It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses--palaces--that
begin to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the
splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay
for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.
This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be
rich--and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the
course must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that
one can get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican
simplicity.
Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of
servants in livery--shortclothes and stockings--in decorous vacuity--an
array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of
the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self
a part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal
simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult
to attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a
man to separate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the
town that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott
mansion used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is
quite beyond remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the
ornamented shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by
Vavani--it was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling
in the music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian
artists had worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of
it exquisite as an intaglio--indeed, the reporters had made the town
familiar with the costly facts.
The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:
the house swarmed with servants--retainers, one might say. Margaret, who
was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when
a man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and
women in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than
a mere accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and
women do not cost so much originally as good pictures--that is, good men
and women--everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain
them. Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance
afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.
The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson
had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same
studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the
extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors
under the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the
dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare
flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply
modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity--pure whiteness, the glow of
yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner
was in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre
d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and
hostess--perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple
and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another
generation will remove that.
If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up
to the level of the dinner and the house--what except that of a circle
of wits, who would be out of place there, could be?--the presence of Mr.
Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The
talk ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox,
at Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the
irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the
marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who
would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark
across the table about a “corner” (it is impossible absolutely here, as
well as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening of
galleries--anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of
the vivacity and persiflage.
“I saw you, Mr. Henderson”--it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice--“the
other night in a box with a very pretty woman.”
“Yes--Miss Eschelle.”
“I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, various
places; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be
very entertaining--and enterprising.”
“Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other lady
was her mother. And the man with us--that might interest you more, Mrs.
Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm.”
“Ah! Then I suppose she has money?”
“I never saw any painful evidence of poverty. But I don't think Mr. Lyon
is fortune-hunting. He seems to be after information and--goodness.”
Margaret flushed a little, but apparently Henderson did not notice it.
Then she said (after Mrs. Laflamme had dropped the subject with the
remark that he had come to the right place), “Miss Eschelle called on me
yesterday.”
“And was, no doubt, agreeable.”
“She was, as Mrs. Laflamme says, entertaining. She quoted you a good
deal.”
“Quoted me? For what?”
“As one would a book, as a familiar authority.”
“I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you will excuse the street
expression, to have my stock quotable. Perhaps you couldn't tell whether
Miss Eschelle was a bull or a bear in this case?”
“I don't clearly know what that is. She didn't offer me any,” said
Margaret, in a tone of carrying on the figure without any personal
meaning.
“Well, she is a bit of an operator. A good many women here amuse
themselves a little in stocks.”
“It doesn't seem to me very feminine.”
“No? But women generally like to' take risks and chances. In countries
where lotteries are established they always buy tickets.”
“Ah! then they only risk what they have. I think women are more prudent
and conservative than men.”
“No doubt. They are conservatives usually. But when they do go in for
radical measures and risks, they leave us quite behind.” Mr. Henderson
did not care to extend the conversation in this direction, and he asked,
abruptly, “Are you finding New York agreeable, Miss Debree?”
“Yes. Yes and no. One has no time to one's self. Do you understand
why it is, Mr. Henderson, that one can enjoy the whole day and then be
thoroughly dissatisfied with it?”
“Perfectly; when the excitement is over.”
“And then I don't seem to be myself here. I have a feeling of having
lost myself.”
“Because the world is so big?”
“Not that. Do you know, the world seems much smaller here than at home.”
“And the city appears narrow and provincial?”
“I cannot quite explain it. The interests of life don't seem so
large--the questions, I mean, what is going on in Europe, the
literature, the reforms, the politics. I get a wider view when I stand
off--at home. I suppose it is more concentrated here. And, oh dear, I'm
so stupid! Everybody is so alert in little things, so quick to turn a
compliment, and say a bright thing. While I am getting ready to say
what I really think about Browning, for instance, he is disposed of in a
sentence.”
“That is because you try to say what you really think.”
“If one don't, what's the use of talk?”
“Oh, to pass the time.”
Margaret looked up to see if Henderson was serious. There was a smile of
amusement on his face, but not at all offensive, because the woman saw
that it was a look of interest also.
“Then I sha'n't be serious any more,” she said, as there was a movement
to quit the table.
“That lays the responsibility on me of being serious,” he replied, in
the same light tone.
Later they were wandering through the picture-gallery together.
A gallery of modern pictures appeals for the most part to the
senses--represents the pomps, the color, the allurements of life.
