The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 161

"I wonder how he knows?"

"Observation, probably. Tom startled a dinner table the other day with the remark that when a man once gives himself up to the full enjoyment of a virtuous life, it seems strange to him that more people do not follow his example."

"The trouble with the virtue of Washington is that it always wants to interfere with other people's business. Fellows like Tom are always hunting up mares' nests in order to be paid for breaking them up."

"I can't say about Tom," rejoined Mavick. "I suppose it is necessary to live."

"I suppose so. And that goes along with another proposition--that the successful have no rights which the unsuccessful are bound to respect.

As soon as a man gets ahead," Henderson continued, with a tone of bitterness, "the whole pack are trying to pull him down. A capitalist is a public enemy. Why, look at that Hodge bill! Strikes directly at the ability of the railways to develop the country. Have you seen it?"

"Yes," Mavick admitted; "the drawer of it was good enough to consult me on its const.i.tutionality. It's a mighty queer bill."

"It can't get through the Senate," said Henderson; "but it's a bother.

Such schemes are coming up all the time, and they unsettle business.

These fellows need watching."

"And managing," added Mavick.

"Exactly. I can't be in Washington all the time. And I need to know what is going on every twenty-four hours from the inside. I can't rely on politicians or lobbyists."

"Well," said Mr. Mavick, in his easiest manner, "that's easy enough.

You want a disinterested friend."

Henderson nodded, but did not even smile, and the talk went on about other measures, and confidentially about certain men in Washington, until, after twenty minutes' conversation, the two men came to a perfect understanding. When Mavick arose to go they shook hands even more cordially than at first, and Henderson said:

"Well, I expect to hear from you, and remember that our house will always be your home in the city."

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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sion. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sion could win. This was not at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen Hatshepsu to a.s.sume 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude of one expecting the usual five o'clock c.o.c.ktail, 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."