It was three o’clock in the morning, and the cotillion was at its
height, when Woburn left the over-heated splendor of the Gildermere
ballroom, and after a delay caused by the determination of the drowsy
footman to give him a ready-made overcoat with an imitation astrachan
collar in place of his own unimpeachable Poole garment, found himself
breasting the icy solitude of the Fifth Avenue. He was still smiling,
as he emerged from the awning, at his insistence in claiming his own
overcoat: it illustrated, humorously enough, the invincible force of
habit. As he faced the wind, however, he discerned a providence in his
persistency, for his coat was fur-lined, and he had a cold voyage before
him on the morrow.
It had rained hard during the earlier part of the night, and the
carriages waiting in triple line before the Gildermeres’ door were still
domed by shining umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down the
avenue blinked Narcissus-like at their watery images in the hollows
of the sidewalk. A dry blast had come out of the north, with pledge of
frost before daylight, and to Woburn’s shivering fancy the pools in
the pavement seemed already stiffening into ice. He turned up his
coat-collar and stepped out rapidly, his hands deep in his coat-pockets.
As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder-like door-steps which
may well suggest to the future archaeologist that all the streets of New
York were once canals; at the spectral tracery of the trees about St.
Luke’s, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the mean vista of the
long side-streets. The knowledge that he was perhaps looking at it all
for the last time caused every detail to start out like a challenge
to memory, and lit the brown-stone house-fronts with the glamor of
sword-barred Edens.
It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to the Gildermere
ball; but the same change in his condition which made him stare
wonderingly at the houses in the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an
exploit to the tame business of ball-going. Who would have imagined,
Woburn mused, that such a situation as his would possess the priceless
quality of sharpening the blunt edge of habit?
It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned against the doorway
of Mrs. Gildermere’s ball-room, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the
accustomed, that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by him with
looks of friendly recognition would start at the thought of having seen
him and slur over the recollection of having taken his hand!
And the girl he had gone there to see: what would she think of him? He
knew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted no
overlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculable
interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of
compassion. Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate
tints of the moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified
by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this
tendency and she was surrounded by people who focussed life in the same
way. To the girls in Miss Talcott’s set, the attentions of a clever man
who had to work for his living had the zest of a forbidden pleasure; but
to marry such a man would be as unpardonable as to have one’s carriage
seen at the door of a cheap dress-maker. Poverty might make a man
fascinating; but a settled income was the best evidence of stability
of character. If there were anything in heredity, how could a nice
girl trust a man whose parents had been careless enough to leave him
unprovided for?
Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be charged with
formulating these views; but they were implicit in the slope of every
white shoulder and in the ripple of every yard of imported tulle
dappling the foreground of Mrs. Gildermere’s ball-room. The advantages
of line and colour in veiling the crudities of a creed are obvious to
emotional minds; and besides, Woburn was conscious that it was to the
cheerful materialism of their parents that the young girls he admired
owed that fine distinction of outline in which their skilfully-rippled
hair and skilfully-hung draperies coöperated with the slimness and
erectness that came of participating in the most expensive sports,
eating the most expensive food and breathing the most expensive air.
Since the process which had produced them was so costly, how could they
help being costly themselves? Woburn was too logical to expect to give
no more for a piece of old Sèvres than for a bit of kitchen crockery;
he had no faith in wonderful bargains, and believed that one got in
life just what one was willing to pay for. He had no mind to dispute the
taste of those who preferred the rustic simplicity of the earthen crock;
but his own fancy inclined to the piece of _pâte tendre_ which must be
kept in a glass case and handled as delicately as a flower.
It was not merely by the external grace of these drawing-room ornaments
that Woburn’s sensibilities were charmed. His imagination was touched
by the curious exoticism of view resulting from such conditions; He had
always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott even more than looking at her.
Her ideas had the brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those
tropical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott’s opinions had
no connection with the actual; her very materialism had the grace of
artificiality. Woburn had been enchanted once by seeing her helpless
before a smoking lamp: she had been obliged to ring for a servant
because she did not know how to put it out.
Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for
granted that people are born with carriages and country-places: it never
occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for
self-consciousness, and she had none of the _nouveau riche_ prudery
which classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave
in the presence of either.
The conditions of Woburn’s own life had made him peculiarly susceptible
to those forms of elegance which are the flower of ease. His father
had lost a comfortable property through sheer inability to go over his
agent’s accounts; and this disaster, coming at the outset of Woburn’s
school-days, had given a new bent to the family temperament. The father
characteristically died when the effort of living might have made it
possible to retrieve his fortunes; and Woburn’s mother and sister,
embittered by this final evasion, settled down to a vindictive war with
circumstances. They were the kind of women who think that it lightens
the burden of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced housekeeper
puts away her knick-knacks to make the dusting easier. They fought mean
conditions meanly; but Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, did
not allow for the suffering which had brought it about: his own tendency
was to overcome difficulties by conciliation rather than by conflict.
Such surroundings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of Miss
Talcott. Woburn instinctively associated poverty with bad food, ugly
furniture, complaints and recriminations: it was natural that he should
be drawn toward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series of
peaceful and good-humored acts, unimpeded by petty obstacles. To spend
one’s time in such society gave one the illusion of unlimited credit;
and also, unhappily, created the need for it.
It was here in fact that Woburn’s difficulties began. To marry Miss
Talcott it was necessary to be a rich man: even to dine out in her set
involved certain minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry
her sooner or later; and in the meanwhile to be with her as much as
possible.
As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watching
her pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. First
there had been the tailor’s bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs
and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on
his clothes for two or three years previously. Then there were
theatre-tickets; cab-fares; florist’s bills; tips to servants at the
country-houses where he went because he knew that she was invited; the
_Omar Khayyám_ bound by Sullivan that he sent her at Christmas; the
contributions to her pet charities; the reckless purchases at fairs
where she had a stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed
and his year’s salary was gone before the second quarter was due.
He had invested the few thousand dollars which had been his portion of
his father’s shrunken estate: when his debts began to pile up, he took
a flyer in stocks and after a few months of varying luck his little
patrimony disappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was proceeding at an
inverse ratio to his financial ventures. Miss Talcott was growing tender
and he began to feel that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the
goal exasperated him. She was not the girl to wait and he knew that it
must be now or never. A friend lent him five thousand dollars on his
personal note and he bought railway stocks on margin. They went up and
he held them for a higher rise: they fluctuated, dragged, dropped
below the level at which he had bought, and slowly continued their
uninterrupted descent. His broker called for more margin; he could not
respond and was sold out.
What followed came about quite naturally. For several years he had been
cashier in a well-known banking-house. When the note he had given his
friend became due it was obviously necessary to pay it and he used
the firm’s money for the purpose. To repay the money thus taken, he
increased his debt to his employers and bought more stocks; and on these
operations he made a profit of ten thousand dollars. Miss Talcott rode
in the Park, and he bought a smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his
tradesmen, and went on speculating with the remainder of his profits. He
made a little more, but failed to take advantage of the market and lost
all that he had staked, including the amount taken from the firm. He
increased his over-draft by another ten thousand and lost that; he
over-drew a farther sum and lost again. Suddenly he woke to the fact
that he owed his employers fifty thousand dollars and that the partners
were to make their semi-annual inspection in two days. He realized then
that within forty-eight hours what he had called borrowing would become
theft.
There was no time to be lost: he must clear out and start life over
again somewhere else. The day that he reached this decision he was to
have met Miss Talcott at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not
appear: she had a headache, his hostess explained. Well, he was not to
have a last look at her, after all; better so, perhaps. He took leave
early and on his way home stopped at a florist’s and sent her a bunch of
violets. The next morning he got a little note from her: the violets had
done her head so much good--she would tell him all about it that evening
at the Gildermere ball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the
fire. That evening he would be on board ship: the examination of the
books was to take place the following morning at ten.
Woburn went down to the bank as usual; he did not want to do anything
that might excite suspicion as to his plans, and from one or two
questions which one of the partners had lately put to him he divined
that he was being observed. At the bank the day passed uneventfully. He
discharged his business with his accustomed care and went uptown at the
usual hour.
