
“Yet I know of no one who works more than Ruth Leigh in the self-sacrificing spirit of the Master.”
“Whom she denies!” The quick reply came with a flush in his pale face, and he instantly arose and walked away to the window and stood for some moments in silence. When he turned there was another expression in his eyes and a note of tenderness in his voice that contradicted the severity of the priest. It was the man that spoke. “Yes, she is the best woman I ever knew. God help me! I fear I am not fit for my work.”
This outburst of Father Damon to her, so unlike his calm and trained manner, surprised Edith, although she had already some suspicion of his state of mind. But it would not have surprised her if she had known more of men, the necessity of the repressed and tortured soul for sympathy, and that it is more surely to be found in the heart of a pure woman than elsewhere.
But there was nothing that she could say, as she took his hand to bid him good-by, except the commonplace that Dr. Leigh had expressed anxiety that he was overworking, and that for the sake of his work he must be more prudent. Yet her eyes expressed the sympathy she did not put in words.
Father Damon understood this, and he went away profoundly grateful for her forbearance of verbal expression as much as for her sympathy. But he did not suspect that she needed sympathy quite as much as he did, and consequently he did not guess the extent of her self-control. It would have been an immense relief to have opened her heart to him—and to whom could she more safely do this than to a priest set apart from all human entanglements?—and to have asked his advice. But Edith's peculiar strength—or was it the highest womanly instinct?—lay in her discernment of the truth that in one relation of life no confidences are possible outside of that relation except to its injury, and that to ask interference is pretty sure to seal its failure. As its highest joys cannot be participated in, so its estrangements cannot be healed by any influence outside of its sacred compact. To give confidence outside is to destroy the mutual confidence upon which the relation rests, and though interference may patch up livable compromises, the bloom of love and the joy of life are not in them. Edith knew that if she could not win her own battle, no human aid could win it for her.
And it was all the more difficult because it was vague and indefinite, as the greater part of domestic tragedies are. For the most part life goes on with external smoothness, and the public always professes surprise when some accident, a suit at law, a sudden death, a contested will, a slip from apparent integrity, or family greed or feminine revenge, turns the light of publicity upon a household, to find how hollow the life has been; in the light of forgotten letters, revealing check-books, servants' gossip, and long-established habits of aversion or forbearance, how much sordidness and meanness!
Was not everything going on as usual in the Delancy house and in the little world of which it was a part? If there had been any open neglect or jealousy, any quarrel or rupture, or any scene, these could be described. These would have an interest to the biographer and perhaps to the public. But at this period there was nothing of this sort to tell. There were no scenes. There were no protests or remonstrances or accusations, nor to the world was there any change in the daily life of these two.
It was more pitiful even than that. Here was a woman who had set her heart in all the passionate love of a pure ideal, and day by day she felt that the world, the frivolous world, with its low and selfish aims, was too strong for her, and that the stream was wrecking her life because it was bearing Jack away from her. What could one woman do against the accepted demoralizations of her social life? To go with them, not to care, to accept Jack's idle, good-natured, easy philosophy of life and conduct, would not that have insured a peaceful life? Why shouldn't she conform and float, and not mind?
To be sure, a wise woman, who has been blessed or cursed with a long experience of life, would have known that such a course could not forever, or for long, secure happiness, and that a man's love ultimately must rest upon a profound respect for his wife and a belief in her nobility. Perhaps Edith did not reason in this way. Probably it was her instinct for what was pure and true-showing, indeed, the quality of her love-that guided her.
To Jack's friends he was much the same as usual. He simply went on in his ante-marriage ways. Perhaps he drank a little more, perhaps he was a little more reckless at cards, and it was certain that his taste for amusing himself in second-hand book-shops and antiquity collections had weakened. His talked-of project for some regular occupation seemed to have been postponed, although he said to himself that it was only postponed until his speculations, which kept him in a perpetual fever, should put him in a position to command a business.
Meantime he did not neglect social life—that is, the easy, tolerant company which lived as he liked to live. There was at first some pretense of declining invitations which Edith could not accept, but he soon fell into the habit of a man whose family has temporarily gone abroad, with the privileges of a married man, without the responsibilities of a bachelor. Edith could see that he took great credit to himself for any evenings he spent at home, and perhaps he had a sort of support in the idea that he was sacrificing himself to his family. Major Fairfax, whom Edith distrusted as a misleader of youth, did not venture to interfere with Jack again, but he said to himself that it was a blank shame that with such a wife he should go dangling about with women like Carmen and Miss Tavish, not that the Major himself had any objection to their society, but, hang it all, that was no reason why Jack should be a fool.
In midwinter Jack went to Washington on business. It was necessary to see Mavick, and Mr. Henderson, who was also there. To spend a few weeks at the capital, in preparation for Lent, has become a part of the program of fashion. There can be met people like-minded from all parts of the Union, and there is gayety, and the entertainment to be had in new acquaintances, without incurring any of the responsibilities of social continuance. They meet there on neutral ground. Half Jack's set had gone over or were going. Young Van Dam would go with him. It will be only for a few days, Jack had said, gayly, when he bade Edith good-by, and she must be careful not to let the boy forget him.
It was quite by accident, apparently, that in the same train were the Chesneys, Miss Tavish, and Carmen going over to join her husband. This gave the business expedition the air of an excursion. And indeed at the hotel where they stayed this New York contingent made something of an impression, promising an addition to the gayety of the season, and contributing to the importance of the house as a centre of fashion. Henderson's least movements were always chronicled and speculated on, and for years he had been one of the stock subjects, out of which even the dullest interviewers, who watch the hotel registers in all parts of the country, felt sure that they could make an acceptable paragraph. The arrival of his wife, therefore, was a newspaper event.
They said in Washington at the time that Mrs. Henderson was one of the most fascinating of women, amiable, desirous to please, approachable, and devoted to the interests of her husband. If some of the women, residents in established society, were a little shy of her, if some, indeed, thought her dangerous—women are always thinking this of each other, and surely they ought to know-nothing of this appeared in the reports. The men liked her. She had so much vivacity, such esprit, she understood men so well, and the world, and could make allowances, and was always an entertaining companion. More than one Senator paid marked court to her, more than one brilliant young fellow of the House thought himself fortunate if he sat next her at dinner, and even cabinet officers waited on her at supper. It could not be doubted that a smile and a confidential or a witty remark from Mrs. Henderson brightened many an evening. Wherever she went her charming toilets were fully described, and the public knew as well as her jewelers the number and cost of her diamonds, her necklaces, her tiaras. But this was for the world and for state occasions. At home she liked simplicity. And this was what impressed the reporters when, in the line of their public duty, they were admitted to her presence. With them she was very affable, and she made them feel that they could almost be classed with her friends, and that they were her guardians against the vulgar publicity, which she disliked and shrank from.