A DAY’S PLEASURE.
Arthur awoke the next morning with a confused consciousness of
splendors and regret; a mood which seemed superinduced by some
forgotten dream. His first perceptions, however, were of the glory of
the morning and the budding, bursting season. The shade had been drawn
up by a servant; and from his bed he saw through the open window mile
after mile of the country-side, and beyond it the broad, gay river,
wearing, like a new gown, the blue of early summer. What nests of men
might be in sight were lost in the white glow of blossoms; but the
birds made their presence vocal, singing in the close boughs unseen.
No man with a trace of sap left in him could lie inert at such a time;
and Arthur rang the bell and asked the servant when they might have
breakfast.
“There is no bell, sir,” said he; “the ladies mostly breakfasts by
eleven, and the gentlemen when they like. Have you found your things,
sir?”
As everything of Arthur’s had been laid out and brushed in most
attractive order, he had; and he dressed and sought the breakfast-room.
Here was no one but Mrs. Malgam, who, attired in a diaphanous material
of many folds and pale tea-rose ribbons, was standing at the window
like a thing bereft. But as Arthur came in, her face mantled with
smiles that could have hardly “been much sweeter for the blush
between.” “Oh, Mr. Holyoke, I am so glad you’ve come,” said she. “It
_is_ so poky, breakfasting alone.”
Mrs. Malgam sat down to make the tea; and Arthur sat down beside her.
“What pretty hands she has,” thought Arthur; “I never noticed them
before.” And just as he thought this, her blue eyes fixed his, looking
suddenly up from the tea. “One lump or two?” said she. “One,” said
Arthur, gravely.
A word should be given to Baby Malgam, as many thought her likely to
be Flossie Gower’s rival; that is at some day, for as yet our heroine
still distanced her. It is true, Flossie was a nobody, by birth; so was
Mrs. Malgam; but her first husband had been Mr. Ten Eyck. Flossie was
rich, but so at this time was Mrs. Malgam; Flossie was no longer young,
while Baby’s ivory skin still was smooth with youth and pleasure and
lack of care. Baby had been poor; and now she had three houses and four
horses and forty ball-dresses and a young and fashionable and careless
husband and an opera-box, and the grace and _cachet_ of her own to
properly adorn all these things--a grace which had been almost a trial
to her when, already conscious of it, she had feared it was to be never
used, but born like a blossom of the fields, to die there, and not in
a china vase. But now she had her china vase, and was happy, and fast
forgetting the fields, and him who had wandered with her in them; and
regretted, not that he was dead, but that she was growing stout. And
it was very cosey and charming for Arthur to be sitting with her so
prettily at breakfast.
“Is nobody else up?” said he. But he did not say it in regret; and
Caryl Wemyss would not have said it at all, as Arthur thought with a
pang just afterward. Mrs. Malgam smiled a little, but she said:
“Mr. Derwent has been up and disappeared long since. Mr. Haviland has
gone to the city. Flossie never appears until luncheon. About the rest,
I don’t know.”
“What are we to do to-day?” said he, by way of conversation.
“Anything we like--that is Mrs. Gower’s rule. I fancy she and Mr.
Wemyss will take a drive;” and she laughed a little again. “Mr. Van
Kull and Mrs. Hay thought of riding. That is, Mr. Van Kull spoke of it
to Mrs. Hay; and Mrs. Hay proposed it to Lord Birmingham. But I fancy
his lordship will ride with Kitty Farnum.” And again did pretty Mrs.
Malgam laugh a little.
“Are there horses for all of us?” said Arthur.
“Oh, yes. Mrs. Gower has a way of providing for us, you see.”
“In that case,” said Arthur, “will not you drive with me?”
