VI

Ogden had been balked in his first social advance by the inconsiderate

and unwarranted demands of the Brainards. He failed on Proposition

No. I., but its attendant corollary he disposed of after the proper

interval. He had missed the dinner, but he accomplished the dinner call.

He was moving around his room in his shirtsleeves; he had the leisurely

air of one whose social orbit was so small as to involve no relations

with the courses of cabs and of street-cars. To set himself right with

the Floyds he had but to step around the corner.

His room was rather small and cramped, but he had preferred indifferent

accommodations in a good house to good accommodations in an indifferent

house--just as he would have chosen an indifferent house in a good

neighborhood to a better house in a poorer one. His quarters, however,

were well enough for a single young man of moderate pretensions. He had

space for a three-quarter bed, a bureau, a wash-stand which displayed

a set of pink-flowered crockery and two towels, a cane-seated chair,

and a pair of book-shelves on the wall. And by means of a good deal

of dexterous manœuvring he contrived to extract some comfort from an

undersized rocker. His decorations were principally photographs, which

showed to the extent common under the circumstances. Some of these

were grouped in twos and threes, in frames faced with Chinese silk;

they helped to achieve the disordered and over-crowded effect that the

present taste in house-furnishing aims at, and can always accomplish in

a back hall bedroom.

The photographs stood in the position in which he had first placed

them a month and a half ago, although the recent arrival of several

of the originals had given their shadows an altered importance.

Everybody knows of the inertia that overtakes decorative detail, even

when portable. There were the pictures of his father and his mother,

arranged in a pair. His father offered a placid, gray-bearded face;

it seemed rather forceless, though that effect may have been due to

retouching; yet, independent of any practical processes, it was the

face of a man who obviously could not have risen in advance to any

adequate conception of the Western metropolis.

The face of his mother was serious, strenuous. She had in some degree

the semi-countrified aspect of one who has run a quiet course in a

quiet quarter of a minor town.

His sister's picture had been taken in the East just before her

starting for her new home. It was now in the hands of Ogden's next-door

neighbor, who had come in carrying a choice of white ties, and who

now wove around it a contemplative cloud of tobacco-smoke from his

briar-wood pipe. He was a young man with a high forehead and a pair of

shrewd but kindly brown eyes.

"A mighty pretty girl," Brower said, heartily. "Get the right kind of a

New England face, and you can't do much better. I must haul out my own

photographs and fix them up some time."

Brower kept his collection in his trunk, along with his shirts and

underwear generally. He used his bureau drawers for collars and cuffs,

and for a growing accumulation of newspapers, magazines, and novels.

He had been in the house two years, yet his trunk had never been

unpacked and put away. He was an adjuster for an insurance company,

and was subject to sudden calls to remote localities, in accordance

with the doings of the busy monster that the press knows as the "fire

fiend." If Isaac Sobrinski, off in Des Moines, had the misfortune

to be burned out, at the close of a dull season or in the face of

brisk and successful competition, then Des Moines was the place to

which Brower immediately posted. He estimated the damage on the

building, figured the salvage on socks and ulsters, and endeavored to

decide, so far as lay in his powers, whether the catastrophe had been

inflicted by Providence or had been precipitated by Sobrinski's own

match-box. However, he never carried anything except his valise on such

excursions; the general state of his trunk is to be accepted simply as

the mental index of a constant and hurried traveller.

"Yes, she's a mighty pretty girl," he repeated, thoughtfully. "Where

have they gone?"

"Oh, not far. There's been a good deal of travelling done already. They

just went up to Milwaukee; Eugene had something to see about there.

They'll be back to-morrow, I expect."

"Milwaukee, eh? That's come to be quite the fashion, hasn't it? Some

folks go there after they're married, and some of them to _be_ married.

We had one in our office a week or two ago; Vibert--have you met him?"

"It's in your office he is, then, is it? No, I've never met him. I've

seen him and heard about him. Is he much thought of?"

"Well, the office doesn't have a great deal to say to a man as long

as he keeps hours and attends to his work--when the position isn't

responsible, I mean. What are you looking for--whisk-broom? Here; I'm

sitting on it, I guess."

"I suppose he does attend to his work?"

"Oh, so-so; but a little break like that doesn't help a man any. He

struck high, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Wonder what he's got to keep her on. Great question--all that; ain't

it? She's a rich girl, I hear. Subject for debate: is it safer to marry

a rich girl or a poor girl--for a young man in moderate circumstances,

I mean?"

"Oh, dear," said Ogden, sitting down on the edge of the bed,

helplessly; "if you're going back to _that_ chestnut!"

"Well, it's timely," rejoined Brower, knocking the ashes of his pipe

into the cover of the soap-dish; "and always will be. Pro: if the

girl's rich, she'll have had things, and got used to them, and perhaps

tired of them. If the girl's poor, she'll be ravenous after her long

starve-out, and will expect her husband to feed her with everything."

