POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
The day after the wedding, as Arthur was going home from work, he saw
Ross on the lofty seat of a dogcart, driving toward him along lower
Monroe Street. His anger instantly flamed and flared; he crushed an oath
between his teeth and glanced about for some way to avoid the humiliating
meeting. But there was no cross street between him and the on-coming
cart. Pride, or vanity, came to his support, as soon as he was convinced
that escape was impossible. With an air that was too near to defiance to
create the intended impression of indifference, he swung along and, just
as the cart was passing, glanced at his high-enthroned former friend.
Ross had not seen him until their eyes met. He drew his horse in so
sharply that it reared and pawed in amazement and indignation at the
bit's coarse insult to thoroughbred instincts for courteous treatment. He
knew Arthur was at work in the factory; but he did not expect to see him
in workman's dress, with a dinner pail in his hand. And from his height,
he, clad in the carefully careless, ostentatiously unostentatious
garments of the "perfect gentleman," gazed speechless at the spectacle.
Arthur reddened violently. Not all the daily contrasts thrust upon him in
those months at the cooperage had so brought home to his soul the
differences of caste. And there came to him for the first time that
hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet
the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as
characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the
supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste.
Arthur did not want to get up where Ross was seated in such elegant
state; he wanted to tear Ross, all the Rosses down. "The damn fool!" he
fumed. "He goes lounging about, wasting the money _we_ make. It's all
wrong. And if we weren't a herd of tame asses, we wouldn't permit it."
And now he began to feel that he was the superior of this showy idler,
that his own garments and dinner pail and used hands were the titles to a
nobility which could justly look down upon those who filched from the
treasury of the toiler the means to buzz and flit and glitter in
dronelike ease. "As for these Whitneys," he thought, "mother's right
about them." Then he called out in a tone of good-natured contempt, which
his stature and his powerful frame and strong, handsome face made
effective: "Hello, Ross! When did _you_ come to town?"
"This morning," replied Ross. "I heard you were working, but I had no
idea it was--I've just been to your house, looking for you, and was on
the way to the factory. Father told me to see that you get a suitable
position. I'm going to Howells and arrange it. You know, father's been in
the East and very busy."
"Don't bother," said Arthur, and there was no pretense in his air of
ease. "I've got just what I want. I am carrying out father's plan, and
I'm far enough into it to see that he was right."
In unbelieving silence Ross looked down at his former equal with
condescending sympathy; how well Arthur knew that look! And he remembered
that he had once, so short a time before, regarded it as kindly, and the
thoughts behind it as generous!
"I like my job," he continued. "It gives me a sense of doing something
useful--of getting valuable education. Already I've had a thousand
damn-fool ideas knocked out of my head."
"I suppose it _is_ interesting," said Ross, with gracious encouragement.
"The associations must be rather trying."
"They _were_ rather trying," replied Arthur with a smile. "Trying to the
other men, until I got my bearings and lost the silliest of the silly
ideas put in my head by college and that sort of thing. But, now that I
realize I'm an apprentice and not a gentleman deigning to associate with
the common herd, I think I'm less despicable--and less ridiculous. Still,
I'm finding it hard to get it through my head that practically everything
I learned is false and must be unlearned."
"Don't let your bitterness over the injustice to you swing you too far
the other way, Artie," said Ross with a faint smile in his eyes and a
suspicious, irritating friendliness in his voice. "You'll soon work out
of that class and back where you belong."
Arthur was both angry and amused. No doubt Ross was right as to the
origin of this new breadth of his; but a wrong motive may start a man
right just as readily as a right motive may start him wrong. Arthur would
have admitted frankly his first feelings about his changed position,
would have admitted that those feelings still lingered, still seemed to
influence him, as grown people often catch themselves thinking in terms
of beliefs impressed on them in childhood, but exploded and abandoned at
the very threshold of youth. But he knew, also, that his present beliefs
and resolves and aspirations were sincere, were sane, were final--the
expression of the mind and heart that were really himself. Of what use,
however, to argue with Ross? "I could no more convince him," thought
Arthur, "than I could myself have been convinced less than a year ago."
