I
How did Ashton Carmichael come by his aristocratic and decidedly
individual place as a dictator in New York’s smart society? Nobody
knew; nobody really cared. In his set it was sufficient for one sheep
to jump, and all the rest would follow. He was as much a power as
was Beau Brummell over modish London in the days of the Regency.
Asked everywhere, deferred to with bated breath by new aspirants, he
was seen only at the houses of authenticated fashion. In the clubs
to which he belonged--and the list of them was long, following his
name in the Social Register--some men affected to pooh-pooh his
right to membership; but rarely was there a member of a committee
on admissions found to vote against him on the score of fitness.
Good-looking, gentlemanlike, amusing when it suited him to be so,
sarcastic--and, on occasion, offensively snobbish--his uncertainties
of mood lent zest to pursuit by his admirers. He had no known income
beyond that derived from a nebulous business in real estate in which
he was alleged to hold a partnership. His place of residence was
in a couple of cheapish rooms in an out-of-the-way neighborhood.
But all the good things of life seemed to fall easily to his share;
and winter and summer, on land, at sea, he was heard of, in ripe
enjoyment of luxuries earned or inherited by other people.
As a matter of fact, while the general public languished in ignorance
of Carmichael’s antecedents, there were two or three individuals in
New York who could have told his story from A to Z, but preferred
for various reasons to keep their mouths shut. One of these was
Tom Oliver, Carmichael’s chum at college and his sponsor in the
initiatory steps of worldly progress. Another was Tom’s sister
Eunice, now pretty Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who, in days of lang syne,
had been engaged to her brother’s handsome friend.
The third was a brave, hard-working young woman journalist on the
staff of a great city newspaper; a girl who never troubled Carmichael
with her presence, although she bore his name, and had given all her
little patrimony to help her only brother through the university and
provide him a start in life.
It was at the beginning of senior year, when Tom Oliver came back
to college to surprise his friends by the announcement of his rich
father’s insolvency. Up to that time Tom had been regarded as a
prince of generosity and good-fellowship. His liberal allowance was
lavished upon college subscriptions and other fellows’ debts as soon
as it came into his hands. Before the end of the month he was as
impecunious as the rest of them. The blow of his sudden change of
prospects did not, therefore, afflict him as much as might have been
expected. As for the democratic, happy-go-lucky band who for three
years had made him their hero, it seemed, if anything, to bring him
nearer to their level. As a rule, the chaps of their brotherhood
were the sons of toilers, accustomed to scant means and modest ways
of life, who looked forward to opening the world’s oyster with their
own swords, or nobody’s. The man who appeared most to feel the hero’s
altered circumstances was his room-mate, known as Ash Carmichael,
a fellow the crowd had taken in among them through a not unnatural
delusion that his being so intimate with Tom made him of Tom’s sort.
Oliver and he had drifted together in freshman year, and Ash was
indebted to Tom for a long list of solid benefits bestowed with the
same recklessness of consequences and loyalty of affection that had
marked every kind action of the young man’s life.
On all occasions when it was possible Tom had taken Ashton home to
New York with him for the holidays and flying visits. The latter had
spent two months of the summer preceding senior year at the Olivers’
house at Newport, where he had made acquaintance with some of the
people who were afterward to be his sponsors in fashionable life.
The stress he laid upon these individuals, their homes and habits,
had elicited from his chum a great deal of good-natured fun at
Carmichael’s expense. But as that was the only thing he ever enjoyed
at the expense of that individual, Tom was entitled to make the most
of it.
For Tom himself the smart people who forever dined and drove and
yachted and gave incessant dinners had no attraction. Mrs. Oliver,
a devotee of the gay world, and Charlotte, her older daughter,
who followed in the mother’s footsteps, had ceased chiding their
recreant brother, and were rather inclined to hustle him out of
the observation of their all-important circle. Eunice, the younger
girl, who adored Tom, used often to fall behind in the fashionable
procession for the pleasure of sharing her brother’s pastimes. In
athletics Tom had trained her well, and here Ash Carmichael had first
elicited her girlish admiration, for he was an adept in all sports
requiring grace and activity.
But then even Mrs. Oliver told her son that his chum was the only
“possible” college-mate he had ever brought under the patrimonial
roof-tree!
When the crash of Tom’s prospects came as to finances Carmichael
was disagreeably taken by surprise. The manifestation to his friend
of the exact condition of his feelings on this subject was, on the
whole, more trying to Tom than the original blow.
