IX

It seemed very fortunate to Jack Delancy that he should have such a

clever woman as Carmen for his confidante, a man so powerful as Henderson

as his backer, and a person so omniscient as Mavick for his friend.

No combination could be more desirable for a young man who proposed to

himself a career of getting money by adroit management and spending it in

pure and simple self-indulgence. There are plenty of men who have taken

advantage of like conditions to climb from one position to another, and

have then kicked down the ladders behind them as fast as they attained a

new footing. It was Jack's fault that he was not one of these. You

could scarcely dignify his character by saying that he had an aim, except

to saunter through life with as little personal inconvenience as

possible. His selfishness was boneless. It was not by any means

negative, for no part of his amiable nature was better developed than

regard for his own care and comfort; but it was not strong enough to give

him Henderson's capacity for hard work and even self-denial, nor Mavick's

cool, persevering skill in making a way for himself in the world.

Why was not Edith his confidante? His respect for her was undoubted; his

love for her was unquestioned; his trust in her was absolute. And yet

with either Carmen or Miss Tavish he fell into confidential revelations

of himself which instinctively he did not make to Edith. The explanation

of this is on the surface, and it is the key to half the unhappiness in

domestic life. He felt that Edith was not in sympathy with the

associations and the life he was leading. The pitiful and hopeless part

of it is that if she had been in sympathy with them, Jack would have gone

on in his frivolous career at an accelerated pace. It was not absence of

love, it was not unfaithfulness, that made Jack enjoy the hours he spent

with Carmen, or with the pleasing and not too fastidious Miss Tavish,

with a zest that was wanting to his hours at home. If he had been upon a

sinking steamboat with the three women, and could have saved only one of

them, he would not have had a moment's hesitation in rescuing Edith and

letting the other two sink out of his life. The character is not

unusual, nor the situation uncommon. What is a woman to do? Her very

virtues are enemies of her peace; if she appears as a constant check and

monitor, she repels; if she weakly acquiesces, the stream will flow over

both of them. The dilemma seems hopeless.

It would be a mistake to suppose that either Edith or Jack put their

relations in any such definite shape as this. He was unthinking. She

was too high-spirited, too confident of her position, to be assailed by

such fears. And it must be said, since she was a woman, that she had the

consciousness of power which goes along with the possession of loveliness

and keen wit. Those who knew her best knew that under her serenity was a

gay temperament, inherited from the original settlers of Manhattan, an

abounding enjoyment of life, and capacity for passion. It was early

discovered in her childhood that little Edith had a will of her own.

Lent was over. It was the time of the twittering of sparrows, of the

opening of windows, of putting in order the little sentimental spots

called "squares," where the poor children get their idea of forests, and

the rich renew their faint recollections of innocence and country life;

when the hawkers go about the streets, and the hand-organs celebrate the

return of spring and the possibility of love. Even the idle felt that it

was a time for relaxation and quiet.

"Have you answered Miss Tavish's invitation?" asked Jack one morning at

the breakfast-table.

"Not yet. I shall decline today for myself."

"Why? It's for charity."

"Well, my charity extends to Miss Tavish. I don't want to see her

dance."

"That leaves me in a nice hole. I said I'd go."

"And why not? You go to a good many places you don't take me--the clubs,

brokers' offices, Stalker's, the Conventional, and--"

"Oh, go on. Why do you object to my going to see this dance?"

"My dear Jack," said Edith, "I haven't objected the least in the world;"

and her animated face sparkled with a smile, which seemed to irritate

Jack more than a frown would have done.

"I don't see why you set yourself up. I'll bet Miss Tavish will raise

more money for the Baxter Street Guild, yes, and do more good, than you

and the priest and that woman doctor slopping about on the East Side in

six months."

"Very likely," replied Edith, still with the same good-humored smile.

"But, Jack, it's delightful to see your philanthropic spirit stirred up

in this way. You ought to be encouraged. Why don't you join Miss Tavish

in this charity? I have no doubt that if it was advertised that Miss

Tavish and Mr. Jack Delancy would dance for the benefit of an East Side

guild in the biggest hall in the city, there wouldn't be standing room."

"Oh, bosh!" said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about the

room, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before.

"I wouldn't be a prude."

Edith's eyes flashed and her face flushed, but her smile came back in a

moment, and she was serene again. "Come here, Jack. Now, old fellow,

look me straight in the eyes, and tell me if you would like to have me

dance the serpentine dance before a drawing-room full of gossiping women,

with, as you say, just a few men peeping in at the doors."