Mrs. Malgam would and did; and a lovely drive they had of it in the
fresh May morning, over the range of hills back in the high country
behind the Hudson. Mrs. Malgam’s conversation was most charming, and
instructive, too, to a young man; it is unfortunate that so much of
its merit consisted in the manner and personality of its owner as to
be quite incapable of transcription. They talked of the day; of the
place; of Mrs. Gower, of Mrs. Gower’s friends; of love; a good deal
of himself; a little of herself; of the time for luncheon; and of the
immediate future. This last topic was called up by Mrs. Malgam’s asking
whether Arthur was invited to the coaching party; and it turned out
that Mrs. Gower had in immediate contemplation a drive in a coach and
four from Catfish-on-the-Hudson up to Lenox. Lucie Gower was coming
up from town to drive them; and Mrs. Malgam, though she had not yet
received her invitation, was in hopeful expectation of one. It must
be confessed that the prospect was enviable; and Arthur most ardently
joined in the wish, so kindly expressed by the pretty woman who was his
companion, that he might be one of the party.
Civilization has cruelly made up for making our luncheon regular and
certain by depriving us often of any desire for it; but one of the
brightest attractions of the upper circle of humanity, in which our
hero now moved, is perhaps its return to this primitive condition. It
is a pity that fresh air and idleness, cleanliness and exercise, do not
necessarily bring with them health for the soul; but they bring health
for this world, which is already something. Arthur and the pretty woman
returned at two, impelled chiefly by a desire for food; and found
others of the company, similarly inspired, already sitting at the
table. Wemyss alone, whose dyspepsia seemed to be the last relic of his
inherited puritan conscience, was not hungry.
“I do not know what we can do for you, lovely Jills, this afternoon,”
said Flossie. “Three of our Jacks have disappeared. Mr. Haviland and
Charlie Townley are in town, and Mr. Derwent has gone to the Mills
village. Pussie, where’s your young man? Your acknowledged one, I
mean--Jimmy De Witt?”
Miss Duval blushed and smiled. “Mr. De Witt is in town, I suppose. His
address is the Columbian Club.”
“Yes, dear,” said Flossie, laughing. “Well, I’ve written to him. Then
there’s Sidney Sewall coming to dinner,” Flossie went on, as if she
were counting her chickens. Sewall was the famous editor of one of the
great papers of the day.
“He’s awfully clever, and improving and all that,” continued the
critical Mrs. Malgam; “but he’s no good in the country. What’s become
of Mr. Derwent, did you say?”
“He’s passing the day at the Mills down in the town, studying the
condition of the laboring classes, I suppose. He’s always doing that
kind of thing.”
“Much more likely he’s found a pretty face there,” said Van Kull.
“Those cranks are all humbugs.”
Miss Farnum looked at Van Kull while he spoke, and then looked about
as if for someone to answer. Her eye fell upon Marion Lenoir. And Miss
Lenoir was magnetized to speak.
“Oh, how can you say so, Mr. Van Kull?” she cried. “When he talks so
earnestly, and fixes his eyes upon you so, they bore you through and
through. I could fall in love with a man like that, I am sure.”
Miss Farnum rose and walked to the window. “Yes, and he bores me
through and through,” Van Kull had retorted; but there was a general
noise of rising and sliding back chairs, and no one noticed his little
joke. Jokes were rare with this big fellow; a fact to which he owed
much of his popularity.
Arthur stood at first with Miss Farnum for a minute; but she seemed
unresponsive, and he was soon swept out in the wake of Mrs. Wilton Hay.
The broad terrace was bathed in the pleasant May sunlight; but over
the end opposite the house was an awning slanted down to the stone
balustrade. The great river lay still; far to the south, where the
light blue vanished in the gleaming, was a solitary sail.
The air was full of the singing of birds and the fragrance of spring
blossoms; it was like a scene from Boccaccio, thought Arthur, the stone
terrace and the flowers, and the distant view. Caryl Wemyss seemed to
have like thoughts. “If life were only this, how simple it would be!”
said he. But even this speech was too analytical for the company in its
present mood.
“It only rests with us to make it so,” he added, as if expecting an
answer.
“I don’t see what you mean,” said Mrs. Hay. And she did not. Wemyss
smiled bitterly, or smiled as if he meant it so. Flossie laughed. Lord
Birmingham came up and leaned over Mrs. Hay’s chair; then Van Kull came
up on the other side, and Arthur had to go over to Miss Farnum, who was
standing alone, looking over the parapet into the deep gorge in the
forest, that led down toward the river. Mrs. Malgam and the other two
girls were laughing together, standing at the other end of the terrace.
Miss Farnum seemed to Arthur more _blasée_ than any girl he knew.
