LEGITIMATE, OR ILLEGITIMATE.
The doctor only stayed a short time, which was mostly employed in
discussing the famous enterprise of the great French capitalist at
Guise—the _Familistère_, or Social Palace. The count had been there on a
visit, and he was eloquent in the praise of the work, which he called
the most important and significant movement of the nineteenth century.
“It points unmistakably,” he said, “to the elevation and culture of the
people, and to a just distribution of the products of labor.” None
present, except the doctor and Miss Delano, had ever heard of the great
enterprise, and they listened eagerly, as if the count were telling an
entrancing tale of some other, and more harmonious world.
“It won’t work, though,” said Burnham. “The equal distribution of wealth
is a chimera.”
“But, my dear sir, it _does_ work,” said the count. “It has been in
splendid working operation several years, and pays six per cent. on the
invested capital. Do not lose sight of facts; and then, I did not say an
equal, but a _just_, distribution of the products of labor, or wealth,
for all wealth is that and nothing else. Depend upon it, we are living
in an age corresponding to that of puberty in an individual. There are
no very marked changes from childhood up to this period, except that of
increase in size; and then, everything being ripe for it, there is a
marvelous sudden transformation in six months or a year, and the child
assumes all the characteristics of the man or woman. Ask yourself why
the man who makes your plow, or tills your ground, should be inferior to
you who muddle your lives away in counting-rooms or offices? You can’t
answer it, except to say the chances ought to be in favor of the one who
has the most varied exercise of his muscles and mental faculties. I tell
you, with the increased facilities for education among the people and
for travel and intercommunication, they are beginning to feel their
power.”
“Building palaces and living in hovels begins to strike the workers as
something more than a joke,” said the doctor; “but up to this time they
have done it very composedly. They have woven the finest fabrics, and
clothed themselves and their children in rags, or mean and cheap
materials. Bettering their condition was next to impossible when they
had to work from sunrise to sunset to gain a bare living; but shortening
the hours of labor will work wonders. It will give men time to read and
improve their mental condition.”
“Yes, if it would only have that effect; but will it?” asked Kendrick.
“Of course it will not,” said Mrs. Kendrick. “There are the three
hundred workmen of Ely & Gerrish. They struck, you know, and got their
hours reduced to ten; and I hear that most of them spend their extra
time in bar-rooms and billiard-rooms.”
“Well, madam,” replied the count, “do you expect men who have been
drudges, to suddenly turn out philosophers, and give their spare time to
algebra and political economy? Why, many of them are no doubt so
degraded by their lives of unceasing toil, that the bar-room is a
culture to them, and getting drunk a luxury. But you must remember you
have not collected the facts upon which to formulate a judgment. I do
not believe the greater part of them, as you say, spend their time in
bar-rooms and billiard-rooms.”
“Oh, no doubt of it; no doubt of it,” said Burnham.
“My dear Kendrick, you must have doubts,” said the count.
“Not the slightest, upon my honor.”
“Well, then, let us decide it in the English way. We have had a bet, you
and I, before this. I’ll lay you three to one, on any sum you like, that
not one-third of these workmen spend more time in drinking-saloons or
billiard-saloons than they did before their reduction of hours.”
“Done!” said Kendrick, very sure of his money. “Let it be two hundred
dollars.”
“Oh, shocking!” said Mrs. Kendrick. “You are like two dissolute young
men. I do not approve of betting.”
“I don’t approve of it either, madam,” said the count, “but this is to
establish the honor of the ‘hodden grey;’ and to make the transaction
more respectable or excusable in your severe eyes, let us further
decide, Kendrick, that whoever wins shall donate the money to your new
hospital.”