It struck Henderson forcibly that this gallery, which he knew well,
appeared very different looking at it with Miss Debree from what it
would if he had been looking at it with Miss Eschelle. There were some
pictures that he hurried past, some technical excellences only used for
sensuous effects--that he did not call attention to as he might have
done with another. Curiously enough, he found himself seeking sentiment,
purity. If the drawing was bad, Margaret knew it; if a false note was
struck, she saw it. But she was not educated up to a good many of the
suggestions of the gallery. Henderson perceived this, and his manner
to her became more deferential and protective. It was a manner to which
every true woman responds, and Margaret was happy, more herself, and
talked with a freedom and gayety, a spice of satire, and a note of
reality that made her every moment more attractive to her companion.
In her, animation the charm of her unworn beauty blazed upon him with a
direct personal appeal. He hardly cared to conceal his frank admiration.
She, on her part, was thinking, what could Miss Eschelle mean by saying
that she was afraid of him?
“Does the world seem any larger here, Miss Debree?” he asked, as they
had lingeringly made the circuit of the room and passed out through the
tropical conservatory to join the rest of the company.
“Yes--away from people.”
“Then it is not numbers, I am glad to know, that make a world.”
She did not reply. But when he encountered her, robed for departure, at
the foot of the stairway, she gave him her hand in good-night, and their
eyes met for a moment.
I wonder if that was the time? Probably not. I fancy that when the right
day came she confessed that the moment was when she first saw him enter
their box at the opera.
Henderson walked down the avenue slowly, hearing the echo of his own
steps in the deserted street. He was in no haste to reach home. It
was such a delightful evening-snowing a little, and cold, but so
exhilarating. He remembered just how she turned her head as she got into
the carriage. She had touched his arm lightly once in the gallery to
call his attention to a picture. Yes, the world was larger, larger, by
one, and it would seem large--her image came to him distinctly--if she
were the only one.
Henderson was under the spell of this evening when the next, in response
to a note asking him to call for a moment on business, he was shown into
the Eschelle drawing-room. It was dimly lighted, but familiarity with
the place enabled him without difficulty to find his way down the
long suite, rather overcrowded with luxurious furniture, statuary, and
pictures on easels, to the little library at the far end glowing in a
rosy light.
There, ensconced in a big chair, a book in her hand, one pretty foot on
the fender, sat Carmen, in a grayish, vaporous toilet, which took a warm
hue from the color of the spreading lamp-shades. On the carved table
near was a litter of books and of nameless little articles, costly and
coquettish, which assert femininity, even in a literary atmosphere.
Over the fireplace hung a picture of spring--a budding girl, smiling and
winning, in a semi-transparent raiment, advancing with swift steps to
bring in the season of flowers and of love. The hand that held the book
rested upon the arm of the chair, a finger inserted in the place where
she had been reading, her rounded white arm visible to the elbow, and
Carmen was looking into the fire in the attitude of reflection upon a
suggestive passage.
Women have so many forms of attraction, different women are attractive
in so many different ways, moods are so changing, beauty is so
undefinable, and has so many weapons. And yet men are called inconstant!
It was not until Henderson had time to take in the warmth of this
domestic picture that Carmen rose.
“It is so good of you to come, with all your engagements. Mamma is
excused with a headache, but she has left me power of attorney to ask
questions about our little venture.”
“I hope the attorney will not put me through a cross-examination.”
“That depends upon how you have been behaving, Mr. Henderson. I'm not
very cross yet. Now, sit there so that I can look at you and see how
honest you are.”
“Do you want me to put on my business or my evening expression?”
“Oh, the first, if you mean business.”
“Well, your stocks are going up.”
“That's nice. You are so lucky! Everything goes up with you. Do you know
what they say of you.
“Nothing bad, I hope.”
“That everything you touch turns to gold. That you will be one of the
nabobs of New York in ten years.”
“That's a startling destiny.”
“Isn't it? I don't like it.” The girl seemed very serious. “I'd like
you to be distinguished. To be in the Cabinet. To be minister--go to
England. But one needs a great deal of money for that, to go as one
ought to go. What a career is open to a man in this country if he has
money!”
“But I don't care for politics.”
“Who does? But position. You can afford that if you have money enough.
Do you know, Mr. Henderson, I think you are dull.”
“Thank you. I reckoned you'd find it out.”
