"His vows, and her absolute materialism! Both of them would go to the
stake for what they believe, or don't believe. It troubles me very
much."
"But," said Jack, "it's interesting. It's what they call a situation.
There. I didn't mean to make light of it. I don't believe there is
anything in it. But it would be comical, right here in New York."
"It would be tragical."
"Comedy usually is. I suppose it's the human nature in it. That is so
difficult to get rid of. But I thought the missionary business was safe.
Though, do you know, Edith, I should think better of both of them for
having some human feeling. By-the-way, did Dr. Leigh say anything about
Henderson?"
"No. What?"
"He has given Father Damon ten thousand dollars. It's in strict secrecy,
but Father Damon said I might tell you. He said it was providential."
"I thought Mr. Henderson was wholly unscrupulous and cold as ice."
"Yes, he's got a reputation for freeze-outs. If the Street knew this it
would say it was insurance money. And he is so cynical that he wouldn't
care what the Street said."
"Do you think it came about through Mrs. Henderson?"
"I don't think so. She was speaking of Father Damon this morning in the
Loan Exhibition. I don't believe she knows anything about it. Henderson
is a good deal shut up in himself. They say at the Union that years ago
he used to do a good many generous things--that he is a great deal harder
than he used to be."
This talk was before dinner. She did not ask anything now about Carmen,
though she knew that Jack had fallen into his old habit of seeing much of
her. He was less and less at home, except at dinner-time, and he was
often restless, and, she saw, often annoyed. When he was at home he
tried to make up for his absence by extra tenderness and consideration
for Edith and the boy. And this effort, and its evidence of a double if
not divided life, wounded her more than the neglect. One night, when he
came home late, he had been so demonstrative about the baby that Edith
had sent the nurse out of the room until she could coax Jack to go into
his own apartment. His fits of alternate good-humor and depression she
tried to attribute to his business, to which he occasionally alluded
without confiding in her.
The next morning Father Damon came in about luncheon-time. He apologized
for not coming before since her return, but he had been a little upset,
and his work was more and more interesting. His eyes were bright and his
manner had quite the usual calm, but he looked pale and thinner, and so
exhausted that Edith ran immediately for a glass of wine, and began to
upbraid him for not taking better care of himself.
"I take too much care of myself. We all do. The only thing I've got to
give is myself."
"But you will not last."
"That is of little moment; long or short, a man can only give himself.
Our Lord was not here very long." And then Father Damon smiled, and said
"My dear friend, I'm really doing very well. Of course I get tired.
Then I come up again. And every now and then I get a lift. Did Jack
tell you about Henderson?"
"Yes. Wasn't it strange?"
"I never was more surprised. He sent for me to come to his office.
Without any circumlocution, he asked me how I was getting on, and, before
I could answer, he said, in the driest business way, that he had been
thinking over a little plan, and perhaps I could help him. He had a
little money he wanted to invest--
"'In our mission chapel?' I asked.
"'No,' he said, without moving a muscle. 'Not that. I don't know much
about chapels, Father Damon. But I've been hearing what you are doing,
and it occurred to me that you must come across a good many cases not in
the regular charities that you could help judiciously, get them over hard
spots, without encouraging dependence. I'm going to put ten thousand
dollars into your hands, if you'll be bothered with it, to use at your
discretion.'
"I was taken aback, and I suppose I showed it, and I said that was a
great deal of money to intrust to one man.
"Henderson showed a little impatience. It depended upon the man. That
was his lookout. The money would be deposited, he said, in bank to my
order, and he asked me for my signature that he could send with the
deposit.
"Of course I thanked him warmly, and said I hoped I could do some good
with it. He did not seem to pay much attention to what I was saying. He
was looking out of the window to the bare trees in the court back of his
office, and his hands were moving the papers on his table aimlessly
about.
"'I shall know,' he said, 'when you have drawn this out. I've got a
fancy for keeping a little fund of this sort there.' And then he added,
still not looking at me, but at the dead branches, 'You might call it the
Margaret Fund.'"
