The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than
a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the
patient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from the
vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in
domestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel
would be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while
appearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the
gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other--a
severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the
substitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is
certain to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to
habituate one to a lower view of human nature.
There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but
there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. There
was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the
growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get
on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life.
Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the
elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was
now to be endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of
this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the
harder to bear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted
it, and had moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great
compensation for such loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career
that is more and more agreeable. And I had to confess, when occasionally
I saw Margaret during that winter, that she did not need us. Why should
she? Did not the city offer her everything that she desired? And where
in the world are beauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a
magnificent establishment better appreciated? I do not know what
criterion newspaper notoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney
Henderson's movements were as faithfully chronicled as if she had been
a visiting princess or an actress of eccentric proclivities. Her name
appeared as patroness of all the charities, the balls, the soirees,
musical and literary, and if it did not appear in a list of the persons
at any entertainment, one might suspect that the affair lacked the
cachet of the best society. I suppose the final test of one's importance
is to have all the details of one's wardrobe spread before the public.
Judged by this, Margaret's career in New York was phenomenal. Even our
interested household could not follow her in all the changing splendor
of her raiment. In time even Miss Forsythe ceased to read all these
details, but she cut them out, deposited them with other relics in a
sort of mortuary box of the child and the maiden. I used to wonder if,
in the Brandon attitude of mind at this period, there were not just
a little envy of such unclouded prosperity. It is so much easier to
forgive a failure than a success.
In the spring the Hendersons went abroad. The resolution to go may have
been sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to
run up and say good-by. The newspapers said that the trip was taken on
account of Mrs. Henderson's health; that it was because Henderson needed
rest from overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time,
pending the settlement of certain complications. There were ugly stories
afloat, but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many
different sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to
every word Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general
impression of his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of
fortune was immensely raised. Nothing is more significant of our
progress than the good-humored deference of the world to this sort of
success. It is said that the attraction of gravitation lessens according
to the distance from the earth, and there seems to be a region of
aerial freedom, if one can attain it, where the moral forces cease to be
operative.
They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interim
made two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it was
made public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection with
names of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity.
Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of her
experiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went they
commanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune. What most
impressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so little
interested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressed
such a lively desire to see. If she saw them at all, it was from a
different point of view than that she formerly had. She did indeed
express her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours in
London, to whom I had written to call on her--people in very moderate
circumstances, I am ashamed to say--but she had not time to see much
of them. She and her husband had spent a couple of days at
Chisholm--delightful days. Of the earl she had literally nothing to say,
except that he was very kind, and that his family received them with the
most engaging and simple cordiality. “It makes me laugh,” she wrote from
Chisholm, “when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport.
I've got some ideas for our new house.” A note came from “John Lyon” to
Miss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in
so poor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon. I did not see
it, but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.
In Paris Margaret was ill--very ill; and this misfortune caused for
a time a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with a
disappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of their
natures. She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all our
apprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession of
gayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies. They returned
in June. Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and there
would be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with us
on her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life were
more and more divergent.
How could it be otherwise? There were so many topics of conversation
that we had to avoid. Even light remarks on current news, comments
that we used to make freely on the conduct of conspicuous persons, now
carried condemnation that took a personal color. The doubtful means of
making money, the pace of fashionable life, the wasteful prodigality
of the time, we instinctively shrank from speaking of before Margaret.
Perhaps we did her injustice. She was never more gracious, never more
anxious to please. I fancied that there was at times something pathetic
in her wistful desire for our affection and esteem. She was always
a generous girl, and I have no doubt she felt repelled at the quiet
rejection of her well-meant efforts to play the Lady Bountiful. There
were moments during her brief visit when her face was very sad, but no
doubt her predominant feeling escaped her in regard to the criticism
quoted from somebody on Jerry Hollowell's methods and motives. “People
are becoming very self-righteous,” she said.
My wife said to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation of
Carmen Eschelle, “The people I cannot stand are those who pretend they
are not wicked.” If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism has
usually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up as
Margaret had been could not very well come to her present view of
life without a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so
lovely--perhaps there is no moral quality in a good temper--that change
of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more
winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her
illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world,
which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her
attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so
sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this
very attractiveness of the worldly sort, I fancied, that pained her
aunt, and marked the separateness of their sympathies.
How could it be otherwise than that our interests should diverge? It was
a very busy summer with the Hendersons. They were planning the New York
house, which had been one of the objects of Henderson's early ambition.