Besides, of what importance were Ross's beliefs about him or about his
views? So he said to him, and his tone and manner were now convincing:
"Well, we'll see. However, as long as I'm a workman, I'll stand with my
class--just as you stand with your class. And while you are pretending to
be generous to us, we'll pretend to be contemptuous of you. You'll think
we are living off of your money; we'll think you are living off of our
work. You'll say we're earning less than half what we get; we'll say
you're stealing more than half what you get. It may amuse you to hear
that I am one of the organizers of the trades union that's starting. I'm
on the committee on wages. So some day you and I are likely to meet."
"I don't know much about those things," said Ross politely. "I can
see that you're right to ingratiate yourself with those working
chaps. It will stand you in good stead when you get on top and have
to manage them."
Arthur laughed, and so did Ross. They eyed each the other with covert
hostility. "Poor creature!" thought Ross. And "Pup!" thought Arthur. "How
could I have wanted Del to marry _him_?" He wished to pass on, but was
detained by some suggestion in Ross's manner that he had not yet
discharged his mind of its real burden.
"I was glad to see your mother so well," said Ross.
"I wish she were," replied Arthur. "She seemed to be better while the
excitement about Del's wedding was on; but as soon as Del and Dory went,
she dropped back again. I think the only thing that keeps her from--from
joining father is the feeling that, if she were to go, the family income
would stop. I feel sure we'd not have her, if father had left us well
provided for, as they call it."
"That is true," said Ross, the decent side of his nature now full to the
fore. "I can't tell you what a sense of loss I had when your father died.
Artie, he was a splendid gentleman. And there is a quality in your mother
that makes me feel very humble indeed before her."
Arthur passed, though he noted, the unconscious superciliousness in this
tribute; he felt that it was a genuine tribute, that, for all its
discoloration in its passage through the tainted outer part of Ross's
nature, it had come from the unspoiled, untainted, deepest part.
Fortunately for us all, the gold in human nature remains gold, whatever
its alloys from base contacts; and it is worth the mining, though there
be but a grain of it to the ton of dross. As Ross spoke Arthur warmed to
him. "You must come to see us," he said cordially.
Ross became embarrassed, so embarrassed that all his ability to command
his feelings went for nothing. "Thank you," said he hurriedly, "but I'm
here only for a few hours. I go away to-night. I came about a matter
that--that--I want to get back as soon as possible."
Arthur was mystified by the complete transformation of the
self-complacent, superior Ross of a few minutes before. He now noted that
Ross was looking almost ill, his eyes sunken, the lids red at the edges,
as if from loss of sleep. Under Arthur's scrutiny his embarrassment
increased to panic. He nervously shifted the reins, made the horse
restless, shook hands with Arthur, reined in, tried to speak, said only,
"I must be off--my horse is getting nervous," and was gone.
Arthur looked after him. "That's the sort of chap I was on the way to
being when father pulled me up," he reflected. "I wonder if I'll ever get
sense enough not to have a sneaking envy of him--and regret?"
If he could have looked in upon Ross's mind, he might have been abruptly
thrust far along the toilsome road toward his goal. In this world, roses
and thorns have a startling, preposterous way of suddenly exchanging
natures so that what was thorn becomes fairest rose, and what was rose
becomes most poisonous of thorns. Ross had just fallen an amazed and
incredulous victim to this alchemy. Though somewhat uncomfortable and
downright unhappy at times, he had been, on the whole, well pleased with
himself and his prospects until he heard that Adelaide was actually about
to marry Dory. His content collapsed with the foundation on which it was
built--the feeling that Adelaide was for no other man, that if at any
time he should change his mind he would find her waiting to welcome him
gratefully. He took train for Saint X, telling himself that after he got
there he could decide what to do. In fact, when he had heard that the
wedding was about to be, it was over and Adelaide and Dory were off for
New York and Europe; but he did not find this out until he reached Saint
X. The man who gave him that final and overwhelming news noticed no
change in his face, though looking for signs of emotion; nor did Ross
leave him until he had confirmed the impression of a heart at ease. Far
along the path between the Country Club and Point Helen he struck into
the woods and, with only the birds and the squirrels as witnesses, gave
way to his feelings.