“The other night at the Nestor ball a lady--no, I won't tell you who she
is--asked me if I knew who that man was across the room; such an air
of distinction; might be the new British Minister. You know, I almost
blushed when I said I did know him.”
“Well?”
“You see what people expect of you. When a man looks distinguished and
is clever, and knows how to please if he likes, he cannot help having a
career, unless he is afraid to take the chances.”
Henderson was not conscious of ever being wanting in this direction.
The picture conjured up by the ingenious girl was not unfamiliar to his
mind, and he understood quite well the relation to it that Carmen had in
her mind; but he did not take the lead offered. Instead, he took refuge
in the usual commonplace, and asked, “Wouldn't you like to have been a
man?”
“Heaven forbid! I should be too wicked. It is responsibility enough to
be a woman. I did not expect such a banality from you. Do you think, Mr.
Henderson, we had better sell?”
“Sell what?”
“Our stocks. You are so occupied that I thought they might fall when you
are up in the clouds somewhere.”
“No, I shall not forget.”
“Well, such things happen. I might forget you if it were not for the
stocks.”
“Then I shall keep the stocks, even if they fall.”
“And we should both fall together. That would be some compensation. Not
much. Going to smash with you would be something like going to church
with Mr. Lyon. It might have a steadying effect.”
“What has come over you tonight, Carmen?” Henderson asked, leaning
forward with an expression of half amusement, half curiosity.
“I've been thinking--doesn't that astonish you?--about life. It is
very serious. I got some new views talking with that Miss Debree from
Brandon. Chiefly from what she didn't say. She is such a lovely girl,
and just as unsophisticated--well, as we are. I fear I shocked her by
telling her your opinion of French novels.”
“You didn't tell her that I approved of all the French novels you read?”
“Oh no! I didn't say you approved of any. It sort of came out that you
knew about them. She is so downright and conscientious. I declare I felt
virtuous shivers running all over me all the time I was with her. I'm
conscientious myself. I want everybody to know the worst of me. I wish
I could practice some concealment. But she rather discourages me. She
would take the color out of a career. She somehow doesn't allow for
color, I could see. Duty, duty--that is the way she looks at life. She'd
try to keep me up to it; no playing by the way. I liked her very much. I
like people not to have too much toleration. She would be just the wife
for some nice country rector.”
“Perhaps I ought to tell her your plan for her? I dined with her last
night at the Stotts'.”
“Yes?” Carmen had been wondering if he would tell her of that. “Was it
very dull?”
“Not very. There was music, distant enough not to interfere with
conversation, and the gallery afterwards.”
“It must have been very exhilarating. You talked about the Duchess of
Bolinbroke, and the opera, and Prince Talleyrand, and the corner in
wheat--dear me, I know, so decorous! And you said Miss Debree was
there?”
“I had the honor of taking her out.”
“Mr. Henderson”--the girl had risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and
now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was
obliged to turn his head backward to see her--“Mr. Henderson, do you
know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?” The laughing eyes looking
into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose the
right object.
“Who taught me?” He raised his left hand. She did not respond to the
overture, except to snap the hand with her index-finger, and was back in
her chair again, regarding him demurely.
“I think we shall go abroad soon.” The little foot was on the fender
again, and the face had the look of melancholy resolution.
“And leave Mr. Lyon without any protection here?” The remark was made in
a tone of good-humored raillery, but for some reason it seemed to sting
the girl.
“Pshaw!” she said. “How can you talk such nonsense? You,” and she rose
to her feet in indignation--“you to advise an American girl to sell
herself for a title--the chance of a title. I'm ashamed of you!”
“Why, Carmen,” he replied, flushing, “I advised nothing of the sort. I
hadn't the least idea. I don't care a straw for Mr. Lyon.”
“That's just it; you don't care,” sinking into her seat, still
unappeased. “I think I'll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupation
enough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that scheme
you were talking over the other night.”
Henderson was in turn annoyed. “You can tell him anything you like.
I'm no more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic
concerns.”
“Now you are offended. It's not nice of you to put me in the wrong when
you know how impulsive I am. I wish I didn't let my feelings run away
with me.” This said reflectively, and looking away from him. And
then, turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes: “Do you know, I
sometimes wish I had never seen you. You have so much power to make a
person very bad or very good.”
“Come, come,” said Henderson, rising, “we mustn't quarrel about an
Englishman--such old friends.”