“Oh, that will be nice!” said Mrs. Kendrick, brightening. She was one of
the board of managers, and had in vain tried to get her husband to
subscribe anything further than the pitiful sum of fifty dollars at
starting. The doctor also, highly approved of this disposition of the
money. He had long agitated the subject of a hospital, and Mrs. Kendrick
at last had come to be, he said, his “right-hand man.” He was one of the
committee to draw up the prospectus then under consideration. He wished
especially to have the hospital so organized that not only the poor
could avail themselves of it, but those in better circumstances—for the
private family, he said, was no place for a sick person. He could not
receive the necessary care without feeling himself a burden, which vexed
and irritated him, and so retarded recovery.
After arguing upon the method of collecting the facts about the
workingmen of Ely & Gerrish, and after calling out the count at some
length on the particulars of the working of the _Familistère_ at Guise,
the doctor left, and Kendrick and Burnham returned to the charge of the
insurance scheme. Burnham insisted that the growing enterprise of
Oakdale, and its steady increase of population, made everything
favorable for a “big thing” in the insurance line.
“I see,” said the count, “that you are not disposed to take my
suggestions about making your insurance a mutual thing among your
citizens. Now, the longer I live, the more I am interested in the
independence of the people. Your rates of insurance, in private
joint-stock companies, are too high for the poor man, who needs
insurance infinitely more than the rich do. Now, as for Oakdale
enterprises, I see none so worthy of consideration as this well-managed
flower business of Dykes & Delano. That is something worth taking stock
in.” Here Burnham turned away with ill-concealed impatience, not to say
disgust; but Kendrick, anxious to keep on the right side of his rich
guest and relative, said, smiling blandly:
“Well, count, one like you might invest in the Dykes-Delano paper, and
still have a balance for our little insurance enterprise.” The count did
not at all like the covert sneer in this speech. “Kendrick,” he said,
“your heart is as dry and crisp as one of your bank-notes. It is not
touched at all by the struggle of these women, while to me it is
inspiring. You never even told me of it, and I have had to learn the
facts outside. They commenced with absolutely nothing but a few plants
in a friend’s bay-window. One of them sold her watch and jewels, I hear,
to help build the second addition to the hot-house. I tell you, they
ought to be encouraged and helped in every way.”
“Pity they couldn’t have kept respectability on their side. That would
have been the best help,” said Mrs. Burnham. Old Burnham could have
choked her; not that he had more charity than his wife, but more policy.
“Respectability!” said the count, thoroughly aroused. “I wonder that
women do not hate the very word. No woman ever becomes worthy of herself
until she finds out what a sham it is—a very bugbear to frighten slaves.
No woman knows her strength until she has had to battle with the cry of
‘strong-minded,’ ‘out-of-her-sphere,’ ‘unfeminine,’ and all the other
weapons of weak and hypocritical antagonists. I tell you, a woman who
has fought that fight, and conquered an independent position by her own
industry, has attractions in the eyes of a true man, as much above the
show of little graces, polite accomplishments, meretricious toilet arts,
and the gabble of inanities, as heaven is above the earth. She is a
woman whom no man can hold by wealth or social position, but only by the
love his devotion and manliness can inspire.”
No dissenting word followed this burst, which was Greek to the solid
men. The count was a little daft anyway, on the subject of women,
according to them. Mrs. Kendrick, after a moment, offered some safe,
negative remark, and Burnham, anxious to neutralize the mischief his
wife had done, said he thought a woman might, at least some women might,
“work up” a business and yet remain feminine. Men were not so hard on
women, it was their own sex. This roused Mrs. Burnham, for she knew well
he talked very differently in the bosom of his family. She took up the
thread of conversation. “I am sure,” she said—and here occurred a little
jerky interruption to her speech, the cause of which no one knew but her
lord, who had kicked her foot under the table, which meant, in his
delicate, marital sign language, “Hold your tongue!” But like many of
the slaves, as the doctor called married women, she made up in
perversity what she lacked in independence; so glancing spitefully at
her “lord,” she continued, “I am sure I think women have a right to all
the money they can honestly gain, and if Miss Dykes had conducted
herself properly, I should have much sympathy with her success.”
“Was it her fault, Mrs. Burnham,” asked the count, “that the man who won
her affection did not marry her?——”
“My dear Louise,” said Mrs. Kendrick, begging the count’s pardon for
interrupting, “I think you had better retire. It is getting rather late
for you.”
