THE CHARIOT OF THE CARELESS GODS.
The coach drew up at the little wharf at Garrison’s, and the party
got into the ferry-boat and were carried across the river. The great
hotel at West Point had been opened; the waiters were spick and span;
the wooden floors were varnished, and slippery like glass. In the hall
were two or three pretty girls, overdressed in white tulle dresses,
low-necked, with their cavaliers who served for the nonce and their
noisy younger brothers. This bright company crowded to the porch,
curious, when the carriages drove up; and Arthur heard one of the
pretty girls say to another, “It’s the coaching party--from New York.”
They went out and wandered on the cliffs above the river; the beautiful
moon-washed mountains stood about them, and below them slept the Hudson
with its salt flood, deeper, nobler than any Rhine. But there were no
castles here, nor Lorelei; and the sunken gold had long since been
robbed from its depths and was circulating in the hands of men.
Arthur fell to Miss Duval’s share, a position he always found a
somewhat uncomfortable one; for how could he replace another man
like Jimmy De Witt, and that one her acknowledged lover? But, had
he known it, Miss Pussie, who was looking forward with intense and
hungry anticipation for the joys of worldly pleasure and a fashionable
marriage, and regarded this coaching party as an earnest of them,
would have blushed at herself if she had been so out of the mode as
to be unable to flirt with anyone but her future husband. It must be
owned, therefore, that she found our hero slow; she tried to talk to
him of hunting, and he to her of books, both things of which they were
reciprocally ignorant. Then they walked up and down the great piazza,
and amused themselves by looking through the windows into the great
parlors, where the hotel girls (_puella tabernensis Americana_) were
dancing with some tightly buttoned cadets. Just then Lionel Derwent
came up, alone with his cigar. “Let me join you,” said he. “I went
downhill and I came upon Birmingham, in at attitude full of unconscious
humor, addressing Miss Farnum; I came up-hill and blundered upon Van
Kull and Mrs. Hay. From these I retreated in disorder only to make
myself _de trop_ with Mr. Caryl Wemyss and our charming hostess. Shall
I be so here?”
Miss Duval laughed. “I was just going to bed, Mr. Derwent; so you
and Mr. Holyoke can fight it out alone. Good-night--good-night,
Mr. Holyoke.” And she left them in the doorway and took her way up
the great staircase. Arthur and Mr. Derwent looked at one another
inquiringly. “Shall we go and smoke?” said the latter, at last. “By all
means,” answered Arthur. “Where shall we go--out upon the cliff?”
“I am afraid it is too densely populated there for such a wild
man as myself, already,” said Derwent, laughing. “Come down to the
billiard-room.” They went down there, and sat at a table, opposite a
bar, where they were not, as Derwent expressed it, “troubled by the
moon,” and here they smoked their cigars and pondered.
“Mr. Van Kull seems rather devoted to Mrs. Hay,” said Arthur, at a
venture.
“And well he may be,” said Derwent, gravely. “He prefers the flowers of
evil; and she is a most glorious one.”
“Evil?” said Arthur, incredulously. “She seems to me a kind-hearted
creature, fond of show, no worse than thoughtless.”
“So is a nightshade blossom fond of sunlight, and bright-colored and
innocent of harm,” said Derwent, with a smile. “Mrs. Hay is a luxuriant
animal--a woman of the world, as other women are women of the town;
and her life is one continual sermon unto these: ‘Look ye; I am rich,
happy, high-placed; I have all the opportunities and advantages, all
the taste and teaching, that the best can give; and I have not one
single taste, or thought, or aspiration that the worst of you have not;
nor have I lost one that you have, except, perhaps, the fondness for
domestic life which some of the best of you may once have had. I, too,
still care for dress and show and the longing glance of many men; these
things, that you are foolishly told have ruined you, are just what I,
too, prize in life; I, Mrs. Wilton Hay, the great high-born beauty
whose photograph you have seen in the shop-windows!’ I tell you,”
ended Derwent, savagely, “but for a little poor fastidiousness, her
soul resembles theirs as do two berries on one stem. But consciously,
’tis true she does no harm; possibly she has not even sinned; as well
attach a moral guilt to some gaudy wayside weed, growing by mistake in
a garden among the sesame and lilies!”
“But Mrs. Gower seems very fond of her----”
“Ah! Mrs. Gower!” answered Derwent, dropping his voice. “She is a
different sort of person entirely. Fannie Hay is but a soldier of
Apollyon; but Florence Gower is a general-of-division.”
“I don’t see why you live with them,” said Arthur, boldly.