“Yes, we are very old friends.” The girl rose also, and gave him her
hand. “Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I
should go into a convent.” She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch
of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in
his face with vestal sweetness. “You are not offended?”
“Not a bit; not the least in the world,” said Henderson, heartily,
patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.
When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation,
and there were hard lines in her sweet face. “What an insensible stick!”
Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of
the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to
condemn.
“Well?”
“Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I
told him we were going abroad.”
“Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as
amusing.”
“And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it
would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?”
“Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you--”
“Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really
ought to be civil.”
One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and,
the new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it
will be different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope,
though it never repeats itself.
Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall--making money and
making love.
Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly
divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and
made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he
found the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been
Carmen? he sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would
never stand in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples.
Her conscience would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career
for him. Would she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And
affectionate? She would be if she had a heart.
He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was
simply because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed
necessary to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his
advancement, but he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure.
And if there are men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness
in a woman, Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not
dictated, his brain would have told him the value of the sympathy of a
good woman.
He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great
fortune. It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve
all the methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success,
and the thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would
approve what he did.
He saw much of her in those passing days--days that went like a dream
to one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but
he saw little of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a
volume; a word is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other.
And then passion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence
of the object. Imagination then has free play. A little separation
sometimes will fan it into a flame.
The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say
that the leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of
hope. Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business
there. The Misses Arbuser said, “Of course.” And Margaret said he must
not forget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers an
affectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.
Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it
on the roadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret,
neglecting the book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window,
felt it in all her veins.
X
It is said that the world is created anew for every person who is in
love. There is therefore this constant miracle of a new heavens and a
new earth. It does not depend upon the seasons. The subtle force which
is in every human being, more or less active, has this power, as if
love were somehow a principle pervading nature itself, and capable of
transforming it. Is this a divine gift? Can it be used more than once?
Once spent, does the world to each succeeding experimenter in it become
old and stale? We say the world is old. In one sense, the real sense
to every person, it is no older than the lives lived in it at any given
time. If it is always passing away, it is always being renewed. Every
time a youth looks love in a maiden's eyes, and sees the timid appealing
return of the universal passion, the world for those two is just as
certainly created as it was on the first morning, in all its color,
odor, song, freshness, promise. This is the central mystery of life.
Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle. Never before
did the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such
a color on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never
before did her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine
ecstasy in the coming of spring.
For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is
over, is apt to be dull. The mind is so occupied with other emotions
that the friends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and
the routine is tame. Out of such a whirl of new experiences to
return and find that nothing has happened; that the old duties and
responsibilities are waiting! Margaret had eagerly leaped from the
carriage to throw herself into her aunt's arms-what a sweet welcome it
is, that of kin!--and yet almost before the greeting was over she felt
alone. There was that in the affectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that
seemed to chill the glow and fever of passion in her new world. And she
had nothing to tell. Everything had changed, and she must behave as if
nothing had happened. She must take up her old life--the interests of
the neighborhood. Even the little circle of people she loved appeared
distant from her at the moment; impossible it seemed to bring them into
the rushing current of her life. Their joy in getting her back again she
could not doubt, nor the personal affection with which she was welcomed.
But was the New England atmosphere a little cold? What was the flavor
she missed in it all? The next day a letter came. The excuse for it was
the return of a fan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket
from the opera. What a wonderful letter it was--his handwriting, the
first note from him! Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness. For
Margaret it outweighed the town of Brandon. It lay in her lap as she
sat at her chamber window looking out over the landscape, which was
beginning to be flushed with a pale green. There was a robin on the
lawn, and a blackbird singing in the pine. “Go not, happy day,” she
said, with tears in her eyes. She took up the brief letter and read it
again. Was he really hers, “truly”? And she answered the letter, swiftly
and with no hesitation, but with a throbbing heart. It was a civil
acknowledgment; that was all. Henderson might have lead it aloud in the
Exchange. But what color, what charming turns of expression, what
of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him such a thrill of
pleasure when he read it? What secret power has a woman to make a common
phrase so glow with her very self?
Here was something in her life that was her own, a secret, a hope,
and yet a tremulous anticipation to be guarded almost from herself. It
colored everything; it was always, whatever she was doing or saying,
present, like an air that one unconsciously hums for days after it has
caught his fancy. Blessed be the capacity of being fond and foolish! If
that letter was under her pillow at night, if this new revelation was
last in her thought as she fell asleep, if it mingled with the song of
the birds in the spring morning, as some great good pervading the world,
is there anything distinguishing in such an experience that it should be
dwelt on? And if there were questionings and little panics of doubt, did
not these moments also reveal Margaret to herself more certainly than
the hours of happy dreaming?
