IX

It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses--palaces--that begin

to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the

splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay

for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.

This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich

--and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the course

must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can

get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican

simplicity.

Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of

servants in livery--shortclothes and stockings--in decorous vacuity--an

array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of

the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self a

part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal

simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult to

attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to

separate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the town

that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion

used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond

remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented

shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani--it

was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in the

music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had

worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as

an intaglio--indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the

costly facts.

The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:

the house swarmed with servants--retainers, one might say. Margaret, who

was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a

man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women

in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere

accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women

do not cost so much originally as good pictures--that is, good men and

women--everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them.

Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance

afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.

The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson

had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same

studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the

extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under

the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the

dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare

flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply

modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity--pure whiteness, the glow of

yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was

in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre

d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and

hostess--perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple

and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another

generation will remove that.

If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up

to the level of the dinner and the house--what except that of a circle of

wits, who would be out of place there, could be?--the presence of Mr.

Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk

ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at

Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the

irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the

marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who

would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark

across the table about a "corner" (it is impossible absolutely here, as

well as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening of

galleries--anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of the

vivacity and persiflage.

"I saw you, Mr. Henderson"--it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice--"the

other night in a box with a very pretty woman."

"Yes--Miss Eschelle."

"I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, various

places; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be very

entertaining--and enterprising."

"Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other lady

was her mother. And the man with us--that might interest you more, Mrs.

Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm."

"Ah! Then I suppose she has money?"

"I never saw any painful evidence of poverty. But I don't think Mr. Lyon

is fortune-hunting. He seems to be after information and--goodness."

Margaret flushed a little, but apparently Henderson did not notice it.

Then she said (after Mrs. Laflamme had dropped the subject with the

remark that he had come to the right place), "Miss Eschelle called on me

yesterday."

"And was, no doubt, agreeable."

"She was, as Mrs. Laflamme says, entertaining. She quoted you a good

deal."

"Quoted me? For what?"

"As one would a book, as a familiar authority."

"I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you will excuse the street

expression, to have my stock quotable. Perhaps you couldn't tell whether

Miss Eschelle was a bull or a bear in this case?"

"I don't clearly know what that is. She didn't offer me any," said

Margaret, in a tone of carrying on the figure without any personal

meaning.

"Well, she is a bit of an operator. A good many women here amuse

themselves a little in stocks."

"It doesn't seem to me very feminine."

"No? But women generally like to' take risks and chances. In countries

where lotteries are established they always buy tickets."

"Ah! then they only risk what they have. I think women are more prudent

and conservative than men."

"No doubt. They are conservatives usually. But when they do go in for

radical measures and risks, they leave us quite behind." Mr. Henderson

did not care to extend the conversation in this direction, and he asked,

abruptly, "Are you finding New York agreeable, Miss Debree?"

"Yes. Yes and no. One has no time to one's self. Do you understand why it

is, Mr. Henderson, that one can enjoy the whole day and then be

thoroughly dissatisfied with it?"

"Perfectly; when the excitement is over."

"And then I don't seem to be myself here. I have a feeling of having lost

myself."

"Because the world is so big?"

"Not that. Do you know, the world seems much smaller here than at home."

"And the city appears narrow and provincial?"

"I cannot quite explain it. The interests of life don't seem so large

--the questions, I mean, what is going on in Europe, the literature, the

reforms, the politics. I get a wider view when I stand off--at home. I

suppose it is more concentrated here. And, oh dear, I'm so stupid!

Everybody is so alert in little things, so quick to turn a compliment,

and say a bright thing. While I am getting ready to say what I really

think about Browning, for instance, he is disposed of in a sentence."

"That is because you try to say what you really think."

"If one don't, what's the use of talk?"

"Oh, to pass the time."

Margaret looked up to see if Henderson was serious. There was a smile of

amusement on his face, but not at all offensive, because the woman saw

that it was a look of interest also.

"Then I sha'n't be serious any more," she said, as there was a movement

to quit the table.

"That lays the responsibility on me of being serious," he replied, in the

same light tone.

