In real life the opera or the theatre is only the prologue to the
evening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins. New
York is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After the
public duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the artificial
comedy and tragedy which imitate life under a mask, and suggest without
satisfying, comes the actual experience. My gentle girl--God bless your
sweet face and pure heart!--who looked down from the sky-parlor at the
Metropolitan upon the legendary splendor of the stage, and the alluring
beauty and wealth of the boxes, and went home to create in dreams the
dearest romance in a maiden's life, you did not know that for many the
romance of the night just began when the curtain fell.
The streets were as light as day. At no other hour were the pavements so
thronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars,
such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a swirl
of pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes and
restaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it is
just the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which has
all of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunity
and unlimited possibility.
At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious--all the
more serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered. Morgan, who
was so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved in
it--some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertaining
than the daily newspaper--knew the histories of half the people in the
room. There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together like
lovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public life
necessary even when the domestic life is established. There is a man who
shot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who rejected
him, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy woman who sits
opposite him in that convivial party. There is a Russian princess, a fair
woman with cool observant eyes, making herself agreeable to a mixed
company in three languages. In this brilliant light is it not wonderful
how dazzlingly beautiful the women are--brunettes in yellow and diamonds,
blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only a bunch of roses for
ornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in a radiant glow that even
the excitement and the lifted glass cannot heighten? That pretty girl
yonder--is she wife or widow?--slight and fresh and fair, they say has an
ambition to extend her notoriety by going upon the stage; the young lady
with her, who does not seem to fear a public place, may be helping her on
the road. The two young gentlemen, their attendants, have the air of
taking life more seriously than the girls, but regard with respectful
interest the mounting vivacity of their companions, which rises and
sparkles like the bubbles in the slender glasses which they raise to
their lips with the dainty grace of practice. The staid family parties
who are supping at adjoining tables notice this group with curiosity, and
express their opinion by elevated eyebrows.
Margaret leaned back in her chair and regarded the whole in a musing'
frame of mind. I think she apprehended nothing of it except the light,
the color, the beauty, the movement of gayety. For her the notes of the
orchestra sounded through it all--the voices of the singers, the hum of
the house; it was all a spectacle and a play. Why should she not enjoy
it? There was something in the nature of the girl that responded to this
form of pleasure--the legitimate pleasure the senses take in being
gratified. "It is so different," she said to me, "from the pleasure one
has in an evening by the fire. Do you know, even Mr. Morgan seems worldly
here."
It was a deeper matter than she thought, this about worldliness, which
had been raised in Margaret's mind. Have we all double natures, and do we
simply conform to whatever surrounds us? Is there any difference in kind
between the country worldliness and the city worldliness? I do not
suppose that Margaret formulated any of these ideas in words. Her
knowledge of the city had hitherto been superficial. It was a place for
shopping, for a day in a picture exhibition, for an evening in the
theatre, no more a part of her existence than a novel or a book of
travels: of the life of the town she knew nothing. That night in her room
she became aware for the first time of another world, restless,
fascinating, striving, full of opportunities. What must London be?
If we could only note the first coming into the mind of a thought that
changes life and re-forms character--supposing that every act and every
new departure has this subtle beginning--we might be less the sport of
circumstances than we seem to be. Unnoted, the desire so swiftly follows
the thought and juggles with the will.
The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses. Mr. Lyon
called. It was a constrained visit. Margaret was cordially civil, and I
fancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been less
so. If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange of
the commonplaces of the day.
"Yes," he was saying to my wife, "perhaps I shall have to change my mind
about the simplicity of your American life. It is much the same in New
York and London. It is only a question of more or less sophistication."
"Mr. Henderson tells us," said my wife, "that you knew the Eschelles in
London."
"Yes. Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season."
"Why almost?"
"Well--you will pardon me--one needs for success in these days to be not
only very clever, but equally daring. It is every day more difficult to
make a sensation."
"I thought her, across the house," Margaret said, "very pretty and
attractive. I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon. Do you mean
that one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in New
York?"
"I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say that
there is always the greater competition in the larger market."
"Oh, my pride," Margaret answered, "does not lie in that direction."
"And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. She
appears to be more interested now in New York than in London."
He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped
suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she be
comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at
the opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.
"And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?" my wife asked.
"Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it." It was an effort
on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly
unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I
could understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world is
to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which
insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society for
First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. "I have never
seen another place," he continued, "where the women are so busy in
improving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings,
recitations, musicales, classes--it fatigues one to keep in sight of
them. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men are
capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild."
"And you find they have no time to be agreeable?"
"Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in,
nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorb
everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as one
of them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a most
interesting city."
The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had been to
see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character,
constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.
"I don't suppose," Mr. Morgan said, "a foreigner would understand it; it
would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London."
"Yes, I saw it," said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. "It was very odd, and
seemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiar
with American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while I
sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play--almost a
part of it, one might say--I doubted if I understood your people as well
as I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is the
beginning of an American drama."
"Some people say that it is."
"But it is so local!"
"Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with.
The only question is, is it true to human nature? What puzzled me in this
American play was its raising the old question of nature and art. You've
seen Coquelin? Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet, the
perfection of training, skill in an art. You never doubt that he is
performing in a play for the entertainment of an audience. You have the
same enjoyment of it that you have of a picture--a picture, I mean, full
of character and sentiment, not a photograph. But I don't think of Denman
Thompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school, but as a
New Hampshire farmer. I don't admire his skill; I admire him. There is
plenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play, plenty of
imitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is the natural
man. If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me." "Probably to
an American audience only he does not," Mr. Lyon remarked.
"Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience."
"I doubt if you will change the laws of art," said Mr. Lyon, rising to
go.
"We shall hope to see you again at our house," my wife said.
"You are very good. I should like it; but my time is running out."
"If you cannot come, you may leave your adieus with Miss Debree, who is
staying some time in the city," my wife said, evidently to Margaret's
annoyance. But she could do no less than give him her city address,
though the information was not accompanied by any invitation in her
manner.
Margaret was to stay some time with two maiden ladies, old friends of her
mother, the Misses Arbuser. The Arbusers were people of consequence in
their day, with a certain social prestige; in fact, the excellent ladies
were two generations removed from successful mercantile life, which in
the remote prospective took on an old-family solidity. Nowhere else in
the city could Margaret have come closer in contact with a certain phase
of New York life in which women are the chief actors--a phase which may
be a transition, and may be only a craze. It is not so much a
condescension of society to literature as it is a discovery that
literature and art, in the persons of those who produce both, may be
sources of amusement, or perhaps, to be just, of the enlargement of the
horizon and the improvement of the mind. The society mind was never
before so hospitable to new ideas and new sensations. Charities, boards
of managers, missions, hospitals, news-rooms, and lodging-houses for the
illiterate and the homeless--these are not sufficient, even with balls,
dancing classes, and teas, for the superfluous energies of this restless,
improving generation; there must be also radical clubs, reading classes,
study classes, ethical, historical, scientific, literary lectures, the
reading of papers by ladies of distinction and gentlemen of special
attainments--an unremitting pursuit of culture and information. Curiosity
is awake. The extreme of social refinement and a mild Bohemianism almost
touch. It passes beyond the affectation of knowing persons who write
books and write for the press, artists in paint and artists in music.
"You cannot be sure in the most exclusive circle"--it was Carmen Eschelle
who said this--"that you will not meet an author or even a journalist."
Not all the women, however, adore letters or affect enthusiasm at
drawing-room lectures; there are some bright and cynical ones who do not,
who write papers themselves, and have an air of being behind the scenes.
Margaret had thought that she was fully occupied in the country, with her
teaching, her reading, her literature and historical clubs, but she had
never known before what it was to be busy and not have time for anything,
always in pursuit of some new thing, and getting a fragment here and
there; life was a good deal like reading the dictionary and remembering
none of the words. And it was all so cosmopolitan and all-embracingly
sympathetic. One day it was a paper by a Servian countess on the social
life of the Servians, absorbingly interesting both in itself and because
it was a countess who read it; and this was followed by the singing of an
Icelandic tenor and a Swedish soprano, and a recital on the violin by a
slight, red-haired, middle-aged woman from London. All the talents seem
to be afloat and at the service of the strenuous ones who are cultivating
themselves.