“Ah, Holyoke, I live everywhere; I see these, and others, too. That
night when I came back from the factory village, I had been talking
with the men, and with some of the young girls there. And I could fancy
Mrs. Hay going there, good-naturedly as she might, and saying to them:
‘Don’t care for dresses, or to lure men’s love or women’s envy, or to
dazzle your neighbor Jenny or break her Johnny’s heart; read books,
look at pictures, enjoy the beauties of nature, seek the beauty of
holiness.’--‘Does your ladyship?’ say they.--‘Well, at all events, be
clean,’ answers Fannie Hay, shocked.--‘But cleanliness costs money,
my fine lady.’--Christ solved the question once; but now Christ is
forgotten; and the sphinx looks out unanswered over the desert sand.”
“Surely you can say nothing against Miss Farnum, at least?”
“She is caught like the others, in their web,” said he. “But come, it’s
late indeed to be troubling ourselves over these two or three. What are
they to the million?”
Arthur thought much of Derwent’s talk; but he seemed to him a morbid
fellow, unpractical and vague. And still more morbid it all seemed
in the morning, when he woke and saw the sunlight and blue sky above
the mountains of the river. Dressing was a delight, with such an
outlook and with such a day before him; and coming down he met Miss
Farnum looking fresh as a rose with the dew on it. Caryl Wemyss was
standing talking to her with that air of distinction of which he was so
proud; and just after, Mrs. Hay and Miss Duval came bouncing down the
staircase, arm in arm. So they went in to breakfast, without waiting
for Mrs. Gower, hungry, and in high glee for want of a chaperone. “Oh,
I don’t consider you a chaperone,” said Pussie Duval to Mrs. Hay. “Nor
do I,” added Kill Van Kull, hastily.
Theirs was the central table in the dining-hall; and each lady found a
dozen roses at her plate. These were from Lord Birmingham, who appeared
late, and was duly thanked for them. Every man asked his neighbor for
one rosebud as a boutonnière: and just then Flossie came in, dressed in
the airiest of summer gowns; and there was a great arising and scraping
of chairs among the gentlemen.
Soon they were down at the river, and crossing the river again. Such a
wealth of brown sunlight as was in the air! The bold mountains rose up
on either side, not soft and purple with heather, as in England, nor
brown and sharp with rock, as in Italy, but green and shaggy, as in a
new country, with a growth of timber; the deep, swirling waters, brown
where you looked into them, shaded off to blue farther from the boat,
where they gleamed smooth beneath the cloudless sky. And the sparkle
and the stillness of the morning gave one the feeling of a truant
school-boy.
“There is something about an American landscape that reminds one of the
pictures in omnibuses,” said Wemyss. No one replied to this; for they
were nearing the wharf, where the coach and four were standing, as if
it were Fifth Avenue. Again there was the shifting of rugs and wraps
in the body, and the courtesies of the steel ladder, and the pleasant
twinkling of neat ankles as the ladies alertly mounted it. The four men
hove themselves up anyhow, with Lord Birmingham and Miss Farnum on the
box; and then with a swing the heavy drag was swaying under way, and
the four shining chestnuts took the hill at a gallop. They were passing
a row of square wooden houses where poor people lived, and Mrs. Hay
turned about and called to Wemyss. “One thing I notice, Mr. Wemyss--in
America you have tenements, not cottages.”
“Yes,” said he, “and ‘elegant residences’ for gentlemen’s houses!”
“Now, in Devonshire,” said Mrs. Hay, “those cottages would be smothered
in roses and fuchsia vines. Don’t you have any cottage improvement
societies? My cousin, Lady St. Aubyn, at Hartland (near Clovelly, you
know), has been most active in them; and one of her tenants took the
prize for the county!”
“These people are nobody’s tenants,” said Wemyss; “and they decorate
their houses as they damn please, American fashion; with goats and
tomato-cans, if they prefer.”
By this time they had entered the forest that clothes the slopes of
Breakneck Mountain. The road was none of the best, and the top of
the coach careened violently, almost shaking Derwent, who was idly
smoking with his face in the sunlight and his eyes half closed, off
the back seat. “Come, let’s walk,” said Pussie Duval; and as the coach
halted a moment upon one of those ridges across the road imaginatively
designated “thank-ye-marms,” she nimbly dropped herself over the side
and sprang back into the daisies and buttercups. Arthur, Mrs. Hay,
Flossie, Van Kull, and Wemyss followed; Derwent Mrs. Gower ordered to
remain upon the coach and play propriety; whereupon that gentleman
stretched himself quite lengthwise upon the warm back seat, pulled his
cloth hat over his eyes, and to all appearances went to sleep.
