The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 149

"You seem to be in a brown study," said Carmen, who came up, leaning on the arm of the Earl of Chisholm.

"I'm lost in admiration. You must make allowance, Miss Esch.e.l.le, for a person from the country."

"Oh, we are all from the country. That is the beauty of it. There is Mr.

Hollowell, used to drive a peddler's cart, or something of that sort, up in Maine, talking with Mr. Stott, whose father came in on the towpath of the Erie Ca.n.a.l. You don't dance? The earl has just been giving me a whirl in the ballroom, and I've been trying to make him understand about democracy."

"Yes," the earl rejoined; "Miss Esch.e.l.le has been interpreting to me republican simplicity."

"And he cannot point out, Mr. Fairchild, why this is not as good as a reception at St. James. I suppose it's his politeness."

"Indeed, it is all very charming. It must be a great thing to be the architect of your own fortune."

"Yes; we are all self-made," Carmen confessed.

"I am, and I get dreadfully tired of it sometimes. I have to read over the Declaration and look at the map of the Western country at such times.

A body has to have something to hold on to."

"Why, this seems pretty substantial," I said, wondering what the girl was driving at.

"Oh, yes; I suppose the world looks solid from a balloon. I heard one man say to another just now, 'How long do you suppose Henderson will last?'

Probably we shall all come down by the run together by-and-by."

"You seem to be on a high plane," I suggested.

"I guess it's the influence of the earl. But I am the most misunderstood of women. What I really like is simplicity. Can you have that without the social traditions," she appealed to the earl, "such as you have in England?"

"I really cannot say," the earl replied, laughing. "I fancied there was simplicity in Brandon; perhaps that was traditional."

"Oh, Brandon!" Carmen cried, "see what Brandon does when it gets a chance. I a.s.sure your lordship that we used to be very simple people in New York. Come, let us go and tell Mrs. Henderson how delightful it all is. I'm so sorry for her."

As I moved about afterwards with my wife we heard not many comments, a word here and there about Henderson's wonderful success, a remark about Margaret's beauty, some sympathy for her in such a wearisome ordeal--the world is full of kindness--the house duly admired, and the ordinary compliments paid; the people a.s.sembled were, as usual, absorbed in their own affairs. From all we could gather, all those present were used to living in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a matter of course. Was there no envy? Was there nothing said about the airs of a country school-ma'am, the aplomb of an adventurer? Were there no criticisms afterwards as the guests rolled home in their carriages, surfeited and exhausted? What would you have? Do you expect the millennium to begin in New York?

The newspapers said that it was the most brilliant affair the metropolis had ever seen. I have no doubt it was. And I do not judge, either, by the newspaper estimates of the expense. I take the simple words addressed by the earl to Margaret, when he said good-night, at their full value. She flushed with pleasure at his modest commendation. Perhaps it was to her the seal of her night's triumph.

The house was opened. The world had seen it. The world had gone. If sleep did not come that night to her tired head on the pillow, what wonder? She had a position in the great world. In imagination it opened wider and wider. Could not the infinite possibilities of it fill the hunger of any soul?

The echoes of the Henderson reception continued long in the country press. Items multiplied as to the cost. It was said that the sum expended in flowers alone, which withered in a night, would have endowed a ward in a charity hospital. Some wag said that the price of the supper would have changed the result of the Presidential election. Views of the mansion were given in the ill.u.s.trated papers, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs.

Henderson. In country villages, in remote farmhouses, this great social event was talked of, Henderson's wealth was the subject of conjecture, Margaret's toilet was an object of interest. It was a shining example of success. Preachers, whose sensational sermons are as widely read as descriptions of great crimes, moralized on Henderson's career and Henderson's palace, and raised up everywhere an envied image of worldly prosperity. When he first arrived in New York, with only fifty cents in his pocket--so the story ran-and walked up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, he had nearly been run over at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street by a carriage, the occupants of which, a lady and gentleman, had stared insolently at the country youth. Never mind, said the lad to himself, the day will come when you will cringe to me. And the day did come when the gentleman begged Henderson to spare him in Wall Street, and his wife intrigued for an invitation to Mrs. Henderson's ball. The reader knows there is not a word of truth in this. Alas! said the preacher, if he had only devoted his great talents to the service of the Good and the True!

Behold how vain are all the triumphs of this world! see the result of the worship of Mammon! My friends, the age is materialized, a spirit of worldliness is abroad; be vigilant, lest the deceitfulness of riches send your souls to perdition. And the plain country people thanked G.o.d for such a warning, and the country girl dreamed of Margaret's career, and the country boy studied the ways of Henderson's success, and resolved that he, too, would seek his fortune in this bad metropolis.

The, Hendersons were important people. It was impossible that a knowledge of their importance should not have a reflex influence upon Margaret.

Could it be otherwise than that gradually the fineness of her discrimination should be dulled by the almost universal public consent in the methods by which Henderson had achieved his position, and that in time she should come to regard adverse judgment as the result of envy?

Henderson himself was under less illusion; the world was about what he had taken it for, only a little worse--more gullible, and with less principle. Carmen had mocked at Margaret's belief in Henderson. It is certainly a pitiful outcome that Margaret, with her naturally believing nature, should in the end have had a less clear perception of what was right and wrong than Henderson himself. Yet Henderson would not have shrunk, any more than Carmen would, from any course necessary to his ends, while Margaret would have shrunk from many things; but in absolute worldliness, in devotion to it, the time had come when Henderson felt that his Puritan wife was no restraint upon him. It was this that broke gentle Miss Forsythe's heart when she came fully to realize it.

