“Men used to be divided into two classes, you know, Mr. Fenton,--those
who belonged to our set, and those who did not.”
Gertrude Van Vleck and John Fenton had retired to a remote corner of
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s drawing-room, and were keeping up as animated
a conversation as the depressing influences of a musicale permit. In
evening dress, Fenton was a man of a most impressive presence. He had
come to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s musicale expecting to be bored. The
expression on his strong, thoughtful face, as he gazed smilingly at the
handsome, aristocratic-looking girl beside him, proved that she had
followed in Richard Stoughton’s footsteps, and had performed a miracle.
“And what is the distinction that you yourself make, Miss Van Vleck?”
asked Fenton.
She looked at him earnestly a moment.
“To me,” she answered, “there are two kinds of men,--those who interest
me, and those who do not.”
“Perhaps,” said Fenton, taking advantage of an interlude in the
music-room, “perhaps it is inconsiderate on my part to ask the
question, but I acknowledge that I am curious to know what ratio exists
between the men who interest you and the men who do not.”
“I don’t know that I ever put the problem on a mathematical basis,”
answered Gertrude, an amused smile playing across her face. “I am
inclined to think that the ratio changes from year to year.”
“To your advantage?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not. As time goes on I find that I meet more men who do not
interest me and fewer who do. But there is compensation for this in the
fact that women have grown more attractive to each other than they used
to be.”
An enthusiastic soprano was at the moment striking certain high notes
as though she had a grudge against them, and Fenton was obliged to
pause a moment before he asked,--
“Won’t you explain that to me, Miss Van Vleck? It is, as you put it, a
novel idea.”
“Why, don’t you see,” she said earnestly, “the very fact that women are
joined together in a protest against ancient customs and prejudices has
drawn them closer to each other; while, at the same time, it has tended
to bring out the most characteristic qualities of each individual
woman. In a word, we women interest each other more as rebels than we
did as slaves.”
Again the soprano uttered her protest against peace and quiet, and
Fenton had an opportunity to weigh Gertrude Van Vleck’s words. His
_vis-à-vis_ was a social product the like of which had not existed in
the days when he had been a member of New York’s inner circle, and had
expected from a young unmarried woman nothing in a conversational way
that would challenge thought. Of course, in his journalistic occupation
he had been obliged to follow in detail the progress of woman toward a
broader, perhaps higher, plane of endeavor; but this was the first time
that Fenton had come face to face with the new ideas incarnate. He was
entertained, stimulated, inspired, by the experience. At first he had
looked upon Gertrude Van Vleck simply as a finely developed specimen of
the patrician type, whose dark hair, deep blue eyes, and finely rounded
neck formed a combination very pleasing to the eye, and indicated a
remote Spanish strain mingling with her Dutch blood. But after a few
moments in her companionship, he had discovered that she not only
satisfied his æsthetic nature, but piqued his intellectual make-up.
She had given him the highest pleasure that one mind can bestow upon
another, by opening up new vistas of thought to him.
John Fenton had reached that period of a life that had been filled with
disappointments when feminine sympathy and appreciation are among the
few things left in the world that are wholly satisfying. Perhaps it was
this very fact that had led him to make a friend of Richard Stoughton,
a youth whose quick intuitions and mental alertness had much in them
that was feminine.
There was, furthermore, a note of defiance in Gertrude’s last remark
that struck a sympathetic chord in Fenton’s nature. No man can accept
the premises upon which the economic theories to which Fenton had
subscribed are based without developing the rebellious tendencies that
lie more or less dormant in all men. For the first time, the similarity
impressed him that exists between woman’s revolt against the oppression
of man, and man’s restlessness under the threatening inequalities of
wealth.
“And as rebels women are much more attractive to men than they were
as conformists,” remarked Fenton, seizing an opportunity to resume
the conversation, after a self-satisfied tenor had proved to his own
satisfaction that he had a divine right to be conceited about his
voice. “To use a rather shop-worn quotation, ‘Blessings brighten as
they take their flight.’”
“But that is not a fair illustration,” exclaimed Gertrude earnestly.
“We are not trying to fly away from men, but to fly with them.”
“That may be true,” said Fenton, smiling thoughtfully; “but men are
naturally startled at the suddenly displayed power of your wings, and
are a little shy at first.”
“Why should they be? After all, I believe that the underlying ambition
of the new woman--as she is rather vulgarly called--is to make herself
intellectually attractive to the brightest men.”
“Then the progress of woman has not decreased the social importance of
the clever man?” asked Fenton humbly.
“On the contrary, Mr. Fenton, it has enhanced it--by giving him a
larger and more appreciative audience. The man of mental power would
hold a higher place in a community containing many Mesdames de Staël
than in a social circle possessing only one. Is it not so?”
“Do you know, Miss Van Vleck,” said Fenton, not answering her question
directly, “that I begin to think that I shall owe you a great debt of
gratitude?”
A slight tinge of red mounted to her face as her eyes met his. He
impressed her as a man more fitted to bestow favors than to accept them.
“I don’t quite understand you,” she said softly.
“We owe much,” he continued, “to those who take us out of our mental
grooves and give us a new standpoint from which to view the world.
There may be a good deal of selfishness in occupying one’s mind
entirely with man’s inhumanity to man, and blinding ourselves to man’s
inhumanity to woman. I have to thank you for a new point of view.”
