As soon as Ray had pulled himself out of his slough of despond, and
began to struggle forward on such footing as he found firm, he felt the
rise of the social instinct in him. He went about and delivered his
letters; he appeared at one of Mrs. Chapley’s Thursdays, and began to be
passed from one afternoon tea to another. He met the Mayquaits at Mrs.
Chapley’s, those Gitchigumee people she had asked him about, and at
their house he met a lady so securely his senior that she could let him
see at once she had taken a great fancy to him. The Mayquaits have since
bought a right of way into the heart of society, but they were then in
the peripheral circles, and this lady seemed anxious to be accounted for
in that strange company of rich outcasts. Something in Ray’s intelligent
young good looks must have appealed to her as a possible solvent. As
soon as he was presented to her she began to ply him with subtle
questions concerning their hostess and their fellow-guests, with whom
she professed to find herself by a species of accident springing from
their common interest in a certain charity: that particular tea was to
promote it. Perhaps it was the steadfast good faith of the pretty boy in
refusing to share in her light satire, while he could not help showing
that he enjoyed it, which commended Ray more and more to her. He told
her how he came to be there, not because she asked, for she did not ask,
but because he perceived that she wished to know, and because it is
always pleasant to speak about one’s self upon any pretext, and he
evinced a delicate sympathy with her misgiving. It flattered him that
she should single him out for her appeal as if he were of her sort, and
he eagerly accepted an invitation she made him. Through her favor and
patronage he began to go to lunches and dinners; he went to balls, and
danced sometimes when his pockets were so empty that he walked one way
to save his car fares. But his poverty was without care; it did not eat
into his heart, for no one else shared it; and those spectres of want
and shame which haunt the city’s night, and will not always away at
dawn, but remain present to eyes that have watched and wept, vanished in
the joyous light that his youth shed about him, as he hurried home with
the waltz music beating in his blood. A remote sense, very remote and
dim, of something all wrong attended him at moments in his pleasure; at
moments it seemed even he who was wrong. But this fled before his
analysis; he could not see what harm he was doing. To pass his leisure
in the company of well-bred, well-dressed, prosperous, and handsome
people was so obviously right and fit that it seemed absurd to suffer
any question of it. He met mainly very refined persons, whose interests
were all elevated, and whose tastes were often altruistic. He found
himself in a set of young people, who loved art and literature and
music, and he talked to his heart’s content with agreeable girls about
pictures and books and theatres.
It surprised him that with all this opportunity and contiguity he did
not fall in love; after the freest give and take of æsthetic sympathies
he came away with a kindled fancy and a cold heart. There was one girl
he thought would have let him be in love with her if he wished, but when
he questioned his soul he found that he did not wish, or could not. He
said to himself that it was her money, for she was rich as well as
beautiful and wise; and he feigned that if it had not been for her money
he might have been in love with her. Her people, an aunt and uncle, whom
she lived with, made much of him, and the way seemed clear. They began
to tell each other about themselves, and once he interested her very
much by the story of his adventures in first coming to New York.
“And did you never meet the two young women afterwards?” she asked.
“Yes. That was the curious part of it,” he said, and piqued that she
called them “two young women,” he went on to tell her of the Hugheses,
whom he set forth in all the picturesqueness he could command. She
listened intensely, and even provoked him with some questions to go on;
but at the end she said nothing; and after that she was the same and not
the same to him. At first he thought it might be her objection to his
knowing such queer people; she was very proud; but he was still made
much of by her family, and there was nothing but this difference in her
that marked with its delicate distinctness the loss of a chance.
He was not touched except in his vanity. Without the subtle willingness
which she had subtly withdrawn, his life was still surpassingly rich on
the side where it had been hopelessly poor; and in spite of his personal
poverty he was in the enjoyment of a social affluence beyond the magic
of mere money. Sometimes he regarded it all as his due, and at all times
he took it with simple ingratitude; but he had moments of passionate
humility when he realized that he owed his good fortune to the caprice
of a worldly old woman, whom he did not respect very much.
When he began to go into society, he did not forget his earlier friends;
he rather prided himself on his constancy; he thought it was uncommon,
and he found it a consolation when other things failed him. It was even
an amusement full of literary suggestion for him to turn from his own
dream of what the world was to Hughes’s dream of what the world should
be; and it flattered him that the old man should have taken the sort of
fancy to him that he had. Hughes consulted him as a person with a
different outlook on life, and valued him as a practical mind, akin to
his own in quality, if not in direction. First and last, he read him his
whole book; he stormily disputed with him about the passages which Ray
criticised as to their basal facts; but he adopted some changes Ray
suggested.
The young fellow was a whole gay world to Mrs. Denton, in his
reproduction of his society career for her. She pursued him to the
smallest details of dress and table and manner; he lived his society
events over again for her with greater consciousness than he had known
in their actual experience; and he suffered patiently the little
splenetic resentment in which her satiety was apt finally to express
itself. He decided that he must not take Mrs. Denton in any wise
seriously; and he could see that Peace was grateful to him for his
complaisance and forbearance. She used to listen, too, when he described
the dinners and dances for her sister, and their interest gave the
material a fascination for Ray himself: it emphasized the curious
duality of his life, and lent the glamor of unreality to the regions
where they could no more have hoped to follow him than to tread the
realms of air. Sometimes their father hung about him--getting points for
his morals, as Ray once accused him of doing.
“No, no!” Hughes protested. “I am interested to find how much better
than their conditions men and women always are. The competitive
conditions of our economic life characterize society as well as
business. Yet business men and society women are all better and kinder
than you would believe they could be. The system implies that the weak
must always go to the wall, but in actual operation it isn’t so.”
“From Mr. Ray’s account there seem to be a good many wall-flowers,” Mrs.
Denton suggested.
Hughes ignored her frivolity. “It shows what glorious beings men and
women would be if they were rightly conditioned. There is a whole heaven
of mercy and loving-kindness in human nature waiting to open itself: we
know a little of what it may be when a man or woman rises superior to
circumstance and risks a generous word or deed in a selfish world. Then
for a moment we have a glimpse of the true life of the race.”
“Well, I wish I had a glimpse of the untrue life of the race, myself,”
said Mrs. Denton, as her father turned away. “I would give a whole year
of the millennium for a week in society.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said her husband. He had
been listening in gloomy silence to Ray’s talk, and he now turned on his
wife. “I would rather see you dead than in such ‘good society’ as that.”
“Oh, well,” she answered, “you’re much likelier to see me dead. If I
understand Mr. Ray, it’s a great deal easier to get into heaven than to
get into good society.” She went up to her husband and pushed his hair
back from his eyes. “If you wore it that way, people could see what a
nice forehead you’ve got. You look twice as ‘brainy,’ now, Ansel.”
He caught her hand and flung it furiously away. “Ansel,” she said, “is
beginning to feel the wear and tear of the job of setting the world
right as much as I do. He never had as much faith in the millennium as
father has; he thinks there’s got to be some sort of sacrifice first;
he hasn’t made up his mind quite what it’s to be, yet.”
Denton left them abruptly, and after a while Ray heard him talking in
the next room; he thought he must be talking to some one there, till his
wife said, “Ansel doesn’t say much in company, but he’s pretty sociable
when he gets by himself.”