“We can cut off a mile,” said Van Kull, “by cutting straight through
the woods to where the road strikes the river again. Now then! each his
own way, and the coach will wait for us there, if it gets in first.”
So they disappeared; Van Kull with Mrs. Hay making for a pine grove on
the high land, Wemyss and Mrs. Gower going lower, where there seemed
evidences of a path, and our hero with Miss Duval taking a middle
course through a rocky pasture, sweet-scented with fern and heathery
blossoms, and dotted with dwarfed and obsolete apple-trees. This gave
Lord Birmingham a chance of devoting himself entirely to his driving
and his companion upon the box. For an hour or more the coach lumbered
on; its driver talked incessantly, but drove very badly, and Lionel
Derwent slumbered in the rear.
In the woods, the day was a very warm one. What breeze there was could
not be felt. It would take too long to follow the devious ways of every
party in all their wanderings; suffice it to say that shortly before
noon Arthur, with Pussie Duval, came out upon the road close by the
Hudson, where they sat upon a fence and waited. Arthur was getting
every day more used to her society; and Mr. De Witt was no longer so
continually upon his mind. Here they were met by the other two couples;
and finally, when the coach came thundering down the hill with a wheel
in a shoe, the whole six were sitting on the fence, _à la mode du
pays_; and Wemyss was even whittling.
“Well, you _have_ been long,” said Van Kull.
“Ah, you can’t make up for lost time with cracking of whips and
horn-blowing!” laughed Mrs. Gower.
“What have they been doing all this time?--without prejudice, now, Mr.
Derwent?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Hay--I’ve been asleep,” said that gentleman.
“Come, now, I’d like to know how long all of you have been here--that’s
all,” growled his lordship, blushing obviously. “Get aboard there--I’m
hungry as a bear. Where do we stop for lunch, Mrs. Gower?”
“At Fishkill,” said that lady. “It’s only a few miles ahead.” And in
an hour or so they stopped before a sleepy old inn, low and rambling,
with a Rip-Van-Winklish look about it. There is a lazy luxuriance, a
sort of slatternly comfort, and a Southern coloring about these old
New York villages, bespeaking material ease and an absence of moral
nervousness; perhaps nervous morality would better express it. “I never
look at a place like this,” said Wemyss, “without thinking that the
most vigorous-sounding word in the Dutchman’s language was Schnapps!”
After luncheon the day was warm, and the ladies inclined to sleep.
Only Derwent wished for a walk, and Arthur went with him, while the
others smoked. They sauntered through the little town’s unkempt,
painted streets; and Derwent sent a telegram. Arthur noticed, with
some surprise, that it was addressed to Haviland. Then at three they
returned, and found the party for the most part wrapped in dreams.
They put to and were off, but the order was changed, as usual, and
Pussie Duval rode with Derwent on the box. Caryl Wemyss would not
drive, for he never did anything that he thought he did not well; so he
and Mrs. Gower and Birmingham sat on the back seat, with Arthur, Van
Kull, Mrs. Hay, and Kitty Farnum on in front. The drive to Poughkeepsie
was straight and uneventful. The long hours were only diversified by
Mrs. Wilton Hay’s uncertain efforts on the coaching horn.
Poughkeepsie is a brick-built city, with horse-car lines, an
opera-house, and a court of justice all its own. Here they had a suite
of rooms, with long lace curtains, black-walnut furniture, and Brussels
carpets, equipped “before the dawn of taste, in poor imitation of a
poorer thing,” said Wemyss; “how different from an English inn!” The
rest of the adornment consisted, in each room, of a steam-heater and a
pitcher of ice-water! “I believe they even bathe in ice-water!” said
he. “Dear me!” said Birmingham, simply. “I rang and could not get a tub
at all.”
They had dinner in Mrs. Gower’s parlor, and a telegram was brought
in to her during the dessert. “Oh, I am very glad,” said she, as
she laid it down. “It is from Mr. Haviland; and he says he can join
us to-morrow.” Arthur looked at her, and then at Derwent; but that
gentleman made no sign; only, Lord Birmingham looked disgusted. The
others expressed a polite gratification, and then the question came
up what they were to do in the evening. Already a great intimacy had
sprung up among the party, and a certain feeling of youth, born of much
outdoor air and freedom from care. Some proposed ghost-stories, others,
games. “I bar kissing games,” said Pussie Duval, with much aplomb, “in
the absence of Mr. De Witt.” Kisses were debarred, being, as Van Kull
expressed it, too serious things to be made game of; but forfeits,
twenty questions, even dancing, was indulged in. When all these failed
to satisfy their souls, it was rumored that Mr. Derwent was “up” in
palmistry. “Oh, do tell us our fortunes!” was the cry. “We must have a
regular gypsy tent.”
