HAPPINESS
The evening on which Peter had left Grey-Court, Leonore had been moved
“for sundry reasons” to go to her piano and sing an English ballad
entitled “Happiness.” She had sung it several times, and with gusto.
The next morning she read the political part of the papers. “I don’t
see anything to have taken him back,” she said “but I am really glad,
for he was getting hard to manage. I couldn’t send him away, but now I
hope he’ll stay there.” Then Leonore fluttered all day, in the true
Newport style, with no apparent thought of her “friend.”
But something at a dinner that evening interested her.
“I’m ashamed,” said the hostess, “of my shortage of men. Marlow was
summoned back to New York last night, by business, quite unexpectedly,
and Mr. Dupont telegraphed me this afternoon that he was detained
there.”
“It’s curious,” said Dorothy. “Mr. Rivington and my brother came on
Tuesday expecting to stay for a week, but they had special delivery
letters yesterday, and both started for New York. They would not tell
me what it was.”
“Mr. Stirling received a special delivery, too,” said Leonore, “and
started at once. And he wouldn’t tell.”
“How extraordinary!” said the hostess. “There must be something very
good at the roof-gardens.”
“It has something to do with headwears,” said Leonore, not hiding her
light under a bushel.
“Headwear?” said a man.
“Yes,” said Leonore. “I only had a glimpse of the heading, but I saw
‘Headwears N.G.S.N.Y.’”
A sudden silence fell, no one laughing at the mistake.
“What’s the matter?” asked Leonore.
“We are wondering what will happen,” said the host, “if men go in for
headwear too.”
“They do that already,” said a man, “but unlike women, they do it on
the inside, not the outside of the head.”
But nobody laughed, and the dinner seemed to drag from that moment.
Leonore and Dorothy had come together, and as soon as they were in
their carriage, Leonore said, “What a dull dinner it was?”
“Oh, Leonore,” cried Dorothy, “don’t talk about dinners. I’ve kept up
till now, bu—” and Dorothy’s sentence melted into a sob.
“Is it home, Mrs. Rivington?” asked the tiger, sublimely unconscious,
as a good servant should be, of this dialogue, and of his mistress’s
tears.
“No, Portman, the Club,” sobbed Dorothy.
“Dorothy,” begged Leonore, “what is it?”
“Don’t you understand?” sobbed Dorothy. “All this fearful anarchist
talk and discontent? And my poor, poor darling! Oh, don’t talk to me.”
Dorothy became inarticulate once more.
“How foolish married women are!” thought Leonore, even while putting
her arm around Dorothy, and trying blindly to comfort her.
“Is it a message, Mrs. Rivington?” asked the man, opening the
carriage-door.
“Ask for Mr. Melton, or Mr. Duer, and say Mrs. Rivington wishes to see
one of them.” Dorothy dried her eyes, and braced up. Before Leonore had
time to demand an explanation, Peter’s gentlemanly scoundrel was at the
door.
“What is it, Mrs. Rivington?” he asked.
“Mr. Duer, is there any bad news from New York?”
“Yes. A great strike on the Central is on, and the troops have been
called in to keep order.”
“Is that all the news?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” said Dorothy. “Home, Portman.”
The two women were absolutely silent during the drive. But they kissed
each other in parting, not with the peck which women so often give each
other, but with a true kiss. And when Leonore, in crossing the porch,
encountered the mastiff which Peter had given her, she stopped and
kissed him too, very tenderly. What is more, she brought him inside,
which was against the rules, and put him down before the fire. Then she
told the footman to bring her the evening-papers, and sitting down on
the rug by Bêtise, proceeded to search them, not now for the political
outlook, but for the labor troubles. Leonore suddenly awoke to the fact
that there were such things as commercial depressions and unemployed.
She read it all with the utmost care. She read the outpourings of the
Anarchists, in a combination of indignation, amazement and fear, “I
never dreamed there could be such fearful wretches!” she said. There
was one man—a fellow named Podds—whom the paper reported as shrieking
in Union Square to a select audience:
“Rise! Wipe from the face of the earth the money power! Kill! Kill!
Only by blood atonement can we lead the way to better things. To a
universal brotherhood of love. Down with rich men! Down with their paid
hirelings, the troops! Blow them in pieces!”
