"Why did we not know?" something whispered within. But she answered herself more calmly,—"It will all come right in the end—it must come right—for his sake!"
When young John Lane first came to St. Louis to work as a clerk in the traffic department of the Atlantic and Pacific, he had called on Colonel Price at his office, a dingy little room in the corner of the second story of the old brick building which had housed the wholesale hardware business of Parrott and Price for a generation. The old merchant had received the young man with the pleasant kindliness that kept his three hundred employees always devoted to him.
"I knew your father, sir!" he said, half-closing his eyes and leaning back in his padded old office chair. "Let me see—it was in sixty-two in camp before Vicksburg. I went to consult him about a boil on my leg. It was a bad boil,—it hurt me…. Your father was a fine man—What are you doing in St. Louis?" he concluded abruptly, looking out of his shrewd blue eyes at the fresh-colored young man whose strong hands gripped squarely the arms of his chair.
And from that day Lane knew that the Colonel never lost sight of him. When his chance came, as in time it did come through one of the mutations of the great corporation, he suspected that the old hardware merchant, who was a close friend of the chief men in the road, had spoken the needed word to lift the clerk out of the rut. At any rate the Colonel had not forgotten the son of Tyringham Lane, and the young man had often been to the generous, ugly Victorian house,—built when the hardware business made its first success.
Nevertheless, when, three years later John Lane made another afternoon visit to that dingy office in the Parrott and Price establishment, his hands trembed nervously as he sat waiting while the Colonel scrawled his signature to several papers.
"Well, John!" the old man remarked finally, shoving the papers towards the waiting stenographer. "How's railroadin' these days?"
"All right," Lane answered buoyantly. "They have transferred me to theIndiana division, headquarters at Torso—superintendent of the Torso andToledo."
"Indeed! But you'll be back here some day, eh?"
"I hope so!"
"That's good!" The Colonel smiled sympathetically, as he always did when he contemplated energetic youth, climbing the long ladder with a firm grip on each rung.
"I came to see you about another matter," Lane began hesitantly.
"Anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, sir; I want to marry your daughter,—and I'd like you to know it."
The old merchant's face became suddenly grave, the twinkle disappearing from his blue eyes. He listened thoughtfully while the young man explained himself. He was still a poor man, of course; his future was to be made. But he did not intend to remain poor. His salary was not much to offer a girl like the Colonel's daughter; but it would go far in Torso—and it was the first step. Finally he was silent, well aware that there was small possibility that he should ever be a rich man, as Colonel Price was, and that it was presumptuous of him to seek to marry his daughter, and therefore open to mean interpretation. But he felt that the Colonel was not one to impute low motives. He knew the very real democracy of the successful merchant, who never had forgotten his own story.
"What does Belle say?" the Colonel asked.
"I should not have come here if I didn't think—" the young man laughed.
"Of course!"
Then the Colonel pulled down the top of his desk, signifying that the day's business was done.
"We have never desired what is called a good match for our girl," he remarked slowly in reply to a further plea from Lane. "All we want is the best;" he laid grave emphasis on this watchword. "And the best is that Isabelle should be happy in her marriage. If she loves the man she marries, she must be that…. And I don't suppose you would be here if you weren't sure you could make her love you enough to be happy!"
The old man's smile returned for a fleeting moment, and then he mused.
"I am afraid it will be hard for her to settle down in a place like Torso—after all she's had," Lane conceded. "But I don't expect that Torso is the end of my rope. I shall give her a better chance than that, I hope."
The Colonel nodded sympathetically.
"I shouldn't consider it any hardship for my daughter to live in Torso or in any other place—if she has a good husband and loves him. That is all, my boy!"
Lane, who realized the grades of a plutocratic democracy better than three years before, and knew the position of the Prices in the city, comprehended the splendid simplicity, the single-mindedness of the man, who could thus completely ignore considerations of wealth and social position in the marriage of his only daughter.
"I shall do my best, sir, to make her happy all her life!" the young man stammered.
"I know you will, my boy, and I think you will succeed, if she loves you as you say she does."
Then the Colonel took his hat from the nail behind the door, and the two men continued their conversation in the street. They did not turn up town to the club and residence quarter, but descended towards the river, passing on their way the massive skeleton of the ten-story building that was to house, when completed, the Parrott and Price business. It rose in the smoky sunset, stretching out spidery tendons of steel to the heavens, and from its interior came a mighty clangor. The Colonel paused to look at the new building,—the monument of his success as a merchant.
"Pretty good? Corbin's doing it,—he's the best in the country, they tell me."
Soon they kept on past the new building into an old quarter of the city, the Colonel apparently having some purpose that guided his devious course through these unattractive streets.
"There!" he exclaimed at last, pointing across a dirty street to a shabby little brick house. "That's the place where Isabelle's mother and I started in St. Louis. We had a couple of rooms over there the first winter. The store was just a block further west. It's torn down now. I passed some of the best days of my life in those rooms on the second story…. It isn't the outside that counts, my boy!" The Colonel tucked his hand beneath the young man's arm, as they turned back to the newer quarters of the city.
Mrs. Price, it should be said, did not accept Lane's suit as easily as the Colonel. Her imagination had been expanded by that winter in Washington, and though she was glad that Isabelle had not accepted any of "those foreigners," yet Harmony Price had very definite ideas of the position that the Colonel's daughter might aspire to in America…. But her objections could not stand before the Colonel's flat consent and Isabelle's decision.
"They'll be a great deal better off than we were," her husband reminded her.
"That's no reason why Belle should have to start where we did, or anywhere near it!" his wife retorted. What one generation had been able to gain in the social fight, it seemed to her only natural that the next should at least hold.
The Colonel gave the couple their new home in Torso, selecting, with a fine eye for real estate values, a large "colonial" wooden house with ample grounds out beyond the smoke of the little city, near the new country club. Mrs. Price spent an exciting three months running back and forth between New York, St. Louis, and Torso furnishing the new home. Isabelle's liberal allowance was to continue indefinitely, and beyond this the Colonel promised nothing, now or later; nor would Lane have accepted more from his hand. It was to the Torso house that the Lanes went immediately after their month in the Adirondacks.
* * * * *
Torso, Indiana, is one of those towns in the Mississippi Valley which makes more impression the farther from New York one travels. New York has never heard of it, except as it appears occasionally on a hotel register among other queer places that Americans confess to as home. At Pittsburg it is a round black spot on the map, in the main ganglia of the great A. and P. and the junction point of two other railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial centre of considerable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso is the coming pivot of the universe.