Now, now that she was irrevocably gone, he knew. He had made a hideous
mistake; he had been led on by his vanity, led on and on until the trap
was closed and sprung; and it was too late. He sat there on a fallen tree
with his head aching as if about to explode, with eyes, dry and burning
and a great horror of heart-hunger sitting before him and staring at him.
In their sufferings from defeated desire the selfish expiate their sins.
He had forgotten his engagement to Theresa Howland, the wedding only
two weeks away. It suddenly burst in upon his despair like a shout
of derisive laughter. "I'll _not_ marry her!" he cried aloud. "I
_can't_ do it!"
But even as he spoke he knew that he could, and would, and must. He had
been a miserable excuse for a lover to Theresa; but Theresa had never had
love. All the men who had approached her with "intentions" had been
fighting hard against their own contempt of themselves for seeking a wife
for the sake of her money, and their efforts at love-making had been tame
and lame; but Theresa, knowing no better, simply thought men not up to
the expectations falsely raised by the romances and the songs. She
believed _she_ could not but get as good a quality of love as there was
going; and Ross, with his delightful, aristocratic indifference, was
perfectly satisfactory. Theresa had that thrice-armored self-complacence
which nature so often relentingly gives, to more than supply the lack of
the charms withheld. She thought she was fascinating beyond any woman of
her acquaintance, indeed, of her time. She spent hours in admiring
herself, in studying out poses for her head and body and arms, especially
her arms, which she regarded as nature's last word on that kind of
beauty--a not wholly fanciful notion, as they were not bad, if a bit too
short between elbow and wrist, and rather fat at the shoulders. She
always thought and, on several occasions in bursts of confidence, had
imparted to girl friends that "no man who has once cared for me can ever
care for another woman." Several of her confidantes had precisely the
same modest opinion of their own powers; but they laughed at
Theresa--behind her back.
Ross knew how vain she was. To break with her, he would have to tell her
flatly that he would not marry her. "I'd be doing her no injury," thought
he. "Her vanity would root out some explanation which would satisfy her
that, whatever might be the cause, it wasn't lack of love for her on my
part." But--To break off was unthinkable. The invitations out; the
arrangements for the wedding all made; quantities of presents
arrived--"I've got to go through with it. I've got to marry her," said
Ross. "But God help me, how I shall hate her!"
And, stripped clean of the glamour of her wealth, she rose before
him--her nose that was red and queer in the mornings; her little personal
habits that got on the nerves, especially a covert self-infatuated smile
that flitted over her face at any compliment, however obviously
perfunctory; her way of talking about every trivial thing she did--and
what did she do that was not trivial?--as if some diarist ought to take
it down for the delight of ages to come. As Ross looked at the
new-created realistic image of her, he was amazed. "Why, I've always
disliked her!" he cried. "I've been lying to myself. I am too low for
words," he groaned. "Was there ever such a sneaking cur?" Yes, many a
one, full as unconscious of his own qualities as he himself had been
until that moment; nor could he find consolation in the fact that he had
company, plenty of company, and it of the world's most "gentlemanly" and
most "ladylike."
The young man who left that wood, the young man whom Arthur saw that day,
had in his heart a consciousness, an ache, of lonely poverty that dress
and dogcarts and social position could do little--something, but
little--to ease.
* * * * *
He stopped at Chicago and sent word to Windrift that he was ill--not
seriously ill, but in such a state that he thought it best to take care
of himself, with the wedding so near. Theresa was just as well pleased
to have him away, as it gave her absolute freedom to plan and to
superintend her triumph. For the wedding was to be her individual and
exclusive triumph, with even Ross as part of the background--the most
conspicuous part, but still simply background for her personal splendor.
