VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW
The Blanchards' equipage was a perfect expression of quiet
respectability, for the carriage was sober in colour, was drawn by a
strong and glossy horse, and was driven by a coachman wearing a modest
livery and a discontented countenance. As it drove away from the golf
club the carriage held the three members of the family, in front the
younger daughter, Beth, and on the rear seat the others: Judith erect
and cheerful, the Colonel cheerful also, but lounging in his corner with
the air of one who took the world without care. Blanchard was
fifty-eight, military as to voice and hair, for his tones were sonorous
and his white whiskers fierce. Yet these outward signs by no means
indicated his nature, and his manner, though bluff, appertained less to
military life than to the game of poker. Not that the Colonel played
cards; moreover, he drank merely in moderation, swore simply to maintain
his character, betrayed only by the tint of the left side of his
mustache that he liked a good cigar, and was extravagant in neither
dress nor table. He kept his carriage, of course, liked the best wines
at home and at the club, and in a small way was a collector of curios.
Yet the Blanchards, but for the brilliance of Judith, were quiet people;
he was proud to be a quiet man.
Dullness is often the penalty of indolence; the Colonel was lazy and he
had small wit. Perceiving that Judith came away from the tea stimulated
and even excited, he rallied her about her new acquaintance. "An
interesting man, hey?" he asked for the third time.
"Yes," answered Judith absently. "Father, what is there against Mr.
Ellis?"
"Only that he is a pusher. He jars." Blanchard aimed to be tolerant.
"Isn't there more?" asked little Beth.
The Colonel, as always, turned his eyes on her with pleasure. She was
dark and quiet and sweet, yet her brown eyes revealed a power of
examining questions for their moral aspects. "Nothing much," he said
indulgently. "You don't know business, Beth. He's beaten his opponents
always, and the beaten always squeal, but I doubt if he's as black as
he's painted."
"I'm glad to hear you stand up for him, father," said Judith.
"He'll be looking for a wife among us," went on the Colonel with vast
shrewdness and considerable delicacy. "How would he suit you, Judith?"
"Oh, father!" Beth protested. But Judith, with fire in her eyes,
answered: "He's at least a man. You can't say that of every one."
Her answer made him turn toward her with a soberer thought and a new
interest. His manner changed from the natural to the pompous as he set
forth his views. "Money is almost the best thing one can have."
"Father, dear!" protested Beth again.
"I mean," he explained, again softening his manner, "from a father's
standpoint. If I could see you two girls married with plenty of money, I
could die happy." But evidently the Colonel was in the best of health,
so that his words lacked impressiveness. It was one of the misfortunes
of their family life that Judith was able to perceive the incongruity
between her father's Delphic utterances and his actual feelings, and
that the Colonel knew she found him out.
"I wasn't thinking of Mr. Ellis's money," she said at this point.
"I was," retorted the Colonel. As he was struggling with a real thought,
his tones became a little less sonorous and more genuine. "In sickness
riches give everything. In health there are enough troubles without
money cares. I mean it, Judith."
She took his hand and caressed it. "Forgive me, father!"
"My dear--my dear!" he responded cordially.
So this, the type of their little jars, the sole disturbers of family
peace, passed as usual, rapidly and completely, and Ellis was spoken of
no more. Beth, with customary adroitness, came in to shift the subject,
and when the three descended at their door none of them shared the
coachman's air of gloom.
He, however, detained the Colonel while the girls went up the steps.
"Beg pardon, sir, but could you give me a little of my wages?"
"James," returned his master with his most military air, "why will you
choose such inconvenient times? Here is all I have with me." He gave
some money. "Twenty dollars."
"Yessir," replied the man, not overmuch relieved. "And the rest of it,
sir? There's a hundred more owing."
"Not to-day," returned the Colonel with vexation. But he was an
optimist. Though at the bottom of the steps he muttered to himself
something about "discharge," by the time he reached the top he was
absorbed in cheerful contemplation of the vast resources which, should
Judith ever chance to marry Ellis, would be at her disposal.
