Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, for
no one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate.
The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and he
sauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an elective
course, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came
in contact. And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merely
easy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to
him when he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies. The cowboys and
the severe moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to
get the drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother. It isn't
a bad test of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who
have few or none of the conventional virtues. These non-moral enforcers
of justice--as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in
the New York clubs liked him--and perhaps the moral standard of approval
of the one was as good as the other.
Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of
England he might have taken first-rate rank in athletics. But he had
never taken first-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship. He had
a great many expensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge,
except in imagination. The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a
library of scarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him. Those
who account for failures in life by a man's circumstances, and not by
a lack in the man himself, which is always the secret of failure, said
that Jack was unfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty
thousand a year. This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough
to permit a man to expand in any direction. It is true that he was
related to millions and moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these
millions might never flow into his bank account. They were not in hand
to use, and they also helped to paralyze effort--like black clouds of
an impending shower that may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher
indoors.
The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marry
Edith Fletcher. The wedding, which took place some eight months before
the advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the
girl had even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his society
entirely, was supposed to have ideals. Her family, indeed, was an old
one on the island, and was prominent long before the building of the
stone bridge on Canal Street over the outlet of Collect Pond. Those who
knew Edith well detected in her that strain of moral earnestness which
made the old Fletchers such stanch and trusty citizens. The wonder was
not that Jack, with his easy susceptibility to refined beauty, should
have been attracted to her, or have responded to a true instinct of
what was best for him, but that Edith should have taken up with such a
perfect type of the aimlessness of the society strata of modern life.
The wonder, however, was based upon a shallow conception of the nature
of woman. It would have been more wonderful if the qualities that
endeared Jack to college friends and club men, to the mighty sportsmen
who do not hesitate, in the clubs, to devastate Canada and the United
States of big game, and to the border ruffians of Dakota, should not
have gone straight to the tender heart of a woman of ideals. And when in
all history was there a woman who did not believe, when her heart went
with respect for certain manly traits, that she could inspire and lift a
man into a noble life?
The silver clock in the breakfast-room was striking ten, and Edith was
already seated at the coffee-urn, when Jack appeared. She was as fresh
as a rose, and greeted him with a bright smile as he came behind her
chair and bent over for the morning kiss--a ceremony of affection which,
if omitted, would have left a cloud on the day for both of them, and
which Jack always declared was simply a necessity, or the coffee would
have no flavor. But when a man has picked a rose, it is always a sort
of climax which is followed by an awkward moment, and Jack sat down with
the air of a man who has another day to get through with.
“Were you amused with the dancing--this morning?”
“So, so,” said Jack, sipping his coffee. “It was a stunning place for
it, that studio; you'd have liked that. The Lamons and Mavick and a lot
of people from the provinces were there. The company was more fun than
the dance, especially to a fellow who has seen how good it can be and
how bad in its home.”
“You have a chance to see the Spanish dancer again, under proper
auspices,” said Edith, without looking up.
“How's that?”
“We are invited by Mrs. Brown--”
“The mother of the Bible class at St. Philip's?”
“Yes--to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female
Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance.”
“Who? Mrs. Brown?”
Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. “They are to make an
artificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning.”
“They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religious
in its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?”
“Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a small
check.”
“Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing--shirking
my duty of personal service by a contribution?”
“Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night,
did you?”
Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such
a gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these
months. “I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't
break up my day so.”
“As for instance?”
“Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a
horse--Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's
and see a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that
the birds and other animals those beggars have been drawing, which
we thought were caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp
enough to see things in motion--flying birds and moving horses which
we never caught till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I
shall step into the club a minute, and--”
“Be in at lunch? Bess is coming.”
“Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do.”
Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the
outer door close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of
notes at her plate, and thinking of many things--things that it began
to dawn upon her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency
that must be done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her
as it had looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to
clear the vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience
that perplexes. Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much
easier to her before she had tried them.