“Why does your friend Mr. Haviland come here so much?” asked she,
suddenly. Now, Arthur could certainly give no answer to this. And he
remembered his first discovery of John’s secret, as he had thought.
“It is a delightful house to visit,” said he. “Did you have a pleasant
ride this morning?” And he remembered the scene in the opera-box.
“I hate Englishmen and foreigners,” said she, inconsequently; and just
then Birmingham came up. “Lovely day, Miss Farnum,” said he. “Ah,
would you not like a bit of a walk? The park, down there, looks most
inviting.”
“I don’t know,” said she, listlessly. “What are the others going to do?”
“They’re playing tennis, I dare say, or something like,” said he. “I
got off, you know.”
Miss Farnum turned toward the house; and just then the others joined
them. “You play, Mr. Holyoke, I know,” said Marion Lenoir, “and Mr.
Van Kull is such a dab at it.” Van Kull looked anything but a dab at
it, but rather an oddly sophisticated lamb being led to the slaughter;
but then Miss Lenoir was, as she expressed it, “a tennis girl.” And
certainly she looked it, when Arthur met her on the lawn, her lithe
young figure robed in a blue and white tennis dress, her black hair
shining in a tight coil.
“Fie, what would Jimmy say?” said Mrs. Gower to Miss Duval as they
passed her. “Jimmy may say what he pleases,” said that young woman,
with a shrug of her shoulders.
They had played several sets, and Miss Lenoir so well that she and
Arthur had won most of them, when there was a ripple of excitement
among the two married women, who had been sitting on a shady bench
watching the game. Mrs. Gower had disappeared; Mr. Wemyss had sauntered
up from time to time, to say a word and disappear again. “I do believe
it’s the men come back!” cried Mrs. Hay, as a carriage stopped at the
door of the house.
The game came to an end; and Arthur walked back with his partner to the
terrace. Charlie Townley was there, and a middle-aged man who was Mr.
Sewall, as Miss Lenoir told him; and a stout man with a red face, who
bore a little clumsily his introduction to Mrs. Hay, and then turned
with a “Well, old fellow--what do you know?” to Kill Van Kull. It
was our old friend S. Howland Starbuck. He had changed more than Van
Kull, and seemed ten years older, with a bloated look in his face. Van
Kull, as he stood there in his light scarlet tennis-jacket and white
flannels, was still a model of manly strength, with features pale and
clear-cut, and a look of race about him. Probably he had led a far
worse life than simple Buck Starbuck, as they still called him; but Van
Kull’s beauty deathless, like a fallen angel’s. “So good of you all to
take pity on us lone women,” said Flossie Gower, as she approached with
Mr. Wemyss. “Mr. Sewall, thanks for leaving the administration so long
unwatched. How are you, Si? Tell us what to do, Mr. Townley. Shall we
take a sail?”
“A sail would be delightful, I think,” said Sewall, affably. “Mrs. Hay,
I hope you got safely home the other night? Lord Birmingham, I am very
glad to meet you; I had the pleasure of knowing your father, the late
Earl.”
“Come, young women!” cried Flossie, “run and get your things on. I’ve
ordered the lunch to be ready at five.”
Arthur was much impressed at the prospect of going on a pleasure-jaunt
with so great a man as Sidney Sewall. He was one of those who really
seem to shape the fortunes of the country; his newspaper was a
political power throughout the land, and he made and unmade candidates
at will. People of wealth and fashion were getting familiar to our
hero; but the companionship of men of power was a social summit he had
never yet climbed. Flossie Gower liked to get such men about her, as a
child plays with chessmen.
There was a break to take them to the river; but most of the company
preferred to walk. Mrs. Gower led the way with Mr. Sewall, and Arthur
was close behind with Marion Lenoir. He was struck with the elaborate
air of pleasure-seeking that Mr. Sewall assumed; he made himself a
perfect squire of dames, for the nonce, and his talk was of other
people and their misdoings. As they turned from the lower footpath-gate
of Mrs. Gower’s place into the main road, they met Derwent, striding
homeward in his knickerbockers; and Flossie introduced him to Mr.