It is an old settlement—some families with French names still own the large distilleries—on the clay banks of a sluggish creek in the southern part of the state, and there are many Kentuckians in its population. Nourished by railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing many fine wires glistening in the sunlight and singing the importance of Torso to the world at large.
The Lanes arrived at night, and to Isabelle the prairie heavens seemed dark and far away, the long broad streets with their bushy maple trees empty, and the air filled with hoarse plaints, the rumbling speech of the railroad. She was homesick and fearful, as they mounted the steps to the new house and pushed open the shining oak door that stuck and smelled of varnish. The next morning Lane whisked off on a trolley to the A. and P. offices, while Isabelle walked around the house, which faced the main northern artery of Torso. From the western veranda she could see the roof of the new country club through a ragged group of trees. On the other side were dotted the ample houses of Torso aristocracy, similar to hers, as she knew, finished in hard wood, electric-lighted, telephoned, with many baths, large "picture" windows of plate glass, with potted ferns in them, and much the same furniture,—wholesome, comfortable "homes." Isabelle, turning back to her house to cope with the three Swedes that her mother had sent on from St. Louis, had a queer sense of anti-climax. She swept the landscape with a critical eye, feeling she knew it all, even to what the people were saying at this moment in those large American-Georgian mansions; what Torso was doing at this moment in its main street…. No, it could not be for the Lanes for long,—that was the conviction in her heart. Their destiny would be larger, fuller than any to be found in Torso. Just what she meant by a "large, full life," she had never stopped to set down; but she was sure it was not to be found here in Torso.
Here began, however, the routine of her married life. Each morning she watched her husband walk down the broad avenue to the electric car,—alert, strong, waving his newspaper to her as he turned the corner. Each afternoon she waited for him at the same place, or drove down to the office with the Kentucky horses that she had bought, to take him for a drive before dinner. He greeted her each time with the same satisfied smile, apparently not wilted by the long hours in a hot office. There was a smudged, work-a-day appearance to his face and linen, the mark of Torso, the same mark that the mill-hands across the street from the A. and P. offices brought home to their wives…. Thus the long summer days dragged. For distraction there was a mutiny in the crew of Swedish servants, but Isabelle, with her mother's instinct for domestic management, quickly produced order, in spite of the completely servantless state of Torso. She would telegraph to St. Louis for what she wanted and somehow always got it. The house ran,—that was her business. It was pretty and attractive,—that was also her business. But this woman's work she tossed off quickly. Then what? She pottered in the garden a little, but when the hot blasts of prairie heat in mid-August had shrivelled all the vines and flowers and cooked the beds into slabs of clay, she retired from the garden and sent to St. Louis for the daily flowers. She read a good deal, almost always novels, in the vague belief that she was "keeping up" with modern literature, and she played at translating some German lyrics.
Then people began to call,—the wives of the Torso great, her neighbors in those ample mansions scattered all about the prairie. These she reported to John with a mocking sense of their oddity.
"Mrs. Fraser came to-day. What is she? Tin-plate or coal?"
"He's the most important banker here," her husband explained seriously.
"Oh,—well, she asked me to join the 'travel-class.' They are going through the Holy Land. What do you suppose a 'travel-class' is?"…
Again it was the wife of the chief coal operator, Freke, "who wanted me to know that she always got her clothes from New York." She added gently, "I think she wished to find out if we are fit for Torso society. I did my best to give her the impression we were beneath it."…
These people, all the "society" of Torso, they met also at the country club, where they went Sundays for a game of golf, which Lane was learning. The wife of the A. and P. superintendent could not be ignored by Torso, and so in spite of Isabelle's efforts there was forming around her a social life. But the objective point of the day remained John,—his going and coming.
"Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her.
"They're all busy days!"
"Tell me what you did."
"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and telegrams,—yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner.
She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose the secrets of the office to women.
It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which he would meet competently….
"Well, what haveyoubeen doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two maids, with five "Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her.
"They're all busy days!"
"Tell me what you did."
"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and telegrams,—yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner.
She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose the secrets of the office to women.
It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which he would meet competently….
"Well, what haveyoubeen doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two maids, with five courses and at least one wine, "to get used to living properly," as she explained vaguely.
"Mrs. Adams called." She was the wife of the manager of the baking-powder works and president of the country club, a young married woman from a Western city with pretensions to social experience. "John," Isabelle added after mentioning this name, "do you think we shall have to stay here long?"
Her husband paused in eating his soup to look at her. "Why—why?"
"It's so second-classy," she continued; "at least the women are, mostly. There's only one I've met so far that seemed like other people one has known."
"Who is she?" Lane inquired, ignoring the large question.
"Mrs. Falkner."
"Rob Falkner's wife? He's engineer at the Pleasant Valley mines."
"She came from Denver."
"They say he's a clever engineer."
"She is girlish and charming. She told me all about every one in Torso.She's been here two years, and she seems to know everybody."
"And she thinks Torso is second-class?" Lane inquired.
"She would like to get away, I think. But they are poor, I suppose. Her clothes look as if she knew what to wear,—pretty. She says there are some interesting people here when you find them out…. Who is Mr. Darnell? A lawyer."
"Tom Darnell? He's one of the local counsel for the road,—a Kentuckian, politician, talkative sort of fellow, very popular with all sorts. What did Mrs. Falkner have to say about Tom Darnell?"
"She told me all about his marriage,—how he ran away with his wife from a boarding-school in Kentucky—and was chased by her father and brothers, and they fired at him. A regular Southern scrimmage! But they got across the river and were married."
"Sounds like Darnell," Lane remarked contemptuously.
"It sounds exciting!" his wife said.
The story, as related by the vivacious Mrs. Falkner, had stirred Isabelle's curiosity; she could not dismiss this Kentucky politician as curtly as her husband had disposed of him….
They were both wilted by the heat, and after dinner they strolled out into the garden to get more air, walking leisurely arm in arm, while Lane smoked his first, cigar. Having finished the gossip for the day, they had little to say to each other,—Isabelle wondered that it should be so little! Two months of daily companionship after the intimate weeks of their engagement had exhausted the topics for mere talk which they had in common. To-night, as Lane wished to learn the latest news from the wreck, they went into the town, crossing on their way to the office the court-house square. This was the centre of old Torso, where the distillery aristocracy still lived in high, broad-eaved houses of the same pattern as the Colonel's city mansion. In one of these, which needed painting and was generally neglected, the long front windows on the first story were open, revealing a group of people sitting around a supper-table.