“No; let her stay, my dear madam. I am not going to say anything that
the Virgin Mary herself might not hear. Let her stay. I see she listens
intently, and if to-night she gains a broader conception of the true
position of her sex, you will hereafter rejoice in the fact. She is a
pretty, a charming girl, just coming into the glare of the footlights on
life’s stage, with bandaged eyes. This is what you mothers all do; and
then if they stumble for want of eyes to see the trap-doors of the
stage, you blame them—not yourselves. Teach a girl to know herself—to
consider all her functions as worthy of admiration and respect; teach
her to be independent, proud of her womanhood, and she will turn as
instinctively from the seductive words of selfish men, as from the touch
of unholy hands. Now, this little woman, Miss Dykes, had no such
teaching, no knowledge of the world whatever, no standard by which to
measure the honor of men’s motives; and, for believing and trusting,
you, Mrs. Burnham, and other Christians, would stone her to death. But
Nature is kinder than you are, madam, for it pardons her weakness, and
compensates for her suffering by a most precious gift. Her child is one
of the very brightest and loveliest I have ever met.”
“It is certainly a very charming little thing,” said Mrs. Kendrick, “and
her mother’s conduct is now, I believe, every way exemplary. I am truly
sorry that her child is illegitimate.”
“Illegitimate!” repeated Von Frauenstein, as if speaking in his sleep.
“Why, all children must be legitimate. How _can_ a child be otherwise? I
must be a barbarian. I can see nothing in the same light that others do.
Well, by heaven! I’ll adopt that child, if her mother will consent. I’ll
take her abroad and educate her. I’ll give her my name, and present her
at a dozen royal courts. There’ll be no question then, whether she is
begotten by law or by the more primitive process of nature.” The company
were astounded.
“Good heavens, count!” exclaimed Mrs. Kendrick, breaking the silence
that followed this speech. “Would you really do such a thing?”
“Yes, my dear friend. I’ll do it—so help me God! and I’ll bring her back
to Oakdale, when her education is finished, a perfect queen of a woman.
You call her illegitimate, madam, and yet the time may come when you’ll
be proud to kiss her hand!”
Mrs. Kendrick rose from the table, and the others followed. Miss
Charlotte had retired some time before.
Kendrick, who could not imagine for a moment that the count was serious,
was disposed to take the matter as a good joke. “If your knightly
passion is the adoption of bastards, why have you never adopted any
before? I think this is the first. Isn’t it?”
“Yes; because I have never known a case where the mother, being poor and
uneducated, rose out of her disgrace so nobly. The doctor tells me she
is a great student—reads and studies regularly, while working like a
martyr to get the flower business on a safe footing. I mean to go and
see her to-morrow, and if she wants capital, I’m her man. It is just as
safe an investment as your insurance business, though it won’t pay so
high a rate of interest.” Kendrick could have strangled him. Burnham and
his wife retired with sufficient discomfiture for any amount of conjugal
infelicity. Burnham declared, as soon as the door closed behind the
happy pair, that but for her “gabble about those women, Frauenstein
would not have made such a fool of himself.” Mrs. Burnham assumed the
silent air of the martyred wife. So they went home to their grand house,
second only in cost to the Kendrick mansion, and laid their heads to
rest on two contiguous pillows, with as much justification for the
proximity as the law allows. Meanwhile a very similar conjugal harmony
expressed itself in the grander home of the Kendricks; but Mrs. Kendrick
did not play the rôle of the silent victim as Mrs. Burnham did. As her
husband was removing his cravat, she said, “Now here’s a fine mess
you’ve got into with the count.”
“_I!_ Well, that’s cool. What do you mean?” asked Mr. Kendrick, not for
information, as his wife knew; so she answered somewhat impatiently:
“You ought to know Frauenstein well enough to see that he would never
sympathize with any narrow social distinctions. He’s seen Clara Forest,
thinks her unjustly treated, and so he has gone over to the enemy.”