The first function at which Margaret assisted in the long drawing-rooms
of the Arbusers was a serious one--one that combined the charm of culture
with the temptations of benevolence. The rooms were crowded with the
fashion of the town, with a sprinkling of clergymen and of thin
philanthropic gentlemen in advanced years. It was a four-o'clock, and the
assembly had the cheerfulness of a reception, only that the display of
toilets was felt to be sanctified by a purpose. The performance opened
with a tremendous prelude on the piano by Herr Bloomgarten, who had been
Liszt's favorite pupil; indeed, it was whispered that Liszt had said
that, old as he was, he never heard Bloomgarten without learning
something. There was a good deal of subdued conversation while the
pianist was in his extreme agony of execution, and a hush of extreme
admiration--it was divine, divine, ravishing--when he had finished. The
speaker was a learned female pundit from India, and her object was to
interest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunate
Hindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands and tens of thousands of them
were doomed to early and lifelong widowhood, owing to the operation of
cruel caste laws, which condemned even girls betrothed to deceased
Brahmins to perpetual celibacy. This fate could only be alleviated by the
education and elevation of women. And money was needed for schools,
especially for medical schools, which would break down the walls of
prejudice and enfranchise the sex. The appeal was so charmingly made that
every one was moved by it, especially the maiden ladies present, who
might be supposed to enter into the feelings of their dusky sisters
beyond the seas. The speaker said, with a touch of humor that always
intensifies a serious discourse, that she had been told that in one of
the New England States there was a superfluity of unmarried women; but
this was an entirely different affair; it was a matter of choice with
these highly educated and accomplished women. And the day had come when
woman could make her choice! At this there was a great clapping of hands.
It was one thing to be free to lead a life of single self-culture, and
quite another to be compelled to lead a single fife without self-culture.
The address was a great success, and much enthusiasm spread abroad for
the cause of the unmarried women of India.
In the audience were Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter. Margaret and Carmen
were made acquainted, and were drawn together by curiosity, and perhaps
by a secret feeling of repulsion. Carmen was all candor and sweetness,
and absorbingly interested in the women of India, she said. With
Margaret's permission she would come and see her, for she believed they
had common friends.
It would seem that there could not be much sympathy between natures so
opposed, persons who looked at life from such different points of view,
but undeniably Carmen had a certain attraction for Margaret. The New
Englander, whose climate is at once his enemy and his tonic, always longs
for the tropics, which to him are a region of romance, as Italy is to the
German. In his nature, also, there is something easily awakened to the
allurements of a sensuous existence, and to a desire for a freer
experience of life than custom has allowed him. Carmen, who showed to
Margaret only her best side--she would have been wise to exhibit no other
to Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves with
men--seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinating
worldliness which make the world agreeable.
One morning, a few days after the Indian function, Margaret was alone in
her own cozy sitting-room. Nothing was wanting that luxury could suggest
to make it in harmony with a beautiful woman, nothing that did not
flatter and please, or nurse, perhaps, a personal sense of beauty, and
impart that glow of satisfaction which comes when the senses are adroitly
ministered to. Margaret had been in a mood that morning to pay extreme
attention to her toilet. The result was the perfection of simplicity, of
freshness, of maiden purity, enhanced by the touch of art. As she
surveyed herself in the pier-glass, and noted the refined lines of the
morning-gown which draped but did not conceal the more exquisite lines of
her figure, and adjusted a rose in her bosom, she did not feel like a
Puritan, and, although she may not have noted the fact, she did not look
like one. It was not a look of vanity that she threw into the mirror, or
of special self-consciousness; in her toilet she had obeyed only her
instinct (that infallible guide in a woman of refinement), and if she was
conscious of any emotion, it was of the stirring within her of the
deepest womanly nature.
In fact, she was restless. She flung herself into an easy-chair before
the fire, and took up a novel. It was a novel with a religious problem.
In vain she tried to be interested in it. At home she would have absorbed
it eagerly; they would have discussed it; the doubts and suggestions in
it would have assumed the deepest personal importance. It might have made
an era in her thoughtful country life. Here it did not so appeal to her;
it seemed unreal and shadowy in a life that had so much more of action
than of reflection in it. It was a life fascinating and exciting, and
profoundly unsatisfactory. Yet, after all, it was more really life than
that placid vegetation in the country. She felt that in the whirl of only
a few days of it--operas, receptions, teas, readings, dances, dinners,
where everybody sparkled with a bewildering brilliancy, and yet from
which one brought away nothing but a sense of strain; such gallantry,
such compliments, such an easy tossing about of every topic under heaven;
such an air of knowing everything, and not caring about anything very
much; so much mutual admiration and personal satisfaction! She liked it,
and perhaps was restless because she liked it. To be admired, to be
deferred to--was there any harm in that? Only, if one suffers admiration
today, it becomes a necessity tomorrow. She began to feel the influence
of that life which will not let one stand still for a moment. If it is
not the opera, it is a charity; if it is not a lover, it is some endowed
cot in a hospital. There must be something going on every day, every
hour.