"There's Mrs. Falkner," Isabelle remarked; "the one at the end of the table, in white. This must be where they live."
Lane looked at the house with a mental estimate of the rent.
"Large house," he observed.
Isabelle watched the people laughing and talking about the table, which was still covered with coffee cups and glasses. A sudden desire to be there, to hear what they were saying, seized her. A dark-haired man was leaning forward and emphasizing his remarks by tapping a wine glass with along finger. That might be Tom Darnell, she thought…. The other houses about the square were dark and gloomy, most of them closed for the summer.
"There's a good deal of money in Torso," Lane commented, glancing at a brick house with wooden pillars. "It's a growing place,—more business coming all the time."
He looked at the town with the observant eye of the railroad officer, who sees in the prosperity of any community but one word writ large,—TRAFFIC.
And that word was blown through the soft night by the puffing locomotives in the valley below, by the pall of smoke that hung night and day over this quarter of the city, the dull glow of the coke-ovens on the distant hills. To the man this was enough—this and his home; business and the woman he had won,—they were his two poles!
"You see," continued Bessie Falkner, drawing up her pretty feet into the piazza cot, "it was just love at first sight. I was up there at the hotel in the mountains, trying to make up my mind whether I could marry another man, who was awfully rich—owned a mine and a ranch; but he was so dull the horses would go to sleep when we were out driving … And then just as I concluded it was the only thing for me to do, to take him and make the best of him,—then Rob rode up to the hotel in his old tattered suit—he was building a dam or something up in the mountains—and I knew I couldn't marry Mr. Mine-and-Ranch. That was all there was to it, my dear. The rest of the story? Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while he was at work on the dam; I stayed on, too, and it came along—naturally, you know."
Mrs. Falkner dipped into a box of candy and swung the cot gently to and fro. The men were still talking inside the house and the two wives had come outside for long confidences. Isabelle, amused by this sketch of the Colorado courtship, patted the blond woman's little hand. Mrs. Falkner had large blue eyes, with waving tendrils of hair, which gave her face the look of childish unsophistication;—especially at this moment when her voluptuous lips were closing over a specially desired piece of candy.
"Of course it would come along—with you!"
"I didn't do a thing—just waited," Bessie protested, fishing about the almost empty box for another delectable bit. "He did it all. He was in such a hurry he wanted to marry me then and there at the hotel and go live up in the mountains in a cabin above the dam where he was at work. He's romantic. Men are all like that then, don't you think? But of course it couldn't be that way; so we got married properly in the fall in Denver, and then came straight here. And," with a long sigh, "we've been here ever since. Stuck!"
"I should think you would have preferred the cabin above the dam," Isabelle suggested, recalling her own romantic notion of Dog Mountain. Mrs. Falkner made a little grimace.
"That might do for two or three months. But snowed in all the winter, even with the man you like best in all the world? He'd kill you or escape through the drifts … You see we hadn't a thing, not a cent, except his salary and that ended with the dam. It was only eighty a month anyway. This is better, a hundred and fifty," she explained with childish frankness. "But Rob has to work harder and likes the mountains, is always talking of going back. But I say there are better things than hiding yourself at the land's end. There's St. Louis, or maybe New York!"
Isabelle wondered how the Falkners were able to support such a hospitable house—they had two small children and Bessie had confided that another was coming in the spring—on the engineer's salary.
"And the other one," Mrs. Falkner added in revery, "is more than a millionnaire now."
Her face was full of speculation over what might have been as the wife of all that money.
"But we are happy, Rob and I,—except for the bills! Don't you hate bills?"
Isabelle's only answer was a hearty laugh. She found this pretty, frank little "Westerner" very attractive.
"It was bills that made my mother unhappy—broke her heart. Sometimes we had money,—most generally not. Such horrid fusses when there wasn't any. But what is one to do? You've got to go on living somehow. Rob says we can't afford this house,—Rob is always afraid we won't get through. But we do somehow. I tell him that the good time is coming,—we must just anticipate it, draw a little on the future."
At this point the men came through the window to the piazza. Bessie shook her box of candy coquettishly at Lane, who took the chair beside her. Evidently he thought her amusing, as most men did. Falkner leaned against the white pillar and stared up at the heavens. Isabelle, accustomed to men of more conventional social qualities, had found the young engineer glum and odd. He had a stern, rather handsome face, a deep furrow dividing his forehead and meeting the part of his thick brown hair, which curled slightly at the ends. "If he didn't look so cross, he would be quite handsome," thought Isabelle, wondering how long it might be before her host would speak to her. She could see him as he rode up to the hotel piazza that day, when Bessie Falkner had made up her mind on the moment that she could not marry "the other man." Finally Falkner broke his glum silence.
"Do you eat candy, Mrs. Lane? Pounds of it, I mean,—so that it is your staple article of diet."
"Tut, tut," remarked his wife from her cot. "Don't complain."
His next remark was equally abrupt.
"There's only one good thing in this Torso hole," he observed with more animation than he had shown all the evening, "and that's the coke-ovens at night—have you noticed them? They are like the fiery pits, smouldering, ready for the damned!"
It was not what she expected from a civil engineer, in Torso, Indiana, and she was at a loss for a reply.
"You'd rather have stayed in Colorado?" she asked frankly.
He turned his face to her and said earnestly, "Did you ever sleep out on a mountain with the stars close above you?—'the vast tellurian galleons' voyaging through space?"
Isabelle suspected that he was quoting poetry, which also seemed odd inTorso.
"Yes,—my brother and I used to camp out at our home in Connecticut. But I don't suppose you would call our Berkshire Hills mountains."
"No," he replied dryly, "I shouldn't."
And their conversation ended. Isabella wished that the Darnells had not been obliged to go home immediately after supper. The young lawyer knew how to talk to women, and had made himself very agreeable, telling stories of his youth spent among the mountains with a primitive people. She had observed that he drank a good deal of whiskey, and there was something in his black eyes that made her uncomfortable. But he was a man that women liked to think about: he touched their imaginations. She did not talk about him to John on their way home, however, but discussed the Falkners.