Later they were wandering through the picture-gallery together. A gallery

of modern pictures appeals for the most part to the senses--represents

the pomps, the color, the allurements of life. It struck Henderson

forcibly that this gallery, which he knew well, appeared very different

looking at it with Miss Debree from what it would if he had been looking

at it with Miss Eschelle. There were some pictures that he hurried past,

some technical excellences only used for sensuous effects--that he did

not call attention to as he might have done with another. Curiously

enough, he found himself seeking sentiment, purity. If the drawing was

bad, Margaret knew it; if a false note was struck, she saw it. But she

was not educated up to a good many of the suggestions of the gallery.

Henderson perceived this, and his manner to her became more deferential

and protective. It was a manner to which every true woman responds, and

Margaret was happy, more herself, and talked with a freedom and gayety, a

spice of satire, and a note of reality that made her every moment more

attractive to her companion. In her, animation the charm of her unworn

beauty blazed upon him with a direct personal appeal. He hardly cared to

conceal his frank admiration. She, on her part, was thinking, what could

Miss Eschelle mean by saying that she was afraid of him?

"Does the world seem any larger here, Miss Debree?" he asked, as they had

lingeringly made the circuit of the room and passed out through the

tropical conservatory to join the rest of the company.

"Yes--away from people."

"Then it is not numbers, I am glad to know, that make a world."

She did not reply. But when he encountered her, robed for departure, at

the foot of the stairway, she gave him her hand in good-night, and their

eyes met for a moment.

I wonder if that was the time? Probably not. I fancy that when the right

day came she confessed that the moment was when she first saw him enter

their box at the opera.

Henderson walked down the avenue slowly, hearing the echo of his own

steps in the deserted street. He was in no haste to reach home. It was

such a delightful evening-snowing a little, and cold, but so

exhilarating. He remembered just how she turned her head as she got into

the carriage. She had touched his arm lightly once in the gallery to call

his attention to a picture. Yes, the world was larger, larger, by one,

and it would seem large--her image came to him distinctly--if she were

the only one.

Henderson was under the spell of this evening when the next, in response

to a note asking him to call for a moment on business, he was shown into

the Eschelle drawing-room. It was dimly lighted, but familiarity with the

place enabled him without difficulty to find his way down the long suite,

rather overcrowded with luxurious furniture, statuary, and pictures on

easels, to the little library at the far end glowing in a rosy light.

There, ensconced in a big chair, a book in her hand, one pretty foot on

the fender, sat Carmen, in a grayish, vaporous toilet, which took a warm

hue from the color of the spreading lamp-shades. On the carved table near

was a litter of books and of nameless little articles, costly and

coquettish, which assert femininity, even in a literary atmosphere. Over

the fireplace hung a picture of spring--a budding girl, smiling and

winning, in a semi-transparent raiment, advancing with swift steps to

bring in the season of flowers and of love. The hand that held the book

rested upon the arm of the chair, a finger inserted in the place where

she had been reading, her rounded white arm visible to the elbow, and

Carmen was looking into the fire in the attitude of reflection upon a

suggestive passage.

Women have so many forms of attraction, different women are attractive in

so many different ways, moods are so changing, beauty is so undefinable,

and has so many weapons. And yet men are called inconstant!

It was not until Henderson had time to take in the warmth of this

domestic picture that Carmen rose.

"It is so good of you to come, with all your engagements. Mamma is

excused with a headache, but she has left me power of attorney to ask

questions about our little venture."

"I hope the attorney will not put me through a cross-examination."

"That depends upon how you have been behaving, Mr. Henderson. I'm not

very cross yet. Now, sit there so that I can look at you and see how

honest you are."

"Do you want me to put on my business or my evening expression?"

"Oh, the first, if you mean business."

"Well, your stocks are going up."

"That's nice. You are so lucky! Everything goes up with you. Do you know

what they say of you.

"Nothing bad, I hope."

"That everything you touch turns to gold. That you will be one of the

nabobs of New York in ten years."

"That's a startling destiny."

"Isn't it? I don't like it." The girl seemed very serious. "I'd like you

to be distinguished. To be in the Cabinet. To be minister--go to England.

But one needs a great deal of money for that, to go as one ought to go.