“Oh!” cried Leonore shuddering. “It’s fearful. I wish some one would
blow you in pieces!” Thereby was she proving herself not unlike Podds.
All humanity have something of the Anarchist in them. Then Leonore
turned to the mastiff and told him some things. Of how bad the strikers
were, and how terrible were the Anarchists. “Yes, dear,” she said, “I
wish we had them here, and then you could treat them as they deserve,
wouldn’t you, Bêtise? I’m so glad he has my luck-piece!”
A moment later her father and another man came into the hall from the
street, compelling Leonore to assume a more proper attitude.
“Hello, Dot!” said Watts. “Still up? Vaughan and I are going to have a
game of billiards. Won’t you score for us?”
“Yes,” said Leonore.
“Bad news from New York, isn’t it?” said Vaughan, nonchalantly, as he
stood back after his first play.
Leonore saw her father make a grimace at Vaughan, which Vaughan did not
see. She said, “What?”
“I missed,” said Watts. “Your turn, Will.”
“Tell me the news before you shoot?” said Leonore.
“The collision of the strikers and the troops.”
“Was any one hurt?” asked Leonore, calmly scoring two to her father’s
credit.
“Yes. Eleven soldiers and twenty-two strikers.”
“What regiment was it?” asked Leonore.
“Colonel Stirling’s,” said Vaughan, making a brilliant _massé_.
“Fortunately it’s a Mick regiment, so we needn’t worry over who was
killed.”
Leonore thought to herself: “You are as bad every bit as Podds!” Aloud
she said, “Did it say who were killed?”
“No. The dispatch only said fourteen dead.”
“That was a beautiful shot,” said Leonore. “You ought to run the game
out with that position. I think, papa, that I’ll go to bed. I find I’m
a little tired. Good-night, Mr. Vaughan.” Leonore went upstairs,
slowly, deep in thought. She did not ring for her maid. On the contrary
she lay down on her bed in her dinner-gown, to its everlasting
detriment. “I know he isn’t hurt,” she said, “because I should feel it.
But I wish the telegram had said.” She hardly believed herself,
apparently, for she buried her head in the pillow, and began to sob
quietly. “If I only had said good-bye,” she moaned.
Early the next morning Watts found Leonore in the hall.
“How pale my Dot is!” he exclaimed.
“I didn’t sleep well,” said Leonore.
“Aren’t you going to ride with me?”
“No. I don’t feel like it this morning,” said Leonore.
As Watts left the hall, a servant entered it.
“I had to wait, Miss D’Alloi,” he said. “No papers are for sale till
eight o’clock.”
Leonore took the newspaper silently and went to the library. Then she
opened it and looked at the first column. She read it hurriedly.
“I knew he wasn’t hurt,” she said, “because I would have felt it, and
because he had my luck piece.” Then she stepped out of one of the
windows, called Bêtise to her, and putting her arms about his neck,
kissed him.
When the New York papers came things were even better, for they
recorded the end of the strike. Leonore even laughed over that big, big
D. “I can’t imagine him getting so angry,” she said “He must have a
temper, after all.” She sang a little, as she fixed the flowers in the
vases, and one of the songs was “Happiness.” Nor did she snub a man who
hinted at afternoon tea, as she had a poor unfortunate who suggested
tennis earlier in the day.
While they were sipping their tea, however, Watts came in from the
club.
“Helen,” he said, going to the bay window farthest from the tea-table,
“come here I want to say something.”
They whispered for a moment, and then Mrs. D’Alloi came back to her
tea.
“Won’t you have a cup, papa?” asked Leonore.
“‘Not to-day, dear,” said Watts, with an unusual tenderness in his
voice.
Leonore was raising a spoon to her mouth, but suddenly her hand
trembled a little. After a glance at her father and mother, she pushed
her tea-cup into the centre of the table as if she had finished it,
though it had just been poured. Then she turned and began to talk and
laugh with the caller.
But the moment the visitor was out of the room, Leonore said:
“What is it, papa?”
Watts was standing by the fire. He hesitated. Then he groaned. Then he
went to the door. “Ask your mother,” he said, and went out of the room.
“Mamma?” said Leonore.
“Don’t excite yourself, dear,” said her mother. “I’ll tell you
to-morrow.”
Leonore was on her feet. “No,” she said huskily, “tell me now.”
“Wait till we’ve had dinner.”