"Don't you think she is perfectly charming?" (Charming was the word she had found for Bessie Falkner.) "So natural and amusing! She's very Western—she can't have seen much of life—but she isn't a bit ordinary."
"Yes, I like her," Lane replied unenthusiastically, "and he seems original. I shouldn't wonder if he were clever in his profession; he told me a lot about Freke's mines."
What he had learned about the Pleasant Valley mines was the chief thing in the evening to Lane. He did not understand why Isabelle seemed so much more eager to know these people—these Darnells and Falkners—than the Frasers and the Adamses. She had made fun of the solemn dinner that the Frasers had given to introduce them into Torso "society."
"I wonder how they can live on that salary," Isabelle remarked. "One hundred and fifty a month!"
"He must make something outside."
* * * * *
After the Lanes had gone, Bessie Falkner prepared yawningly for bed, leaving her husband to shut up the house. Her weekly excitement of entertaining people over, she always felt let down, like a poet after the stir of creation. It was useless to go over the affair with Rob, as he was merely bored. But she spent hours thinking what the women said and how they looked and deciding whom she could have the next time. On her way to bed she went into the nursery where her two little girls were asleep in their cots beside the nurse, and finding a window open woke the nurse to reprove her for her carelessness. In the hall she met her husband bringing up the silver.
"Emma is so thoughtless," she complained. "I shall have to let her go if I can find another servant in this town."
Her husband listened negligently. The Falkners were perpetually changing their two servants, or were getting on without them.
"Mrs. Lane's maids all wear caps," Mrs. Falkner had observed frequently to her husband.
Bessie had strict ideas of how a house should be run, ideas derived from the best houses that she was familiar with. Since the advent of the Lanes she had extended these ideas and strove all the harder to achieve magnificent results. Though the livery of service was practically unknown in Torso, she had resolved to induce her cook (and maid of all work) to serve the meals with cap and apron, and also endeavored to have the nursemaid open the door and help serve when company was expected.
"What's the use!" her husband protested. "They'll only get up and go."
He could not understand the amount of earnest attention and real feeling that his wife put into these things,—her pride to have her small domain somewhat resemble the more affluent ones that she admired. Though her family had been decidedly plain, they had given her "advantages" in education and dress, and her own prettiness, her vivacity and charm, had won her way into whatever society Kansas City and Denver could offer. She had also visited here and there in different parts of the country,—once in New York, and again at a cottage on the New England coast where there were eight servants, a yacht, and horses. These experiences of luxury, of an easy and large social life, she had absorbed through every pore. With that marvellous adaptability of her race she had quickly formed her ideals of "how people ought to live." It was frequently difficult to carry out these ideals on a circumscribed income, with a husband who cared nothing for appearances, and that was a source of constant discontent to Bessie.
"Coming to bed?" she asked her husband, as she looked in vain for the drinking water that the maid was supposed to bring to her bedside at night.
"No," Falkner answered shortly. "I've got to make out those estimates somehow before morning. If you will have people all the time—"
Bessie turned in at her door shrugging her shoulders. Rob was in one of his "cross" moods,—overworked, poor boy! She slowly began to undress before the mirror, thinking of Isabelle Lane's stylish figure and her perfect clothes. "She must have lots of money," she reflected, "and so nice and simple! He's attractive, too. Rob is foolish not to like them. He showed his worst side to-night. If he wants to get on,—why, they are the sort of people he ought to know." Her husband's freakish temper gave her much trouble, his unexpectedly bearish moods when she was doing her very best for him, "bringing him out" as she put it, making the right kind of friends,—influential ones, so that he might have some chance in the scramble for the good things of life. Surely that was a wife's part. Bessie was satisfied that she had done much for her husband in this way, developed him socially; for when he rode up to the mountain hotel, he was solitary, moody, shy. Tonight he hadn't kissed her,—in fact hadn't done so for several days. He was tired by the prolonged heat, she supposed, and worried about the bills. He was always worried about expenses.
As the clothes slipped from her still shapely figure, she stood before the glass, thinking in a haze of those first lover-days that had departed so soon. Now instead of petting her, Rob spent his hours at home upstairs in his attic workroom, doing extra work or reading. Could it be that he was growing tired of her, so soon, in four years? She glanced over her shoulder at her pretty arms, her plump white neck reflected in the glass, and smiled unconsciously with assurance. Oh, he would come back to the lover-mood—she was still desirable! And as the smile curved her lip she thought, "I married him for love!" She was very proud of that….
The house was now deliciously cool and quiet. Bessie sank into her bed with a sigh, putting out one hand for a magazine and turning on the electric light beside the bed. It had been a tiresome day, with the supper to bring off. There had been six courses, and everything had been very nice. The black cook she had engaged to prepare the meal was a treasure, could serve a better dinner than Mrs. Fraser's or Mrs. Adams's. She herself had made the salad and prepared the iced grape-fruit. Every limb ached—she was always so tired. She loved this last quiet hour of the day that she had by herself, now that the nurse took both the children. With her delicate health the nurse had been a necessity. She usually looked blooming and rosy, but was always tired, always had been as long as she could remember. The doctor had told Falkner after the second child came that his wife would always be a delicate woman, must be carefully protected, or she would collapse and have the fearful modern disease of nerves. So Falkner had insisted on having the best nurse obtainable to relieve her from the wearing nights,—though it meant that somehow eighteen hundred dollars must grow of itself!
As midnight sounded from the court-house clock, Bessie laid down the magazine and stretched her tired limbs, luxuriating in the comfort of her soft bed. The story she had been reading was sentimental,—the love of a cowboy for the fair daughter of a railroad president. She longed for the caresses of her cow-boy lover, and wondered dreamily if Lane were a devoted husband. He seemed so; but all men were probably alike: their first desires gratified, they thought of other things. So she put out the light and closed her eyes, in faint discontent with life, which was proving less romantic than she had anticipated.
She had her own room. At first it had held two beds, her husband sharing the room with her. But as the house was large he had taken a room on the third story. Nowadays, as Bessie knew, the better sort of American household does not use the primitive double bed. For hygiene and comfort enlightened people have taken to separate beds, then separate quarters. A book might be written on the doing away of the conjugal bed in American life! There should be interesting observations on the effect of this change, social, and hygienic, and moral,—oh, most interesting! … A contented smile at last stole over the young wife's face. Was she dreaming of her babies, of those first days of love, when her husband never wished her out of his sight, or simply of the well-ordered, perfectly served, pretty supper that she had given for the Lanes whom she was most anxious to know well? The supper had quite met her aspirations except in the matter of caps and aprons, had satisfied her cherished ideal of how "nice people" lived in this world.