The sea-air had been prescribed for Margaret, and Henderson had built a
steam-yacht, the equipment and furnishing of which had been a prolific
newspaper topic. It was greatly admired by yachtsmen for the beauty of
its lines and its speed, and pages were written about its sumptuous and
comfortable interior. I never saw it, having little faith in the
comfort of any structure that is not immovably reposeful, but from the
descriptions it was a boudoir afloat. In it short voyages were made
during the summer all along the coast from New York to Maine, and the
arrival and departure of the Henderson yacht was one of the telegraphic
items we always looked for. Carmen Eschelle was usually of the party on
board, sometimes the Misses Arbuser; it was always a gay company, and in
whatever harbor it dropped anchor there was a new impetus given to the
somewhat languid pleasure of the summer season. We read of the dinners
and lunches on board, the entertainments where there were wine and
dancing and moonlight, and all that. I always thought of it as a fairy
sort of ship, sailing on summer seas, freighted with youth and beauty,
and carrying pleasure and good-fortune wherever it went. What more
pleasing spectacle than this in a world that has such a bad name for
want and misery?
Henderson was master of the situation. The sudden accumulation of
millions of money is a mystery to most people. If Henderson had been
asked about it he would have said that he had not a dollar which he had
not earned by hard work. None worked harder. If simple industry is a
virtue, he would have been an example for Sunday-school children.
The object of life being to make money, he would have been a perfect
example. What an inspiration, indeed, for all poor boys were the names
of Hollowell and Henderson, which were as familiar as the name of the
President! There was much speculation as to the amount of Henderson's
fortune, and many wild estimates of it, but by common consent he was one
of the three or four great capitalists. The gauge of this was his power,
and the amounts he could command in an emergency. There was a mystery in
the very fact that the amount he could command was unknown. I have said
that his accumulation was sudden; it was probably so only in appearance.
For a dozen years, by operations, various, secret, untiring, he had
been laying the foundations for his success, and in the maturing of his
schemes it became apparent how vast his transactions had been. For years
he had been known as a rising man, and suddenly he became an important
man. The telegraph, the newspapers, chronicled his every movement;
whatever he said was construed like a Delphic oracle. The smile or the
frown of Jay Hawker himself had not a greater effect upon the market.
The Southwest operation, which made so much noise in the courts, was
merely an incident. In the lives of many successful men there are such
incidents, which they do not care to have inquired into, turning-points
that one slides over in the subsequent gilded biography, or, as it
is called, the nickel-plated biography. The uncomfortable A. and B.
bondholders had been settled with and silenced, after a fashion. In the
end, Mrs. Fletcher had received from the company nearly the full amount
of her investment. I always thought this was due to Margaret, but I made
no inquiries. There were many people who had no confidence in Henderson,
but generally his popularity was not much affected, and whatever was
said of him in private, his social position was almost as unchallenged
as his financial. It was a great point in his favor that he was very
generous to his family and his friends, and his public charities began
to be talked of. Nothing could have been more admirable than a paper
which appeared about this time in one of the leading magazines, written
by a great capitalist during a strike in his “system,” off the uses of
wealth and the responsibilities of rich men. It amused Henderson and
Uncle Jerry, and Margaret sent it, marked, to her aunt. Uncle Jerry said
it was very timely, for at the moment there was a report that Hollowell
and Henderson had obtained possession of one of the great steamship
lines in connection with their trans-continental system. I thought
at the time that I should like to have heard Carmen's comments on the
paper.
The continued friendly alliance of Rodney Henderson and Jerry Hollowell
was a marvel to the public, which expected to read any morning that
the one had sold out the other, or unloaded in a sly deal. The Stock
Exchange couldn't understand it; it was so against all experience that
it was considered something outside of human nature. But the explanation
was simple enough. The two kept a sharp eye on each other, and, as Uncle
Jerry would say, never dropped a stitch; but the simple fact was that
they were necessary to each other, and there had been no opportunity
when the one could handsomely swallow the other. So it was beautiful to
see their accord, and the familiar understanding between them.
One day in Henderson's office--it was at the time they were arranging
the steamship “scoop” while they were waiting for the drafting of some
papers, Uncle Jerry suddenly asked:
“By the way, old man, what's all this about a quarter of a million for a
colored college down South?”
“Oh, that's Mrs. Henderson's affair. They say it's the most magnificent
college building south of Washington. It's big enough. I've seen the
plan of it. Henderson Hall, they are going to call it. I suggested
Margaret Henderson Hall, but she wouldn't have it.”
“What is it for?”
“One end of it is scientific, geological, chemical, electric,
biological, and all that; and the other end is theological. Miss
Eschelle says it's to reconcile science and religion.”