"That was the name of his first wife!" Edith exclaimed.
"Yes, I remember. I said I would, and began to thank him again as I rose
from my chair. He was still looking away, and saying, as if to himself,
'I think she would like that.' And then he turned, and, in his usual
abrupt office manner, said: 'Good-morning, good-morning. I am very much
obliged to you.'"
"Wasn't it all very strange!" Edith spoke, after a moment. "I didn't
suppose he cared. Do you think it was just sentiment?"
"I shouldn't wonder. Men like Henderson do queer things. In the hearts
of such hardened men there are sometimes roots of sentiment that you
wouldn't suspect. But I don't know. The Lord somehow looks out for his
poor."
Notwithstanding this windfall of charity, Father Damon seemed somewhat
depressed. "I wish," he said, after a pause, "he had given it to the
mission. We are so poor, and modern philanthropy all runs in other
directions. The relief of temporary suffering has taken the place of the
care of souls."
"But Dr. Leigh said that you were interesting the churches in the labor
unions."
"Yes. It is an effort to do something. The church must put herself into
sympathetic relations with these people, or she will accomplish nothing.
To get them into the church we must take up their burdens. But it is a
long way round. It is not the old method of applying the gospel to men's
sins."
"And yet," Edith insisted, "you must admit that such people as Dr. Leigh
are doing a good work."
Father Damon did not reply immediately. Presently he asked: "Do you
think, Mrs. Delancy, that Dr. Leigh has any sympathy with the higher
life, with spiritual things? I wish I could think so."
"With the higher life of humanity, certainly."
"Ah, that is too vague. I sometimes feel that she and those like her are
the worst opponents to our work. They substitute humanitarianism for the
gospel."
"Yet I know of no one who works more than Ruth Leigh in the
self-sacrificing spirit of the Master."
"Whom she denies!" The quick reply came with a flush in his pale face,
and he instantly arose and walked away to the window and stood for some
moments in silence. When he turned there was another expression in his
eyes and a note of tenderness in his voice that contradicted the severity
of the priest. It was the man that spoke. "Yes, she is the best woman I
ever knew. God help me! I fear I am not fit for my work."
This outburst of Father Damon to her, so unlike his calm and trained
manner, surprised Edith, although she had already some suspicion of his
state of mind. But it would not have surprised her if she had known more
of men, the necessity of the repressed and tortured soul for sympathy,
and that it is more surely to be found in the heart of a pure woman than
elsewhere.
But there was nothing that she could say, as she took his hand to bid him
good-by, except the commonplace that Dr. Leigh had expressed anxiety that
he was overworking, and that for the sake of his work he must be more
prudent. Yet her eyes expressed the sympathy she did not put in words.
Father Damon understood this, and he went away profoundly grateful for
her forbearance of verbal expression as much as for her sympathy. But he
did not suspect that she needed sympathy quite as much as he did, and
consequently he did not guess the extent of her self-control. It would
have been an immense relief to have opened her heart to him--and to whom
could she more safely do this than to a priest set apart from all human
entanglements?--and to have asked his advice. But Edith's peculiar
strength--or was it the highest womanly instinct?--lay in her discernment
of the truth that in one relation of life no confidences are possible
outside of that relation except to its injury, and that to ask
interference is pretty sure to seal its failure. As its highest joys
cannot be participated in, so its estrangements cannot be healed by any
influence outside of its sacred compact. To give confidence outside is
to destroy the mutual confidence upon which the relation rests, and
though interference may patch up livable compromises, the bloom of love
and the joy of life are not in them. Edith knew that if she could not
win her own battle, no human aid could win it for her.
And it was all the more difficult because it was vague and indefinite, as
the greater part of domestic tragedies are. For the most part life goes
on with external smoothness, and the public always professes surprise
when some accident, a suit at law, a sudden death, a contested will, a
slip from apparent integrity, or family greed or feminine revenge, turns
the light of publicity upon a household, to find how hollow the life has
been; in the light of forgotten letters, revealing check-books, servants'
gossip, and long-established habits of aversion or forbearance, how much
sordidness and meanness!