That ideal is constantly expanding these days. In America no one is classed by birth or profession. All is to make, and the women with their marvellous powers of absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn "how to live as other people do,"—in magazines and on bill boards, in the theatre, the churches, the trains, the illustrated novel. Suggestions how to live!
Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house Falkner was figuring over stresses and strains of an unemotional sort. When past midnight he shoved the papers into the drawer, a familiar thought coursed through his brain: somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price. Living was not cheap even in Torso, and the cost of living was ever going higher, so the papers said and the wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live "like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things not seen.
The book dropped from his hand. He had carried it in his mountain kit, had read it to Bessie when they were engaged. She had listened, flattered, looking at him and smoothing his hair. But after marriage she confessed flatly that she was not "literary." So they had read together a book of travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and latterly nothing. Taking another cigarette, the man read on, and before his tired eyes rose the purple peaks of the Rockies, the shining crests of snow, the azure sky. And also a cabin in a green meadow beside a still mountain lake, and a woman fair and tall and straight, with blue eyes and a caressing hand,—a child on one arm. But Bessie was sleeping downstairs. Putting out his light, the man went to bed.
The man on horseback riding up the trail to look into the girl's eyes that summer afternoon!
The two young wives quickly became very intimate. They spent many mornings together "reading," that is, they sat on the cool west veranda of the Lanes's house, or less often on the balcony at the Falkners's, with a novel turned down where their attention had relaxed, chatting and sewing. Isabelle found Bessie Falkner "cunning," "amusing," "odd," and always "charming." She had "an air about her," a picturesque style of gossip that she used when instructing Isabelle in the intricacies of Torso society. Isabelle also enjoyed the homage that Bessie paid her.
Bessie frankly admired Isabella's house, her clothes, her stylish self, and enjoyed her larger experience of life,—the Washington winter, Europe, even the St. Louis horizon,—all larger than anything she had ever known. Isabelle was very nearly the ideal of what she herself would have liked to be. So when they had exhausted Torso and their households, they filled the morning hours with long tales about people they had known,—"Did you ever hear of the Dysarts in St. Louis? Sallie Dysart was a great belle,—she had no end of affairs, and then she married Paul Potter. The Potters were very well-known people in Philadelphia, etc." Thus they gratified their curiosity aboutlives, all the interesting complications into which men and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she became exacting and interfered with the luncheon.
Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torsonians. "Mrs. Freke was a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant when he married her. Don't you see the bang in her hair still? … Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky,—very old family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard,—he was very wild. He's disappeared since…. Yes, Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to like her. I don't trust her green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn't the one to care!"
Often they came back to Darnell,—that impetuous, black-haired young lawyer with his deep-set, fiery eyes, who had run away with his wife.
"She looks scared most of the time, don't you think? They say he drinks. Too bad, isn't it? Such a brilliant man, and with the best chances. He ran for Congress two years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection is against him…. Oh, Sue Darnell,—she is nobody; she can't hold him—that's plain."
"What does she think of Mrs. Adams?"
Bessie shrugged her shoulders significantly.
"Sue has to have her out at their farm. Well, they say she was pretty gay herself,—engaged to three men at once,—one of them turned up in Torso last year. Tom was very polite to him, elaborately polite; but he left town very soon, and she seemed dazed…. I guess she has reason to be afraid of her husband. He looks sometimes—well, I shouldn't like to have Rob look at me that way, not for half a second!"
The two women clothed the brilliant Kentuckian with all the romance of unbridled passion. "He sends to Alabama every week for the jasmine Mrs. Adams wears—fancy!"
"Really! Oh, men! men!"
"It's probablyherfault—she can't hold him."
That was the simple philosophy which they evolved about marriage,—men were uncertain creatures, only partly tamed, and it was the woman's business to "hold" them. So much the worse for the women if they happened to be tied to men they could not "hold." Isabelle, remembering on one occasion the flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, his passionate denunciation of mere commercialism in public life, felt that there might be some defence for poor Tom Darnell,—even in his flirtation with the "common" Mrs. Adams.
Then the two friends went deeper and talked husbands, both admiring, both hilariously amused at the masculine absurdities of their mates.
"I hate to see poor Rob so harassed with bills," Bessie confided. "It is hard for him, with his tastes, poor boy. But I don't know what I can do about it. When he complains, I tell him we eat everything we have, and I am sure I never get a dress!"
Isabelle, recollecting the delicious suppers she had had at the Falkners's, thought that less might be eaten. In her mother's house there had always been comfort, but strict economy, even after the hardware business paid enormous profits. This thrift was in her blood. Bessie had said to Rob that Isabelle was "close." But Isabelle only laughed at Bessie when she was in these moods of dejection, usually at the first of the month. Bessie was so amusing about her troubles that she could not take her seriously.
"Never mind, Bessie!" she laughed. "He probably likes to work hard for you,—every man does for the woman he loves."
And then they would have luncheon, specially devised for Bessie's epicurean taste. For Bessie Falkner did devout homage to a properly cooked dish. Isabelle, watching the contented look with which the little woman swallowed a bit of jellied meat, felt that any man worth his salt would like to gratify her innocent tastes. Probably Falkner couldn't endure a less charming woman for his wife. So she condoned, as one does with a clever child, all the little manifestations of waywardness and selfishness that she was too intelligent not to see in her new friend. Isabelle liked to spoil Bessie Falkner. Everybody liked to indulge her, just as one likes to feed a pretty child with cake and candy, especially when the discomforts of the resulting indigestion fall on some one else.
"Oh, it will all come out right in the end!" Bessie usually exclaimed, after she had well lunched. She did not see things very vividly far ahead,—nothing beyond the pleasant luncheon, the attractive house, her adorable Isabelle. "I always tell Rob when he is blue that his chance will come some day; he'll make a lucky strike, do some work that attracts public attention, and then we'll all be as happy as can be."
She had the gambler's instinct; her whole life had been a gamble, now winning, now losing, even to that moment when her lover had ridden up to the hotel and solved her doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had known men whose fortunes came over night, "millions and millions," as she told Isabelle, rolling the words in her little mouth toothsomely. Why not to her? She felt that any day fortune might smile.