“She's a daisy-that girl. Seems to me, though, that you are educating
the colored brother all on top. I suppose, however, it wouldn't have
been so philanthropic to build a hall for a white college.”
Henderson laughed. “You keep your eye on the religious sentiment of the
North, Uncle Jerry. I told Mrs. Henderson that we had gone long on the
colored brother a good while. She said this was nothing. We could endow
a Henderson University by-and-by in the Southwest, white as alabaster,
and I suppose we shall.”
“Yes, probably we've got to do something in that region to keep 'em
quiet. The public is a curious fish. It wants plenty of bait.”
“And something to talk about,” continued Henderson. “We are going down
next week to dedicate Henderson Hall. I couldn't get out of it.”
“Oh, it will pay,” said Uncle Jerry, as he turned again to business.
The trip was made in Henderson's private car; in fact, in a special
train, vestibuled; a neat baggage car with library and reading-room in
one end, a dining-room car, a private car for invited guests, and
his own car--a luxurious structure, with drawing-room, sleeping-room,
bath-room, and office for his telegrapher and type-writer. The whole
was a most commodious house of one story on wheels. The cost of it would
have built and furnished an industrial school and workshop for a hundred
negroes; but this train was, I dare say, a much more inspiring example
of what they might attain by the higher education. There were half
a dozen in the party besides the Hendersons--Carmen, of course; Mr.
Ponsonby, the English attache; and Mrs. Laflamme, to matronize three
New York young ladies. Margaret and Carmen had never been so far South
before.
Is it not agreeable to have sweet charity silver shod? This sumptuous
special train caused as much comment as the errand on which it went. Its
coming was telegraphed from station to station, and crowds everywhere
collected to see it. Brisk reporters boarded it; the newspapers devoted
columns to descriptions of it; editorials glorified it as a signal
example of the progress of the great republic, or moralized on it as a
sign of the luxurious decadence of morals; pointing to Carthage and Rome
and Alexandria in withering sarcasm that made those places sink into
insignificance as corrupters of the world. There were covert allusions
to Cleopatra ensconced in the silken hangings of the boudoir car, and
one reporter went so far as to refer to the luxury of Capua and Baiae,
to their disparagement. All this, however, was felt to add to the glory
of the republic, and it all increased the importance of Henderson. To
hear the exclamations, “That's he!” “That's him!” “That's Henderson!”
was to Margaret in some degree a realization of her ambition; and Carmen
declared that it was for her a sweet thought to be identified with
Cleopatra.
So the Catachoobee University had its splendid new building--as great a
contrast to the shanties from which its pupils came as is the Capitol
at Washington to the huts of a third of its population. If the reader is
curious he may read in the local newspapers of the time glowing accounts
of its “inaugural dedication”; but universities are so common in this
country that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies of
this sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy on
himself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundred
young men and women of various colors and invited guests--a eulogy which
no one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that she
refused to take the affair seriously.
“I felt for you, Mr. Henderson,”; she said, after the exercises were
over. “I blushed for you. I almost felt ashamed, after all the president
said, that you had given so little.”
“You seem, Miss Eschelle,” remarked Mr. Ponsonby, “to be enthusiastic
about the education and elevation of the colored people.”
“Yes, I am; I quite share Mr. Henderson's feeling about it. I'm for the
elevation of everything.”
“There is a capital chance for you,” said Henderson; “the university
wants some scholarships.”
“And I've half a mind to found one--the Eschelle Scholarship of Washing
and Clear-starching. You ought to have seen my clothes that came back to
the car. Probably they were not done by your students. The things looked
as if they had been dragged through the Cat-a-what-do-you-call-it River,
and ironed with a pine chip.”
“Could you do them any better, with all your cultivation?” asked
Margaret.
“I think I could, if I was obliged to. But I couldn't get through that
university, with all its ologies and laboratories and Greek and queer
bottles and machines. You have neglected my education, Mr. Henderson.”
“It is not too late to begin now; you might see if you could pass
the examination here. It is part of our plan gradually to elevate the
whites,” said Henderson.
“Yes, I know; and did you see that some of the scholars had red hair and
blue eyes, quite in the present style? And how nice the girls looked,”
she rattled on; “and what a lot of intelligent faces, and how they
kindled up when the president talked about the children of Israel in
the wilderness forty years, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon! And you,
sir”--she turned to the Englishman--“I've heard, were against all this
emancipation during the war.”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Ponsonby, “we never were against
emancipation, and wanted the best side to win.”
“You had a mighty queer way of showing it, then.”
“Well, honestly, Miss Eschelle, do you think the negroes are any better
off?”