Old Howland--called Bill until his early career as a pedlar and keeper of
a Cheap Jack bazaar was forgotten and who, after the great fire, which
wiped out so many pasts and purified and pedigreed Chicago's present
aristocracy, called himself William G. Howland, merchant prince, had, in
his ideal character for a wealth-chaser, one weakness--a doting fondness
for his daughter. When she came into the world, the doctors told him his
wife would have no more children; thereafter his manner was always
insulting, and usually his tone and words, whenever and of whatever he
spoke to her. Women were made by the Almighty solely to bear children to
men; his woman had been made to bear him a son. Now that she would never
have a son, she was of no use, and it galled him that he could find no
plausibly respectable excuse for casting her off, as he cast off worn-out
servants in his business. But as the years passed and he saw the various
varieties of thorns into which the sons of so many of his fellow-princes
developed, he became reconciled to Theresa--_not_ to his wife. That
unfortunate woman, the daughter of a drunkard and partially deranged by
illness and by grief over her husband's brutality toward her, became--or
rather, was made by her insistent doctor--what would have been called a
drunkard, had she not been the wife of a prince. Her "dipsomania" took an
unaggressive form, as she was by nature gentle and sweet; she simply used
to shut herself in and drink until she would cry herself into a timid,
suppressed hysteria. So secret was she that Theresa never knew the truth
about these "spells."
Howland did not like Ross; but when Theresa told him she was going to
marry him she had only to cry a little and sit in the old man's lap and
tease. "Very well, then," said her father, "you can have him. But he's a
gambler, like his father. They call it finance, but changing the name of
a thing only changes the smell of it, not the thing itself. I'm going to
tie my money up so that he can't get at it."
"I want you to, papa," replied Theresa, giving him a kiss and a great hug
for emphasis. "I don't want anybody to be able to touch _my_ property."
For the wedding, Howland gave Theresa a free hand. "I'll pay the bills,
no matter what they are," said he. "Give yourself a good time." And
Theresa, who had been brought up to be selfish, and was prudent about her
impulses only where she suspected them of being generous, proceeded to
arrange for herself the wedding that is still talked about in Chicago
"society" and throughout the Middle West. A dressmaker from the Rue de la
Paix came over with models and samples, and carried back a huge order and
a plaster reproduction of Theresa's figure, and elaborate notes on the
color of her skin, hair, eyes, and her preferences in shapes of hats. A
jeweler, also of the Rue de la Paix, came with jewels--nearly a million
dollars' worth--for her to make selections. Her boots and shoes and
slippers she got from Rowney, in Fifth Avenue, who, as everybody knows,
makes nothing for less than thirty-five dollars, and can put a hundred
dollars worth of price, if not of value, into a pair of evening slippers.
Theresa was proud of her feet; they were short and plump, and had those
abrupt, towering insteps that are regarded by the people who have them as
unfailing indications of haughty lineage, just as the people who have
flat feet dwell fondly upon the flat feet of the Wittlesbachs, kings in
Bavaria. She was not easy to please in the matter of casements for those
feet; also, as she was very short in stature, she had to get three and a
half extra inches of height out of her heels; and to make that sort of
heel so that it can even be hobbled upon is not easy or cheap. Once
Theresa, fretting about her red-ended nose and muddy skin, had gone to a
specialist. "Let me see your foot," said he; and when he saw the heel, he
exclaimed: "Cut that tight, high-heeled thing out or you'll never get a
decent skin, and your eyes will trouble you by the time you are thirty."
But Theresa, before adopting such drastic measures, went to a beauty
doctor. He assured her that she could be cured without the sacrifice of
the heel, and that the weakness of her eyes would disappear a year or so
after marriage. And he was soon going into ecstasies over her
improvement, over the radiance of her beauty. She saw with his eyes and
ceased to bother about nose or skin--they were the least beautiful of her
beauties, but--"One can't expect to be absolutely perfect. Besides, the
absolutely perfect kind of beauty might be monotonous."