In the first flush of his successful speculations he had set up bachelor
lodgings, moved by the temptation to get away from the dismal atmosphere
of home, from his mother’s struggles with the cook and his sister’s
curiosity about his letters. He had been influenced also by the wish for
surroundings more adapted to his tastes. He wanted to be able to give
little teas, to which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. She
came once or twice and pronounced it all delightful: she thought it _so_
nice to have only a few Whistler etchings on the walls and the simplest
crushed levant for all one’s books.
To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the bank. His plans had taken
definite shape. He had engaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifax
early the next morning; and there was nothing for him to do before going
on board but to pack his clothes and tear up a few letters. He threw his
clothes into a couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been called
for by an expressman he emptied his pockets and counted up his ready
money. He found that he possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five
cents; but his passage to Halifax was paid, and once there he could
pawn his watch and rings. This calculation completed, he unlocked his
writing-table drawer and took out a handful of letters. They were notes
from Miss Talcott. He read them over and threw them into the fire.
On his table stood her photograph. He slipped it out of its frame and
tossed it on top of the blazing letters. Having performed this rite,
he got into his dress-clothes and went to a small French restaurant to
dine.
He had meant to go on board the steamer immediately after dinner; but a
sudden vision of introspective hours in a silent cabin made him call for
the evening paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It would be
as easy to go on board at midnight as now.
He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with surprising
freshness of interest; but toward eleven o’clock he again began to
dread the approaching necessity of going down to the steamer. There was
something peculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending the rest of the
night in a stifling cabin jammed against the side of a wharf.
He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth Avenue. It was now
nearly midnight and a stream of carriages poured up town from the
opera and the theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the familiar
spectacle it occurred to him that many of the people driving by him in
smart broughams and C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermere
ball. He remembered Miss Talcott’s note of the morning and wondered if
she were in one of the passing carriages; she had spoken so confidently
of meeting him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last look
at her? There was really nothing to prevent it. He was not likely to run
across any member of the firm: in Miss Talcott’s set his social standing
was good for another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipation of
her surprise at seeing him, and then reflected with a start that she
would not be surprised at all.
His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety rain, and hailing a
hansom he gave the driver Mrs. Gildermere’s address.
As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like a traveller in a
strange city. The buildings which had been so unobtrusively familiar
stood out with sudden distinctness: he noticed a hundred details which
had escaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks looked like
strangers: he wondered where they were going and tried to picture
the lives they led; but his own relation to life had been so suddenly
reversed that he found it impossible to recover his mental perspective.
At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the shadow of the side
street; as the hansom passed, a policeman ordered him to move on.
Farther on, Woburn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a
handsome house. She had drawn a shawl over her head and was sunk in the
apathy of despair or drink. A well-dressed couple paused to look at her.
The electric globe at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw the
lady, who was young and pretty, turn away with a little grimace, drawing
her companion after her.
The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn to the Gildermeres’;
but once in the ball-room he made no effort to find her. The people
about him seemed more like strangers than those he had passed in the
street. He stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the
women and the resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible
that these were his friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and
whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures
that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among
such puppets that he had sold his soul? What had any of these people
done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name
even, except their tradesmen and the society reporters? Who were they,
that they should sit in judgment on him?
The bald man with the globular stomach, who stood at Mrs. Gildermere’s
elbow surveying the dancers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile in
wrecking railroads; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, at whom a pretty
girl smiled up so confidingly, was Collerton, the political lawyer, who
had been mixed up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying transaction;
near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent failure had ruined his
friends and associates, but had not visibly affected the welfare of his
large and expensive family. The slim fellow dancing with Miss Gildermere
was Alec Vance, who lived on a salary of five thousand a year, but whose
wife was such a good manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and
always put in their season at Newport and their spring trip to Europe.
The little ferret-faced youth in the corner was Regie Colby, who wrote
the _Entre-Nous_ paragraphs in the _Social Searchlight_: the women were
charming to him and he got all the financial tips he wanted from their
husbands and fathers.