Sewall. Then they all went on and soon came to the river, where the
Gowers’ pretty little steam-yacht lay at a private wharf. Derwent was
full of his day at the Mills; and began talking of it to the great
editor. “They are nearly all French Canadians,” said he, “not Americans
at all; and their wages are quite as low, except the few skilled
workmen and foremen, as at Manchester.”
“They were even lower last year,” said Sewall, “at the time of the
worst depression. The mill has really no reason for being, except the
tariff; and, of course, in the bad years the laborers are ten times
worse off than if there were no tariff at all. But it attracts Canadian
cheap labor; and our ignorant workmen think they are being protected
all the same.”
“Surely, you would not abolish the tariff and wipe out the mill
entirely?” said Wemyss, who had taken a seat close by. Sewall shrugged
his shoulders. He was the editor of a great protectionist newspaper.
“There is no use riding against a herd of cattle,” said he. “If you
want to lead them, you must ride their way.” Arthur opened his eyes
at this, for Sewall’s paper declared itself the great representative
of the laboring classes; but he soon found that “cattle” was a milder
term than the popular editor usually applied to his constituency. “The
secret of statesmanship,” he went on, “in representative government,
is to do nothing yourself until driven to it by the rabble, and in the
meantime make capital out of the other fellow’s mistakes.”
“Ay,” said Derwent; “but it is not the people, but the selfish middle
class that rules as yet. Anarchy, even tyranny, may be the mother of
men, of high thought and noble deeds; but the lights of the Manchester
school are matter and greed, dry bones and death.”
Sewall looked at him quizzically. “Oh, dear,” said he, good-naturedly,
“here’s another terrible fellow who believes something!”
“But,” hazarded Arthur, with a blush, “will not representatives do
something, and think something, when we make our politics something
more than a game for party stakes?”
“Young man,” said Sewall, impressively, “this country cannot be
governed without parties and organizations. And if the organizers are
not paid for their trouble, they won’t organize. I’ve never known a
man with a principle that was worth his salt in politics yet; how can
you expect parties to have them? This great country of ours is on the
make, just now; and it doesn’t trouble itself about much else.” And
Mr. Sewall suddenly dropped his professional tone and, turning to Mrs.
Gower, resumed his air of an _homme du monde_. “Lovely country, after
all, is it not, Mrs. Gower? Look at that purple twilight stealing in
under the western mountains; I’ve just got a Daubigny with exactly that
feeling in it. Only Frenchmen can paint in the half lights, the minor
tones, after all.”
Mrs. Gower still patronized art, though she successively had given over
most of her special protections for the patronage of human life in
general; but Sewall was an amateur, and was famed for his galleries,
his cellars, and his orchids. Derwent looked at him from the corners
of his eyes, but kept silent; meantime Kill Van Kull, Si Starbuck, and
Marion Lenoir, sitting forward, had brought out their banjos and struck
up a Southern melody, very soft and sweet. “What a pity we have no
folk-songs,” said Wemyss. “Great art is, after all, impossible without
the nursery songs and tales of many generations, without the legends
and delusions of the people.”
“I am glad to find you need the people for something,” said Derwent,
dryly.
“But they have self-educated it away,” said Wemyss. “They have driven
beauty out of the world with the three Rs; and now they are about to
cut one another’s throats for its mere goods and raw material.”
“True,” said Derwent. “But is it they that have done it? or we that
have taught them?”
“Speaking of the people,” laughed Flossie, “there they are.” And she
pointed to an excursion-boat coming up the river; it was filled with
a holiday party--clerks, upper mechanics, small tradesmen, and their
womankind. The latter were resplendently dressed in new bonnets and
bright shawls; the husbands looked dingy and jaded. Wemyss took out his
opera-glass and scanned the decks for a minute or more, then laid it
down wearily as if exhausted. “I have no doubt they are most of them
virtuous,” said he. “But they all wear glass diamonds in their ears.”
“Nay,” said Sewall, without cynicism, but as if merely stating an
obvious fact. “There are the people.” And he pointed to a huge
three-decked barge, coming slowly down stream before two tugs. It was
covered with long streamers; the largest bearing, in flaring white
letters, “The P. J. McGarragle Association;” and on smaller ones, “6th
Ward.” All the decks were black with people; and all the people were
waltzing to the loud rhythm of several brass bands. A few dozen of the
younger men on the lower deck yelled at the little launch as it went
by; they were tipsily singing an obscene song. “Mr. McGarragle has just
been elected to Congress; and he is giving a free picnic to all his
supporters in his district.”
