A Little Journey in the World Part 24

"And your husband has not come yet?"

"He may come any day. I think business might suspend in the summer."

"So do I. But then, what would become of Lenox? It is rather hard on the men, only I dare say they like it. Don't you think Mr. Henderson would like a place here?"

"He cannot help being pleased with Lenox."

"I'm sure he would if you are. I have hardly seen him since that evening at the Stotts'. Can I tell you?--I almost had five minutes of envy that evening. You won't mind it in such an old woman?"

"I should rather trust your heart than your age, Mrs. Laflamme," said Margaret, with a laugh.

"Yes, my heart is as old as my face. But I had a feeling, seeing you walk away that evening into the conservatory. I knew what was coming.

I think I have discovered a great secret, Mrs. Henderson to be able to live over again in other people. By-the-way, what has become of that quiet Englishman, Mr. Lyon?"

"He has come into his t.i.tle. He is the Earl of Chisholm."

"Dear me, how stupid in us not to have taken a sense of that! And the Esch.e.l.les--do you know anything of the Esch.e.l.les?"

"Yes; they are at their house in Newport."

"Do you think there was anything between Miss Esch.e.l.le and Mr. Lyon? I saw her afterwards several times."

"Not that I ever heard. Miss Esch.e.l.le says that she is thoroughly American in her tastes."

"Then her tastes are not quite conformed to her style. That girl might be anything--Queen of Spain, or coryphee in the opera ballet. She is clever as clever. One always expects to hear of her as the heroine of an adventure."

"Didn't you say you knew her in Europe?"

"No. We heard of her and her mother everywhere. She was very independent. She had the sort of reputation to excite curiosity. But I noticed that the men in New York were a little afraid of her. She is a woman who likes to drive very near the edge."

Mrs. Laflamme rose. "I must not keep Mr. McNaughton waiting for any more of my gossip. We expect you and the Misses Arbuser this afternoon. I warn you it will be dull. I should like to hear of some summer resort where the men are over sixteen and under sixty."

Mrs. Laflamme liked to drive near the edge as much as Carmen did, and this piquancy was undeniably an attraction in her case. But there was this difference between the two: there was a confidence that Mrs.

Laflamme would never drive over the edge, whereas no one could tell what sheer Carmen might not suddenly take. A woman's reputation is almost as much affected by the expectation of what she may do as by anything she has done. It was Fox McNaughton who set up the dictum that a woman may do almost anything if it is known that she draws a line somewhere.

The lawn party was not at all dull to Margaret. In the first place, she received a great deal of attention. Henderson's name was becoming very well known, and it was natural that the splendor of his advancing fortune should be reflected in the person of his young wife, whose loveliness was enhanced by her simple enjoyment of the pa.s.sing hour.

Then the toilets of the women were so fresh and charming, the colors grouped so prettily on the greensward, the figures of the slender girls playing at tennis or lounging on the benches under the trees, recalled scenes from the cla.s.sic poets. It was all so rich and refined. Nor did she miss the men of military age, whose absence Mrs. Laflamme had deplored, for she thought of her husband. And, besides, she found even the college boys (who are always spoken of as men) amusing, and the elderly gentlemen--upon whom watering-place society throws much responsibility--gallant, facetious, complimentary, and active in whatever was afoot. Their boyishness, indeed, contrasted with--the gravity of the undergraduates, who took themselves very seriously, were civil to the young ladies,--confidential with the married women, and had generally a certain reserve and dignity which belong to persons upon whom such heavy responsibility rests.

There were, to be sure, men who looked bored, and women who were listless, missing the stimulus of any personal interest; but the scene was so animated, the weather so propitious, that, on the whole, a person must be very cynical not to find the occasion delightful.

There was a young novelist present whose first story, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take a profound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be read aloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him, although Mr. Summers Ba.s.s was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes, to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual frown. Mr. Ba.s.s dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very exact in his p.r.o.nunciation, careful about his manner, and had the air of a little weariness, of the responsibility of one looking at life. It was only at rare moments that his face expressed intensity of feeling.

"It is a very pretty scene. I suppose, Mr. Ba.s.s, that you are making studies," said Margaret, by way of opening a conversation.

"No; hardly that. One must always observe. It gets to be a habit. The thing is to see reality under appearances."

"Then you would call yourself a realist?"

Mr. Ba.s.s smiled. "That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want is nature, color, pa.s.sion--to pierce the artificialities."

"But you must describe appearance."

"Certainly, to an extent--form, action, talk as it is, even trivialities--especially the trivialities, for life is made up of the trivial."

"But suppose that does not interest me?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Henderson, that is because you are used to the conventional, the selected. Nature is always interesting."

"I do not find it so."