“Now,” said Mrs. Hay, “it’s no fun unless we all tell. Agree all of you
to tell us what he says!”
“Girls, girls” (the women of Mrs. Gower’s set had a way of still
addressing each other joyously as “girls”)--“suppose he reveals the
secrets of your hearts?”
“’Pon my soul!” cried Mrs. Hay, “I’ve quite forgotten what they are!
Who’ll go in first?”
A shawl had been hung across an open door, behind which Derwent took up
his position. No one seemed anxious to make the first try; and at last
the voice of the company fell upon Arthur Holyoke, “as having,” said
Mrs. Gower, “the most future before him.”
Arthur went in and came out laughing. “I have had,” said he, “a very
terrible horoscope, as Derwent says. Everything that I really wish for
is to happen to me!”
“I don’t see what there is so very terrible about that,” said they all;
and the others were emboldened. Mrs. Gower went in next. “Speak aloud,
Mr. Derwent,” cried Mrs. Hay, “so we all can hear--we can’t trust the
garbled statements of the culprits.”
Derwent’s voice was heard, in sepulchral tones, from behind the screen.
“I see the hand of a woman who has done whatever she has meant to
do----”
(“Dear me,” interjected Mrs. Hay, “how successful we all are!”)
“She may come near doing more than she meant to do; but her will shall
conquer everything.”
“How delightfully enigmatic!” laughed Pussie Duval.
“You must go in next, Miss Pussie--you spoke,” said Van Kull.
But Pussie wouldn’t; and the choice fell upon Kitty Farnum. She
disappeared, and there was several moments’ silence. At last--
“Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen,
Die hat einen Andern erwählt;
Der Andre liebt eine Andre
Und hat sich mit Dieser vermählt.
“Das Mädchen heiratet aus Ärger
Den ersten besten Mann,
Der ihr in den Weg gelaufen;
Der Jüngling ist übel dran.
“Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei----”
“Good heavens!” laughed Flossie. “Come, you go in, Mr. Van Kull.”
“I can tell more of this man’s past than his future,” said the voice.
“There has been a voyage across the water--perhaps to Brighton, or to
Cannes. And there is a fair maiden and a dark maiden; and both have had
but little influence on his life. And there is to be another yet, I
see----”
“There, there,” interfered Flossie, “if you make poor Van such a Don
Juan, we shall have to send him home again, in our own protection. Mrs.
Hay, you go in.”
But this the beauty flatly refused to do. And after much chaff at her
expense, the party betook themselves to their several slumbers.
The next day was Sunday; but, as Wemyss said, to leave Poughkeepsie was
a work of necessity and mercy; and they were early under way. Here they
left the river, and they struck inland; the country grew more rural and
primitive, and their spirits rose proportionately. Haviland appeared by
the early train, and shared the back seat with Birmingham, Mrs. Gower,
and Kitty Farnum. He brought the news of the day, which no one cared
to hear; and some gossip of the town, which interested everybody. “How
can you have the heart to bring him up?” Wemyss had said at breakfast;
and Flossie had laughed, and said that she expected a very entertaining
day. “He must go back Monday evening, you know,” she added.
They had another perfect day, and by this time all of them, even to
Caryl Wemyss, were charged with ozone and overflowing with animal
spirits. Even practical joking was in order; and Arthur had caught
an instantaneous photograph, which he exhibited with much applause,
of Van Kull assisting Mrs. Hay over a stone wall. Conversation was
unnecessary; it was quite enough to live and laugh. Much amusement was
caused by a rustic, at a farm-house where they stopped for milk, who
first insisted that they were the advance-guard of a circus, and then
would have it that they were “travelling” for something--“jerseys” and
men’s clothing, he first suggested, and then parlor organs and patent
medicines. And all the women were so pretty, and so stylish, and so
sweet-tempered, that Arthur began to feel a little bit in love with
every one of them.