“You'd better ask them. My opinion is that everybody should do what he
likes in this world.”
“Then what are you girding Mr. Henderson for about his university?”
“Because these philanthropists, like Mr. Henderson and Uncle Jerry
Hollowell, are all building on top; putting on the frosting before the
cake rises.”
“Haven't you found out, Mr. Ponsonby,” Margaret interrupted, “that if
there were eight sides to a question, Miss Eschelle would be on every
one of them?”
“And right, too. There are eight sides to every question, and generally
more. I think the negro question has a hundred. But there is only one
side to Henderson Hall. It is a noble institution. I like to think about
it, and Uncle Caesar Hollowell crossing the Rubicon in his theological
seminary. It is all so beautiful!”
“You are a bad child,” said Margaret. “We should have left you at home.”
“No, not bad, dear; only confused with such a lot of good deeds in a
naughty world.”
That this junketing party was deeply interested in the cause of
education for whites or blacks, no one would have gathered from the
conversation. Margaret felt that Carmen had exactly hit the motives of
this sort of philanthropy, and she was both amused and provoked by the
girl's mockery. By force of old habit she defended, as well she might,
these schools.
“You must have a high standard,” she said. “You cannot have good lower
schools without good higher schools. And these colleges, which you think
above the colored people, will stimulate them and gradually raise the
whole mass. You cannot do anything until you educate teachers.”
“So I have always heard,” replied the incorrigible. “I have always been
a philanthropist about the negro till I came down here, and I intend to
be again when I go back.”
Mrs. Laflamme was not a very eager apostle either, and the young ladies
devoted themselves to the picturesque aspects of the population, without
any concern for the moral problems. They all declared that they liked
the negro. But Margaret was not to be moved from her good-humor by any
amount of badgering. She liked Henderson Hall; she was proud of the
consideration it brought her husband; she had a comfortable sense of
doing something that was demanded by her opportunity. It is so difficult
to analyze motives, and in Margaret's case so hard to define the change
that had taken place in her. That her heart was not enlisted in this
affair, as it would have been a few years before, she herself knew.
Insensibly she had come to look at the world, at men and women, through
her husband's eyes, to take the worldly view, which is not inconsistent
with much good feeling and easy-going charity. She also felt the
necessity--a necessity totally unknown to such a nature as Carmen's--of
making compensation, of compounding for her pleasures. Gradually she was
learning to play her husband's game in life, and to see no harm in
it. What, then, is this thing we call conscience? Is it made of
India-rubber? I once knew a clever Southern woman, who said that New
England women seemed to her all conscience--Southern women all soul and
impulse. If it were possible to generalize in this way, we might say
that Carmen had neither conscience nor soul, simply very clever reason.
Uncle Jerry had no more conscience than Carmen, but he had a great deal
of natural affection. Henderson, with an abundance of good-nature, was
simply a man of his time, troubled with no scruples that stood in the
way of his success. Margaret, with a finer nature than either of them,
stifling her scruples in an atmosphere of worldly-mindedness, was likely
to go further than either of them. Even such a worldling as Carmen
understood this. “I do things,” she said to Mrs. Laflamme--she made
anybody her confidant when the fit was on her--“I do things because I
don't care. Mrs. Henderson does the same, but she does care.”
Margaret would be a sadder woman, but not a better woman, when the
time came that she did not care. She had come to the point of accepting
Henderson's methods of overreaching the world, and was tempering the
result with private liberality. Those were hypocrites who criticised
him; those were envious who disparaged him; the sufficient ethics of
the world she lived in was to be successful and be agreeable. And it is
difficult to condemn a person who goes with the general opinion of
his generation. Carmen was under no illusions about Henderson, or the
methods and manners of which she was a part. “Why pretend?” she said.
“We are all bad together, and I like it. Uncle Jerry is the easiest
person to get on with.” I remember a delightful, wicked old baroness
whom I met in my youth stranded in Geneva on short allowance--European
resorts are full of such characters. “My dear,” she said, “why shouldn't
I renege? Why shouldn't men cheat at cards? It's all in the game. Don't
we all know we are trying to deceive each other and get the best of each
other? I stopped pretending after Waterloo. Fighting for the peace of
Europe! Bah! We are all fighting for what we can get.”
So the Catachoobee Henderson Hall was dedicated, and Mr. Henderson got
great credit out of it.
“It's a noble deed, Mr. Henderson,” Carmen remarked, when they were at
dinner on the car the day of their departure. “But”--in an aside to
her host--“I advise the lambs in Wall Street to look alive at your next
deal.”