"No? Nature has been covered up; it has been idealized. Look yonder,"

and Mr. Ba.s.s pointed across the lawn. "See that young woman upon whom the sunlight falls standing waiting her turn. See the quivering of the eyelids, the heaving of the chest, the opening lips; note the curve of her waist from the shoulder, and the line rounding into the fall of the folds of the Austrian cashmere. I try to saturate myself with that form, to impress myself with her every att.i.tude and gesture, her color, her movement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence of pa.s.sion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of her shoe. The picture will be life."

"But suppose, Mr. Ba.s.s, when you come to speak with her, you find that she has no ideas, and talks slang."

"All the better. It shows what we are, what our society is. And besides, Mrs. Henderson, nearly everybody has the capacity of being wicked; that is to say, of expressing emotion."

"You take a gloomy view, Mr. Ba.s.s."

"I take no view, Mrs. Henderson. My ambition is to record. It will not help matters by pretending that people are better than they are."

"Well, Mr. Ba.s.s, you may be quite right, but I am not going to let you spoil my enjoyment of this lovely scene," said Margaret, moving away.

Mr. Ba.s.s watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebook a phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a pretty plutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "The Last Sigh of the Prude."

The whole world knows how delightful Lenox is. It even has a club where the men can take refuge from the exactions of society, as in the city.

The town is old enough to have "histories"; there is a romance attached to nearly every estate, a tragedy of beauty, and money, and disappointment; great writers have lived here, families whose names were connected with our early politics and diplomacy; there is a tradition of a society of wit and letters, of women whose charms were enhanced by a spice of adventure, of men whose social brilliancy ended in misanthropy.

All this gave a background of distinction to the present gayety, luxury, and adaptation of the unsurpa.s.sed loveliness of nature to the refined fashion of the age.

Here, if anywhere, one could be above worry, above the pa.s.sion of envy; for did not every new "improvement" and every new refinement in living add to the importance of every member of this favored community? For Margaret it was all a pageant of beauty. The Misses Arbuser talked about the quality of the air, the variety of the scenery, the exhilaration of the drives, the freedom from noise and dust, the country quiet. There were the morning calls, the intellectual life of the reading clubs, the tennis parties, the afternoon teas, combined with charming drives from one elegant place to another; the siestas, the idle swinging in hammocks, with the latest magazine from which to get a topic for dinner, the mild excitement of a tete-a-tete which might discover congenial tastes or run on into an interesting attachment. Half the charm of life, says a philosopher, is in these personal experiments.

When Henderson came, as he did several times for a few days, Margaret's happiness was complete. She basked in the sun of his easy enjoyment of life. She liked to take him about with her, and see the welcome in all companies of a man so handsome, so natural and cordial, as her husband.

Especially aid she like the consideration in which he was evidently held at the club, where the members gathered about him to listen to his racy talk and catch points about the market. She liked to think that he was not a woman's man. He gave her his version of some recent transactions that had been commented on in the newspapers, and she was indignant over the insinuations about him. It was the price, he said, that everybody had to pay for success. Why shouldn't he, she reflected, make money?

Everybody would if they could, and no one knew how generous he was. If she had been told that the family of Jerry Hollowell thought of him in the same way, she would have said that there was a world-wide difference in the two men. Insensibly she was losing the old standards she used to apply to success. Here in Lenox, in this prosperous, agreeable world, there was nothing to remind her of them.

In her enjoyment of this existence without care, I do not suppose it occurred to her to examine if her ideals had been lowered. Sometimes Henderson had a cynical, mocking tone about the world, which she reproved with a caress, but he was always tolerant and good-natured. If he had told her that he acted upon the maxim that every man and woman has his and her price she would have been shocked, but she was getting to make allowances that she would not have made before she learned to look at the world through his eyes. She could see that the Brandon circle was over-scrupulous. Her feeling of this would have been confirmed if she had known that when her aunt read the letter announcing a month's visit to the Esch.e.l.les in Newport, she laid it down with a sigh.

XVI

Uncle Jerry was sitting on the piazza of the Ocean House, absorbed in the stock reports of a New York journal, answering at random the occasional observations of his wife, who filled up one of the s.p.a.cious chairs near him--a florid woman, with diamonds in her ears, who had the resolute air of enjoying herself. It was an August Newport morning, when there is a salty freshness in the air, but a temperature that discourages exertion. A pony phaeton dashed by containing two ladies.

The ponies were cream-colored, with flowing manes and tails, and harness of black and gold; the phaeton had yellow wheels with a black body; the diminutive page with folded arms, on the seat behind, wore a black jacket and yellow breeches. The lady who held the yellow silk reins was a blonde with dark eyes. As they flashed by, the lady on the seat with her bowed, and Mr. Hollowell returned the salute.

"Who's that?" asked Mrs. Hollowell.

"That's Mrs. Henderson."