"My husband says that Mr. Falkner is doing excellent work,—Mr. Freke said so," Isabelle told Bessie.
"And Rob talks as if he were going to lose his job next week! Sometimes I wish he would lose it—and we could go away to a large city."
Bessie thus echoed the feeling in Isabelle's own heart,—"I don't want to spend my life on an Indiana prairie!" To both of the women Torso was less a home, a corner of the earth into which to put down roots, than a way-station in the drama and mystery of life. Confident in their husbands' ability to achieve Success, they dreamed of other scenes, of a larger future, with that restlessness of a new civilization, which has latterly seized even women—the supposedly stable sex.
* * * * *
As the year wore on there were broader social levels into which Isabelle in company with Bessie dipped from time to time. The Woman's Club had a lecture course in art and sociology. They attended one of the lectures in the Normal School building, and laughed furtively in their muffs at "Madam President" of the Club,—a portly, silk-dressed dame,—and at the ill-fitting black coat of the university professor who lectured. They came away before the reception.
"Dowds!" Bessie summed up succinctly.
"Rather crude," Isabelle agreed tolerantly.
During the winter Isabelle did some desultory visiting among the Hungarians employed at the coke-ovens, for Bessie's church society. Originally of Presbyterian faith, she had changed at St. Mary's to the Episcopal church, and latterly all church affiliations had grown faint. The Colonel maintained a pew in the first Presbyterian Church, but usually went to hear the excellent lectures of a Unitarian preacher. Isabelle's religious views were vague, broad, liberal, and unvital. Bessie's were simpler, but scarcely more effective. Lane took a lively interest in the railroad Y.M.C.A., which he believed to be helpful for young men. He himself had been a member in St. Louis and had used the gymnasium. Isabelle got up an entertainment for the Hungarian children, which was ended by a disastrous thunderstorm. She had an uneasy feeling that she "ought to do something for somebody." Alice Johnston, she knew, had lived at a settlement for a couple of years. But there were no settlements in Torso, and the acutely poor were looked after by the various churches. Just what there was to be done for others was not clear. When she expressed her desire "not to live selfishly" to her husband, he replied easily:—
"There are societies for those things, I suppose. It ought to be natural, what we do for others."
Just what was meant by "natural" was not clear to Isabelle, but the word accorded with the general belief of her class that the best way to help in the world was to help one's self, to become useful to others by becoming important in the community,—a comfortable philosophy. But there was one definite thing that they might accomplish, and that was to help the Falkners into easier circumstances.
"Don't you suppose we could do something for them? Now that the baby has come they are dreadfully poor,—can't think of going away for the summer, and poor Bessie needs it and the children. I meant to ask the Colonel when he was here last Christmas. Isn't there something Rob could do in the road?"
Lane shook his head.
"That is not my department. There might be a place in St. Louis when they begin work on the new terminals. I'll speak to Brundage the next time he's here."
"St. Louis—Bessie would like that. She's such a dear, and would enjoy pretty things so much! It seems as if she almost had a right to them."
"Why did she marry a poor man, then?" Lane demanded with masculine logic.
"Because she loved him, silly! She isn't mercenary."
"Well, then,—" but Lane did not finish his sentence, kissing his wife instead. "She's rather extravagant, isn't she?" he asked after a time.
"Oh, she'll learn to manage."
"I will do what I can for him, of course."
And Isabelle considered the Falkners' fate settled; John, like her father, always brought about what he wanted.
* * * * *
They spent the Christmas holidays that year with her parents. Lane was called to New York on railroad business, and Isabelle had a breathless ten days with old friends, dining and lunching, listening to threads of gossip that had been broken by her exile to Torso. She discovered an unexpected avidity for diversion, and felt almost ashamed to enjoy people so keenly, to miss her husband so little. She put it all down to the cramping effect of Torso. So when the Colonel asked her how she liked her new home, she burst forth, feeling that her opportunity had come:—
"It doesn't agree with me, I think. I've grown frightfully thin,—John says I mustn't spend another summer there…. I hope we can get away soon. John must have a wider field, don't you think?"
"He seems to find Torso pretty wide."
"He's done splendid work, I know. But I don't want him side-tracked all his life in a little Indiana town. Don't you think you could speak to the Senator or Mr. Beals?"
The Colonel smiled.
"Yes, I could speak to them, if John wants me to."
"He hasn't said anything about it," she hastened to add.
"So you are tired of Torso?" he asked, smiling still more.
"It seems so good to be here, to hear some music, and go to the theatre; to be near old friends," she explained apologetically. "Don't you and mother want us to be near you?"
"Of course, my dear! We want you to be happy."
"Why, we are happy there,—only it seems so out of the world, so second-class. And John is not second-class."
"No, John is not second-class," the Colonel admitted with another smile."And for that reason I don't believe he will want me to interfere."
Nevertheless she kept at her idea, talking it over with her mother. All her friends were settled in the great cities, and it was only natural that she should aspire to something better than Torso—for the present, St. Louis. So the Colonel spoke to Lane, and Lane spoke to his wife when they were back once more in the Torso house. He was grave, almost hurt.
"I'm sorry, Belle, you are so tired of life here. I can take another position or ask to be transferred; but you must understand, dear, that whatever is done, it must be by myself. I don't want favors, not even from the Colonel!"
She felt ashamed and small, yet protested: "I don't see why you should object. Every one does the same,—uses all the pull he has."
"There are changes coming,—I prefer to wait. The man who uses least pull usually hangs on longest."
As he walked to the office that morning, the thought of Isabelle's restlessness occupied his mind. "It's dull for her here, of course. It isn't the kind of life she's been used to, or had the right to expect as the Colonel's daughter." He felt the obligation to live up to his wife, having won her from a superior position. Like a chivalrous American gentleman he was not aggrieved because even during the first two years of marriage, he—their life together—was not enough to satisfy his wife. He did not reflect that his mother had accepted unquestioningly the Iowa town to which his father had brought her after the War; nor that Isabelle's mother had accepted cheerfully the two rooms in the little brick house near the hardware store. Those were other days.
He saw the picture of Isabelle standing beside the dining-room window with the sun on her hair,—a developed type of human being, that demanded much of life for satisfaction and adjustment. He plunged into his affairs with an added grip, an unconscious feeling that he must by his exertions provide those satisfactions and adjustments which his wife's nature demanded for its perfect development.