The two weeks before the wedding were the happiest of her life. All day
long, each day, vans were thundering up to the rear doors of Windrift,
each van loaded to bursting with new and magnificent, if not beautiful
costliness. The house was full of the employees of florists, dressmakers,
decorators, each one striving to outdo the other in servility. Theresa
was like an autocratic sovereign, queening it over these menials and
fancying herself adored. They showed _so_ plainly that they were awed by
her and were in ecstasies of admiration over her taste. And, as the
grounds and the house were transformed, Theresa's exaltation grew until
she went about fairly dizzy with delight in herself.
The bridesmaids and ushers came. They were wealth-worshipers all, and
their homage lifted Theresa still higher. They marched and swept about in
her train, lording it over the menials and feeling that they were not a
whit behind the grand ladies and gentlemen of the French courts of the
eighteenth century. They had read the memoirs of that idyllic period
diligently, had read with minds only for the flimsy glitter which hid the
vulgarity and silliness and shame as a gorgeous robe hastily donned by a
dirty chambermaid might conceal from a casual glance the sardonic and
repulsive contrast. The wedding day approached all too swiftly for
Theresa and her court. True, that would be the magnificent climax; but
they knew it would also dissipate the spell--after the wedding, life in
twentieth century America again.
"If only it don't rain!" said Harry Legendre.
"It won't," replied Theresa with conviction--and her look of command
toward the heavens made the courtiers exchange winks and smiles behind
her back. They were courtiers to wealth, not to Theresa, just as their
European prototypes are awed before a "king's most excellent Majesty,"
not before his swollen body and shrunken brain.
And it did not rain. Ross arrived in the red sunset of the wedding eve,
Tom Glenning, his best man, coming with him. They were put, with the
ushers, in rooms at the pavilion where were the squash courts and winter
tennis courts and the swimming baths. Theresa and Ross stood on the front
porch alone in the moonlight, looking out over the enchantment-like scene
into which the florists and decorators had transformed the terraces and
gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but
she accepted his reassurances without question--she would have
disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as
they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight,
her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am _so_ happy," she
murmured, slipping an arm through his.
Her act called for a return pressure. He gave it, much as a woman's
salutation would have made him unconsciously move to lift his hat.
"While Adele was dressing me for dinner--" she began.
At that name, he moved so that her arm dropped from his; but she did not
connect her maid with her former bosom friend.
"I got to thinking about those who are not so well off as we," she went
on; "about the poor. And so, I've asked papa to give all his employees
and the servants nice presents, and I've sent five thousand dollars to be
divided among the churches in the town, down there--for the poor. Do you
think I did wrong? I'm always afraid of encouraging those kind of people
to expect too much of us."
She had asked that he might echo the eulogies she had been bestowing
upon herself. But he disappointed her. "Oh, I guess it was well
enough," he replied. "I must go down to the pavilion. I'm fagged, and
you must be, too."
The suggestion that he might not be looking his best on the morrow was
enough to change the current of her thoughts. "Yes, _do_, dear!" she
urged. "And don't let Tom and Harry and the rest keep you up."
They did not even see him. He sat in the shed at the end of the
boat-landing, staring out over the lake until the moon set. Then he went
to the pavilion. It was all dark; he stole in, and to bed, but not to
sleep. Before his closed but seeing eyes floated a vision of two
women--Adelaide as he had last seen her, Theresa as she looked in the
mornings, as she had looked that afternoon.
He was haggard next day. But it was becoming to him, gave the
finishing touch to his customary bored, distinguished air; and he
was dressed in a way that made every man there envy him. As Theresa, on
insignificant-looking little Bill Howland's arm, advanced to meet him at
the altar erected under a canopy of silk and flowers in the bower of
lilies and roses into which the big drawing-room had been transformed,
she thrilled with pride. _There_ was a man one could look at with
delight, as one said, "My husband!"