The first public move in the disintegration of their friendship was
Tom’s withdrawal from the expensive rooms they had occupied together
since freshman year into much cheaper lodgings.
Ash promptly installed in his place a wealthy and inane classmate
whom the “crowd” had antecedently styled “Miss Willie.” There was a
groan of derision among the fellows for this substitute for Tom; and
at an impromptu meeting of leading spirits in Tom’s new rooms, in an
old and shabby quarter, it was voted to give Carmichael henceforth
what they called the “icy nod.”
After the Christmas holidays, which Ash spent with “Miss Willie’s”
family, something occurred to bring upon Tom’s former chum a ban more
serious than what had preceded it. The offense, the discovery of
it, the discussion, and the verdict were known to only a few of Tom
Oliver’s most devoted henchmen. Outsiders, aware of some dark mystery
in process of solution, talked of it--speculated curiously--but got
no farther. That Carmichael had done something awfully shady was
generally believed. What that something was nobody could find out.
But during the whole time of the agitation Tom went about black as a
thunder-cloud and silent as the grave.
If the Faculty knew anything of these proceedings it was based upon
vague rumor only, or came by intuition. They had nothing to take hold
of, on which to condemn Carmichael. It was generally believed, among
them and the undergraduates, that a few men under Oliver’s leadership
had rectified whatever wrong was done; had saved Carmichael from
disgrace and exposure; and had then agreed to hush the matter up.
Before graduating, Carmichael took a prize for an uncommonly clever
essay, which he delivered with ease and distinction before an
audience of whom the strangers applauded him to the echo. When he
took his degree, and the class was about to scatter, he was so
much alone that nobody thought of asking what he meant to do in the
future. When next heard from by his late associates Mr. Carmichael
had set out on a journey to Europe to end in the circuit of the
globe, as the companion of “Miss Willie,” whose family defrayed all
expenses.
About this time Tom Oliver, in a suit of greasy overalls, was
beginning his labors in the repair-shops of a great railway in a
little Pennsylvania town, to obtain intimate personal knowledge
of all parts of the mighty motor that was henceforward to control
his destiny. For, at the advice of a friend of his father, he had
determined to work up from the bottom of the railroad business
to as near the top as ambition and energy might ultimately carry
him. Tom had need of all his pluck during the summer of this first
apprenticeship to toil. His father, overworried and outworn, was
stricken with apoplexy in New York, and suddenly passed away. Simply
because he could not tell what better to do for them, Tom transferred
his mother and sisters to live in a cottage in the suburbs of the
town where he was employed.
Oh, the tragedy of life when small souls meet larger ones in everyday
friction! Mrs. Oliver and Charlotte, banded against Tom and Eunice,
made those summer days in the hot little house twice their ordinary
length. And Tom saw, in spite of her persistent effort to make the
best of things, that little Eunice was carrying a burden more heavy
for her shoulders than the loss of a great house, a troop of friends,
servants, and finery. Nor was it her mourning for the father she
had loved tenderly that oppressed her. Of him she and Tom talked
together frequently, and with honest feeling. But there was something
else--something she hugged to her heart in silence, that grew worse
as the summer waned.
Just when matters were at their worst with the little household--when
petty domestic trials beat like billows over poor Tom’s head--when
Eunice began to look like an image of hope deferred--a visitor
arrived. Tom heartily welcomed Arden Farnsworth, a man much older
than himself, who in years past had been often at their home. A
dim idea that Farnsworth had come after Chatty penetrated the
brother’s head. It occurred to him that among his mother’s abundant
lamentations for lost joys she had mentioned the fact that last
winter she had been almost sure Farnsworth would propose for Chatty,
but that he had gone abroad and made no sign. And Farnsworth, as
everybody knew, would be a husband in a hundred--well born, well
placed, of such character, means, and position as would anchor
the whole Oliver family away from the quick-sands of their present
uncertainties.
Then it came out it was Eunice, not Charlotte, whom Farnsworth wanted
for a wife--whom he had loved for a year past, and left because he
feared she would laugh at the disparity between their ages--nineteen
and thirty-five--whom he had now come back to America resolved to
secure, if earnest pleading would avail.
But Eunice, urged to the front by her mother, who philosophically
made up her mind that one, if not _the_ one she had counted upon
of her daughters, should recoup their lost fortune and position,
disappointed all the family hopes. She told Arden Farnsworth that it
was impossible for her to marry him, and sent him away pierced with
sorrow at his failure. His generous nature longed for an opportunity
to place the dainty little beauty back in the niche where she
belonged. For her sake he was prepared to make any provision for Mrs.