What a career is open to a man in this country if he has money!"

"But I don't care for politics."

"Who does? But position. You can afford that if you have money enough. Do

you know, Mr. Henderson, I think you are dull."

"Thank you. I reckoned you'd find it out."

"The other night at the Nestor ball a lady--no, I won't tell you who she

is--asked me if I knew who that man was across the room; such an air of

distinction; might be the new British Minister. You know, I almost

blushed when I said I did know him."

"Well?"

"You see what people expect of you. When a man looks distinguished and is

clever, and knows how to please if he likes, he cannot help having a

career, unless he is afraid to take the chances."

Henderson was not conscious of ever being wanting in this direction. The

picture conjured up by the ingenious girl was not unfamiliar to his mind,

and he understood quite well the relation to it that Carmen had in her

mind; but he did not take the lead offered. Instead, he took refuge in

the usual commonplace, and asked, "Wouldn't you like to have been a man?"

"Heaven forbid! I should be too wicked. It is responsibility enough to be

a woman. I did not expect such a banality from you. Do you think, Mr.

Henderson, we had better sell?"

"Sell what?"

"Our stocks. You are so occupied that I thought they might fall when you

are up in the clouds somewhere."

"No, I shall not forget."

"Well, such things happen. I might forget you if it were not for the

stocks."

"Then I shall keep the stocks, even if they fall."

"And we should both fall together. That would be some compensation. Not

much. Going to smash with you would be something like going to church

with Mr. Lyon. It might have a steadying effect."

"What has come over you tonight, Carmen?" Henderson asked, leaning

forward with an expression of half amusement, half curiosity.

"I've been thinking--doesn't that astonish you?--about life. It is very

serious. I got some new views talking with that Miss Debree from Brandon.

Chiefly from what she didn't say. She is such a lovely girl, and just as

unsophisticated--well, as we are. I fear I shocked her by telling her

your opinion of French novels."

"You didn't tell her that I approved of all the French novels you read?"

"Oh no! I didn't say you approved of any. It sort of came out that you

knew about them. She is so downright and conscientious. I declare I felt

virtuous shivers running all over me all the time I was with her. I'm

conscientious myself. I want everybody to know the worst of me. I wish I

could practice some concealment. But she rather discourages me. She would

take the color out of a career. She somehow doesn't allow for color, I

could see. Duty, duty--that is the way she looks at life. She'd try to

keep me up to it; no playing by the way. I liked her very much. I like

people not to have too much toleration. She would be just the wife for

some nice country rector."

"Perhaps I ought to tell her your plan for her? I dined with her last

night at the Stotts'."

"Yes?" Carmen had been wondering if he would tell her of that. "Was it

very dull?"

"Not very. There was music, distant enough not to interfere with

conversation, and the gallery afterwards."

"It must have been very exhilarating. You talked about the Duchess of

Bolinbroke, and the opera, and Prince Talleyrand, and the corner in

wheat--dear me, I know, so decorous! And you said Miss Debree was there?"

"I had the honor of taking her out."

"Mr. Henderson"--the girl had risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now

stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged

to turn his head backward to see her--"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are

getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said

that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose the right object.

"Who taught me?" He raised his left hand. She did not respond to the

overture, except to snap the hand with her index-finger, and was back in

her chair again, regarding him demurely.

"I think we shall go abroad soon." The little foot was on the fender

again, and the face had the look of melancholy resolution.

"And leave Mr. Lyon without any protection here?" The remark was made in

a tone of good-humored raillery, but for some reason it seemed to sting

the girl.

"Pshaw!" she said. "How can you talk such nonsense? You," and she rose to

her feet in indignation--"you to advise an American girl to sell herself

for a title--the chance of a title. I'm ashamed of you!"

"Why, Carmen," he replied, flushing, "I advised nothing of the sort. I

hadn't the least idea. I don't care a straw for Mr. Lyon."

"That's just it; you don't care," sinking into her seat, still

unappeased. "I think I'll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupation

enough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that scheme

you were talking over the other night."

Henderson was in turn annoyed. "You can tell him anything you like. I'm

no more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic concerns."