Yes, she was restless, and could not read. She thought of Mr. Henderson.
He had called formally. She had seen him, here and there, again and
again. He had sought her out in all companies; his face had broken into a
smile when he met her; he had talked with her lightly, gayly; she
remembered the sound of his voice; she had learned to know his figure in
a room among a hundred; and she blushed as she remembered that she had
once or twice followed him with her eyes in a throng. He was, to be sure,
nothing to her; but he was friendly; he was certainly entertaining; he
was a part, somehow, of this easy-flowing life.
Miss Eschelle was announced. Margaret begged that she would come upstairs
without ceremony. The mutual taking-in of the pretty street costume and
the pretty morning toilet was the work of a moment--the photographer has
invented no machine that equals a woman's eyes for such a purpose.
"How delightful it is! how altogether charming!" and Margaret felt that
she was included with the room in this admiration. "I told mamma that I
was coming to see you this morning, even if I missed the Nestors'
luncheon. I like to please myself sometimes. Mamma says I'm frivolous,
but do you know"--the girls were comfortably seated by the fire, and
Carmen turned her sweet face and candid eyes to her companion--"I get
dreadfully tired of all this going round and round. No, I don't even go
to the Indigent Mothers' Home; it's part of the same thing, but I haven't
any gift that way. Ah, you were reading--that novel."
"Yes; I was trying to read it; I intend to read it."
"Oh, we have had it! It's a little past now, but it has been all the
rage. Everybody has read it; that is, I don't know that anybody has read
it, but everybody has been talking about it. Of course somebody must have
read it, to set the thing agoing. And it has been discussed to death. I
sometimes feel as if I had changed my religion half a dozen times in a
fortnight. But I haven't heard anything about it for a week. We have
taken up the Hindoo widows now, you know." And the girl laughed, as if
she knew she were talking nonsense.
"And you do not read much in the city?" Margaret asked, with an answering
smile.
"Yes; in the summer. That is, some do. There is a reading set. I don't
know that they read much, but there is a reading set. You know, Miss
Debree, that when a book is published--really published, as Mr. Henderson
says--you don't need to read it. Somehow it gets into the air and becomes
common property. Everybody hears the whole thing. You can talk about it
from a notice. Of course there are some novels that one must read in
order to understand human nature. Do you read French?"
"Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot."
"Nor can I," said Carmen, with a sincere face. "They are too realistic
for me." She was at the moment running over in her mind a "situation" in
a paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. "Mr. Henderson says
that everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise the
novels they don't read."
"You know Mr. Henderson very well?"
"Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of."
"Afraid of?"
"Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes your
curiosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you a
little uneasy."
Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon the
nature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slight
expression of pain on Margaret's face.
"But there is your Mr. Lyon--"
Margaret laughed. "You do me too much honor. I think you discovered him
first."
"Well, our Mr. Lyon." Carmen was still looking into the fire. "He is such
a good young man!"
Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and she
replied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, "We all have the
highest regard for Mr. Lyon."
"Yes, and he is quite gone on Brandon, I assure you. He intends to do a
great deal of good in the world. I think he spends half his time in New
York studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproaches
me that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldly
side. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be"--this
with a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation--"but I haven't
any call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what
she means--dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked,
after a moment, turning to Margaret?
Margaret explained that she was neither.
"Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical.
There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religious
belief."
"I should think not," said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. "It
must be a matter of great anxiety to you here."
Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed with
merriment as she rose.
"What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deep
things. You must not mind what I said about Mr.--(a little pause to read
Margaret's face)--Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charming
you are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not letting
this life tell on one." And she was gone in a shower of compliments and
smiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out.
Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.
The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did not
raise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sort
of woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man to
whom such a woman would be attracted?