It was to be Isabella's first real dinner-party, a large affair for Torso. It had already absorbed her energies for a fortnight. The occasion was the arrival of a party of Atlantic and Pacific officials and directors, who were to inspect the Torso and Northern, with a view to its purchase and absorption. The Torso and Northern was only a little scab line of railroad, penetrating the soft-coal country for a couple of hundred miles, bankrupt and demoralized. When Lane saw President Beals at Christmas, he pointed out to him what might be made of this scrap-heap road, if it were rehabilitated and extended into new coal fields. Beals had shown no interest in the Torso and Northern at that time, and Lane forgot the matter until he noticed that there was a market for Torso and Northern equipment bonds, which before had been unsalable at twenty. Seeing them rise point by point for a month, he had bought all he could pay for; he knew the weather signs in the railroad world. When the inspection party was announced, his sagacity was proved.
Isabelle was excited by the prospect of her dinner for the distinguished visitors. Who should she have of Torso's best to meet them? The Frasers and the Griscoms, of course. John insisted on inviting the Frekes, and Isabelle wanted the Darnells and the Adamses, though her husband demurred at recognizing the bond. But Tom Darnell was so interesting, his wife urged, and she was presentable. And the Falkners? There was no special reason for having them, but Isabelle thought it might be a good thing for Rob to meet some influential people, and Bessie would surely amuse the men. Isabelle's executive energy was thoroughly aroused. The flowers and the wines were ordered from St. Louis, the terrapin from Philadelphia, the fish and the candies from New York. Should they have champagne? Lane thought not, because "it's not quite our style." But Isabelle overbore his objections:—
"The Adamses always have it, and the Senator will expect it and all the NewYork crowd."
Her husband acquiesced, feeling that in these things his wife knew the world better than he,—though he would have preferred to offer his superior officers a simpler meal.
The inspection party returned from their trip over the Torso and Northern in the best of spirits. Lane felt sure that the purchase had been decided upon by this inner coterie of the A. and P., of which the mouthpiece, Senator Thomas, had emitted prophetic phrases,—"valuable possibilities undeveloped," "would tap new fields,—good feeder," etc., etc. Lane thought pleasantly of the twenty equipment bonds in his safe, which would be redeemed by the Atlantic and Pacific at par and accrued interest, and he resolved to secure another block, if they were to be had, before the sale was officially confirmed by the directors. Altogether it had been an agreeable jaunt. He had met several influential directors and had been generally consulted as the man who knew the exact local conditions. And he was aware that he had made a favorable impression as a practical railroad man….
When his guests came down to the drawing-room, he was proud of what his wife had done. The house was ablaze with candles—Bessie had persuaded Isabelle to dispense with the electric light—and bunches of heavy, thick-stemmed roses filled the vases. A large silver tray of decanters and cocktails was placed in the hall beside the blazing fire. The Senator had already possessed himself of a cocktail, and was making his little speeches to Isabelle, who in a Paris gown that gave due emphasis to her pretty shoulders and thin figure, was listening to him gayly.
"Did you think we lived in a log-cabin, Senator?" she protested to his compliments. "We eat with knives and forks, silver ones too, and sometimes we even have champagne in Torso!"…
Lane, coming up with the first Vice-president, Vernon Short, and a Mr. Stanton, one of the New York directors ("a great swell," and "not just money," "has brains, you know," as the Senator whispered), was proud of his competent wife. She was vivaciously awake, and seemed to have forgotten her girlish repugnance to the amorous Senator. As she stood by the drawing-room door receiving her guests, he felt how much superior to all the Torso "leaders" she was,—yes, she deserved a larger frame! And to-night he felt confident that he should be able before long to place her in it…. The Senator, having discharged his cargo of compliments, was saying:—
"Saw your friend Miss Pallanton that was—Mrs. Woodyard—at the Stantons's the other night, looking like a blond Cleopatra. She's married a bright fellow, and she'll be the making of him. He'll have to hop around to please her,—I expect that's what husbands are for, isn't it, Lane?"
And here Isabelle passed him over to Bessie, who had come without Falkner, he having made some silly excuse at the last moment,—"just cross," as Bessie confided to Isabelle. She was looking very fresh in a gown that she and Isabelle's seamstress had contrived, and she smiled up into the Senator's face with her blandest child-manner. The Senator, who liked all women, even those who asked his views on public questions, was especially fond of what he called the "unsophisticated" variety, with whom his title carried weight.
When they reached the dining room, Lane's elation rose to a higher pitch. The table, strewn with sweet jasmine and glossy leaves, was adorned with all the handsome gold and silver service and glass that Isabelle had received at her marriage. It was too barbarically laden to be really beautiful; but it was in the best prevailing taste of the time, and to Lane, who never regarded such matters attentively, "was as good as the best." Looking down the long table after they were seated, he smiled with satisfaction and expanded, a subtle suavity born of being host to distinguished folk unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him even to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom he did not like.
The food was excellent, and the maids, some borrowed, some specially imported from St. Louis, made no mistakes, at least gross ones. The feast moved as smoothly as need be. Isabelle, glancing over the table as the game came on, had her moment of elation, too. This was a real dinner-party, as elaborate and sumptuous as any that her friends in St. Louis might give. The Farrington Beals, she remembered, had men servants,—most New York families kept them, but that could hardly be expected in Torso. The dinner was excellent, as the hungry visitors testified, and they seemed to find the women agreeable and the whole affair unexpectedly cosmopolitan, which was pleasing after spending a long week in a car, examining terminals and coal properties. Indeed, it was very much the same dinner that was being served at about that hour in thousands of well-to-do houses throughout the country all the way from New York to San Francisco,—the same dishes, the same wines, the same service, almost the same talk. Nothing in American life is so completely standardized as what is known as a "dinner" in good, that is well-to-do, society. Isabelle Lane, with all her executive ability, her real cleverness, aspired to do "the proper thing," just as it was done in the houses of the moderately rich everywhere.
The model of hospitality is set by the hotel manager and his chef, and all that the clever hostess aspires to do is to offer the nearest copy of this to her guests. Neither the Lanes nor any of their guests, however, felt this lack of distinction, this sameness, in the entertainment provided for them. They had the comfortable feeling of being in a cheerful house, well warmed and well lighted, of eating all this superfluous food, which they were accustomed to eat, of saying the things they always said on such occasions….