"Now you are offended. It's not nice of you to put me in the wrong when

you know how impulsive I am. I wish I didn't let my feelings run away

with me." This said reflectively, and looking away from him. And then,

turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes: "Do you know, I

sometimes wish I had never seen you. You have so much power to make a

person very bad or very good."

"Come, come," said Henderson, rising, "we mustn't quarrel about an

Englishman--such old friends."

"Yes, we are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him her

hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I

should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of

violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his

face with vestal sweetness. "You are not offended?"

"Not a bit; not the least in the world," said Henderson, heartily,

patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.

When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation,

and there were hard lines in her sweet face. "What an insensible stick!"

Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one of

the town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something to

condemn.

"Well?"

"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. I

told him we were going abroad."

"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as amusing."

"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think it

would be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"

"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you--"

"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really

ought to be civil."

One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, the

new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will be

different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it

never repeats itself.

Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall--making money and

making love.

Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly

divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and

made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he found

the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? he

sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never stand

in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her conscience

would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Would

she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? She

would be if she had a heart.

He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simply

because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessary

to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his advancement, but

he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure. And if there are

men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness in a woman,

Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not dictated, his brain

would have told him the value of the sympathy of a good woman.

He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great fortune.

It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve all the

methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success, and the

thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would approve

what he did.

He saw much of her in those passing days--days that went like a dream to

one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but he saw

little of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a volume; a

word is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other. And then

passion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence of the

object. Imagination then has free play. A little separation sometimes

will fan it into a flame.

The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say that

the leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of hope.

Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business there.

The Misses Arbuser said, "Of course." And Margaret said he must not

forget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers an

affectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.

Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it on the

roadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret, neglecting

the book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window, felt it in all

her veins.

X

It is said that the world is created anew for every person who is in

love. There is therefore this constant miracle of a new heavens and a new

earth. It does not depend upon the seasons. The subtle force which is in

every human being, more or less active, has this power, as if love were

somehow a principle pervading nature itself, and capable of transforming

it. Is this a divine gift? Can it be used more than once? Once spent,

does the world to each succeeding experimenter in it become old and

stale? We say the world is old. In one sense, the real sense to every

person, it is no older than the lives lived in it at any given time. If

it is always passing away, it is always being renewed. Every time a youth

looks love in a maiden's eyes, and sees the timid appealing return of the

universal passion, the world for those two is just as certainly created

as it was on the first morning, in all its color, odor, song, freshness,

promise. This is the central mystery of life.

Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle. Never before

did the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such a

color on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never before

did her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine ecstasy

in the coming of spring.

For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is over,

is apt to be dull. The mind is so occupied with other emotions that the

friends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and the routine

is tame. Out of such a whirl of new experiences to return and find that

nothing has happened; that the old duties and responsibilities are

waiting! Margaret had eagerly leaped from the carriage to throw herself

into her aunt's arms-what a sweet welcome it is, that of kin!--and yet

almost before the greeting was over she felt alone. There was that in the

affectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that seemed to chill the glow and

fever of passion in her new world. And she had nothing to tell.

Everything had changed, and she must behave as if nothing had happened.

She must take up her old life--the interests of the neighborhood. Even

the little circle of people she loved appeared distant from her at the

moment; impossible it seemed to bring them into the rushing current of

her life. Their joy in getting her back again she could not doubt, nor

the personal affection with which she was welcomed. But was the New

England atmosphere a little cold? What was the flavor she missed in it

all? The next day a letter came. The excuse for it was the return of a

fan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket from the opera.

What a wonderful letter it was--his handwriting, the first note from him!

Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness. For Margaret it outweighed the

town of Brandon. It lay in her lap as she sat at her chamber window

looking out over the landscape, which was beginning to be flushed with a

pale green. There was a robin on the lawn, and a blackbird singing in the

pine. "Go not, happy day," she said, with tears in her eyes. She took up

the brief letter and read it again. Was he really hers, "truly"? And she

answered the letter, swiftly and with no hesitation, but with a throbbing

heart. It was a civil acknowledgment; that was all. Henderson might have

lead it aloud in the Exchange. But what color, what charming turns of

expression, what of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him such

a thrill of pleasure when he read it? What secret power has a woman to

make a common phrase so glow with her very self?