Five minds were, that evening, dominated by the occurrences of the
afternoon. One was the Colonel's, still entertaining a dream which
should properly be repugnant to one of his station. This he recognised,
but he reminded himself that as a parent his daughter's good should be
his care. Another mind was Mather's, disturbed by the jealousy and dread
which the manliest of lovers cannot master. And one was Mrs. Harmon's;
she, like Ellis, had learned much that afternoon, and meant in future to
apply her knowledge.
As that evening she went to the Fennos' ball Mrs. Harmon recalled the
snubs of the afternoon, and saw how insecure her footing was among these
people. Sometimes she had wondered if it were worth while, this struggle
to be "in"; the life was dull, lacking all natural excitements; there
was no friendship possible with any of the blue-bloods. Yet she hated to
knuckle to them; if she could engineer this match between Judith and
Ellis, then----! And Mrs. Harmon, with the hope of coming triumph, felt
fully equal to meeting Mrs. Fenno on her own ground. Mrs. Harmon wore
Ellis's jewels on her breast, she had his brain to back her, she
believed she knew Judith's weaknesses, and she saw before her a bright
future.
Judith Blanchard made at that ball a searching review of her world,
dominated as she still was by the thoughts which Ellis aroused. For he,
the strongest personality in the city, had done more than to excite her
curiosity: with his deference to her opinion and his appeal for her help
he had succeeded--as Mather never--in wakening her sympathy. Questioning
why fashion should reject him, stirred to a new comparison of reality
with sham, she looked keenly about her at the ball. She was in one of
the inner sanctuaries, where society bowed down and worshiped itself.
Judith sniffed the incense, listened to the chants, and weighed the
words of officiating priests and priestesses. She found everything to
delight the eye, except the idols; everything to charm the senses,
except sense.
In the ball-room there was dancing, pagan rites to what purpose? This
usually unrhythmic swaying, skipping, sliding, seemed a profitless way
to pass the hours when workers were in bed. Girls more or less innocent
danced with men more or less _roué_; this procedure, indefinitely
continued, gave occasion for jealousies among the girls and selfish
scheming among the men. In other rooms the older people played cards,
intent at bridge or whist upon their stakes. Near the buffet thronged
bachelors old or young, with not a few married men, busied in acquiring
an agreeable exhilaration. Their occupation was no worse than the
passionate gambling of the old women. And the house in which all this
went on was beautifully classic in design and furnishings. Beside that
quiet elegance, how vacant was the chatter! As Judith thought thus,
slowly the spirit of revolt came to her.
The master of the house approached her; he was leonine, massive,
somewhat lame from rheumatism. She saw him, as he came, speaking among
his guests; his smile was cynical. It lighted upon her father, and the
Colonel, his character somehow exposed by that smile, seemed shallow. It
turned to the men at the sideboard, and their interests seemed less than
the froth in their glasses. The smile turned on Judith, and she felt
called to give an account of herself.
But he merely asked her: "Where is Beth?"
"Gone with Miss Pease to a meeting of the Charity Board," Judith
answered.
Mr. Fenno grunted, looking at her sidewise. "Better employed than we!"
Then he rambled away, neither knowing nor caring what encouragement he
had given to her mood. He missed Beth, for his rheumatism was sharp, the
company inane, and Beth was almost the only person who could make him
contented with himself. But Judith felt the reflection of his cynicism
and was stirred still deeper. What was there to interest her here?
Among all the women Mrs. Harmon alone was in disaccord. No dressmaker
could conceal her natural style; the eye and carriage of the Judge's
wife were bolder than those of the women about her. A free humour
attracted some of the men; the women avoided her, the more delicate from
instinct, the stronger with a frank dislike. This antipathy Judith had
often felt and expressed, yet to-night she reviewed and rejected it.
Mrs. Harmon belonged to the class of the rising Americans; in that class
Judith felt interest, questioning if its vigour and freshness should not
outweigh external faults. She went to Mrs. Harmon and began to talk with
her.