And the women? Well, the women knew all about the men, and flattered
them and married them and tried to catch them for their daughters. It
was a domino-party at which the guests were forbidden to unmask, though
they all saw through each other’s disguises.
And these were the people who, within twenty-four hours, would be
agreeing that they had always felt there was something wrong about
Woburn! They would be extremely sorry for him, of course, poor devil;
but there are certain standards, after all--what would society be
without standards? His new friends, his future associates, were the
suspicious-looking man whom the policeman had ordered to move on, and
the drunken woman asleep on the door-step. To these he was linked by the
freemasonry of failure.
Miss Talcott passed him on Collerton’s arm; she was giving him one of
the smiles of which Woburn had fancied himself sole owner. Collerton was
a sharp fellow; he must have made a lot in that last deal; probably she
would marry him. How much did she know about the transaction? She was
a shrewd girl and her father was in Wall Street. If Woburn’s luck had
turned the other way she might have married him instead; and if he had
confessed his sin to her one evening, as they drove home from the opera
in their new brougham, she would have said that really it was of no use
to tell her, for she never _could_ understand about business, but that
she did entreat him in future to be nicer to Regie Colby. Even now, if
he made a big strike somewhere, and came back in ten years with a beard
and a steam yacht, they would all deny that anything had been proved
against him, and Mrs. Collerton might blush and remind him of their
friendship. Well--why not? Was not all morality based on a convention?
What was the stanchest code of ethics but a trunk with a series of false
bottoms? Now and then one had the illusion of getting down to
absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false bottom--a removable
hypothesis--with another false bottom underneath. There was no getting
beyond the relative.
The cotillion had begun. Miss Talcott sat nearly opposite him: she was
dancing with young Boylston and giving him a Woburn-Collerton smile. So
young Boylston was in the syndicate too!
Presently Woburn was aware that she had forgotten young Boylston and
was glancing absently about the room. She was looking for some one, and
meant the some one to know it: he knew that _Lost-Chord_ look in her
eyes.
A new figure was being formed. The partners circled about the room and
Miss Talcott’s flying tulle drifted close to him as she passed. Then
the favors were distributed; white skirts wavered across the floor like
thistle-down on summer air; men rose from their seats and fresh couples
filled the shining _parquet_.
Miss Talcott, after taking from the basket a Legion of Honor in red
enamel, surveyed the room for a moment; then she made her way through
the dancers and held out the favor to Woburn. He fastened it in his
coat, and emerging from the crowd of men about the doorway, slipped his
arm about her. Their eyes met; hers were serious and a little sad. How
fine and slender she was! He noticed the little tendrils of hair about
the pink convolution of her ear. Her waist was firm and yet elastic;
she breathed calmly and regularly, as though dancing were her natural
motion. She did not look at him again and neither of them spoke.
When the music ceased they paused near her chair. Her partner was
waiting for her and Woburn left her with a bow.
He made his way down-stairs and out of the house. He was glad that he
had not spoken to Miss Talcott. There had been a healing power in their
silence. All bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her now
quite simply, as the girl he loved.
At Thirty-fifth Street he reflected that he had better jump into a car
and go down to his steamer. Again there rose before him the repulsive
vision of the dark cabin, with creaking noises overhead, and the cold
wash of water against the pier: he thought he would stop in a café and
take a drink. He turned into Broadway and entered a brightly-lit café;
but when he had taken his whisky and soda there seemed no reason
for lingering. He had never been the kind of man who could escape
difficulties in that way. Yet he was conscious that his will was
weakening; that he did not mean to go down to the steamer just yet. What
did he mean to do? He began to feel horribly tired and it occurred to
him that a few hours’ sleep in a decent bed would make a new man of him.
Why not go on board the next morning at daylight?
He could not go back to his rooms, for on leaving the house he had taken
the precaution of dropping his latch-key into his letter-box; but he was
in a neighborhood of discreet hotels and he wandered on till he came to
one which was known to offer a dispassionate hospitality to luggageless
travellers in dress-clothes.