Jack did look, and the serene eyes, yet dancing with amusement at the

incongruous picture, seemed to take a warmer glow of love and pleading.

"Oh, hang it! that's different," and he stooped and gave her an awkward

kiss.

"I'm glad you know it's different," she said, with a laugh that had not a

trace of mockery in it; "and since you do, you'd better go along and do

your charity, and I'll stay at home, and try to be--different when you

come back."

And Jack went; with a little feeling of sheepishness that he would not

have acknowledged at the time, and he found himself in a company where he

was entirely at his ease. He admired the dancing of the blithe, graceful

girl, he applauded her as the rest did with hand-clapping and bravas, and

said it was ravishing. It all suited him perfectly. And somehow, in the

midst of it all, in the sensuous abandon of this electric-light

eccentricity at mid-day, he had a fleeting vision of something very

different, of a womanhood of another sort, and a flush came to his face

for a moment as he imagined Edith in a skirt dance under the gaze of this

sensation-loving society. But this was only for a moment. When he

congratulated Miss Tavish his admiration was entirely sincere; and the

girl, excited with her physical triumph, seemed to him as one emancipated

out of acquired prudishness into the Greek enjoyment of life. Miss

Tavish, who would not for the world have violated one of the social

conventions of her set, longed, as many women do, for the sort of freedom

and the sort of applause which belongs to women who succeed upon the

stage. Not that she would have forfeited her position by dancing at a

theatre for money; but; within limits, she craved the excitement, the

abandon, the admiration, that her grace and passion could win. This was

not at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen Hatshepsu to assume

the dress of a man, but rather that more famous aspiration which led the

daughter of Herodias, in a pleasure-loving court, to imitate and excel

the professional dancing-girls. If in this inclination of the women of

the day, which is not new, but has characterized all societies to which

wealth has brought idleness, there was a note of demoralization, it did

not seem so to Jack, who found the world day by day more pleasing and

more complaisant.

As the months went by, everything prospered with him on his drifting

voyage. Of all voyages, that is the easiest to make which has no port in

view, that depends upon the varying winds, if the winds happen to be soft

and the chance harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to Henderson.

He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in his idle

habits, and with no more attention to business than formerly, money came

to him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion that he was a

favorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance in the financial

world increased enormously, much to the amusement of Mavick, when he was

occasionally in the city, to whom he talked somewhat largely of his

operations, and who knew that he had no more comprehension of the sweep

of Henderson's schemes than a baby has of the stock exchange when he

claps his hands with delight at the click of the ticker.

His prosperity was visible. It showed in the increase of his accounts

at the Union, in his indifference to limits in the game of poker, in a

handsome pair of horses which he insisted on Edith's accepting for her

own use, in an increased scale of living at home, in the hundred ways

that a man of fashion can squander money in a luxurious city. If he did

not haunt the second-hand book-shops or the stalls of dealers in

engravings, or bring home as much bric-a-brac as he once had done, it was

because his mind was otherwise engaged; his tailor's bills were longer,

and there were more expensive lunches at the clubs, at which there was a

great deal of sage talk about stocks and combinations, and much wisdom

exhibited in regard to wines; and then there were the little suppers at

Wherry's after the theatres, which a bird could have eaten and a fish

have drunken, and only a spendthrift have paid for.

"It is absurd," Edith had said one night after their return. "It makes

us ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools." And Jack had flared up

about it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she had

retorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack had

attempted to pass it off lightly, at last, by saying, "Very well then,

dear, if you won't back me, I shall have to rely upon my bankers."

At any rate, neither Carmen nor Miss Tavish took him to task. They

complimented him on his taste, and Carmen made him feel that she

appreciated his independence and his courage in living the life that

suited him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, how

much he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs, and

venturing herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow of

fashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwing

him a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept away by that

undertow.

It was remarked at the Union, and by the men in the Street who knew him,

that Jack was getting rapid. But no one thought the less of him for his

pace--that is, no one appeared to, for this sort of estimate of a man is

only tested by his misfortunes, when the day comes that he must seek

financial backing. In these days he was generally in an expansive mood,

and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There were

those who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack, and

that he had recently come in for something handsome.

But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was to

know to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was a

sort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly how

the Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no one

had ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The name

of Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis, and

the Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursed

little income--an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of the

art of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man in

his generation in those things about which it would be as well not to

know anything.

Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, by

the open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude of

one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, he hailed Jack, who was

just coming down-stairs from a protracted lunch.

"I say, Delancy, what's this I hear?"

"About what?" said Jack, sauntering along to a seat opposite the Major,

and touching a bell on the little table as he sat down. Jack's face was

flushed, but he talked with unusual slowness and distinctness. "What

have you heard, Major?"

"That you have bought Benham's yacht."

"No, I haven't; but I was turning the thing over in my mind," Jack

replied, with the air of a man declining an appointment in the Cabinet.

"He offers it cheap."

"My dear boy, there is no such thing as a cheap yacht, any more than

there is a cheap elephant."

"It's better to buy than build," Jack insisted. "A man's got to have

some recreation."

"Recreation! Why don't you charter a Fifth Avenue stage and take your

friends on a voyage to the Battery? That'll make 'em sick enough." It

was a misery of the Major's life that, in order to keep in with necessary

friends, he had to accept invitations for cruises on yachts, and pretend

he liked it. Though he had the gout, he vowed he would rather walk to

Newport than go round Point Judith in one of those tipping tubs. He had

tried it, and, as he said afterwards, "The devil of it was that Mrs.

Henderson and Miss Tavish sympathized with me. Gad! it takes away a

person's manhood, that sort of thing."

The Major sipped his bitters, and then added: "Or I'll tell you what; if

you must do something, start a newspaper--the drama, society, and

letters, that sort of thing, with pictures. I heard Miss Tavish say she

wished she had a newspaper."

"But," said Jack, with gravity, "I'm not buying a yacht for Miss Tavish."

"I didn't suppose you were. Devilish fine girl, though. I don't care

who you buy it for if you don't buy it for yourself. Why don't you buy

it for Henderson? He can afford it."

"I'd like to know what you mean, Major Fairfax!" cried Jack. "What

business--"

"There!" exclaimed the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softened

expression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack.

I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop.

But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he

used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your

mother--that was a woman!--did me a kindness once when I was in a d---d

tight place, and I never forgot it. See here, Jack, if I had money

enough I'd buy a yacht and put Carmen and Miss Tavish on it, and send

them off on the longest voyage there is."

"Who's been talking?" exclaimed Jack, touched a little, but very much

offended.

"The town, Jack. Don't mind the talk. People always talk. I suppose

people talk about me: At your age I should have been angry too at a hint

even from an old friend. But I've learned. It doesn't pay. I don't get

angry any more. Now there's Henderson--"

"What have you got against Henderson?"

"Nothing. He is a very good fellow, for that sort of man. But, Lord!

Henderson is a big machine. You might as well try to stand in with a

combination of gang-saws, or to make friends with the Department of the

Interior. Look at the men who have gone in with Henderson from time to

time. The ground is strewn with them. He's got no more feeling in

business than a reaper-and-binder."

"I don't know what Henderson's got to do with my having a yacht."

"I beg your pardon, Jack; it's none of my business. Only I do not put my

investments"--Jack smiled faintly, as if the conversation were taking a

humorous turn--"at the mercy of Henderson's schemes. If I did, I

wouldn't try to run a yacht at the same time. I should be afraid that

some day when I got to sea I should find myself out of coal. You know,

my boy, that the good book says you cannot serve two masters."

"Nobody ever accused you of that, Major," retorted Jack, with a laugh.

"But what two have you in mind?"

"Oh, I don't mean anything personal. I just use names as typical. Say

Henderson and Carmen." And the Major leaned back and tapped his fingers

together, as if he were putting a general proposition.

Jack flushed, and then thought a moment--it would be ridiculous to get

angry with old Fairfax--and then said: "Major, if I were you, I wouldn't

have anything to do with either of them. You'll spoil your digestion."

"Umph!" the Major grunted, as he rose from his chair. "This is an age of

impudence. There's no more respect for gray hair than if it were dyed.

I cannot waste any more time on you. I've got an early dinner. Devilish

uphill work trying to encourage people who dine at seven. But, my boy,

think on these things, as the saint says."

And the old fellow limped away. There was one good thing about the

Major. He stood up in church every Sunday and read his prayers, like a

faithful old sinner as he was.

Jack, sobered by the talk, walked home in a very irritated mood, blaming

everybody except himself. For old Fairfax's opinion he didn't care, but

evidently the old fellow represented a lot of gossip. He wished people

would mind their own business. His irritation was a little appeased by

Edith's gay and loving greeting; but she, who knew every shade of his

face, saw it.