“Seen Clara? I should say he had seen the other, by the way he talked.
Shouldn’t wonder if he fell in love with that brat, and the mother too.”
“That’s as much as you know. Men never see anything. I’m perfectly sure
that he is smitten with Clara. That’s the way it will end. You’ll see,”
said Mrs. Kendrick, bitterly. She had long cherished the hope that
Louise might win the count; but she spoke very despairingly about it
now.
“Oh, I always told you that would never work. Men like that, know too
well what a woman is. Louise has arms and legs like spermaceti candles.”
“Well, I must say, for a father to speak like that, is shameful,”
answered Mrs. Kendrick.
“It’s all your own fault; you took her away from the high-school because
she got hurt a little in the gymnasium, and sent her to that namby-pamby
seminary of half idiots at Worcester. Didn’t I always want her to work
in the garden and in the hot-house, and develop her muscles? She’ll
always be sickly, just as she is now.”
“I’m sure she has had a great deal of exercise, and her health is as
good as mine was at her age, and she is not a bit thinner in flesh.” Mr.
Kendrick made no denial, and his wife continued: “Working in the garden
spreads out a girl’s hands, and makes them red; and what man, I should
like to know, ever likes hands and arms like a washer-woman’s? You were
always praising the smallness and whiteness of mine. I mean before we
were married, of course.” Still Kendrick was silent, but his thoughts
were very busy. Someway the world was out of joint, and he was wondering
if, after all, these radicals, with their talk about making women free
and teaching them to depend on themselves, were not pretty near the
truth. Here was Frauenstein, for example, rich enough to put a wife in a
palace, and surround her with attendants, and he was always admiring
women who worked. This he expressed to Mrs. Kendrick, and said that it
certainly was commendable in Clara, since she would be a fool and throw
away her rights as Delano’s wife, to take care of herself, instead of
coming home and living on her father.
“Of course,” said his wife; “and we ought never to have cut her. You
heard what the count said.”
“Who’s to blame for the cutting? Not I. Men don’t cut women, my dear.”
“Well, Elias, I think you can take the palm for sneaking out of a
responsibility. Men don’t cut women, indeed! I know they don’t; but they
insult them worse than we do. I know you bow as graciously to Clara as
if she were a duchess; but would you let Louise visit her? You know you
wouldn’t. That’s the way men take the part of women whom their wives and
daughters avoid.” Mr. Kendrick thought silence the best reply to this
just reflection of his wife. He thought he could trust her to bring
harmony out of the discord; for while he wanted to keep the count’s
money from straying away from the family, she, on her part, was equally
anxious to secure his name and rank for Louise; and he knew she would
hang on to that hope to the last.
The next morning, after breakfast, which had been a serene affair,
showing no trace of the perturbation of the previous evening, the count
drove over to the doctor’s. The doctor was out, but would return very
soon. Frauenstein waited, and spent the time mostly at the piano. The
twins were both delighted, though timid, especially in the presence of
such a lion. Linnie, after they had sung, asked him to say frankly what
he thought of their voices. “Do you allow your sister to speak for you,
Miss Leila?” he asked, turning his fine eyes upon hers.
“Yes—no,” blushing and laughing just like nothing in the world but a
young girl. “I mean yes, in this case,” she finally managed to say.
“Well, then, yours has most power, but it is wiry. Miss Linnie’s is more
flexible, more emotional. She feels more than you do, or, rather, more
than you _seem_ to, when she sings. If you were both equally to
cultivate your voices, and also continue your practice for the next five
years, Linnie would win more applause for her singing, and you for your
playing. That is my opinion; but I ought to add, as the French do,
_maintenant je n’en sais rien_.” Then the count made them both speak
French, he carefully constructing his sentences as much as possible
after _Fasquelle’s French Course_, which he knew was their text-book,
they having no idea of the reason why they were able to get along so
well with him. He understood their worst sentences like a Parisian. Any
foreigner who has been in Paris will understand that. He will recall
how, in his abominable murdering of the language, sentences which he
could not for his life have understood himself, written or spoken, were
instantly seized and graciously and gravely replied to, as if they had
been models of elegance. When the count finished singing a charming aria
in his best style, Linnie said, with enthusiasm,
“Oh, I wish my sister Clara could hear you sing!”