“You were one of his supporters, Mr. Sewall, I believe?” said Derwent,
calmly. “But you are both wrong. These are the American people, if I
understand them right.” And he pointed to the night boat. The upper
decks were crowded with men, intent on their newspapers, regardless of
all else--business-men returning to Chicago or the great lakes. And in
the bow and main deck were groups of emigrants bound for the prairies;
ploughs, sewing-machines, and bales of Eastern goods. This great
steamer swept by them with a certain majesty; and Mrs. Gower’s little
yacht lay for some seconds, rolling and tossing in its wake.
* * * * *
It was after seven o’clock when they got back from the sail; and all
the ladies hurried into the break, lest they should lose that calm
leisure before dinner which a perfect toilet demands. Mr. Sewall and
Lord Birmingham and Caryl Wemyss were further specially honored with
seats therein; the others walked, Townley with Van Kull and Starbuck,
Arthur with Lionel Derwent. “What a different man is Sewall from what
one would suppose,” said Arthur.
“Sidney Sewall is the most guilty criminal in America,” said
Derwent, vehemently. Arthur started a little at so superlative a
characterization; which Derwent went on to explain. “There is a man
with all the birthright of light; with the inherited instinct of
truth, the training of character, the charm of breeding; with power
of intellect and cultivation of the finest that your country gives;
and if there is a malignant lie to be disseminated, a class-hatred
to be stirred up, a cruel delusion to be spread, a poisonous virus
of any subtler sort ready to be instilled into the body public and
politic--there stands Sidney Sewall, of all men, ready and willing to
do the devil’s work. And he does it with the genius of a Lucifer; and
all to get his personal luxury, and his orchids and his wines, and a
little power, and revenge for personal spites. Mephistopheles himself
was not so quick at seeing the evil side of any human error, the wrong
that may be wrought from any chance event. And yet it does not even
pay; or pay any more than if he chose the good and served it with half
that intellect of his that now seeks to sap his country’s soul!”
Poor Arthur had not thought to reap such a whirlwind with his little
conversational seed, and stood aghast.
“And he doesn’t really care for money either; he knows its
worthlessness, deep down, as well as I do. And he hasn’t even, or he
says he hasn’t, the devil’s motive of ambition to make a reason for
his wrong. And he’s married a rich woman, like any common adventurer.
I tell you I have spent years in this country of yours; and the
people have a heart, and a soul, and in their clumsy way they blunder
ahead upon the right. But Sewall! He has no heart, nor soul, but only
stomach and cerebral matter, like a jelly-fish. In his intellectual
Frankenstein way, when fresh from his Ohio farm, he was once a
communist; just as he might be to-morrow a dynamiter. But if to-morrow
there comes to the polls a well-meaning, honest man, and against him
a very figurehead of that greed and cynical materialism which bids
fair to blast your country in its bud, this man will hasten to bid the
people to choose Barabbas, that Cain and Abel’s strife may be on earth
once more.”
By this time they were walking up the avenue to the house, and on the
terrace they met their hostess, already dressed and waiting for them.
“Ah, you philosophers!” said she. “You must make haste. By the way, you
know I count upon you, Mr. Holyoke, for our coaching party! Mr. Derwent
has already promised.” Arthur was, of course, delighted.
“I am so glad----” he began.
“There, there,” said she, “you must run and dress or you will be late
to dinner. And Mr. Sewall is very particular about his dinners, I know.”
After Derwent’s outburst, Arthur went in to his dinner with some
trepidation; but Derwent had too often dined and lodged with Arab
chieftains, or other persons who had designs upon his life the next
morning, to show his personal feelings in his demeanor. Arthur took in
Miss Duval; and she asked him if he had been invited on the coaching
party. She was going, and Mrs. Hay, and Kitty Farnum. Mrs. Malgam had
not been asked, after all. “She is perfectly furious,” said Pussie;
“and wanted to go home to-night.” And Arthur himself felt a slight pang
at the absence of his fair companion, such a mitigated pang as one must
feel at the exclusion of others from a paradise open to one’s self.