Oliver and Chatty, short of offering them the hospitality of his
houses and yacht and other such covetable spots where the Farnsworth
Penates were enshrined.
In the tempest that broke over Eunice after Farnsworth’s departure,
Tom learned his sister’s secret. She came to him, trembling and
tearful, nestled in his breast, and told him that for a year she had
considered herself engaged to Ashton Carmichael.
“What!” shouted Tom, loosening his hold of her, his eyes darting
angry lightning. “That ----! Why, Eunice, it is impossible! You
cannot have met him since I broke with him last autumn a year ago.”
“Oh, Tom! How dreadful you look! Of course I knew you were no longer
friends. It was just after poor papa’s troubles began when Ashton
wrote to me that you had separated, and that pride would not allow
him to correspond with me after what had taken place between you.
Then once, during the Christmas holidays, I met him in the street,
and we took a walk together, and he begged me to be true to him and
all would come out right. But still we did not write, until--”
“Don’t tell me he dared approach you after _February_!” exclaimed
Tom, white to the lips with anger.
“Yes. He said there had been such a bad quarrel between you he feared
it could not be made up; but he asked me to meet him in town--in a
picture-gallery--and I did. Don’t be angry, Tom. He wanted to let
me off from our engagement; indeed he did; but I saw he was in
great trouble, and so told him I would never give him up so long as
my love was worth anything to him; that he needn’t write--I should
understand. After this he began coming down to town to walk with me,
which took place several times--I couldn’t refuse him that comfort,
Tom.”
“Comfort! He was laughing in his sleeve, the infernal scoundrel, that
he was so outwitting me! And I at that very time was holding him up
like a rock, to save him from utter ruin before the world! But go on;
for Heaven’s sake, tell me all!”
“That _is_ all, Tom. He sent me a clipping about his essay, and I was
proud. Then he came once again, in June, to tell me he was going to
sail with Billy Innis around the world--and from that day to this I
have never heard from him.” Her head dropped forward forlornly upon
her breast. Large tears flooded her blue eyes and streamed down her
childish face. Tom’s tender heart smote him for having so increased
her grief.
“My dear,” he said, gently, “I would give anything on earth if you
had confided in me before. In my desire to shelter a false and
contemptible fellow I have let you run into a trouble that makes
my blood boil to think of it. Now listen, Eunice, and believe I
speak plain truth. Not only did Ash Carmichael throw me overboard
the minute our father lost his money, but last February he was
guilty of a transaction involving me that might have landed him in
state’s prison if I had not consented to hush it up. Judge, then,
if he is likely to present himself before you again. No, Eunice, he
will never come back. He was a coward, a cad, a sneak, to gratify
himself at your expense in that way; and my heart aches for you,
dear. But now that you know him as he is you will never care for
him again. Think how much worse suffering was his sister’s, to whom
he wrote confessing all, when he was in abject fear that I’d expose
him. He had the cunning to make her come East to beg for him. For,
at the first sight of that brave, tortured girl I was disarmed of
my thoughts of punishment for him. For her sake, not his, I and two
or three other men he had involved in the affair resolved to let
him go and never to speak of it. Except to you, now, the matter has
not passed my lips. And you best know why I have broken our vow of
secrecy.”
Again Eunice hung her head. The crimson of deep shame deepened upon
her face. For a time her voice was stifled by the sobs that shook her
frame.
“Don’t cry, little sister,” Tom went on, distressfully. “You make
me feel like an ogre or an executioner. But in this case there was
no such thing as being merciful; I _had_ to tell you to cure you,
Eunice. Heaven knows the task was not to my taste. Some day, if the
opportunity ever comes in your way, I should like you to say a kind
word or do a kind act to that girl. She is a perfect heroine; and,
if she did not fancy herself under such tremendous obligations to me
already, I’d like to look Alice Carmichael up and try to help her.”
“You are bigger and more generous than I am, Tom,” cried Eunice,
between gasps of pain. “As I feel now, I pray God never to let me
look upon one of their blood again!”
* * * * *
Four or five years later saw Mr. Ashton Carmichael a conqueror in
the lists of New York’s smart society. Among all the portals that
flew open at his magic touch there was one that remained obstinately
closed. This was the very fine front door belonging to the new
mansion up town in which Arden Farnsworth had, two years after her
refusal to marry him, installed his bride, recently Miss Eunice
Oliver.