Was not everything going on as usual in the Delancy house and in the
little world of which it was a part? If there had been any open neglect
or jealousy, any quarrel or rupture, or any scene, these could be
described. These would have an interest to the biographer and perhaps to
the public. But at this period there was nothing of this sort to tell.
There were no scenes. There were no protests or remonstrances or
accusations, nor to the world was there any change in the daily life of
these two.
It was more pitiful even than that. Here was a woman who had set her
heart in all the passionate love of a pure ideal, and day by day she felt
that the world, the frivolous world, with its low and selfish aims, was
too strong for her, and that the stream was wrecking her life because it
was bearing Jack away from her. What could one woman do against the
accepted demoralizations of her social life? To go with them, not to
care, to accept Jack's idle, good-natured, easy philosophy of life and
conduct, would not that have insured a peaceful life? Why shouldn't she
conform and float, and not mind?
To be sure, a wise woman, who has been blessed or cursed with a long
experience of life, would have known that such a course could not
forever, or for long, secure happiness, and that a man's love ultimately
must rest upon a profound respect for his wife and a belief in her
nobility. Perhaps Edith did not reason in this way. Probably it was her
instinct for what was pure and true-showing, indeed, the quality of her
love-that guided her.
To Jack's friends he was much the same as usual. He simply went on in
his ante-marriage ways. Perhaps he drank a little more, perhaps he was a
little more reckless at cards, and it was certain that his taste for
amusing himself in second-hand book-shops and antiquity collections had
weakened. His talked-of project for some regular occupation seemed to
have been postponed, although he said to himself that it was only
postponed until his speculations, which kept him in a perpetual fever,
should put him in a position to command a business.
Meantime he did not neglect social life--that is, the easy, tolerant
company which lived as he liked to live. There was at first some
pretense of declining invitations which Edith could not accept, but he
soon fell into the habit of a man whose family has temporarily gone
abroad, with the privileges of a married man, without the
responsibilities of a bachelor. Edith could see that he took great
credit to himself for any evenings he spent at home, and perhaps he had a
sort of support in the idea that he was sacrificing himself to his
family. Major Fairfax, whom Edith distrusted as a misleader of youth,
did not venture to interfere with Jack again, but he said to himself that
it was a blank shame that with such a wife he should go dangling about
with women like Carmen and Miss Tavish, not that the Major himself had
any objection to their society, but, hang it all, that was no reason why
Jack should be a fool.
In midwinter Jack went to Washington on business. It was necessary to
see Mavick, and Mr. Henderson, who was also there. To spend a few weeks
at the capital, in preparation for Lent, has become a part of the program
of fashion. There can be met people like-minded from all parts of the
Union, and there is gayety, and the entertainment to be had in new
acquaintances, without incurring any of the responsibilities of social
continuance. They meet there on neutral ground. Half Jack's set had
gone over or were going. Young Van Dam would go with him. It will be
only for a few days, Jack had said, gayly, when he bade Edith good-by,
and she must be careful not to let the boy forget him.
It was quite by accident, apparently, that in the same train were the
Chesneys, Miss Tavish, and Carmen going over to join her husband. This
gave the business expedition the air of an excursion. And indeed at the
hotel where they stayed this New York contingent made something of an
impression, promising an addition to the gayety of the season, and
contributing to the importance of the house as a centre of fashion.
Henderson's least movements were always chronicled and speculated on,
and for years he had been one of the stock subjects, out of which even
the dullest interviewers, who watch the hotel registers in all parts of
the country, felt sure that they could make an acceptable paragraph. The
arrival of his wife, therefore, was a newspaper event.