“Mamma,” cried Leonore, appealingly, “don’t you see that—that—that I
suffer more by not knowing it? Tell me.”
“Oh, Leonore,” cried her mother, “don’t look that way. I’ll tell you;
but don’t look that way!”
“What?”
Mrs. D’Alloi put her arms about Leonore. “The Anarchists have exploded
a bomb.”
“Yes?” said Leonore.
“And it killed a great many of the soldiers.”
“Not—?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, mamma,” said Leonore. She unclasped her mother’s arms, and
went towards the door.
“Leonore,” cried her mother, “stay here with me, dear.”
“I’d rather be alone,” said Leonore, quietly. She went upstairs to her
room and sank down by an ottoman which stood in the middle of the
floor. She sat silent and motionless, for over an hour, looking
straight before her at nothing, as Peter had so often done. Is it
harder to lose out of life the man or woman whom one loves, or to see
him or her happy in the love of another. Is the hopelessness of the
impossible less or greater than the hopelessness of the unattainable?
Finally Leonore rose, and touched her bell. When her maid came she
said, “Get me my travelling dress.” Ten minutes later she came into the
library, saying to Watts.
“Papa, I want you to take me to New York, by the first train.”
“Are you crazy, my darling?” cried Watts. “With riots and Anarchists
all over the city.”
“I must go to New York,” said Leonore. “If you won’t take me, I’ll go
with madame.”
“Not for a moment—” began Watts.
“Papa,” cried Leonore, “don’t you see it’s killing me? I can’t bear
it—” and Leonore stopped.
“Yes, Watts, we must,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
Two hours later they were all three rolling towards New York. It was a
five hours’ ride, but Leonore sat the whole distance without speaking,
or showing any consciousness of her surroundings. For every turn of
those wheels seemed to fall into a rhythmic repetition of: “If I had
only said ‘good-bye.’”
The train was late in arriving, and Watts tried to induce Leonore to go
to a hotel for the night. She only said “No. Take me to him,” but it
was in a voice which Watts could not disregard. So after a few
questions at the terminal, which produced no satisfactory information,
Watts told the cabman to drive to the City Hall Park.
They did not reach it, however, for at the corner of Centre Street and
Chambers, there came a cry of “halt,” and the cab had to stop.
“You can’t pass this line,” said the sentry. “You must go round by
Broadway.”
“Why?” asked Watts.
“The street is impassable.”
Watts got out, and held a whispered dialogue with the sentry. This
resulted in the summoning of the officer of the watch. In the mean time
Leonore descended and joined them. Watts turned and said to her: “The
sentry says he’s here.”
Presently an officer came up.
“An’ what do the likes av yez want at this time av night?” he inquired
crossly. “Go away wid yez.”
“Oh, Captain Moriarty,” said Leonore, “won’t you let me see him? I’m
Miss D’Alloi.”
“Shure,” said Dennis, “yez oughtn’t to be afther disturbin’ him. It’s
two nights he’s had no sleep.”
Leonore suddenly put her hand on Dennis’s arm. “He’s not killed?” she
whispered, as if she could not breathe, and the figure swayed a little.
“Divil a bit! They got it wrong entirely. It was that dirty spalpeen av
a Podds.”
“Are you sure?” said Leonore, pleadingly. “You are not deceiving me?”
“Begobs,” said Dennis, “do yez think Oi could stand here wid a dry eye
if he was dead?”
Leonore put her head on Dennis’s shoulder, and began to sob softly. For
a moment Dennis looked aghast at the results of his speech, but
suddenly his face changed. “Shure,” he whispered, “we all love him just
like that, an that’s why the Blessed Virgin saved him for us.”
Then Leonore, with tears in her eyes, said, “I felt it,” in the most
joyful of voices. A voice that had a whole _Te Deum_ in it.
“Won’t you let me see him?” she begged. “I won’t wake him, I promise
you.”
“That yez shall,” said Dennis. “Will yez take my arm?” The four passed
within the lines. “Step careful,” he continued. “There’s pavin’ stones,
and rails, and plate-glass everywheres. It looks like there’d been a
primary itself.”
All thought that was the best of jokes and laughed. They passed round a
great chasm in the street and sidewalk. Then they came to long rows of
bodies stretched on the grass, or rather what was left of the grass, in
the Park. Leonore shuddered. “Are they all dead?” she whispered. “Dead!