Here was something in her life that was her own, a secret, a hope, and

yet a tremulous anticipation to be guarded almost from herself. It

colored everything; it was always, whatever she was doing or saying,

present, like an air that one unconsciously hums for days after it has

caught his fancy. Blessed be the capacity of being fond and foolish! If

that letter was under her pillow at night, if this new revelation was

last in her thought as she fell asleep, if it mingled with the song of

the birds in the spring morning, as some great good pervading the world,

is there anything distinguishing in such an experience that it should be

dwelt on? And if there were questionings and little panics of doubt, did

not these moments also reveal Margaret to herself more certainly than the

hours of happy dreaming?

Questionings no doubt there were, and, later, serious questionings; for

habit is almost as strong as love, and the old ways of life and of

thought will reassert themselves in a thoughtful mind, and reason will

insist on analyzing passion and even hope.

Gradually the home life and every-day interests began to assume their

natural aspect and proportions. It was so sweet and sane, this home life,

interesting and not feverish. There was time for reading, time for

turning over things in the mind, time for those interchanges of feeling

and of ideas, by the fireside; she was not required to be always on dress

parade, in mind or person, always keyed up to make an impression or

receive one; how much wider and sounder was Morgan's view of the world,

allowing for his kindly cynicism, than that prevalent in the talk where

she had lately been! How sincere and hearty and free ran the personal

currents in this little neighborhood! In the very fact that the daily

love and affection for her and interest in her were taken for granted she

realized the difference between her position here and that among newer

friends who showed more open admiration.

Little by little there was a readjustment. In comparison, the city life,

with its intensity of action and feeling, began to appear distant, not so

real, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing part

of this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by? It

could not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now and

again, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no more

letters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse, the

nexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly like

a letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the little

excitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three times,

four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is such a

blank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill? Has he

changed? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between lovers.

Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her that it had

not gone so far as that. But she should see him. She felt sure of that.

And the thought filled all the vacant places in her imagination of the

future.

And yet she thought she was seeing him more clearly than when he was with

her. Oh wise young woman! She fancied she was deliberating, looking at

life with great prudence. It must be one's own fault if one makes a

radical mistake in marriage. She was watching the married people about

her with more interest-the Morgans, our own household, Mrs. Fletcher; and

besides, her aunt, whose even and cheerful life lacked this experience.

It is so wise to do this, to keep one's feelings in control, not to be

too hasty! Everybody has these intervals of prudence. That is the reason

there are so few mistakes.

I dare say that all these reflections and deliberations in the maidenly

mind were almost unconscious to herself; certainly unacknowledged. It was

her imagination that she was following, and scarcely a distinct reality

or intention. She thought of Henderson, and he gave a certain

personality, vivid maybe, to that dream of the future which we all in

youth indulge; but she would have shrunk from owning this even to

herself. We deceive ourselves as often as we deceive others. Margaret

would have repudiated with some warmth any intimation that she had lost

her heart, and was really predicting the practical possibilities of that

loss, and she would have been quite honest with herself in thinking that

she was still mistress of her own feeling. Later on she would know, and

delight to confess, that her destiny was fixed at a certain hour, at a

certain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to that

like links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong in

that; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would have

faded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and more

convinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon deep

reflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would have us

believe, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations; and that men

and women know themselves much less thoroughly than they suppose they do.

There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced, about the inward

struggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that Margaret was

hopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that charming girl

would have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant humiliation if

she had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more, if Henderson

had at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand, her impulse

would have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by anything that

had taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that impulse.

But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock

her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but which

did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simply

the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter--far enough

from that--but one in which there was a certain tone and intention that

the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside from

the announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it was

significant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interested

in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need have

been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran on

con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, was

the excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her a

business visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about his

daily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people in

which she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and there

were slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in the

Government; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and there

were little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no special

mystery about all this travel and hurrying from place to place, but it

gave Margaret a sense of varied and large occupations that she did not

understand. Through it all there was the personality that had been

recently so much in her thoughts. He was coming. That was a very solid

fact that she must meet. And she did not doubt that he was coming to see

her, and soon. That was a definite and very different idea from the dim

belief that he would come some time. He had signed himself hers

"faithfully."