They said in Washington at the time that Mrs. Henderson was one of the
most fascinating of women, amiable, desirous to please, approachable, and
devoted to the interests of her husband. If some of the women, residents
in established society, were a little shy of her, if some, indeed,
thought her dangerous--women are always thinking this of each other,
and surely they ought to know-nothing of this appeared in the reports.
The men liked her. She had so much vivacity, such esprit, she understood
men so well, and the world, and could make allowances, and was always an
entertaining companion. More than one Senator paid marked court to her,
more than one brilliant young fellow of the House thought himself
fortunate if he sat next her at dinner, and even cabinet officers waited
on her at supper. It could not be doubted that a smile and a
confidential or a witty remark from Mrs. Henderson brightened many an
evening. Wherever she went her charming toilets were fully described,
and the public knew as well as her jewelers the number and cost of her
diamonds, her necklaces, her tiaras. But this was for the world and for
state occasions. At home she liked simplicity. And this was what
impressed the reporters when, in the line of their public duty, they were
admitted to her presence. With them she was very affable, and she made
them feel that they could almost be classed with her friends, and that
they were her guardians against the vulgar publicity, which she disliked
and shrank from.
There went abroad, therefore, an impression of her amiability,
her fabulous wealth in jewels and apparel, her graciousness and her
cleverness and her domesticity. Her manners seemed to the reporters
those of a "lady," and of this both her wit and freedom from prudishness
and her courteous treatment of them convinced them. And the best of all
this was that while it was said that Henderson was one of the boldest and
shrewdest of operators, and a man to be feared in the Street, he was in
his family relations one of the most generous and kind-hearted of men.
Henderson himself had not much time for the frivolities of the season,
and he evaded all but the more conspicuous social occasions, at which
Carmen, sometimes with a little temper, insisted that he should accompany
her. "You would come here," he once said, "when you knew I was immersed
in most perplexing business."
"And now I am here," she had replied, in a tone equally wanting in
softness, "you have got to make the best of me."
Was Jack happy in the whirl he was in? Some days exceedingly so. Some
days he sulked, and some days he threw himself with recklessness born of
artificial stimulants into the always gay and rattling moods of Miss
Tavish. Somehow he could get no nearer to Henderson or to Mavick than
when he was in New York. Not that he could accuse Mavick of trying to
conceal anything; Mavick bore to him always the open, "all right"
attitude, but there were things that he did not understand.
And then Carmen? Was she a little less dependent on him, in this wide
horizon, than in New York? And had he noticed a little disposition to
patronize on two or three occasions? It was absurd. He laughed at
himself for such an idea. Old Eschelle's daughter patronize him!
And yet there was something. She was very confidential with Mavick.
They seemed to have a great deal in common. It so happened that even in
the little expeditions of sightseeing these two were thrown much
together, and at times when the former relations of Jack and Carmen
should have made them comrades. They had a good deal to say to each
other, and momentarily evidently serious things, and at receptions Jack
had interrupted their glances of intelligence. But what stuff this was!
He jealous of the attentions of his friend to another man's wife! If she
was a coquette, what did it matter to him? Certainly he was not jealous.
But he was irritated.
One day after a round of receptions, in which Jack had been specially
disgruntled, and when he was alone in the drawing-room of the hotel with
Carmen, his manner was so positively rude to her that she could not but
notice it. There was this trait of boyishness in Jack, and it was one of
the weaknesses that made him loved, that he always cried out when he was
hurt.
Did Carmen resent this? Did she upbraid him for his manner? Did she
apologize, as if she had done anything to provoke it? She sank down
wearily in a chair and said:
"I'm so tired. I wish I were back in New York."
"You don't act like it," Jack replied, gruffly.
"No. You don't understand. And now you want to make me more miserable.
See here, Mr. Delancy," and she started up in her seat and turned to him,
"you are a man of honor. Would you advise me to make an enemy of Mr.
Mavick, knowing all that he does know about Mr. Henderson's affairs?"
"I don't see what that has got to do with it," said Jack, wavering.