"Have you had a worrying day?"

"No; not specially. I've had an hour of old Fairfax, who hasn't any

business of his own to attend to."

"Oh, nobody minds the Major," Edith said, as she gave him a shake and

another kiss; but a sharp pang went through her heart, for she guessed

what had happened, since she had had a visit that afternoon from another

plain-speaking person.

They were staying late in town. Edith, who did not care to travel far,

was going presently to a little cottage by the sea, and Mrs. Schuyler

Blunt had looked in for a moment to say good-by before she went up to her

Lenox house.

"It's only an old farmhouse made over," Mrs. Blunt was saying; "hardly

smart enough to ask anybody to, but we hope to have you and Jack there

some time."

"That would be very nice. I hear Lenox is more beautiful than ever."

"Yes, it is, and about as difficult to get into as the kingdom of heaven.

It's being spoiled for moderate people. The Hendersons and the Van Dams

and that sort are in a race to see who shall build houses with the

biggest rooms, and give the most expensive entertainments. It's all

show. The old flavor has gone."

"But they cannot spoil the scenery.".

"My child, they are the scenery. You can't see anything else. It

doesn't bother me, but some of my old neighbors are just ruining

themselves trying to keep the pace. I do think the Americans are the

biggest fools on earth."

"Father Damon says the trouble is we haven't any middle class for a

balance."

"Yes, that's the English of it. But it's a pity that fashion has got

hold of the country, and is turning our summers into a worry and a

burden. I thought years ago when we went to Lenox that it was a good

thing the country was getting to be the fashion; but now it's

fashionable, and before we know it every desirable spot will be what they

call syndicated. Miss Tavish says she is coming to visit the Hendersons

there."

"I thought she went to Bar Harbor."

"But she is coming down for part of the season. These people don't stay

anywhere. Just long enough in one place to upset everything with their

extravagance. That's the reason I didn't ask you and Jack up this

summer."

"Thank you, we couldn't go, you know," said Edith, simply, and then, with

curiosity in her eyes, asked; "but I don't quite understand what's the

reason."

"Well," said Mrs. Blunt, as if nerving herself up to say what must be

said, "I thought perhaps you wouldn't like to be where they are."

"I don't know why I should or why I should not," Edith replied.

"Nor have Jack with them," continued Mrs. Blunt, stoutly.

"What do you mean, Mrs. Blunt?" cried Edith, her brown eyes flaming.

"Don't turn on me, Edith dear. I oughtn't to have said anything. But I

thought it was my duty. Of course it is only talk."

"Well?"

"That Jack is always with one or the other of those women."

"It is false!" cried Edith, starting up, with tears now in her eyes;

"it's a cruel lie if it means anything wrong in Jack. So am I with those

women; so are you. It's a shame. If you hear any one say such things,

you can tell them for me that I despise them."

"I said it was a shame, all such talk. I said it was nonsense. But,

dear, as a friend, oughtn't I to tell you?" And the kind-hearted gossip

put her arm round Edith, and kept saying that she perfectly understood

it, and that nobody really meant anything. But Edith was crying now,

with a heart both hurt and indignant.

"It's a most hateful world, I know," Mrs, Blunt answered; "but it's the

best we have, and it's no use to fret about it."

When the visitor had gone, Edith sat a long time in misery. It was the

first real shock of her married life. And in her heart she prayed. For

Jack? Oh no. The dear girl prayed for herself, that suspicions might

not enter her heart. She could not endure that the world should talk

thus of him. That was all. And when she had thought it all over and

grown calm, she went to her desk and wrote a note to Carmen. It asked

Mrs. Henderson, as they were so soon to leave town, to do her the favor

to come round informally and lunch with her the next day, and afterwards

perhaps a little drive in the Park.

X

Jack was grateful for Edith's intervention. He comprehended that she had

stepped forward as a shield to him in the gossip about Carmen. He showed

his appreciation in certain lover-like attentions and in a gayety of

manner, but it was not in his nature to feel the sacrifice she had made

or its full magnanimity; he was relieved, and in a manner absolved.

Another sort of woman might have made him very uncomfortable. Instead of

being rebuked he had a new sense of freedom.