For Eunice, expanding into rare beauty during her exile from the gay
world, had come back to take her place as a power in its councils,
with a new understanding of people and things. Her grave husband
was valued for his truth and loyalty and virile force, immeasurably
beyond what her earlier love had been for his youthful graces of
exterior. With all her heart she loved and was grateful to Farnsworth
for “waiting till she came to her senses,” as she often laughingly
told him. Long, long ago the sting of Carmichael’s treatment had
ceased to pain her. Her fancy for him, in truth, expired that day
when poor, blundering Tom had revealed her lover’s treachery.
With the marriage of Eunice the pressure of adverse circumstances
had been lifted from the Olivers. A former admirer of Miss Chatty’s,
a Mr. Ringstead, first discouraged by her mamma because she did not
want her daughter to remove to Philadelphia, had gallantly come
forward and offered himself anew. Mrs. Oliver, clearing her throat,
suavely remarked to Chatty that she had always considered Ringstead
a most excellent young man. To which Chatty pertly replied that his
excellence was secondary to the fact that he was going to take her
out of that hole of a provincial town where Tom had buried them
alive. Mrs. Oliver, after the second nuptials in her family, gave
it out that she meant to divide her time between her two married
daughters and “dear Tom,” whenever he could be persuaded to settle in
a decent place; and a short time after went abroad, to the relief of
all concerned.
Tom, during most of these early years a bird of passage between
different headquarters of the railway that had annexed his services,
was rarely in New York. When occasionally he had fallen in with some
of his old college-mates they had dined and talked together till well
into next morning, and word was passed along the line of alumni of
their year to this effect: “Tom is all there, every inch of him”;
“The same glorious old fellow”; “True as steel”; “Deserves his luck
in business”; and the like.
But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost
dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at
last coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the
world that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see
some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present
at, for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin,
Mrs. Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison,
rather a foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend
an invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair
of thirty guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome
brother. “For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care
who knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into
prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her
schemes.
* * * * *
“Young lady from the _Epoch_ waiting to see you, sir,” said the
servant at Carmichael’s lodgings, encountering him in the hallway of
that domicile, as he let himself in by a pass-key late one afternoon
after a round of calls.
Carmichael was the picture of self-satisfied complacency. In attire,
in bearing, he knew himself to be above criticism by the well
informed; and yet his vanity did not disdain the looks of heartfelt
admiration cast upon him by the hand-maidens to whom his landlady
paid small wages for the promiscuous service of her house.
“Another reporter!” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Did I not tell you
never to let them wait for me?”
“She’s in there, sir, not in your sittin’-room,” went on the girl,
pointing to the closed door of the boarding-house parlor. “She said
it was _very_ important, Mr. Carmichael.”
Smiling at the awe-struck expression of the domestic, whose class
can never rid itself of respect for private individuals “wanted”
by the press, he opened the door of a long, narrow apartment with
abundant cheap draperies, spindle-work furniture, and artificial
palms, to find himself confronted by an unwelcome apparition.
“You!” he said, in a tone from which all self-complacency had fled.
“Yes, I. I was assigned to you, and I had to come. Until now I have
been fortunate in avoiding such a contingency.”
“I did not know you were in New York,” he stammered, to gain time.
“I got this appointment on the _Epoch_ last season, through a friend.
But I came here first in summer, when you were cruising on Mr.
Compton’s yacht. You see it is not difficult for me to keep account
of your movements, you are such a great man now; and besides, the
others tell me you are very good in giving them items about your
plans.”
Carmichael colored. He could not believe that the cool, satiric,
self-reliant speaker was the orphaned sister who for years had made
him the god of her idolatry.
“You are looking well,” he said; “your profession seems to agree with
you. I hope you have comfortable quarters. And if there is anything
I can do for you now, perhaps you will tell me as soon as may be,
since I am engaged for dinner and have some letters to write before
dressing.”
“They sent me to ask you the correct date of the Bachelor’s Ball, and
any items about the affair you may wish to publish,” she answered,
fixing upon his evasive eyes a pair of clear, bright orbs.
“That is easily done,” he replied, with an air of relief. “Or stop;
leave me your address, and I will send you the full data to-morrow
after the committee meets.”
“Send it to me at the office, please. But now that our business is so
satisfactorily disposed of there is another little matter about which
I should like to speak to you in a more private place.”
“But I am pressed for time, I tell you!” he exclaimed, uneasily.
“It is something in the nature of a warning,” she said, with a
mocking intonation. “But just as you choose, of course.”