“But,” protested Gertrude, “I have said nothing that we do not read in
print every day.”
“Even if that is so,” said Fenton, “truths that would make no
impression on me if I read them on an editorial page come to me with
startling force when you present them. I repeat, that I owe you a debt
of gratitude.”
At that moment Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s voice, a rich, highly-cultivated
contralto, was heard, giving passionate expression to Heine’s mournful
little story of the pine that dreamt of love. Richard Stoughton stood
at the entrance to the music-room, forgetful of the crowd around him.
There was something in her voice that seemed to be meant for him alone,
something that told him she was thinking of the night when she had
first sung the song to him. “I must be growing wofully egotistic,” he
thought; but at that instant their eyes met, and his self-deprecation
vanished.
She came to him after the applause had died away, and called his
attention to an unoccupied corner of the drawing-room.
“I want to talk to you,” she said simply. “Come!”
“Do you know,” she began playfully, after they were seated, “I have
begun to feel a good deal awed in your presence. A man who can perform
miracles, you know”--
“Well?” exclaimed Richard, as she hesitated a moment.
“A man who can perform miracles is to be avoided. Just think of poor
Trilby and Svengali.”
Richard laughed outright.
“That is a most complimentary remark! If I follow you, you mean that I
hypnotized John Fenton. I certainly feel flattered. But, do you know,
I begin to suspect that your friend, Miss Van Vleck, will prove a much
more successful medium than I?”
They both glanced at Gertrude and John Fenton, who were deep in
conversation in the opposite corner of the drawing-room.
“I am very glad that all responsibility for the man’s future has been
taken off of my hands,” said Richard. “The fact is, I feel that I have
all that I can do to take care of myself.”
He looked into her eyes with an expression in his own that was hardly
allowable--even at a musicale.
“How selfish a man is,” Mrs. Percy-Bartlett murmured musingly. “It is
almost impossible for him to be a consistent friend to another man. How
much less is he able to be a true friend to a woman.”
“The basis of all friendship is affection,” argued Richard, lowering
his voice as the music of a ’cello crept softly through the room. “And
affection is a very hard thing to hold in check.”
She looked up at him with a smile on her lips, but an expression of
sadness in her eloquent brown eyes.
“It is, indeed!” she almost whispered. Then, as if regretting the
admission, she leaned back in her chair, and seemed to listen to the
soft, throbbing harmonies that the piano and the ’cello begot as their
tones met and mingled, as though they caressed each other.
Richard bent forward, and their eyes met again.
“Do you reject my--my friendship?” he whispered.
Suddenly he felt her hand in his; and she smiled as he pressed it,
while her eyes brightened, and her cheeks flushed. Withdrawing her
hand, she said, her voice hardly audible even as he bent his face close
to hers:--
“Remember that there is another foundation-stone to friendship: it is
unselfishness.”
The words, and the pleading tone in which they were uttered, combined
to make her remark sound more like a prayer to his generosity than a
statement founded on a time-worn truth.
“I will try,” whispered Richard earnestly, “I will try to be an ideal
friend to you. I would rather have your friendship than the love of any
other woman in the world.”
She smiled up at him gratefully, as though he had made a great
sacrifice for her happiness. They say that Love is blind. Perhaps that
is the reason that the little rascal is such a consummate liar. How can
one expect a sightless imp, whose domain is youth, and whose throne
is the heart, to wield his sceptre with absolute respectability? If
he could see further, Cupid might behave better as a monarch; but the
chances are, in that case, that he would be compelled to abdicate.
The hour was waxing late.
“I must resume my duties,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett reluctantly; “and
abandon my friend for the sake of my guests. Will you come to see me
soon? Let me see--a week from to-night I have no engagement. Will you
come and talk to me of friendship?”
“Very gladly,” murmured Richard, touching her willing hand again.
“Until then I shall not live, but dream!”
Richard and Fenton strolled together down the avenue, silent and
self-absorbed. Finally the former asked,--
“Did you have a pleasant evening, John?”
“Very,” answered Fenton gruffly.
They walked for half a block before they spoke again.
“The music was well done,” ventured Richard.
“Yes,” assented Fenton. Neither of the two again opened their lips
until they reached the cross-street at which they were to part.
“Good-night, John,” said Richard, holding out his hand.
“Good-night, boy! See you to-morrow,” exclaimed Fenton hurriedly. Then
he walked onward alone.
“I went there,” he was saying to himself, “to get a line on the
youngster’s affair. But the cold, hard fact is that I forgot all about
him.”...
At that same moment Percy-Bartlett and Buchanan Budd were smoking their
good-night cigars together at the club.
“It is really too bad,” Budd was saying, “that the newspapers have been
able to print so much scandal about our set. But I suppose there is no
way to prevent it.”
“But there is a way,” returned Percy-Bartlett almost sternly. “What we
need in the inner circle is more heroism and less heroics. If _noblesse
oblige_ means anything at all in these days, it demands of those who
live up to its behests that they be self-contained, not hysterical.
There is no necessity for a domestic tragedy getting into print if the
man or woman who is wronged is fundamentally worthy of a place in the
most select coterie on earth.”
“You would rather wink at crime than have the public gossip about you,
then?” asked Budd.
“I would--a thousand times!” answered Percy-Bartlett, throwing away his
cigar and saying “good-night” cheerily.