"Not one woman in a thousand would have done it," was the comment of

Major Fairfax when he heard of the drive in the Park. "Gad! most of 'em

would have cut Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there would

have been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such a woman

as Jack's mother. If there were not one of them now and then society

would deliquesce." And the Major knew, for his principal experience had

been with a deliquescent society.

Whether Carmen admired Mrs. Delancy or thought her weak it is impossible

to say, but she understood the advances made and responded to them, for

they fell in perfectly with her social plans. She even had the face to

eulogize Mrs. Delancy to Jack, her breadth of view, her lack of

prejudice, and she had even dared to say, "My dear friend, she is too

good for us," and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had accepted

the implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he did

not see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about his

wife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment was that the

comradeship of Miss Tavish and Carmen was agreeable to him. They were no

restraint upon him. So long as they remained in town the exchange of

civilities was kept up. Carmen and Miss Tavish were often at his house,

and there was something reassuring to Jack in the openness with which

affairs went on.

Early in June Edith went down to their rented cottage on the south Long

Island shore. In her delicate health the doctor had recommended the

seaside, and this locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from the

whirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm, namely,

of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in from the

far tropical South with its message of romance to the barren Northern

shore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of tempests

and wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not an

impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like a

tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with barns

and outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden--a place with a salty air

friendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage.

If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and the

low-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination to

fancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled in

the sand, that it had been remodeled and roofed over, and its sides

pierced with casement windows, over which roses had climbed in order to

bind the wanderer to the soil. It had been painted by the sun and the

wind and the salt air, so that its color depended upon the day, and it

was sometimes dull and almost black, or blue-black, under a lowering sky,

and again a golden brown, especially at sunset, and Edith, feeling its

character rather than its appearance to ordinary eyes, had named it the

Golden House. Nature is such a beautiful painter of wood.

With Edith went one of her Baltimore cousins, a young kindergarten

teacher of fine intelligence and sympathetic manner, who brought to her

work a long tradition of gentle breeding and gayety and simplicity

--qualities which all children are sure to recognize. What a hopeful thing

it is, by-the-way, in the world, that all conditions of people know a

lady at sight! Jack found the place delightful. He liked its

quaintness, the primitiveness of the farmer-fisherman neighbors, he liked

the sea. And then he could run up to the city any morning and back at

night. He spent the summer with Edith at the Golden House. This was his

theory. When he went to town in the morning he expected to return at

night. But often he telegraphed in the afternoon that he was detained by

business; he had to see Henderson, or Mavick was over from Washington.

Occasionally, but not often, he missed the train. He had too keen a

sense of the ridiculous to miss the train often. When he was detained

over for two or three days, or the better part of the week, he wrote

Edith dashing, hurried letters, speaking of ever so many places he had

been to and ever so many people he had seen--yes, Carmen and Miss Tavish

and everybody who was in town, and he did not say too much about the hot

city and its discomforts.

Henderson's affairs kept him in town, Miss Tavish still postponed Bar

Harbor, and Carmen willingly remained. She knew the comfort of a big New

York house when the season is over, when no social duties are required,

and one is at leisure to lounge about in cool costumes, to read or dream,

to open the windows at night for the salt breeze from the bay, to take

little excursions by boat or rail, to dine al fresco in the garden of

some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the

town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York

in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were

really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in

the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the

squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt

by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer

theatres, where no one expected anything, and no one was disappointed,

the general air of enjoyment, and the suggestion of intrigue. Sometimes,

when Mavick was over, a party was made up for the East Side, to see the

foreign costumes, the picturesque street markets, the dime museums, and

the serious, tragical theatres of the people. The East Side was left

pretty much to itself, now that the winter philanthropists had gone away,

and was enjoying its summer nights and its irresponsible poverty.

They even looked in at Father Damon's chapel, the dimly lighted fragrant

refuge from the world and from sin. Why not? They were interested in

the morals of the region. Had not Miss Tavish danced for one of the

guilds; and had not Carmen given Father Damon a handsome check in support

of his mission? It was so satisfactory to go into such a place and see

the penitents kneeling here and there, the little group of very plainly

dressed sinners attracted by Father Damon's spiritual face and unselfish

enthusiasm. Carmen said she felt like kneeling at one of the little

boxes and confessing--the sins of her neighbors. And then the four

--Carmen, Miss Tavish, Mavick, and Jack--had a little supper at Wherry's,

which they enjoyed all the more for the good action of visiting the East

Side--a little supper which lasted very late, and was more and more

enjoyed as it went on, and was, in fact, so gay that when the ladies were

set down at their houses, Jack insisted on dragging Mavick off to the

Beefsteak Club and having something manly to drink; and while they drank

he analyzed the comparative attractions of Carmen and Miss Tavish; he

liked that kind of women, no nonsense in them; and presently he wandered

a little and lost the cue of his analysis, and, seizing Mavick by the

arm, and regarding him earnestly, in a burst of confidence declared that,

notwithstanding all appearances, Edith was the dearest girl in the world.