"Lay on."

"Con: if the girl's rich, she'll expect all the comforts and luxuries

she has been used to at home. If she's poor, she'll have had some sense

ground into her; she'll know how to manage and contrive. So there it

is. What's your idea?" "No general rule. Depends on circumstances."

"What does?"

"The girl. To begin with."

"The girl depends on circumstances. And after?"

"After? Oh, then circumstances depend on the girl."

"H'm! Can't lay down any general law--same as with little Johnny.

Pshaw! You go to the foot."

But they both agreed on one point, as young men always do when they

discuss this standard subject: they stood together on the assumption

that such a venture concerned only the two people primarily involved.

Brower preceded Ogden into the hallway; he stood with the toe of one

slipper on the heel of the other. "Well, remember me to the swells."

"Oh, shucks!" said George, turning back and laughing.

He walked down and out rather sedately, and picked his way over the

muddy sidewalks with his thoughts fixed on the two recent marriages.

That in his own family had just occurred under such disadvantages as

must prevail in a disorganized household, and with the infliction of

such discomforts as will sometimes be undergone by people who, while

not in society, still feel impelled to have such a function proceed

after the fashion that society prescribes. Kittie Ogden was duly

married, then, with a certain regard to cards, carriages, caterers, and

the rest; and the feast was graced by a number of McDowell's family

and friends--people of a fairish sort, who called for little comment

in either way. At least, little comment was bestowed by Ogden, whose

principal thought was that his sister was now the wife of a fellow of

some means and ability, and who felt that it would not come amiss to

have a good business man in the family.

At the Floyds' he found the other wedding the subject of much comment,

more or less discreet. On the other hand, the affair in his own family

received but a mere civil mention; the Ogdens, he felt, must be only

an insignificant little group, after all. Must they--must he--always

remain so?

The Floyds occupied a snug little house which filled a chink between

two bigger and finer ones, and commanded a view of the back yard of a

third, which was bigger and finer still. Mrs. Floyd had lately begun

to fill a chink in the social world as well, by having an "evening."

She had approached the idea with a good deal of deliberation, and she

had achieved something very small and quiet. She overcame her husband's

weakness for knowing people and inviting them to the house; she was not

after a deluge, but a drop; and if her tardy distillation did not equal

the perfumes of the fragrant East, still it was the best result to be

arrived at under the circumstances.

He found the Fairchilds there, and he came upon Fairchild and Floyd

smoking, _sub rosa,_ in a secluded corner of the library, which was

furnished in a sombre and solid fashion. In the Floyd family the

household divinity was the lace-curtain, whose susceptibility to

offence from the fumes of tobacco is well known; her high-priestess was

Mrs. Floyd, and her chief victim was Walworth. Associated with the two

smokers was young Freddy Pratt, whose solicitude regarding Brainard's

mental state on the occasion of his daughter's call at the bank has

been already touched upon, and who was now puffing a cigarette with a

learned and expert air. This attitude was displeasing to Ogden, who was

perhaps over-disposed to feel official differences on social occasions;

but no oppressive sense of his own subordinate rank troubled Freddy

Pratt, who had but a feeble and intermittent realization of the orders

of the business hierarchy, or indeed of anything else.

"It was a matter that concerned just her and him," Fairchild was

saying as Ogden entered, with a contemplative regard fastened on the

lengthening ash of his cigar. "It was nobody else's business."

He stopped. He had spoken in a low, quiet voice, but he had conveyed

unmistakably the presence of quotation-marks.

"I called on 'em the other night," volunteered Freddy Pratt,

unabashedly. His perky little nose was tipped in the air, and his

eyes were closed to the two fine slits that denote the complete

enjoyment of the smoker. "I wasn't going to stand off. They're at the

Northumberland--big name, but not much else. Ragged matting in the

halls, and the janitor didn't look very slick. I guess they've rented

ready furnished. Mayme was real glad to see me. But _he_ was rather

grumpy, I thought."

"Everybody ought always to be glad to see _you_, Freddy," smiled

Walworth, with a caressing irony.

"I suppose," resumed Fairchild, thoughtfully, "that the human family

will always go on considering a wedding as a joyous occasion. It always

has; it always must--hope springs eternal."

Ogden wondered what other view there might be to take. Everybody had

seemed lively and happy enough when Kittie was married.

"But there's the other side--the side that turns to view with a

consideration of the complicated relations of a good many new and

diverse elements--new people coming in. We had a case in our own family

some years ago, when my young cousin married. Poor Lizzie; she is dead

now. Her father died six months before her and left a good deal to be

divided up. Her husband was trustee for the boy after she herself went,

and he made us a good deal of trouble. He had his eye on the estate

from the start, and more than his share in the handling of it. There

were a good many meetings in lawyers' offices--more trying than the

courts themselves. There was a good deal of money lost, and there is

a good deal of feeling that will never be got over. He traded on his

wife's memory all through. Yet the family welcomed him very cordially

and trustfully; we thought the poor girl was going to be so happy. She

was; she never knew."