Questionings no doubt there were, and, later, serious questionings;
for habit is almost as strong as love, and the old ways of life and of
thought will reassert themselves in a thoughtful mind, and reason will
insist on analyzing passion and even hope.
Gradually the home life and every-day interests began to assume their
natural aspect and proportions. It was so sweet and sane, this home
life, interesting and not feverish. There was time for reading, time for
turning over things in the mind, time for those interchanges of feeling
and of ideas, by the fireside; she was not required to be always on
dress parade, in mind or person, always keyed up to make an impression
or receive one; how much wider and sounder was Morgan's view of the
world, allowing for his kindly cynicism, than that prevalent in the
talk where she had lately been! How sincere and hearty and free ran the
personal currents in this little neighborhood! In the very fact that
the daily love and affection for her and interest in her were taken for
granted she realized the difference between her position here and that
among newer friends who showed more open admiration.
Little by little there was a readjustment. In comparison, the city life,
with its intensity of action and feeling, began to appear distant, not
so real, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing
part of this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by?
It could not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now
and again, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no
more letters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse,
the nexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly
like a letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the little
excitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three
times, four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is
such a blank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill?
Has he changed? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between
lovers. Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her
that it had not gone so far as that. But she should see him. She felt
sure of that. And the thought filled all the vacant places in her
imagination of the future.
And yet she thought she was seeing him more clearly than when he was
with her. Oh wise young woman! She fancied she was deliberating, looking
at life with great prudence. It must be one's own fault if one makes a
radical mistake in marriage. She was watching the married people about
her with more interest-the Morgans, our own household, Mrs. Fletcher;
and besides, her aunt, whose even and cheerful life lacked this
experience. It is so wise to do this, to keep one's feelings in control,
not to be too hasty! Everybody has these intervals of prudence. That is
the reason there are so few mistakes.
I dare say that all these reflections and deliberations in the maidenly
mind were almost unconscious to herself; certainly unacknowledged. It
was her imagination that she was following, and scarcely a distinct
reality or intention. She thought of Henderson, and he gave a certain
personality, vivid maybe, to that dream of the future which we all
in youth indulge; but she would have shrunk from owning this even to
herself. We deceive ourselves as often as we deceive others. Margaret
would have repudiated with some warmth any intimation that she had lost
her heart, and was really predicting the practical possibilities of that
loss, and she would have been quite honest with herself in thinking that
she was still mistress of her own feeling. Later on she would know, and
delight to confess, that her destiny was fixed at a certain hour, at
a certain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to
that like links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong
in that; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would
have faded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and
more convinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon
deep reflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would
have us believe, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations;
and that men and women know themselves much less thoroughly than they
suppose they do. There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced,
about the inward struggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that
Margaret was hopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that
charming girl would have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant
humiliation if she had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more,
if Henderson had at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand,
her impulse would have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by
anything that had taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that
impulse.
But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock
her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but
which did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was
simply the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter--far
enough from that--but one in which there was a certain tone and
intention that the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly
serious. Aside from the announcement in the letter, the very fact of
writing it was significant, conveying an intimation that the reader
might be interested in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer
than it need have been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started
on its errand, ran on con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon;
business, to be sure, was the excuse; but why should it have been
necessary to announce to her a business visit? There crept into the
letter somehow a good deal about his daily life, linked, to be sure,
with mention of places and people in which she had recently an interest.
He had been in Washington, and there were slight sketches of well-known
characters in Congress and in the Government; he had been in Chicago,
and even as far as Denver, and there were little pictures of scenes that
might amuse her. There was no special mystery about all this travel and
hurrying from place to place, but it gave Margaret a sense of varied and
large occupations that she did not understand. Through it all there was
the personality that had been recently so much in her thoughts. He was
coming. That was a very solid fact that she must meet. And she did not
doubt that he was coming to see her, and soon. That was a definite and
very different idea from the dim belief that he would come some time. He
had signed himself hers “faithfully.”
It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it
raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one
hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to
think that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might
come; he had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that.
Therefore she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we
have in dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our
existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was
conscious of being judicially reflective.