“What men are going?” he asked.
“Oh, Lord Birmingham, and Mr. Wemyss, and Mr. Van Kull--and--and Mr.
----”
“Derwent,” said Arthur. “I know.”
“Mr. Derwent? dear me,” said Miss Duval. “I wonder what he’s going for!”
“But where’s Mr. Gower?” asked Arthur.
“I don’t know,” said she. “He can’t come, I believe. Kill Van Kull is
going to drive.”
“You can’t fancy what terrible things Mr. Derwent has been telling us,
Mr. Sewall. We quite needed you last night. He has been saying we are
none of us Christians.” It was Mrs. Malgam who spoke.
“We are not,” said Sewall. “Christianity is a very fine thing; but,
like many another, quite too fine for this world. If people could
practise it, there would be no need of it; it would be heaven here and
now, and a divine revelation quite superfluous.”
“And are you really going to drive, Mr. Van Kull?” said Mrs. Hay. “You
are such a dangerous man, I shall not trust myself with you--on the
box-seat.” And she cast down her eyes, while Van Kull gave her one of
the dark glances that made his pale face so famous.
“Would you confess as much in your paper, Mr. Sewall?” said Derwent, in
answer to his speech.
“Certainly not,” said the great editor. “You know the natural failing
of the middle classes is hypocrisy; and we still have a large
constituency with them. They like to think they are Christians, while
they make their money; just as they like to have full reports of
divorce cases, and call it news.”
“Hypocrisy, in the end, is of all vices the one least suffered by gods
and men,” said Derwent.
“Quite so; and sooner or later the people will arise and wipe out the
middle class in this country, and leave nothing between them and us,”
said Sewall, placidly. “That is why I am anxious to have my paper
appeal more and more to the masses.”
“But when that day comes, we--that is, the people--will destroy you,
too,” said Derwent.
Sewall looked again at Derwent, with his expression of polite
curiosity, as at a misplaced mummy. “Our grandchildren, you mean,” said
he. “I haven’t any.”
“All thinking men are agreed as to the coming _déchéance_,” put in
Wemyss. “They only differ as to the feelings with which they regard it.”
“Well,” said Sewall, in a tone of finality, “we can get a good time out
of this world as it is; those to come may amuse themselves as they
like. What do you think, Mrs. Gower?”
“I think you are all pessimists,” said she. “Surely we live in a most
enlightened age; consider the progress that has been made in a few
years! Why, in my grandfather’s old house they hadn’t even carpets. Now
the very poorest can have everything.”
“Everybody has a chance to make money now,” said Baby Malgam. “Just
think how many self-made men you meet in society!”
“You wouldn’t have us go back to those days, surely,” said Flossie.
“Just think how narrow people were! And everybody thought almost
everybody else was going to be damned. But we are growing more liberal
every day.”
“Ay,” grunted Derwent. “We are above the revelation of Christ; but our
clever women talk glibly of theosophy, and go into fashionable crazes
over imported Buddhist priests; and nobody is afraid of being damned.”
“What _is_ theosophy, Mr. Derwent?” said Marion Lenoir. “Something to
do with spirit-rapping, isn’t it?--or palmistry?”
“I am sure,” said Mrs. Malgam, “I was always brought up to go to
church; but when I was first married, Mr. Ten Eyck didn’t care for it.”
“The only advantage should be, that the general smash gives us at least
a chance at personal liberty. But most of these fads start in my place;
and in Boston the masses are more philistine than almost anywhere,”
said Caryl Wemyss.
“There is some strength in Philistinism,” said Sewall, curtly. “What
I can’t stand is the critical crowd, the cousins of the nephews of
the friends of Emerson, who now talk sagely of the fine art of their
boarding-house literature, of the tea-table realism school--what Poe
called, the Frog-pond weakly school. They are too delicate to take life
straight, at most they can only stomach a criticism of a critique of
humanity, as we give babies peptonized preparations of refined oatmeal.
Their last fad is pure government. Pure government!” repeated Sewall,
with a snort of disgust.