Shurely not. It’s the regiment sleepin’,” she was told. They passed
between these rows for a little distance. “This is him,” said Dennis,
“sleepin’ like a babby.” Dennis turned his back and began to describe
the explosion to Mrs. D’Alloi and Watts.
There, half covered with a blanket, wrapped in a regulation great coat,
his head pillowed on a roll of newspapers, lay Peter. Leonore knelt
down on the ground beside him, regardless of the proprieties or the
damp. She listened to hear if he was breathing, and when she found that
he actually was, her face had on it a little thanksgiving proclamation
of its own. Then with the prettiest of motherly manners, she softly
pulled the blanket up and tucked it in about his arms. Then she looked
to see if there was not something else to do. But there was nothing. So
she made more. “The poor dear oughtn’t to sleep without something on
his head. He’ll take cold.” She took her handkerchief and tried to fix
it so that it should protect Peter’s head. She tried four different
ways, any one of which would have served; but each time she thought of
a better way, and had to try once more. She probably would have thought
of a fifth, if Peter had not suddenly opened his eyes.
“Oh!” said Leonore, “what a shame? I’ve waked you up. And just as I had
fixed it right.”
Peter studied the situation calmly, without moving a muscle. He looked
at the kneeling figure for some time. Then he looked up at the arc
light a little distance away. Then he looked at the City Hall clock.
Then his eyes came back to Leonore. “Peter,” he said finally, “this is
getting to be a monomania. You must stop it.”
“What?” said Leonore, laughing at his manner as if it was intended as a
joke.
Peter put out his hand and touched Leonore’s dress. Then he rose
quickly to his feet. “What is the matter?” he asked.
“Hello,” cried Watts. “Have you come to? Well. Here we are, you see.
All the way from Newport to see you in fragments, only to be
disappointed. Shake!”
Peter said nothing for a moment. But after he had shaken hands, he
said, “It’s very good of you to have thought of me.”
“Oh,” explained Leonore promptly, “I’m always anxious about my friends.
Mamma will tell you I am.”
Peter turned to Leonore, who had retired behind her mother. “Such
friends are worth having,” he said, with a strong emphasis on
“friends.”
Then Leonore came out from behind her mother. “‘How nice he’s stupid,”
she thought. “He is Peter Simple, after all.”
“Well,” said Watts, “your friends are nearly dying with hunger and want
of sleep, so the best thing we can do, since we needn’t hunt for you in
scraps, is to go to the nearest hotel. Where is that?”
“You’ll have to go uptown,” said Peter. “Nothing down here is open at
this time.”
“I’m not sleepy,” said Leonore, “but I am so hungry!”
“Serves you right for eating no din—” Watts started to say, but Leonore
interjected, in an unusually loud voice. “Can’t you get us something?”
“Nothing; that will do for you, I’m afraid,” said Peter. “I had Dennett
send up one of his coffee-boilers so that the men should have hot
coffee through the night, and there’s a sausage-roll man close to him
who’s doing a big business. But they’ll hardly serve your purpose.”
“The very thing,” cried Watts. “What a lark!”
“I can eat anything,” said Leonore.
So they went over to the stands. Peter’s blanket was spread on the
sidewalk, and three Newport swells, and the Democratic nominee for
governor sat upon it, with their feet in the gutter, and drank
half-bean coffee and ate hot sausage rolls, made all the hotter by the
undue amount of mustard which the cook would put in. What is worse,
they enjoyed it as much as if it was the finest of dinners. Would not
society have been scandalized had it known of their doings?
How true it is that happiness is in a mood rather than in a moment. How
eagerly we prepare for and pursue the fickle sprite, only to find our
preparations and chase giving nothing but dullness, fatigue, and ennui.
But then how often without exertion or warning, the sprite is upon us,
and tinges the whole atmosphere. So it was at this moment, with two of
the four. The coffee might have been all beans, and yet it would have
been better than the best served in Viennese cafés. The rolls might
have had even a more weepy amount of mustard, and yet the burning and
the tears would only have been the more of a joke. The sun came up, as
they ate, talked and laughed, touching everything about them with gold,
but it might have poured torrents, and the two would have been as
happy.
For Leonore was singing to herself: “He isn’t dead. He isn’t dead.”
And Peter was thinking: “She loves me. She must love me.”