It was at this supper that the famous society was formed, which the

newspapers ridiculed, and which deceived so many excellent people in New

York because it seemed to be in harmony with the philanthropic endeavor

of the time, but which was only an expression of the Mephistophelian

spirit of Carmen--the Society for Supplying Two Suspenders to Those who

have only One.

By the end of June there was no more doubt about the heat of the town

than about its odors. The fashionable residence part was dismantled and

deserted. At least miles and miles of houses seemed to be closed.

Few carriages were seen in this quarter, the throngs of fashion had

disappeared, comparatively few women were about, and those that appeared

in the Sunday promenade were evidently sight-seers and idlers from other

quarters; the throng of devotees was gone from the churches, and indeed

in many of them services were suspended till a more convenient season.

The hotels, to be sure, were full of travelers, and the club-houses had

more habitues than usual, and were more needed by the members whose

families had gone into the country.

Notwithstanding the silence and vacation aspect of up-town, the public

conveyances were still thronged, and a census would have shown no such

diminution of population as seemed. Indeed, while nobody was in town,

except accidentally, the greater portion of it presented a more animated

appearance than usual, especially at night, on account of the open

windows, the groups on door-steps and curb-stones, and the restless

throng in the streets-buyers and sellers and idlers. To most this

outdoor life was a great enjoyment, and to them the unclean streets with

the odors and exhalations of decay were homelike and congenial. Nor did

they seem surprised that a new country should so completely reproduce the

evil smells and nastiness of the old civilization. It was all familiar

and picturesque. Work still went on in the crowded tenement-houses, and

sickness simply changed its character, death showing an increased

friendliness to young children. Some impression was of course made by

the agents of various charities, the guilds and settlements bravely

strove at their posts, some of the churches kept their flags flying on

the borders of the industrial districts, the Good Samaritans of the

Fresh-air Fund were active, the public dispensaries did a thriving

business, and the little band of self-sacrificing doctors, most of them

women, went their rounds among the poor, the sick, and the friendless.

Among them Ruth Leigh was one who never took a vacation. There was no

time for it. The greater the heat, the more noisome the town, the more

people became ill from decaying food and bad air and bad habits, the more

people were hungry from improvidence or lack of work, the more were her

daily visits a necessity; and though she was weary of her monotonous

work, and heart-sick at its small result in such a mass, there never came

a day when she could quit it. She made no reputation in her profession

by this course; perhaps she awoke little gratitude from those she served,

and certainly had not so much of their confidence as the quacks who

imposed upon them and took their money; and she was not heartened much by

hope of anything better in this world or any other; and as for pay, if

there was enough of that to clothe her decently, she apparently did not

spend it on herself.

It was, in short, wholly inexplicable that this little woman should

simply go about doing good, without any ulterior purpose whatever, not

even notoriety. Did she love these people? She did not ever say

anything about that. In the Knights of Labor circle, and in the little

clubs for the study of social questions, which she could only get leisure

to attend infrequently, she was not at all demonstrative about any

religion of humanity. Perhaps she simply felt that she was a part of

these people, and that whether they rejected her or received her, there

was nothing for her to do but to give herself to them. She would

probably have been surprised if Father Damon had told her that she was in

this following a great example, and there might have been a tang of

agnostic bitterness in her reply. When she thought of it the condition

seemed to her hopeless, and the attitude of what was called civilization

towards it so remorseless and indifferent, and that of Christianity so

pharisaical. If she ever lost her temper, it was when she let her mind

run in this nihilistic channel, in bitterness against the whole social

organization, and the total outcome of civilization so far as the mass of

humanity is concerned.

One day Father Damon climbed up to the top of a wretched tenement in

Baxter Street in search of a German girl, an impulsive and pretty girl of

fifteen, whom he had missed for several days at the chapel services.