“It is the literature of the decadence, of course,” said Wemyss; “an
emasculated type, product of short-haired women and long-haired men,
gynanders and androgynes. I have often myself thought of writing
another novel--if only for the sake of putting a great, horrid man into
it. But gentlemen should all the more have courage to reassert their
essence. It is an age, after all, when one may lead a full life. There
is a fine passage somewhere in Zola, where the lips of two lovers are
unsealed at the approach of death. So we, on the eve of the destruction
of society, are free to live our lives elementally; enforced to
idleness, like patricians in the fall of Rome.”
“Mr. Wemyss, do you know my definition of a Boston man?” cried Sewall,
who had had an evident struggle to repress himself during this speech.
“No,” said Wemyss, respectfully sipping a glass of Yquem.
“An Essay at Life,” said Sewall, hurling the words at Wemyss like a
missile.
There was a certain pause and then Derwent was heard softly quoting
Dante’s “gran rifiuto.”
“So there is nothing for us, you both think, but to make ‘the grand
refusal,’” said he, sadly. “To take no office in our human life, but
wait for death; amusing ourselves as best we may.”
After which, Lord Birmingham was heard saying to Miss Farnum, “I should
so like to show you Noakes Park.”
“No,” said Sewall, taking up the thread of the conversation again,
“what’s the use of breaking lances on wind-mills? The simple fact is,
that everybody wants about a hundred times his individual proportion of
the world’s labor; and some few fellows have got to have it, and the
other ninety-nine be deprived of that little which they have. Therefore
the more toys we give the rabble to play with the better. When they
find them out, they’ll break the toys and our heads with them.”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Malgam, “I don’t see what there is so very
terrible. I like real lace shawls; but my Irish servants prefer red and
green ones. And what would be the use of taking a scrub-woman to the
opera? She wouldn’t understand it.”
“It’s astonishing how soon those same scrub-women catch on,” said
Charlie Townley, who sat next. “I see two or three at the opera every
night.”
Derwent muttered something about the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life; and Mrs. Gower said there was one in the box next her. “She has
red arms and diamonds as big as a hotel-clerk’s,” said she, with a fine
scorn. “But of course there must always be such people trying to get
in.”
“Kehew entered her; but she was scratched for the Derby,” said Van Kull
to Si Starbuck, who was on the other side of Mrs. Wilton Hay. “De Mora
told me she was safe for the Grand Prix.”
“Kehew? why, that’s the very man who has entered his wife, too--at the
opera,” laughed Flossie.
“He’s a great friend of the Duc de Mora,” said Si Starbuck to his
sister. “I don’t see what there is bad about the old woman, and the
daughter’s capital fun.”
“Kehew’s a wonderful man,” added Townley. “He turned up from some
road-hotel just out of Chicago, and the next thing we knew he put
through that Wabash deal.”
“What a name,” sighed Wemyss--“Kehew! how it expresses the sharp,
lean-faced Yankee of the day, who doses his dyspepsia with
whiskey-cocktails, and bores you through with his dull, soulless eyes!
‘Brainy,’ the newspapers call them, I think.”
“But they are making the country, and they make the government,” said
Sewall. “It’s all very well to talk about the greatest good of the
greatest number; but government is going to be run in the interest of
the successful man, and not for general philanthropy.”
“Ah!” said Lionel Derwent, sadly. “You have done a good deal, in
your country. You have done away with rank, and chivalry and the
feudal system, with established churches and bishops, priests and
deacons--except, perhaps, the Pope of Rome. You are independent
of authority and experience, and enforced respect--Aristotle’s
‘Ethics,’ and Plato’s ‘Republic,’ to say nothing of Montesquieu and
de Tocqueville, have become ‘chestnuts,’ as your phrase is. ‘You have
eschewed a titled aristocracy and abolished primogeniture; you elect
all your officers, from judges up to President; your laws run in the
name of the people, instead of in the name of a prince; your State
knows no religion and your judges wear no wigs!’--and for King Log you
bow to King Stork; your God Baal is money, and you have lost individual
liberty into the bargain.”
Mr. Sewall chuckled to himself a little, but said nothing, like an
Augur with a sense of humor; the collective individual liberties of
the land made power, and power was his. It was left to Mrs. Malgam to
respond.