Isabelle had distributed her Torsonians skilfully: Bessie was adorable and kept three men hanging on her stories. Mrs. Adams, on the other side of Stanton, was furtively eying Darnell, who was talking rather loudly, trying to capture the Senator's attention from Bessie. Across the table Mrs. Darnell, still the striking dark-haired schoolgirl, was watching her husband, with a pitiful something in her frightened eyes that made Isabelle shrink…. It was Darnell who finally brought the conversation to a full stop.
"No, Senator," he said in his emphatic voice, "it is not scum like the assassin of the President that this country should fear!"
"We're paying now for our liberal policy in giving homes to the anarchistic refuse of Europe," the Senator insisted. "Congress must pass legislation that will protect us from another Czolgocz."
Darnell threw up his head, his lips curving disdainfully. He had emptied his champagne glass frequently, and there was a reckless light in his dark eyes. Isabelle trembled for his next remark:—
"You are wrong, sir, if you will allow me to say so. The legislation that we need is not against poor, feeble-minded rats like that murderer. We have prisons and asylums enough for them. What the country needs is legislation against its honored thieves, the real anarchists among us. We don't get 'em from Europe, Senator; we breed 'em right here,—in Wall street."
If some one had discharged assafoetida over the table, there could not have been a more unpleasant sensation.
"You don't mean quite that, Darnell," Lane began; but the Kentuckian brushed him to one side.
"Just that; and some day you will see what Americans will do with their anarchists. I tell you this land is full of discontent,—men hating dishonesty, privilege, corruption, injustice! men ready to fight their oppressors for freedom!"
The men about the table were all good Republicans, devout believers in the gospel of prosperity, all sharers in it. They smiled contemptuously at Darnell's passion.
"Our martyred President was a great and good man," the Senator observed irrelevantly in his public tone.
"He was the greatest breeder of corruption that has ever held that office," retorted the Kentuckian. "With his connivance, a Mark Hanna has forged the worst industrial tyranny the world has ever seen,—the corrupt grip of corporations on the lives of the people."
"Pretty strong for a corporation lawyer!" Lane remarked, and the men laughed cynically.
"I am no longer a corporation hireling," Darnell said in a loud voice.
Isabelle noticed that Mrs. Adams's eyes glowed, as she gazed at the man.
"I sent in my resignation last week."
"Getting ready for the public platform?" some one suggested. "You won't find much enthusiasm for those sentiments; wages are too high!"
There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The Kentuckian raised his head as if to retort, then collected himself, and remarked meekly:—
"Pardon me, Mrs. Lane, this is not the occasion for such a discussion. I was carried away by my feelings. Sometimes the real thought will burst out."
The apology scarcely bettered matters, and Isabelle's response was flat.
"I am sure it is always interesting to hear both sides."
"But I can't see that to a good citizen there can be two sides to the lamentable massacre of our President," the Senator said severely. "I had the privilege of knowing our late President intimately, and I may say that I never knew a better man,—he was another Lincoln!"
"I don't see where Mr. Darnell can find this general discontent," the Vice-president of the A. and P. put in suavely. "The country has never been so prosperous as during the McKinley-Hanna regime,—wages at the high level, exports increasing, crops abundant. What any honest and industrious man has to complain of, I can't see. Why, we are looking for men all the time, and we can't get them, at any price!"
"'Ye shall not live by bread alone,'" Darnell muttered. It was a curious remark for a dinner-party, Isabelle thought. Mrs. Adams's lips curled as if she understood it. But now that the fiery lawyer had taken to quoting the Bible no one paid any further attention to him, and the party sank back into little duologues appropriate to the occasion. Later Bessie confessed to Isabelle that she had been positively frightened lest the Kentuckian would do "something awful,"—he had been drinking, she thought. But Darnell remained silent for the brief time before the ladies left the room, merely once raising his eyes apologetically to Isabelle with his wine-glass at his lips, murmuring so that she alone could hear him,—"I drink to the gods of Prosperity!" She smiled back her forgiveness. He had behaved very badly, almost wrecked her successful dinner; but somehow she could not dislike him. She did not understand what he was saying or why he should say it when people were having a good time; but she felt it was part of his interesting and uncertain nature….
Presently the coffee and cigars came and the women went across the hall, while the men talked desultorily until the sound of Bessie's voice singing a French song to Isabella's accompaniment attracted them. After the next song the visitors went, their car being due to leave on the Eastern express. They said many pleasant things to Isabelle, and the Senator, holding her hand in his broad, soft palm, whispered:—
"We can't let so much charm stay buried in Torso!"
So when the last home guest had departed and Lane sat down before the fire for another cigar, Isabelle drew her chair close to his, her heart beating with pleasant emotions.
"Well?" she said expectantly.
"Splendid—everything! They liked it, I am sure. I felt proud of you,Belle!"
"It was all good but the fish,—yes, I thought our party was very nice!" Then she told him what the Senator had said, and this time Lane did not repel the idea of their moving to wider fields. He had made a good impression on "the New York crowd," and he thought again complacently of the Torso and Northern equipment bonds.
"Something may turn up before long, perhaps."
New York! It made her heart leap. She felt that she was now doing the wife's part admirably, furthering John's interests by being a competent hostess, and she liked to further his interests by giving pleasant dinners, in an attractive gown, and receiving the admiration of clever men. It had not been the way that her mother had helped on the Colonel; but it was another way, the modern way, and a very agreeable way.
"Darnell is an awful fool," Lane commented. "If he can't hold on to himself any better than he did to-night, he won't get far."
"Did you know that he had resigned?"
"No,—it's just as well he has. I don't think the A. and P. would have much use for him. He's headed the wrong way;" and he added with hardly a pause, "I think we had better cut the Darnells out, Isabelle. They are not our sort."
Isabelle, thinking that this was the man's prejudice, made no reply.
"It was too bad Rob Falkner wouldn't come. It would have been a good thing for him to meet influential people."
Already she spoke with an air of commanding the right sort that her husband had referred to.
"He doesn't make a good impression on people," Lane remarked. "Perhaps he will make good with his work."
As a man who had made his own way he felt the great importance of being able to "get on" with people, to interest them, and keep them aware of one's presence. But he was broad enough to recognize other roads to success.