She tried to find, within the exterior, the solid qualities of the
middle class. But thought and purpose seemed lacking; in Mrs. Harmon the
vulgarity lay deeper than the surface. She was frivolous; she liked the
sparkle and the show, the wine, the dancing, and the gaiety. Promising
herself an intimacy with Judith, she talked willingly, but it was only
upon the subject of Ellis that she became interesting.
She told Judith much about him. He had always been persevering and
ambitious; he had left his town as a boy because even then he found it
too little. Ellis had begun small; now he was big. Some day, said Mrs
Harmon significantly, people would recognise him.
Why not, thought Judith as she looked about her, admit Ellis here? What
was an aristocracy for but to reward success? How could it remain sound
but by the infusion of new blood? Ellis had proved his quality by the
things he had done; he had beaten Mather; yet these halls which to
Mather were open were closed to Ellis. It was unfair to refuse to
recognise him! What were the abilities of these men here, compared with
his?
Thus Judith, tolerant in her broad Americanism, admiring the forces
which to-day are accomplishing such marvellous results, thought of her
world. At the same time Ellis also was thinking of it. His was the fifth
mind moved by that afternoon's occurrence, but moved the most deeply of
them all. On leaving Judith first, like a man smitten by a slender blade
he had spoken, acted, thought as before. Then the inward bleeding began,
and the pain. He had gone away from her thinking of her as something to
be won, but no more distant, no less a commodity, than a public
franchise or a seat in the legislature. Thus he had discussed her with
Mrs. Harmon, but before night his thought of the girl had changed. Her
refinement was new to him; he recalled her in imagination and dwelt on
her features and her voice. Yet, equally with her delicacy, her spirit
charmed him with its frankness and its admiration of great things. There
was a subtle flattery in her interest in him; he had never thought of
himself as she did; he saw himself magnified in her eyes, which seemed
to refine the baseness from his employments and purposes. She gave him a
new idea of himself, and held before him vague new aims.
He had entertained some of his henchmen that evening at his table, had
tasted while they ate, sipped while they drank, listened while they
spoke of politics. He sat at the head of the table, like the Sphinx
after which he was familiarly called, indifferent to their uncouthness
and their little thoughts; then at the end he suddenly called them into
executive session, asked a few keen questions, gave some brief
directions, and dismissed them. Thus he had always ruled them, from
outside, commanding respect by his decision, almost awe by his silence.
Though his purposes were not clear, the men went to obey him, having
learned to support him blindly, for he never failed. Such was Ellis
among his subordinates, the "old man" of whom they never asked
questions, with whom they never attempted familiarity. They praised him
as they went, proud of their connection with him. But he put out the
lights as soon as the men were gone, and sat at the window, looking at
Fenno's house.
There was the temporary focus of social life; he saw the lights; had he
opened his window he might have heard the music. Carriages drove up,
people entered the house, and on the curtains of the ball-room he saw
moving shadows. In that house were what he wanted--recognition, a new
life, Judith. But she was guarded by the powers of a whole order, was
infinitely remote.
His talk with Judith had doubled his determination to enter the upper
world, and yet changed his regard for it. It became Judith's world,
seeming to-night like a house which she inhabited, more precious by her
presence. And because she was so much finer than he had imagined the
women of her class, her sphere looked farther away, and his
determination to enter it was tempered by the fear of failure.
As he took the first step in his new venture, he had been half ashamed
of his desire to "better himself," quite unable to justify himself by
appeal to the natural American wish to obtain the highest indorsement of
his community. So long as there had been anything left for him to win,
he had turned instinctively toward it. Now he suddenly realised that he
faced his greatest fight. He had often said that he liked fighting; he
had struggled for many years with all the power of nerve and mind.
To-night his brain seemed weary, bruised and scarred as a body might be.
Watching the house where Judith was, contemplating her image, a softness
came over Ellis, new to him; resolution became a wish, and then turned
to yearning. It was with difficulty that he roused himself, surprise
mingling with his contempt of the unrecognised sensation. He was in for
it now, he told himself almost roughly; the game was worth the candle,
and he would see it through.