Ogden sighed; this was dismal matter.

"Oh, well," continued Fairchild, resuming his cigar, with an air of

passing to lighter topics, "this can't apply here. All of us are

happily married or are going to be--"

Freddy Pratt nonchalantly blew an ineffable smoke-ring across the room;

Walworth slipped around the table to close the last inch of crack in

the door.

"Oh, dear, yes!" he exclaimed.

"--and none of us are being troubled through relations by marriage."

The door was shut, but the penetrating voice of Ann Wilde came through

it clearly, and Walworth winced.

"Oh, dear, no!" he protested.

"I should say not," chimed in Freddy Pratt, with his self-satisfied

little ba-a.

The cigars were ending. "Come, let us go out to the others," said Floyd.

In the drawing-room Ogden presently encountered Jessie Bradley and her

parents. The girl herself appeared as dressed as the occasion could

warrant, but her father and mother wore the every-day habiliments in

which he had first seen them, a fortnight before, on the occasion

of a call at Hinsdale. They had an easy-going aspect, as if they

hardly cared to put themselves out greatly. They were present in the

triple capacity of relatives of the hostess, of suburbanites, and of

body-guard to escort their daughter back home after another of her

frequent visits in town, and their effect was quite provisional and

transitory.

Mrs. Bradley was a pleasant woman whose face was full of the fine lines

of experience and whose hair had thinned greatly without changing

its dry, sandy brown. She wore an old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb.

She met Ogden here precisely as she had met him in her own house. He

noticed presently that she treated everybody else in exactly the same

fashion, and he learned subsequently that she had, practically, one

invariable manner for all times, places, and people. It was a manner

that he found very quiet, simple, straightforward, and friendly. It

showed that she valued herself, and was also disposed to accord a good

value to anybody else. It seemed to say, as plainly as words: "The Lord

is the maker of us all; so let's have no more fuss about it." It was

the good American manner in full bloom.

Her husband had a jovial eye, a grizzled moustache, a rotund, polished

forehead, and cheeks that hung downward fatly into his big, round,

short neck. He appeared to have valued his peace of mind sufficiently

to preserve it and to be satisfied with the moderate success that comes

from moderate effort. He wore a short-waisted, double-breasted frock

coat, and there were no wrinkles in it, either front or back: he would

have found it impossible to thrust his plump hand in between any two of

the buttons.

He was given in the directory as "Bradley, Danl. H., secty. and treas.

Darrell & Bradley P't'g & Lith'g Co." He had been one of the organizers

of the corporation, but had since yielded the lead to others of more

push and means. He had a moderate salary and a small block of the

stock. Since he was assisting the business as an officer, rather than

directing it as an individual, he had little personal annoyance from

typographical unions and from the paper manufacturers' trusts. As for

"pi" and proof-readers' errors, matters which have a power to make

some men agonize, he merely laughed at them. The concern, besides its

central establishment, had a few retail branches placed here and there

through the business district; one of them, on the ground floor of the

Clifton, supplied the La Salle Street banks and insurance offices with

ledgers, ink, and blotting-pads.

He had an acre of ground and a two-story frame house at Hinsdale, and

Ogden remembered the small green-house where he fed his craze for

chrysanthemums.

[Illustration: "'We have come to take our girl back home.'"]

"We have come to take our girl back home," he said to Ogden as he laid

his plump hand lightly on his daughter's shoulder. "That is, if she can

make up her mind to go with us."

"Just us two all alone in the house," added her mother, with a humorous

pathos. "No chick nor child."

Jessie laughed and shook out a bit of her frivolous finery. Her face

had a tired look, but motion seemed more restful to her than rest

itself.

Ogden canvassed the three. Whence could this girl have got her

supple leanness, her light, gay, rapid, incisive air, her aspen-like

quiverings of nervous force? Not from her parents. From the March

winds, perhaps, that sweep down from Mackinaw, over the limy and choppy

expanse of Lake Michigan; from the varied breezes, hot and cold, that

scour the prairies on their way from scorched-up Texas or from the

snow-fields beyond Manitoba.

"Not even a relative," pursued her father; "not one in all the country

round--except Frances. All our people are down East," he continued,

addressing Ogden more directly. "They write every so often to learn

if we are millionnaires yet. We always have to say 'no,' and that

discourages them. They stay where they are."

"But Jessie goes around to look after them," contributed her mother,

with combined complacency and reproach. "She goes to Pittsfield and

Nantucket and everywhere. People are beginning, now, to ask her up to

Wisconsin, summers. And sometimes Florida."

The girl shrugged her shoulders in a fidgety fashion.

"Oh, well, mamma," she said, "I have to circulate. Let's circulate some

now," she suggested, turning to Ogden. "I'll be ready to go when you

are," she called back to her father.