"Lately your manner--"
"Nonsense!" cried Carmen, springing up and approaching Jack with a smile
of animation and trust, and laying her hand on his shoulder. "We are
old, old friends. And I have just confided to you what I wouldn't to any
other living being. There!" And looking around at the door, she tapped
him lightly on the cheek and ran out of the room.
Whatever you might say of Carmen, she had this quality of a wise person,
that she never cut herself loose from one situation until she was
entirely sure of a better position.
For one reason or another Jack's absence was prolonged. He wrote often,
he made bright comments on the characters and peculiarities of the
capital, and he said that he was tired to death of the everlasting whirl
and scuffle. People plunged in the social whirlpool always say they are
weary of it, and they complain bitterly of its exactions and its tax on
their time and strength. Edith judged, especially from the complaints,
that her husband was enjoying himself. She felt also that his letters
were in a sense perfunctory, and gave her only the surface of his life.
She sought in vain in them for those evidences of spontaneous love, of
delight in writing to her of all persons in the world, the eagerness of
the lover that she recalled in letters written in other days. However
affectionate in expression, these were duty letters. Edith was not
alone. She had no lack of friends, who came and went in the common round
of social exchange, and for many of them she had a sincere affection.
And there were plenty of relatives on the father's and on the mother's
side. But for the most part they were old-fashioned, home-keeping
New-Yorkers, who were sufficient to themselves, and cared little for the
set into which Edith's marriage had more definitely placed her. In any
real trouble she would not have lacked support. She was deemed fortunate
in her marriage, and in her apparent serene prosperity it was believed
that she was happy. If she had had mother or sister or brother, it is
doubtful if she would have made either a confidant of her anxieties, but
high-spirited and self-reliant as she was, there were days when she
longed with intolerable heartache for the silent sympathy of a mother's
presence.
It is singular how lonely a woman of this nature can be in a gay and
friendly world. She had her interests, to be sure. As she regained her
strength she took up her social duties, and she tried to resume her
studies, her music, her reading, and she occupied herself more and more
with the charities and the fortunes of her friends who were giving their
lives to altruistic work. But there was a sense of unreality in all
this. The real thing was the soul within, the longing, loving woman
whose heart was heavy and unsatisfied. Jack was so lovable, he had in
his nature so much nobility, if the world did not kill it, her life might
be so sweet, and so completely fulfill her girlish dreams. All these
schemes of a helpful, altruistic life had been in her dream, but how
empty it was without the mutual confidence, the repose in the one human
love for which she cared.
Though she was not alone, she had no confidant. She could have none.
What was there to confide? There was nothing to be done. There was no
flagrant wrong or open injustice. Some women in like circumstances
become bitter and cynical. Others take their revenge in a career
reckless, but within social conventions, going their own way in a sort of
matrimonial truce. These are not noticeable tragedies. They are things
borne with a dumb ache of the heart. There are lives into which the show
of spring comes, but without the song of birds or the scent of flowers.
They are endured bravely, with a heroism for which the world does not
often give them credit. Heaven only knows how many noble women-noble in
this if in nothing else--carry through life this burden of an unsatisfied
heart, mocked by the outward convention of love.
But Edith had one confidant--the boy. And he was perfectly safe; he
would reveal nothing. There were times when he seemed to understand,
and whether he did or not she poured out her heart to him. Often in the
twilight she sat by him in this silent communion. If he were asleep--and
he was not troubled with insomnia--he was still company. And when he was
awake, his efforts to communicate the dawning ideas of the queer world
into which he had come were a never-failing delight. He wanted so many
more things than he could ask for, which it was his mother's pleasure to
divine; later on he would ask for so many things he could not get. The
nurse said that he had uncommon strength of will.
These were happy hours, imagining what the boy would be, planning what
she would make his life, hours enjoyed as a traveler enjoys wayside
flowers, snatched before an approaching storm. It is a pity, the nurse
would say, that his father cannot see him now. And at the thought Edith
could only see the child through tears, and a great weight rested on her
heart in all this happiness.