He had been in the room before. It was not one of the worst, for though

small and containing a cook-stove, a large bed, and a chest of drawers,

there was an attempt to make it tidy. In a dark closet opening out from

it was another large bed. As he knocked and opened the door, he saw that

Gretchen was not at home. Her father sat in a rocking-chair by an open

window, on the sill of which stood a pot of carnations, the Easter gift

of St. George's, a wax-faced, hollow-eyed man of gentle manners, who

looked round wearily at the priest. The mother was washing clothes in a

tub in one corner; in another corner was a half-finished garment from a

slop-shop. The woman alternated the needle at night and the tub in the

daytime. Seated on the bed, with a thin, sick child in her arms, was Dr.

Leigh. As she looked up a perfectly radiant smile illuminated her

usually plain face, an unworldly expression of such purity and happiness

that she seemed actually beautiful to the priest, who stopped,

hesitating, upon the threshold.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid to come in, Father Damon," she cried out; "it

isn't contagious--only rash."

Father Damon, who would as readily have walked through a pestilence as in

a flower-garden, only smiled at this banter, and replied, after speaking

to the sick man, and returning in German the greeting of the woman, who

had turned from the tub, "I've no doubt you are disappointed that it

isn't contagious!" And then, to the mother: "Where is Gretchen? She

doesn't come to the chapel."

"Nein," replied the woman, in a mixture of German and English, "it don't

come any more in dot place; it be in a shtore now; it be good girl."

"What, all day?"

"Yaas, by six o'clock, and abends so spate. Not much it get, but my man

can't earn nothing any more." And the woman, as she looked at him, wiped

her eyes with the corner of her apron.

"But, on Sunday?" Father Damon asked, still further.

"Vell, it be so tired, and goed up by de Park with Dick Loosing and dem

oder girls."

"Don't you think it better, Father Damon," Dr. Leigh interposed, "that

Gretchen should have fresh air and some recreation on Sunday?"

"Und such bootiful tings by de Museum," added the mother.

"Perhaps," said he, with something like a frown on his face, and then

changed the subject to the sick child. He did not care to argue the

matter when Dr. Leigh was present, but he resolved to come again and

explain to the mother that her daughter needed some restraining power

other than her own impulse, and that without religious guidance she was

pretty certain to drift into frivolous and vulgar if not positively bad

ways. The father was a free-thinker; but Father Damon thought he had

some hold on the mother, who was of the Lutheran communion, but had

followed her husband so far as to become indifferent to anything but

their daily struggle for life. Yet she had a mother's instinct about the

danger to her daughter, and had been pleased to have her go to Father

Damon's chapel.

And, besides, he could not bring himself in that presence to seem to

rebuke Ruth Leigh. Was she not practically doing what his Lord did

--going about healing the sick, sympathizing with the poor and the

discouraged, taking upon herself the burden of the disconsolate,

literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery and

sin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to have

seen the woman in her--or was it the saint? and he recalled that

wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautiful

as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms.

It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted a

new pang there that she had no belief in a future life.

It did not occur to him that the sudden joy in her face might have been

evoked by seeing him, for it was a long time since she had seen him. Nor

did he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religious

anxiety. Ah, priest and worldly saint, how subtle and enduring are the

primal instincts of human nature!

"Yes," he said, as they walked away, in reply to her inquiry as to his

absence, "I have been in retreat a couple of weeks."

"I suppose," she said, softly, "you needed the rest; though," and she

looked at him professionally, "if you will allow me to say it, it seems

to me that you have not rested enough."

"I needed strength"--and it was the priest that spoke--"in meditation

and prayer to draw upon resources not my own."

"And in fasting, too, I dare say," she added, with a little smile.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Pardon me," she said; "I don't pretend to know what you need. I need to

eat, though Heaven knows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite down

here. But it is physical endurance you need for the work here. Do you

think fasting strengthens you to go through your work night and day?"

"I know I couldn't do it on my own strength." And Dr. Leigh recalled

times when she had seen him officiating in the chapel apparently

sustained by nothing but zeal and pure spirit, and wondered that he did

not faint and fall. And faint and fall he did, she was sure, when the

service was over.

"Well, it may be necessary to you, but not as an example to these people.

I see enough involuntary fasting."

"We look at these people from different points of view, I fear." And

after a moment he said: "But, doctor, I wanted to ask you about Gretchen.

You see her?"

"Occasionally. She works too many hours, but she seems to be getting on

very well, and brings her mother all she earns."

"Do you think she is able to stand alone?"

