The Philistines Part 18

"Yes, the men who are planning the thing say that it will be so evident that you'd want the road to go this new way, that if you vote with the Wachusett interest they'll swear you are bought."

"Swear I'm bought? Pooh! Tom Greenfield is too well known for that sort of talk to hold water."

"But through your own town"--

Mrs. Sampson regarded her companion closely as she slowly p.r.o.nounced these words. They roused him like an electric shock.

"Through Feltonville?"

She nodded, compressing her lips, but saying nothing.

"Phew! This is a tough nut to crack. But are you sure that is to be tried?"

"Yes; there is a scheme for a few monopolists to buy up mill privileges and run factories at Feltonville; and they mean to make the road serve them, instead of its being put where the public need it."

"So that's what Lincoln's been raking up in Boston," Greenfield said to himself. "I knew he was up to some deviltry. Wants to sell off those meadows he's been gathering in on mortgages."

"Of course you'll want to help your town," Mrs. Sampson said, regretfully. "The men that voted for you'll expect you to do it; but it's helping on a sly scheme at the expense of the state. I'm sorry you've got to be on that side."

"Got to be on that side?" he retorted, starting up. "Who says I've got to be on that side? we'll see about that before we get through. The men that voted for me expect me to do what is right, and I don't think they'll be disappointed just yet."

And all things considered, Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson thought she had done a good evening's work.

XVI

WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE.

Hamlet; i.--2.

"Oh, this is completely captivating," Mrs. Frostwinch said, as she sat down to luncheon in Edith Fenton's pretty dining-room, and looked at the large mound-like bouquet of richly tinted spring leaves which adorned the centre of the table. "That is the advantage of having brains. One always finds some delightful surprise or other at your house."

"Thank you," Edith returned, gayly; "but at your house one always has a delightful surprise in the hostess, so you are not forced to resort to makeshifts."

Helen Greyson, the third member of the party, smiled and shook her head.

"Really," she said, "is one expected to keep up to the level of elaborate compliment like that? I fear I can only sit by in admiring silence while you two go on."

"Oh, no," the hostess responded. "Mrs. Frostwinch is to talk to you.

That is what you people are here for. I am only to listen."

Edith had invited Helen and Mrs. Frostwinch to take luncheon with her, and she had really done it to bring these two more closely together.

She was fond of them both, and the effect of her life in the world into which her marriage had introduced her had been to render her capable of judging both these women broadly. She admired them both, and while her feeling of affection had by circ.u.mstances been more closely cemented with Helen, she felt that a strong friendship was possible between herself and Mrs. Frostwinch should the lines of their lives ever fall much together.

The modern woman, particularly if she be at all in society, has generally to accept the possibilities of friendship in place of that gracious boon itself. The busy round of life to-day gives ample opportunity for judging of character, so that it is well nigh impossible not to feel that some are worthy of friendship, some especially gifted by nature with the power of inspiring it, while, on the other hand, there are those who repel or with whom the bond would be impossible. But friendship, however much it be the result of eternal fitness and the inevitable consequence of the meeting of two harmonious natures, is a plant of slow growth, and few things which require time and tranquillity for their nourishment flourish greatly in this age of restlessness and intense mental activity. The radical and unfettered Bohemian, or such descendants of that famous race as may be supposed still to survive, attempts to leap over all obstacles, to create what must grow, and to turn comradeship into friendship simply because one naturally grows out of the other; the more conservative and logical Philistine recognizes the futility of this att.i.tude, and in his too careful consistency sometimes needlessly brings about the very same failure by pursuing the opposite course.

Edith was not of the women who naturally a.n.a.lyze their own feelings toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the "_Journal Intime_" which it is impossible to read without blushing that one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her mental att.i.tude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship other than such as must come from lack of intercourse.

Perhaps some train of thought not far removed from the foregoing made her say, as the luncheon progressed,--

"Really, it seems to me as if life proceeded at a pace so rapid nowadays that one had not time even to be fond of anybody."

"It goes too fast for one to have much chance to show it," Helen responded; "but one may surely be fond of one's friends, even without seeing them."

"If you will swear not to tell the disgraceful fact," Mrs. Frostwinch said, "I'll confess that I abhor Walt Whitman; but that one dreadful, disreputably slangy phrase of his, 'I loaf and invite my soul,' echoes through my brain like an invitation to Paradise."

Edith smiled.

"If Arthur were here," she returned, "he would probably say that you think you mean that, but that really you don't."

"My dear," Mrs. Frostwinch answered, with her beautiful smile and a characteristic undulation of the neck, "your husband, although he is clever to an extent which I consider positively immoral, is only a man, and he does not understand. Men do what they like; women, what they can. There may be moral free will for women, although I've ceased to be sure of that even; but socially no such thing exists. Do we wear the dreadful clothes we are tied up in because we want to? Do we order society, or our lives, or our manners, or our morals? Do we"--

"There, there," interrupted Helen, laughing and putting up her hand. "I can't hear all this without a protest. If it is true I won't own it. I had rather concede that all women are fools"--

"As indeed they are," interpolated Mrs. Frost-winch.

"Than that they are helpless manikins," continued Helen. "In any other sense, that is," she added, "than men are."

"My dear Mrs. Greyson," the other said, leaning toward her, "you take the single question of the relation of the s.e.xes, and where are we? I wouldn't own it to a man for the world, but the truth is that men are governed by their will, and women are governed by men; and, what is more, if it could all be changed to-morrow, we should be perfectly miserable until we got the old way back again; and that's the most horribly humiliating part of it."

"It is easy to see that you are not a woman suffragist," commented Edith.

"Woman suffrage," echoed the other, her voice never for an instant varied from its even and highbred pitch; "woman suffrage must remain a practical impossibility until the idea can be eradicated from society that the initiative in pa.s.sion is the province of man."

"Brava!" cried the hostess. "Mr. Herman ought to hear that epigram. He asked me last night if he ought to put an inscription in favor of woman suffrage on the hem of the _America _he is modelling."

Helen turned toward her quickly.

"Is Mr. Herman making a model of the _America_?" she asked. "Has he the commission?"

"He hasn't the commission, because n.o.body has it, but he has been asked by the committee to prepare a model."

"That is"--began Helen. "Strange," she was going to say, but fortunately caught herself in time and subst.i.tuted "capital. It is good to think that Boston will have one really fine statue."

"Aren't you in that, Mrs. Greyson?" Mrs. Frostwinch asked.

"No," Helen answered. "I am really doing little since I came home. I am waiting until the time serves, I suppose."

She spoke without especial thought of what she was saying, desiring merely to cover any indications which might show the feeling aroused by what she had just heard and the decision she had just taken to have nothing to do with the contest for the statue of _America_, although she had begun a study for the figure.

"I admire you for being able to make time serve you instead of serving time like the rest of us," Mrs. Frostwinch said.

"I shouldn't hear another call you a time server without taking up the cudgels to defend you," responded Edith.

Mrs. Frostwinch smiled in reply to this. Then she turned again to Helen.

"To tell the truth, Mrs. Greyson," she observed, "I am glad you are not concerned in this statue, for I am myself one of a band of conspirators who are pushing the claims of a new man."