As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch of
English violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no better
subject. Many people thought her eyes her best feature; they were large
brown eyes, yet not always brown, green at times, liquid, but never
uncertain, apt to have a smile in them, yet their chief appealing
characteristic was trustfulness, a pure sort of steadfastness, that
always conveyed the impression of a womanly personal interest in the
person upon whom they were fixed. They were eyes that haunted one like a
remembered strain of music. The lips were full, and the mouth was drawn
in such exquisite lines that it needed the clear-cut and emphasized
chin to give firmness to its beauty. The broad forehead, with arching
eyebrows, gave an intellectual cast to a face the special stamp of which
was purity. The nose, with thin open nostrils, a little too strong for
beauty, together with the chin, gave the impression of firmness and
courage; but the wonderful eyes, the inviting mouth, so modified this
that the total impression was that of high spirit and great sweetness
of character. It was the sort of face from which one might expect
passionate love or unflinching martyrdom. Her voice had a quality the
memory of which lingered longer even than the expression of her eyes; it
was low, and, as one might say, a fruity voice, not quite clear, though
sweet, as if veiled in femineity. This note of royal womanhood was also
in her figure, a little more than medium in height, and full of natural
grace. Somehow Edith, with all these good points, had not the
reputation of a belle or a beauty--perhaps for want of some artificial
splendor--but one could not be long in her company without feeling
that she had great charm, without which beauty becomes insipid and even
commonplace, and with which the plainest woman is attractive.
Edith's theory of life, if one may so dignify the longings of a young
girl, had been very simple, and not at all such as would be selected by
the heroine of a romance. She had no mission, nor was she afflicted
by that modern form of altruism which is a yearning for notoriety by
conspicuous devotion to causes and reforms quite outside her normal
sphere of activity. A very sincere person, with strong sympathy for
humanity tempered by a keen perception of the humorous side of things,
she had a purpose, perhaps not exactly formulated, of making the most
out of her own life, not in any outward and shining career, but by a
development of herself in the most helpful and harmonious relations to
her world. And it seemed to her, though she had never philosophized it,
that a marriage such as she believed she had made was the woman's way to
the greatest happiness and usefulness. In this she followed the
dictates of a clear mind and a warm heart. If she had reasoned about
it, considering how brief life is, and how small can be any single
contribution to a better social condition, she might have felt more
strongly the struggle against nature, and the false position involved in
the new idea that marriage is only a kind of occupation, instead of an
ordinance decreed in the very constitution of the human race. With the
mere instinct of femineity she saw the falseness of the assumption that
the higher life for man or woman lies in separate and solitary paths
through the wilderness of this world. To an intelligent angel, seated
on the arch of the heavens, the spectacle of the latter-day
pseudo-philosophic and economic dribble about the doubtful expediency
of having a wife, and the failure of marriage, must seem as ludicrous as
would a convention of birds or of flowers reasoning that the processes
of nature had continued long enough. Edith was simply a natural woman,
who felt rather than reasoned that in a marriage such as her heart
approved she should make the most of her life.
But as she sat here this morning this did not seem to be so simple a
matter as it had appeared. It began to be suspected that in order to
make the most of one's self it was necessary to make the most of many
other persons and things. The stream in its own channel flowed along not
without vexations, friction and foaming and dashings from bank to bank;
but it became quite another and a more difficult movement when it
was joined to another stream, with its own currents and eddies and
impetuosities and sluggishness, constantly liable to be deflected if not
put altogether on another course. Edith was not putting it in this
form as she turned over her notes of invitation and appointments and
engagements, but simply wondering where the time for her life was to
come in, and for Jack's life, which occupied a much larger space than it
seemed to occupy in the days before it was joined to hers. Very curious
this discovery of what another's life really is. Of course the society
life must go on, that had always gone on, for what purpose no one could
tell, only it was the accepted way of disposing of time; and now there
were the dozen ways in which she was solicited to show her interest in
those supposed to be less fortunate in life than herself-the alleviation
of the miseries of her own city. And with society, and charity, and
sympathy with the working classes, and her own reading, and a little
drawing and painting, for which she had some talent, what became of that
comradeship with Jack, that union of interests and affections, which was
to make her life altogether so high and sweet?
This reverie, which did not last many minutes, and was interrupted by
the abrupt moving away of Edith to the writing-desk in her own room, was
caused by a moment's vivid realization of what Jack's interests in life
were. Could she possibly make them her own? And if she did, what would
become of her own ideals?