Dr. Leigh winced a little at this searching question, for no one knew

better than she the vulgarizing influence of street life and chance

associations upon a young girl, and the temptations. She was even forced

to admit the value in the way of restraint, as a sort of police force,

of the church and priestly influence, especially upon girls at the

susceptible age. But she knew that Father Damon meant something more

than this, and so she answered:

"But people have got to stand alone. She might as well begin."

"But she is so young."

"Yes, I know. She is in the way of temptation, but so long as she works

industriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which the

poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not in

so much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle and

self-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to protect

themselves."

"And you think this is enough, without any sort of religion--that this

East Side can go on without any spiritual life?"

Ruth Leigh made a gesture of impatience. In view of the actual struggle

for existence she saw around her, this talk seemed like cant. And she

said:

"I don't know that anything can go on. Let me ask you a question, Father

Damon. Do you think there is any more spirituality, any more of the

essentials of what you call Christianity, in the society of the other

side than there is on the East Side?"

"It is a deep question, this of spirituality," replied Father Damon, who

was in the depths of his proselyting action a democrat and in sympathy

with the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventional

fashion in religion. "I shouldn't like to judge, but there is a great

body of Christian men and women in this city who are doing noble work."

"Yes," replied the little doctor, bitterly, "trying to save themselves.

How many are trying to save others--others except the distant and foreign

sinners?"

"You surely cannot ignore," replied the father, still speaking mildly,

"the immense amount of charitable work done by the churches!"

"Yes, I know; charity, charity, the condescension of the rich to the

poor. What we want are understanding, fellowship, and we get alms!

If there is so much spirituality as you say, and Christianity is what you

say it is today, how happens it that this side is left in filth and

misery and physical wretchedness? You know what it is, and you know the

luxury elsewhere. And you think to bridge over the chasm between classes

with flowers, in pots, yes, and Bible-readers and fashionable visitors

and little aid societies--little palliatives for an awful state of

things. Why, look at it! Last winter the city authorities hauled off

the snow and the refuse from the fashionable avenues, and dumped it down

in the already blockaded and filthy side streets, and left us to struggle

with the increased pneumonia and diphtheria, and general unsanitary

conditions. And you wonder that the little nihilist groups and labor

organizations and associations of agnostics, as you call them, meeting to

study political economy and philosophy, say that the existing state of

things has got to be overturned violently, if those who have the power

and the money continue indifferent."

"I do not wonder," replied Father Damon, sadly. "The world is evil, and I

should be as despairing as you are if I did not know there was another

life and another world. I couldn't bear it. Nobody could."

"And all you've got to offer, then, to this mass of wretchedness,

poverty, ignorance, at close quarters with hunger and disease, is to grin

and bear it, in hope of a reward somewhere else!"

"I think you don't quite--"

The doctor looked up and saw a look of pain on the priest's face.

"Oh," she hastened to say, almost as impetuously as she had spoken

before, "I don't mean you--I don't mean you. I know what you do. Pardon

me for speaking so. I get so discouraged sometimes." They stood still a

moment, looking up and down the hot, crowded, odorful street they were

in, with its flaunting rags of poverty and inefficiency. "I see so

little result of what I can do, and there is so little help."

"I know," said the father, as they moved along. "I don't see how you

can bear it alone."

This touched a sore spot, and aroused Ruth Leigh's combativeness.

It seemed to her to approach the verge of cant again. But she knew the

father's absolute sincerity; she felt she had already said too much; and

she only murmured, as if to herself, "If we could only know." And then,

after a moment, she asked, "Do you, Father Damon, see any sign of

anything better here?"

"Yes, today." And he spoke very slowly and hesitatingly. "If you will

excuse the personality of it. When I entered that room today, and saw

you with that sick child in your arms, and comprehended what it all

meant, I had a great wave of hope, and I knew, just then, that there is

coming virtue enough in the world to redeem it."

Ruth was confounded. Her heart seemed to stand still, and then the hot

blood flowed into her face in a crimson flood. "Ah," escaped from her

lips, and she walked on more swiftly, not daring to look up. This from

him! This recognition from the ascetic father! If one of her dispensary

comrades had said it, would she have been so moved?

And afterwards, when she had parted from him, and gone to her little

room, the hot flush again came to her neck and brow, and she saw his

pale, spiritual face, and could hear the unwonted tenderness of his

voice. Yes, Father Damon had said it of her.