“But one gets tired of women, after a while,” said Caryl Wemyss to
Arthur, at Washington Hollow, where they lunched. The inn was an old
roadside one, at the “four corners,” smelling of dusty leather and the
road, with a large bar-room, fit political centre of the surrounding
district; but the country was robed in beautiful green forests, into
which the others had plunged, and came back loaded with wild flowers,
Mrs. Gower with Lord Birmingham, and Haviland and Kitty Farnum last of
all. For a wonder, Derwent had done the polite, and wandered off with
Mrs. Wilton Hay. Van Kull and Miss Duval came back laughing over some
quaint epitaphs they had discovered in what he termed a “boneyard”
opposite. “What a jolly place this must have been in the old days!”
said Flossie. “Look at the splendid great chimney-places and the old
ball-room!” And Arthur’s memory suddenly went back to the ball-room at
Lem Hitchcock’s. But it was summer now, and the place was civilized;
some stranded woman-boarder was playing, upon an old piano overhead,
one of Beethoven’s sonatas. And Derwent took up a curious old stone
jug, in which they had had milk, and read:
“He who buys land, buys stones;
“He who buys meat, buys bones;
“He who buys eggs must buy their shells--
“Who buys good ale buys nothing else.”
But, after all, no stops were like the rapid riding; the sense of
freedom and delight of sweeping high over the rolling country, making a
panorama of it, and being in a little republic of their own. Two small
roans were leaders to-day, and the chestnuts, being a little used up,
were in the lighter baggage-wagon, in “spike team” with the cock-horse;
for no great hills were expected that afternoon.
Arthur settled himself again to the pure delight of life, gazing
joyously from sky to forest and from forest to the wide green carpet
of the fields, sweeping by them with the changing angles of the long
Virginia fences. Arthur and Pussie Duval were the least _blasé_ of the
party; and both drank in the very moments with enthusiasm. And when
he was tired of looking at the swelling hills and spaces of the sky,
it was pleasant to look in her fair face--or, for that matter, at any
other of the beautiful women about him. As for Miss Duval, the world
was like an opening treasure-house to her; she saw before her all she
wanted, and had only to grasp her fill with full hands. Ah! saints and
cynics to the contrary, this world has happiness for some--thought
Arthur. But what he said was, “How lovely that long edge of the forest
is, Miss Duval! See how boldly the high trees rise out of the meadow;
I suppose it’s what the poets call a ‘hanging wood.’ _La lisière_ they
call it in French; I have always thought it was such a pretty name for
Mrs. Gower’s place.”
“But you weren’t really thinking of that, Mr. Holyoke,” said she. “You
weren’t looking at it.”
“I was looking at your eyes, Miss Duval, if you will have it,” said
Arthur. It will be seen that our hero was making progress.
“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Hay, who overheard this speech, “I shall
certainly write to Mr. De Witt. Why don’t _you_ say such intense things
to me, Mr. Van Kull?”
“Because I daren’t,” said Van Kull, meaningly.
“Please--I’ll promise not to write to Wilton,” retorted she. “Poor
Wilton! he must find it so hot in Washington.”
How pleasant it is to feel ourselves moving above the world like gods!
How pleasant it is, like gods, to make of our own rules of conduct our
laws of good and evil! And what responsibility have we for the rest of
humanity? They should not all attempt to be in fashion. Fashion is for
us alone--us few, who transcend common laws.
Yet it is relying on the many abiding by the humdrum rules of gravity
that the few can flutter and glitter freely on the surface. In the
evening there was a moon (which shineth alike upon the just and on the
unjust; particularly the latter, for moonlight has no conscience), and
the warm night attracted them forth from the dreary hotel parlor. They
wandered up the hill, through pastures, to where there was a cliff,
above huge chasms of a quarry, carven deep into the living rock. Here
they met some Italian laborers; they were living in little wooden huts
about the quarry, with their womankind, richly, upon seventy cents
a day. Their views of life were much the same as their own, thought
Derwent, looking at the merry party; with only, perhaps, a little less
morality, a little more religion, these day laborers, than had they.
Caryl Wemyss conversed with them a little in their own language, at
which they were greatly pleased. They were citizens, and had come over
to make their portion of our great democracy; but they sighed for the
sunny skies of Sicily as yet.
Wemyss was walking with Mrs. Gower, and as they turned back they found
Haviland sitting with Kitty Farnum on a stone wall in the long grass;
the moon lit up her fair face and her eyes, which were shining; and all
about them lay the petals of a rose that she had pulled to pieces. “How
like Faust and Marguerite!” said Mrs. Gower.
“Say, rather, Psyche with her Dipsychus,” said Mr. Wemyss.
“Who is Dipsychus?” said Flossie Gower.
“Have you never met him, then?” said Wemyss. And coming back, she took
his arm across the fields.
Wemyss pressed it gently, and began to analyze himself, whether he was
in love with her or not. It rather flattered him to think he was.