“The Percy-Bartletts,” as _Town Tattle_ always called them in the
weekly paragraph that it devoted to their doings, were dining alone,
“_en tête-à-tête_ and _en famille_,” as the husband sometimes
remarked in a mildly sarcastic way. Not that Percy-Bartlett was in
the habit of being satirical. Far from it! He considered sarcasm
and satire the outward and visible--or, rather, audible--sign of
an inward and hereditary tendency toward vulgarity. The use of
these weapons of speech implied that one possessed both temper and
originality--characteristics that were not approved in the set in which
the Percy-Bartletts moved. But Percy-Bartlett had, by inheritance, a
rather peppery disposition, and a mind naturally given to creative
effort. It was greatly to his credit, therefore, that he had rubbed
his manners and speech into an almost angelic smoothness, and had so
thoroughly stunted such mental qualities as were not included in the
accepted flora-of-the-mind recognized by his set that he passed current
as a man in no danger of ever saying or doing anything that would
attract special attention to him on the part of the world at large.
It is not generally known, but it is nevertheless a fact, that it
sometimes requires heroic self-restraint to become a “howling swell”--a
vulgar term that cannot be avoided by the writer in his effort to
convey to the reader the exact social status of Percy-Bartlett. He was
known to the lower orders of society as a “howling swell,” which means,
of course, that howling was the very last thing in which he would
indulge. There are those, the poet tells us, who never sing, and die
with all their music in them. In like manner the modern aristocrat is
one who never howls, and dies with all his howling in him.
Let it not be thought for a moment that the perfect self-control
exercised by Percy-Bartlett indicated that there was nothing in his
life to try the temper of either a saint or a howling swell. In
fact, the temptation to give way to his hereditary testiness was with
him, practically, at all times. Percy-Bartlett had nobly triumphed
over all tendency toward originality. His wife had not. It was Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett who constantly tried Percy-Bartlett’s temper. If you are
a married man, O reader, you will realize the full significance of the
assertion, now made with due solemnity and emphasis, that, in spite of
this fact, Mr. Percy-Bartlett had never said an unkind word to her,
had never crossed her will, had never shown her, by word or deed, that
he was bitterly disappointed at her refusal to walk in the very narrow
path that society prescribed for her.
It must be acknowledged that there was something in the face and
manner of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett that rendered her husband’s hesitancy
about opposing her will seemingly explicable. Her dark-brown eyes,
golden-brownish hair, clear-cut nose and mouth, and perfect teeth
combined to give her a beauty that won from every man a chivalric
reverence--from every man, that is, who is awed by the loving-kindness
of the Creator in scattering flowers here and there in a weed-choked
earth. Furthermore, there was something in Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s way
of using her hands and moving her head that told of a will-power as
highly developed as that which had enabled her husband to suppress
every inclination to defy the pattern that had been adopted by his set.
Percy-Bartlett had used his self-command to destroy originality. Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett had made her will-power an ally of her creative genius.
The outlook for a permanent peace between them was not bright, but we
find them at dinner at a time when the _modus vivendi_ was still in
comfortable operation.
“And who sings for you to-night?” asked Percy-Bartlett, his calm, blue
eyes resting on his wife coldly. He was a man of thirty-eight, with
pale cheeks, thin lips, and immobile countenance. The fifteen years’
difference in the ages of husband and wife was more than borne out by
their faces. She looked younger than her years; he was younger than he
looked.
“I think,” she answered, “that it will be a great success. The new
boy-soprano who has made such a sensation at St. George’s is coming. So
is Gordon Mackey, the tenor--you met him one night, you remember. Then
Bryant Stanton is to play the ’cello, and Mlle. de Sarçon has promised
to sing some of the ‘Falstaff’ music. Several others of less importance
will be here,--Barton, the baritone, Miss Ely, the contralto, and
so forth. Barton, you know, has been singing my cradle-song at his
concerts.”
Percy-Bartlett looked at his wife in a way that was distinctly
unsympathetic. He seemed to be thinking that a cradle-song was
something of a _tour-de-force_ for a childless woman; but there
are many things about a musical genius that a layman cannot hope
to understand. Percy-Bartlett had learned his limitations in this
direction long ago, and never asked his wife how or why she wrote vocal
music that was slowly but surely gaining popularity. It was a cross he
had to bear, and, like a perfect gentleman, he bore it in silence.
“Don’t you think, my dear,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett sweetly, as
they arose from the table, “that you could endure just one evening of
really good music?”
“You will have to let me off to-night, Harriet,” answered
Percy-Bartlett coldly. “I have a committee meeting at the club. By the
way,” he remarked as they entered the library, in the intellectual
atmosphere of which he was in the habit of smoking his after-dinner
cigar, “I had a letter to-day from a business friend of mine, a distant
relative on my mother’s side, Samuel Stoughton of Norwich. He tells me
that his son, Richard, who was graduated from Yale last year, has come
to the city to take a place on the _Morning Trumpet_. He asks me to
show him a little attention. And, really, I don’t see how I can get out
of it.”
“Why should you want to?” asked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, striking a few
chords on the piano, and casting a questioning glance at her husband.
“The Stoughtons are very nice people.”
“Oh, yes, of course. But then a newspaper man, don’t you know, may be
all very well, but--really I can’t understand why Richard Stoughton,
who was left a fortune, if I remember rightly, by his mother, should
take up the drudgery of New York newspaper life.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, looking down at her white,
symmetrical arms and tapering hands, “perhaps the young man wants to
see all sides of life. Perhaps he wants to enlarge his horizon.”
“Humph,” exclaimed Percy-Bartlett, showing more of his ancestral
testiness than was his wont; “I can’t understand such a motive. If
running up and down the city until all hours of the night, making
a nuisance of yourself, is enlarging one’s horizon, I should think
a man of Stoughton’s position and education would prefer to remain
narrow in his vision. But there is no accounting for tastes; and I
must acknowledge that, of late years, a good many very nice fellows
have gone into newspaper work. Well, we’ll ask Stoughton to dinner
some night when we’re dining alone, and see what kind of a boy he is.
Perhaps he’ll get over his attack of journalistic enthusiasm as he
recovered from the mumps or measles. His father has done me some good
turns in business, and has it in his power to do more. I’ll drop a note
to Richard to-morrow and have him call at the office.”
Percy-Bartlett threw away his cigar and rose to go. The picture his
wife presented was irresistibly attractive. He bent over and kissed
her. It was an unusual outbreak of emotion on his part, and Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett smiled up at him as he turned to leave the room.
“How late,” he asked as he reached the portière, “will your musical
friends be here?”
“Oh, not late,” she answered; “come home by twelve and you will find
them gone.”
* * * * *
The hour of midnight was striking.
“It was a great success, my little musicale,” Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with
flushed, triumphant face, was saying to her husband as they stood in
the drawing-room on his return. The evening had been a pleasant one
to Percy-Bartlett, and the genial influences of his club had made him
sociable.
“Come into the library, Harriet,” he said, “while I smoke just one more
cigar.”
The smile on her face vanished, and lines of fatigue formed around her
mouth.
“Please excuse me,” she murmured in a weary tone. “I am very tired.
They encored my cradle-song so many times that--that, really, it
wearied me. I fear I can’t stand success. Good-night. I’m very sorry.”
“Good-night,” he said coldly.
Then he went to the library and moodily lighted a “perfecto.” There
seemed to be something lacking in his life, something that forever
seemed within his grasp and forever escaped him.