“She shall hear me sing,” he said, looking up to Linnie, who stood on
his left, with an expression in his face that she had never seen there.
It affected her senses like a caress.
Pretty soon the doctor entered; and after greeting the count, he said,
“What a fusillade of French! What a state of excitement these girls are
in! I believe you are bewitching them both, Frauenstein.”
“On the contrary, I am the victim of both, and I dare not stay another
moment. I have come to take you over the river. I want you to see my
fifty acres, on which I am going to build a social palace, if the gods
are propitious.”
It was a clear, balmy day in the first week of April that the count
sought this interview with the doctor. So far in his life, he had never
found a man who was so much “after his own heart.” He believed in him
fully from the first hour he conversed with him, since when they had
corresponded, expressing their views fearlessly; and thus far had found
them in perfect accord. To say they loved each other like brothers would
by no means express the sentiment existing between these two men, so
unlike in many respects, yet so closely in sympathy that thought
answered to thought like the voice of one’s own soul. During the drive,
for they went past the fifty acres away into the country, neither asking
for what reason, the count gave in detail his plans. “If I build this
palace,” he said, “I shall do it with this clear granite sand of the
river. I know the secret of making stones of it—bricks, we call
them—which, moulded in any shape, and tinted any hue, will last for
centuries. I can have a man here in three days to conduct the work. He
will guarantee that they shall be finished this summer. If I do it, it
shall be a magnificent structure, beside which the palace of Versailles
will seem the work of a ‘prentice hand.’ I can profit by the original
palace at Guise, and make it much handsomer, though that is truly
splendid. The apartments must be larger, and the whole should
accommodate about two thousand people. Now, I have already one industry
for its occupants. What is your idea for a second?”
“Making these very bricks,” said the doctor, “if only you have got at
the secret of their perfect durability, as you have, I know, or you
would not speak so positively. But this industry would not suit all. You
want one more.”
“Of course. One that will employ women. What shall it be? I have thought
of silk-weaving, for a certain reason of my own. It is proverbial, you
know, that those who make the silks, laces, and velvets—pure luxuries,
and the most costly—are the worst paid of any laborers in the world.
Look at Spitalfields, England, and Lyons, the great velvet manufacturing
centre of France. In India, those who make the fabulous-priced Cashmere
shawls are the most pitiably paid of all. I am willing, if necessary, to
lose a considerable fortune to prove that good wages can be paid to
silk-makers, and yet have a fair profit on the product. I should go into
that manufacture with some advantages. I have a first class steamer
already plying between San Francisco and China. I can get silk as cheap
as anybody.”
“Good!” said the doctor. “Let the third industry be silk-weaving.” The
count had not mentioned the first, but the doctor knew well he meant
floriculture.
“There’s only one thing lacking, doctor, and that is—the motive: the
motive for the first step. That depends——” And suddenly checking himself
and turning his horse in the road, he asked, abruptly, “Doctor, have you
ever been in love?”
“With a woman—no; with a man, yes.”
“I understand. You have met a man who responded to all the needs a man
could respond to, but never a woman to respond to what you need there.
That is my own case exactly, though I have loved, of course—few men
more, I think.”
“If men only knew,” said the doctor, “how they cramp their own growth by
making idols of women!”
“By idols, you mean slaves. Only free women are worthy of free men; and
the time is not come, though it is near, when they will be emancipated.
Then we shall see the dawn of the Golden Age. Men think they are free;
but they are bound by many shackles, only they have thrown off some
which they still compel women to wear.”
“And some they cannot throw off,” said the doctor, “until women are
recognized as their political equals. I have great patience with the
women; they are coming up slowly, through much tribulation.”