“Come to my sitting-room on the floor above, then,” he responded,
ungraciously, leading the way up the stairs.
The room into which he ushered her was a curious combination of
elemental homeliness and the little belongings of advanced luxury,
which littered it from wall to wall. Alice Carmichael’s quick eye did
not fail to discern this discrepancy, which she set down at once to
her brother’s habitual unwillingness to enjoy anything that was not
a gift from some one who could afford to pay the piper. But despite
her calm bearing, her heart was torn at sight of him. A thousand
recollections, tender and poignant, arose to overwhelm her. To
Ashton’s infinite relief, however, she continued to sit as unbending
as marble upon the edge of the cane-bottomed chair he had offered
her. He knew well enough that after the first drop into sentiment she
would soon be herself again.
“I have always regarded it as a particular piece of good fortune,”
she began, presently, “that so far as I have followed your
fashionable career fate has not brought you into contact with any of
the Olivers. When Mrs. Farnsworth returned here to live it must have
been a considerable embarrassment to you to know how to avoid meeting
her. But that, I suppose, might have been left to her woman’s tact
to dispose of. I am quite sure that neither she nor any one of her
family would ever voluntarily come to look you in the face.”
Her victim winced, and she saw that he felt the sting implied.
“Just now, with the omniscience of my fraternity, I am in a position
to know the list of guests expected at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner for
her débutante daughter to-night. Not only are Mr. and Mrs. Arden
Farnsworth to be there, but Mr. Thomas Oliver himself, who is in town
stopping with his sister for a few days.”
“The devil he is!” cried Carmichael, much perturbed.
“You can hardly have expected to go on forever escaping the sword
of Damocles. Though, as you know, you are perfectly safe from Mr.
Oliver and the Farnsworths, too; indeed, I don’t believe they would
turn on their heels to look a second time if they saw you lying in
the gutter. But I have a feeling for them--a feeling that I can’t ask
you to understand--which makes me wish to spare them the annoyance of
your presence. It will be the first time in years that Mr. Oliver has
appeared in the society of his old friends. He has had a life of work
and care beyond his deserts. I should like to think that this one
evening’s enjoyment is not to be spoiled for him.”
“I believe you are in love with that---- monolith!” said her brother,
with an oath.
Miss Carmichael looked at him with undisturbed equanimity.
“What Mr. Oliver did for me in my hour of greatest need would entitle
him to the best my heart could give. But you forget, I think, that
this and other experiences have made of me a machine, not a woman. No
need, however, to tell you what he did for me, or what I am. Will you
stay away from the Ellisons’ dinner, or will you not?”
“I shall go,” said Carmichael, stubbornly. “I am to take in Miss
Ellison, and to lead their cotillon afterward. I could not be guilty
of such a departure from good form as to throw over the Ellisons
because this assorted lot of paragons of yours are going to be there.
Among thirty people it is hardly likely I shall run counter to them.
And should I do so, I fancy my position is assured beyond any attempt
at a slight _they_ could put upon me. My dear girl, your attitude in
all this is in the last degree strained and goody-goody. Leave me
to paddle my own canoe, as I have left you. We shall continue to do
without each other, I do not doubt. No man alive could endure to have
a Lady Macbeth kind of female arise and stalk about him indulging
in remorseful soliloquies about his past. I am sorry that the only
visit you have done me the honor to make me should have been devoted
to such a ridiculous and futile enterprise. And you will permit me to
suggest once more that I am really very much afraid you are indulging
in a schoolgirl passion for your hero, the doughty and horny-handed
Tom.”
“Good evening,” said the reporter, briskly. “You won’t forget to send
that stuff about ‘The Bachelor’s’ to me not later than to-morrow?”
She was up and off before he could intercept her. The little
servant-maid in the pink cotton frock, with cap askew, was hovering
outside his door as Miss Carmichael went out of it.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” she said, with frank pride. “I s’pose you’ll
put another one o’ them pieces a-praisin’ him into your paper?
There’s lots of the newspaper folks come here to see him; and no
wonder--an’ him keepin’ company with all the high ’ristocrats o’ the
city.”
A moment more and Alice was upon the street mingling with the throng
of workers like herself. Although well in check about matters of
mere sentiment, for which there was no longer time in her hurried
existence, her thoughts had filled with a vision of two children at
their mother’s knee, who shared everything in common until time and
the mother’s death and subsequent hard circumstances had forced them
apart forever. Ah, well! she did not begrudge Ashton anything she had
done for him. But she was glad their mother had not lived.