“I am sure,” said she, “I think money is very nice; and those who don’t
want it needn’t get it.”
“Money,” said Wemyss, “gives us the very individual liberty Mr. Derwent
wants.”
“Money,” said Flossie Gower, “is certainly necessary to get married on;
else married people would have to be together all the time.”
“Oh,” said Marion Lenoir, “I think love in a cottage would be just
charming. Do you know I saw such a lovely household last winter in
Florida----”
But here Mrs. Gower gave the signal; and the men were left to their own
reflections. Derwent rose abruptly, took a cigar, and walked out the
open window to the terrace above the river. Wemyss and Arthur followed;
and the other four were left about the dining-table.
Derwent was puffing his cigar violently, and did not speak to them; but
after a minute or two he took the path leading down into the valley and
disappeared in the wood. Wemyss and Arthur sat down in one corner of
the terrace and lit their cigars comfortably.
“Derwent,” said Mr. Wemyss, “is one of those fanatics who do more harm,
from their position and education, than any leader of the proletariat.
But all women rave about him; for women are all hero-worshippers.”
“Mrs. Gower has asked him to go on the coaching party,” said Arthur,
secretly flattered at being thought by Wemyss worthy of hearing that
gentleman’s opinion. He made no reply to this, but frowned obviously.
Pretty soon the others came out and joined them, and they had cognac
and coffee; the ladies, too, were out on the terrace, at its other end,
attracted by the beauty of the night; and gradually the two groups came
together and intermingled. But it was the man’s hour; and they made
bold to keep their cigars, even when, as soon happened, each one joined
his fair one and took to walking with her. Wemyss walked with Mrs.
Gower, Birmingham with Miss Farnum, Van Kull with Mrs. Hay, Charlie
Townley with Miss Duval, and Mrs. Malgam with Si Starbuck.
Arthur found himself with Miss Lenoir. She was a pretty girl, with fine
black hair and gray eyes, and an ivory-like complexion; and her dress
was the perfection of style and enlightened civilization. It was the
most glorious night; a night made for the imaginative and idle, for
those who have read the world’s literature and looked at paintings,
and whose women are fair ladies, bravely dressed. The great pathway of
the river lay open to the dark sky, walled by ebon mountain-masses; to
the east the azure shaded into blue, where the stars were sown less
freely, tremulous, luminous with the rising moon. The moon’s light was
pleasant, too, on the figure of the pretty girl beside him; and the
others, as they passed and repassed, seemed like the gay ladies of
Boccaccio’s garden, and looked, each pair, as if they had been lovers.
Down in the factory village, too, the night was fine; perhaps a few
old men, smoking, enjoyed it, dumbly, as such people do. For these do
not comment, in diaries or print, upon such things, nor analyze the
moods they bring. But most of the women who were stirring made only a
convenience of the moonlight, lighting the uncertain hazards of the
dirty street; and the young men, smoking and drinking, were quite
unconscious of it, for tobacco and whiskey had more direct action upon
their consciousness, besides having a money cost, which the beauty of
the night had not. But here, too, were some few young men wandering
afield with young women, and perhaps upon these the moonlight had its
unconscious effect. Up at Mrs. Gower’s the love-making, though not
inartistically done, was rather like a play; here it was more earnest.
Yet, as it seemed to Lionel Derwent, there was not so much difference
between these two places, laying aside mere dress and manner, as there
should have been.
But to Arthur, the softness and good taste and beauty of framing seemed
inspiration fit for any poet. If the evening was not one of true
happiness, it was an excellent worldly counterfeit. After Miss Lenoir
went in, he stayed out alone, watching the river. The other guests,
successively, sought the drawing-room; and soon he heard Mrs. Hay’s
voice, singing a simple Scotch ballad, and singing it very well. Now,
any cultivated foreman’s daughter, in the factory village, would have
sung in bad Italian, and not sung well.
As Arthur stood leaning over the balustrade in the terrace, he heard
low voices; and looking down, he recognized, in the moonlight, Mr.
Caryl Wemyss and his hostess. Their talk seemed to have come to an end;
for as she rose, he seized her white hand and imprinted (as the dime
novels say), with studied grace, a kiss upon it.