It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it

raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one

hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to think

that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; he

had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that. Therefore

she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have in

dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our

existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was

conscious of being judicially reflective.

But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman

of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her

mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what was

the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his

principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.

Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose

personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so

dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her

simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did not

go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking in

these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing that

he were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some one

solid occupation.

In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,

was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,

any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the

day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper

of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become

millionaires.

"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of the

thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."

"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."

"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Is

there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their

little property?"

"Yes; the law."

"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something

goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will

give you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,

or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"

"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you let

your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people who

want it. You can put it in the ground."

"But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground will

tax it till there is nothing left for me."

"That is equality."

"But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or lands,

while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be a public

official whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I cannot afford

to enforce when I am wronged?"

"The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or only

unfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if you

are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it

needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom

the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer

costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern

luxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will find

it economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out of

it, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about the

law, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It is

like any other commodity."

"You mean to say," I asked, "that the lawyer takes what the operator

leaves?"

"Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice against

lawyers. They must live. There is no nobler occupation than the

application of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble is

that public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and estimates

the lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the aid of a

lawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.

"Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees."

"It seems to me," said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallel

lines, "that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one man

can get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods by

which he gets it."

"That never yet could be set," Morgan replied. "It is impossible for any

number of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolute

freedom of acquisition, trusting to circumstances, misfortune, and death

to knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism."

"Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly come

by?"

"That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean a

process the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration for

others, I doubt. But property accumulates by itself almost. Many a man

who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have

investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and

has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable,

using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd."

"Mr. Morgan," suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an

uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, "what is railroad

wrecking?"

"Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,' as

they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays

dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. They

contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it,

either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus; they

let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even

pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to

accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then they

throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it with

some other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them in

stealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look round

for another road."

"And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of

it?"

"Naturally, the little fish get swallowed."

"It is infamous," said Margaret--"infamous! And men go to work to do

this, to get other people's property, in cool blood?"

"I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business."

"What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank and

robbing it?" she asked, hot with indignation.

"Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement."

"It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a

wrecker should steal your money that way?"

"I was thinking of that."

I never saw Margaret more disturbed--out of all proportion, I thought, to

the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.

"Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like

that?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I said. "Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally

called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate

business. It is a common way of making a fortune."

"You see, Margaret," Morgan explained, "when people in trade buy

anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it."

"It seems to me," Margaret replied, more calmly, "that a great deal of

what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money,

and doesn't help anybody or produce anything."

"Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation."

"And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?"

"Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves

from stagnation."

"I cannot see any good in it," Margaret persisted. "No one seems to have

the things he buys or sells. I don't understand it."

"That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.

Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith and

credit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay the

difference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth."

"I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that betting."

"Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is really

paying for a difference of knowledge or opinion."

"Would you buy stocks that way?"

"What way?"

"Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it, not

really having any stock at all."

"I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if I

could make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle."

"Well," said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, "I don't

understand business morality."

"Nobody does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems to

be suspended by a more than two-thirds vote."

It was by such inquiries, leading to many talks of this sort, that

Margaret was groping in her mind for the solution of what might become to

her a personal question. Consciously she did not doubt Henderson's

integrity or his honor, but she was perplexed about the world of which

she had recently had a glimpse, and it was impossible to separate him

from it. Subjected to an absolutely new experience, stirred as her heart

had never been before by any man--a fact which at once irritated and

pleased her--she was following the law of her own nature, while she was

still her own mistress, to ponder these things and to bring her reason to

the guidance of her feeling. And it is probable that she did not at all

know the strength of her feeling, or have any conception of the real

power of love, and how little the head has to do with the great passion

of life, the intensity of which the poets have never in the least

exaggerated. If she thought of Mr. Lyon occasionally, of his white face

and pitiful look of suffering that day, she could not, after all, make it

real or permanently serious. Indeed, she was sure that no emotion could

so master her. And yet she looked forward to Henderson's coming with a

sort of nervous apprehension, amounting almost to dread.