It was a perfect day--perfect weather, everything going forward without
hitch, everybody looking his and her best, and "Mama" providentially
compelled by one of her "spells" to keep to her room. Those absences of
hers were so frequent and so much the matter of course that no one gave
them a second thought. Theresa had studied up the customs at fashionable
English and French weddings, and had combined the most aristocratic
features of both. Perhaps the most successful feature was when she and
Ross, dressed for the going away, walked, she leaning upon his arm,
across the lawns to the silk marquee where the wedding breakfast was
served. Before them, walking backward, were a dozen little girls from the
village school, all in white, strewing roses from beribboned baskets, and
singing, "Behold! The bride in beauty comes!"
"Well, I'm glad it's all over," said Theresa as she settled back in a
chair in the private car that was to take them to Wilderness Lodge, in
northern Wisconsin for the honeymoon.
"So am I," Ross disappointed her by saying. "I've felt like a damn fool
ever since I began to face that gaping gang."
"But you must admit it was beautiful," objected Theresa pouting.
Ross shut his teeth together to keep back a rude reply. He was
understanding how men can be brutal to women. To look at her was to have
an all but uncontrollable impulse to rise up and in a series of noisy and
profane explosions reveal to her the truth that was poisoning him. After
a while, a sound from her direction made him glance at her. She was
sobbing. He did not then know that, to her, tears were simply the means
to getting what she wanted; so his heart softened. While she was thinking
that she was looking particularly well and femininely attractive, he was
pitying her as a forlorn creature, who could never inspire love and ought
to be treated with consideration, much as one tries to hide by an
effusive show of courtesy the repulsion deformity inspires.
"Don't cry, Theresa," he said gently, trying to make up his mind to touch
her. But he groaned to himself, "I can't! I must wait until I can't see
her." And he ordered the porter to bring him whisky and soda.
"Won't you join me?" he said.
"You know, I never touch anything to drink," she replied. "Papa and Dr.
Massey both made me promise not to."
Ross's hand, reaching out for the bottle of whisky, drew slowly back. He
averted his face that she might not see. He knew about her mother--and
knew Theresa did not. It had never entered his head that the weakness of
the mother might be transmitted to the daughter. Now--Just before they
left, Dr. Massey had taken him aside and, in a manner that would have
impressed him instantly but for his mood, had said: "Mr. Whitney, I want
you never to forget that Theresa must not be depressed. You must take the
greatest care of her. We must talk about it again--when you return."
And _this_ was what he meant!
He almost leaped to his feet at Theresa's softly interrupting voice, "Are
you ill, dear?"
"A little--the strain--I'll be all right--" And leaving the whisky
untouched, he went into his own compartment. As he was closing the door,
he gave a gasp of dismay. "She might begin now!" he muttered. He rang for
the porter. "Bring that bottle," he said. Then, as an afterthought of
"appearances," "And the soda and a glass."
"I can get you another, sir," said the porter.
"No--that one," ordered Ross.
Behind the returning porter came Theresa. "Can't I do something for you,
dear? Rub your head, or fix the pillows?"
Ross did not look at her. "Do, please--fix the pillows," he said. "Then
if I can sleep a little, I'll be all right, and will soon rejoin you."
"Can't I fix your drink for you?" she asked, putting her hand on
the bottle.
Ross restrained an impulse to snatch it away from her. "Thanks,
no--dear," he answered. "I've decided to swear off--with you. Is it a
go?"
She laughed. "Silly!" she murmured, bending and kissing him. "If
you wish."
"That settles it," said Ross, with a forced, pained smile. "We'll neither
of us touch it. I was getting into the habit of taking too much--not
really too much--but--Oh, you understand."
"That's the way father feels about it," said Theresa, laughing. "We never
drink at home--except mother when she has a spell, and has to be kept up
on brandy."
Ross threw his arm up to hide his face. "Let me sleep, do," he
said gently.