I said that the world was at Margaret's feet. Was it? How many worlds are there, and does one ever, except by birth (in a republic), conquer them all? Truth to say, there were penetralia in New York society concerning which this successful woman was uneasy in her heart. There were people who had accepted her invitations, to whose houses she had been, who had a dozen ways of making her feel that she was not of them. These people--I suppose that if two castaways landed naked on a desert island, one of them would instantly be the ancien regime--had spoken of Mrs. Henderson and her ambition to the Earl of Chisholm in a way that pained him. They graciously a.s.sumed that he, as one of the elect, would understand them.

It was therefore with a heavy heart that he came to say good-by to Margaret before his return.

I cannot imagine anything more uncomfortable for an old lover than a meeting of this sort; but I suppose the honest fellow could not resist the inclination to see Margaret once more. I dare say she had a little flutter of pride in receiving him, in her consciousness of the change in herself into a wider experience of the world. And she may have been a little chagrined that he was not apparently more impressed by her surroundings, nor noticed the change in herself, but met her upon the ground of simple sincerity where they had once stood. What he tried to see, what she felt he was trying to see, was not the beautiful woman about whose charm and hospitality the town talked, but the girl he had loved in the old days.

He talked a little, a very little, about himself and his work in England, and a great deal about what had interested him here on his second visit, the social drift, the politics, the organized charities; and as he talked, Margaret was conscious how little the world in which she lived seemed to interest him; how little importance he attached to it. And she saw, as in a momentary vision of herself, that the things that once absorbed her and stirred her sympathies were now measurably indifferent to her. Book after book which he casually mentioned, as showing the drift of the age, and profoundly affecting modern thought, she knew only by name. "I guess," said Carmen, afterwards, when Margaret spoke of the earl's conversation, "that he is one of those who are trying to live in the spirit--what do they call it?--care for things of the mind."

"You are doing a n.o.ble work," he said, "in your Palace of Industry."

"Yes, it is very well managed," Margaret replied; "but it is uphill work, the poor are so ungrateful for charity."

"Perhaps n.o.body, Mrs. Henderson, likes to be treated as an object of charity."

"Well, work isn't what they want when we give it, and they'd rather live in the dirt than in clean apartments."

"Many of them don't know any better, and a good many of our poor resent condescension."

"Yes," said Margaret, with warmth; "they are getting to demand things as their right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in that quarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do with such people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled, 'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying round here.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, d.i.c.k; the lady's got to have some pleasure. Don't yer see, she's a-slummin'?'"

"It's very hard, I know," said the earl; "perhaps we are all on the wrong track."

"Maybe. Mr. Henderson says that the world would get on better if everybody minded his own business."

"I wish it were possible," the earl remarked, with an air of finishing the topic. "I have just been up to Brandon, Mrs. Henderson. I fear that I have seen the dear place for the last time."

"You don't mean that you are tired of America?"

"Not that. I shall never, even in thought, tire of Brandon."

"Yes, they are dear, good people."

"I thought Miss Forsythe--what a sweet, brave woman she is!--was looking sad and weary."

"Oh, aunt won't do anything, or take an interest in anything. She just stays there. I've tried in vain to get her here. Do you know"--and she turned upon the earl a look of the old playfulness--"she doesn't quite approve of me."

"Oh," he replied, hesitating a little--"I think, Mrs. Henderson, that her heart is bound up in you. It isn't for me to say that you haven't a truer friend in the world."

"Yes, I know. If I'd only--" and she stopped, with a petulant look on her fair face--"well, it doesn't matter. She is a dear soul."

"I--suppose," said the earl, rising, "we shall see you again on the other side?"

"Perhaps," with a smile. Could anything be more commonplace than such a parting? Good-by, I shall see you tomorrow or next year, or in the next world. Hail and farewell! That is the common experience. But, oh, the bitterness of it to many a soul!

It is quite possible that when the Earl of Chisholm said good-by, with an air of finality, Margaret felt that another part of her life was closed.

He was not in any way an extraordinary person, he was not a very rich peer, probably with his modesty and conscientiousness, and devotion to the ordinary duties of his station, he would never attain high rank in the government. Yet no one could be long with him without apprehending that his life was on a high plane. It was with a little irritation that Margaret recognized this, and remembered, with a twinge of conscience, that it was upon that plane that her life once traveled. The time had been when the more important thing to her was the world of ideas, of books, of intellectual life, of pa.s.sionate sympathy with the fortunes of humanity, of deepest interest in all the new thoughts struck out by the leaders who studied the profound problems of life and destiny.

That peace of mind which is found only in the highest activity for the n.o.blest ends she once had, though she thought it then unrest and striving--what Carmen, who was under no illusions about Henderson, or Uncle Jerry, or the world of fashion, and had an intuitive perception of cant that is sometimes denied to the children of light, called "taking pleasure in the things of the mind." To do Margaret justice, there entered into her reflections no thought of the t.i.tle and position of the Earl of Chisholm. They had never been alluring to her. If one could take any satisfaction in this phase of her character, her worldiness was purely American.

"I hardly know which I should prefer," Carmen was saying when they were talking over the ball and the earl's departure, "to be an English countess or the wife of an American millionaire."

"It might depend upon the man," replied Margaret, with a smile.

"The American," continued Carmen, not heeding this suggestion, "has the greater opportunities, and is not hindered by traditions. If you were a countess you would have to act like a countess. If you are an American you can act--like anything--you can do what you please. That is nicer.

Now, an earl must do what an earl has always done. What could you do with such a husband? Mind! Yes, I know, dear, about things of the mind. First, you know, he will be a gentleman socialist (in the magazines), and maybe a Christian socialist, or a Christian scientist, or something of that sort, interested in the Mind Cure."