But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman
of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her
mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what
was the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his
principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.
Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose
personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so
dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her
simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she
did not go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of
moneymaking in these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found
herself wishing that he were definitely practicing some profession, or
engaged in some one solid occupation.
In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,
was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,
any visible effect on anything, one evening a common “incident” of the
day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper
of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become
millionaires.
“I don't see,” said my wife, “any mention in this account of the
thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation.”
“No,” said Morgan; “that is not interesting.”
“But it would be very interesting to me,” Mrs. Fletcher remarked. “Is
there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their
little property?”
“Yes; the law.”
“But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something
goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will
give you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,
or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?”
“Not that I know of,” Morgan admitted. “You take your chance when you
let your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people
who want it. You can put it in the ground.”
“But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground will
tax it till there is nothing left for me.”
“That is equality.”
“But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or
lands, while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be
a public official whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I
cannot afford to enforce when I am wronged?”
“The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or only
unfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if you
are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it
needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom
the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer
costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern
luxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will find
it economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out
of it, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about
the law, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It
is like any other commodity.”
“You mean to say,” I asked, “that the lawyer takes what the operator
leaves?”
“Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice against
lawyers. They must live. There is no nobler occupation than the
application of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble
is that public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and
estimates the lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the
aid of a lawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.
“Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees.”
“It seems to me,” said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallel
lines, “that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one man
can get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods by
which he gets it.”
“That never yet could be set,” Morgan replied. “It is impossible for
any number of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolute
freedom of acquisition, trusting to circumstances, misfortune, and death
to knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism.”
“Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly
come by?”
“That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean
a process the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration for
others, I doubt. But property accumulates by itself almost. Many a
man who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have
investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and
has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable,
using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd.”
“Mr. Morgan,” suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an
uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, “what is railroad
wrecking?”
“Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,'
as they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays
dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. They
contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it,
either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus;
they let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot
even pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be
glad to accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and
perhaps then they throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or
consolidate it with some other road at a value enormously greater than
the cost to them in stealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it
dry, they look round for another road.”
“And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of
it?”
“Naturally, the little fish get swallowed.”
“It is infamous,” said Margaret--“infamous! And men go to work to do
this, to get other people's property, in cool blood?”
“I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business.”
“What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank
and robbing it?” she asked, hot with indignation.
“Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement.”
“It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a
wrecker should steal your money that way?”
“I was thinking of that.”
I never saw Margaret more disturbed--out of all proportion, I thought,
to the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.
“Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like
that?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Probably most men who are engaged in what is
generally called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly
legitimate business. It is a common way of making a fortune.”
“You see, Margaret,” Morgan explained, “when people in trade buy
anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it.”
“It seems to me,” Margaret replied, more calmly, “that a great deal of
what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money,
and doesn't help anybody or produce anything.”
“Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation.”
“And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?”
“Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves
from stagnation.”
“I cannot see any good in it,” Margaret persisted. “No one seems to have
the things he buys or sells. I don't understand it.”
“That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.
Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith and
credit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay the
difference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth.”
“I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that
betting.”
“Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is really
paying for a difference of knowledge or opinion.”
“Would you buy stocks that way?”
“What way?”
“Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it,
not really having any stock at all.”
“I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if I
could make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle.”
“Well,” said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, “I don't
understand business morality.”
“Nobody does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems to
be suspended by a more than two-thirds vote.”
It was by such inquiries, leading to many talks of this sort, that
Margaret was groping in her mind for the solution of what might become
to her a personal question. Consciously she did not doubt Henderson's
integrity or his honor, but she was perplexed about the world of which
she had recently had a glimpse, and it was impossible to separate him
from it. Subjected to an absolutely new experience, stirred as her heart
had never been before by any man--a fact which at once irritated and
pleased her--she was following the law of her own nature, while she was
still her own mistress, to ponder these things and to bring her reason
to the guidance of her feeling. And it is probable that she did not at
all know the strength of her feeling, or have any conception of the real
power of love, and how little the head has to do with the great passion
of life, the intensity of which the poets have never in the least
exaggerated. If she thought of Mr. Lyon occasionally, of his white face
and pitiful look of suffering that day, she could not, after all, make
it real or permanently serious. Indeed, she was sure that no emotion
could so master her. And yet she looked forward to Henderson's coming
with a sort of nervous apprehension, amounting almost to dread.