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
associations 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 assailed 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 passion. 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 amusement 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 emancipated
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 passion could win. This was
not at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen Hatshepsu to assume
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 amusement 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 pass 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 attitude of
one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, 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."
"It's better to buy than build," Jack insisted. "A man's got to have
some recreation."
"Recreation! Why don't you charter a Fifth Avenue stage and take your
friends on a voyage to the Battery? That'll make 'em sick enough." It
was a misery of the Major's life that, in order to keep in with necessary
friends, he had to accept invitations for cruises on yachts, and pretend
he liked it. Though he had the gout, he vowed he would rather walk to
Newport than go round Point Judith in one of those tipping tubs. He had
tried it, and, as he said afterwards, "The devil of it was that Mrs.
Henderson and Miss Tavish sympathized with me. Gad! it takes away a
person's manhood, that sort of thing."
The Major sipped his bitters, and then added: "Or I'll tell you what; if
you must do something, start a newspaper--the drama, society, and
letters, that sort of thing, with pictures. I heard Miss Tavish say she
wished she had a newspaper."
"But," said Jack, with gravity, "I'm not buying a yacht for Miss Tavish."
"I didn't suppose you were. Devilish fine girl, though. I don't care
who you buy it for if you don't buy it for yourself. Why don't you buy
it for Henderson? He can afford it."
"I'd like to know what you mean, Major Fairfax!" cried Jack. "What
business--"
"There!" exclaimed the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softened
expression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack.
I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop.
But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he
used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your
mother--that was a woman!--did me a kindness once when I was in a d---d
tight place, and I never forgot it. See here, Jack, if I had money
enough I'd buy a yacht and put Carmen and Miss Tavish on it, and send
them off on the longest voyage there is."
"Who's been talking?" exclaimed Jack, touched a little, but very much
offended.
"The town, Jack. Don't mind the talk. People always talk. I suppose
people talk about me: At your age I should have been angry too at a hint
even from an old friend. But I've learned. It doesn't pay. I don't get
angry any more. Now there's Henderson--"
"What have you got against Henderson?"
"Nothing. He is a very good fellow, for that sort of man. But, Lord!
Henderson is a big machine. You might as well try to stand in with a
combination of gang-saws, or to make friends with the Department of the
Interior. Look at the men who have gone in with Henderson from time to
time. The ground is strewn with them. He's got no more feeling in
business than a reaper-and-binder."
"I don't know what Henderson's got to do with my having a yacht."
"I beg your pardon, Jack; it's none of my business. Only I do not put my
investments"--Jack smiled faintly, as if the conversation were taking a
humorous turn--"at the mercy of Henderson's schemes. If I did, I
wouldn't try to run a yacht at the same time. I should be afraid that
some day when I got to sea I should find myself out of coal. You know,
my boy, that the good book says you cannot serve two masters."
"Nobody ever accused you of that, Major," retorted Jack, with a laugh.
"But what two have you in mind?"
"Oh, I don't mean anything personal. I just use names as typical. Say
Henderson and Carmen." And the Major leaned back and tapped his fingers
together, as if he were putting a general proposition.
Jack flushed, and then thought a moment--it would be ridiculous to get
angry with old Fairfax--and then said: "Major, if I were you, I wouldn't
have anything to do with either of them. You'll spoil your digestion."
"Umph!" the Major grunted, as he rose from his chair. "This is an age of
impudence. There's no more respect for gray hair than if it were dyed.
I cannot waste any more time on you. I've got an early dinner. Devilish
uphill work trying to encourage people who dine at seven. But, my boy,
think on these things, as the saint says."
And the old fellow limped away. There was one good thing about the
Major. He stood up in church every Sunday and read his prayers, like a
faithful old sinner as he was.
Jack, sobered by the talk, walked home in a very irritated mood, blaming
everybody except himself. For old Fairfax's opinion he didn't care, but
evidently the old fellow represented a lot of gossip. He wished people
would mind their own business. His irritation was a little appeased by
Edith's gay and loving greeting; but she, who knew every shade of his
face, saw it.
"Have you had a worrying day?"
"No; not specially. I've had an hour of old Fairfax, who hasn't any
business of his own to attend to."
"Oh, nobody minds the Major," Edith said, as she gave him a shake and
another kiss; but a sharp pang went through her heart, for she guessed
what had happened, since she had had a visit that afternoon from another
plain-speaking person.
They were staying late in town. Edith, who did not care to travel far,
was going presently to a little cottage by the sea, and Mrs. Schuyler
Blunt had looked in for a moment to say good-by before she went up to her
Lenox house.
"It's only an old farmhouse made over," Mrs. Blunt was saying; "hardly
smart enough to ask anybody to, but we hope to have you and Jack there
some time."
"That would be very nice. I hear Lenox is more beautiful than ever."
"Yes, it is, and about as difficult to get into as the kingdom of heaven.
It's being spoiled for moderate people. The Hendersons and the Van Dams
and that sort are in a race to see who shall build houses with the
biggest rooms, and give the most expensive entertainments. It's all
show. The old flavor has gone."
"But they cannot spoil the scenery.".
"My child, they are the scenery. You can't see anything else. It
doesn't bother me, but some of my old neighbors are just ruining
themselves trying to keep the pace. I do think the Americans are the
biggest fools on earth."
"Father Damon says the trouble is we haven't any middle class for a
balance."
"Yes, that's the English of it. But it's a pity that fashion has got
hold of the country, and is turning our summers into a worry and a
burden. I thought years ago when we went to Lenox that it was a good
thing the country was getting to be the fashion; but now it's
fashionable, and before we know it every desirable spot will be what they
call syndicated. Miss Tavish says she is coming to visit the Hendersons
there."
"I thought she went to Bar Harbor."
"But she is coming down for part of the season. These people don't stay
anywhere. Just long enough in one place to upset everything with their
extravagance. That's the reason I didn't ask you and Jack up this
summer."
"Thank you, we couldn't go, you know," said Edith, simply, and then, with
curiosity in her eyes, asked; "but I don't quite understand what's the
reason."
"Well," said Mrs. Blunt, as if nerving herself up to say what must be
said, "I thought perhaps you wouldn't like to be where they are."
"I don't know why I should or why I should not," Edith replied.
"Nor have Jack with them," continued Mrs. Blunt, stoutly.
"What do you mean, Mrs. Blunt?" cried Edith, her brown eyes flaming.
"Don't turn on me, Edith dear. I oughtn't to have said anything. But I
thought it was my duty. Of course it is only talk."
"Well?"
"That Jack is always with one or the other of those women."
"It is false!" cried Edith, starting up, with tears now in her eyes;
"it's a cruel lie if it means anything wrong in Jack. So am I with those
women; so are you. It's a shame. If you hear any one say such things,
you can tell them for me that I despise them."
"I said it was a shame, all such talk. I said it was nonsense. But,
dear, as a friend, oughtn't I to tell you?" And the kind-hearted gossip
put her arm round Edith, and kept saying that she perfectly understood
it, and that nobody really meant anything. But Edith was crying now,
with a heart both hurt and indignant.
"It's a most hateful world, I know," Mrs, Blunt answered; "but it's the
best we have, and it's no use to fret about it."
When the visitor had gone, Edith sat a long time in misery. It was the
first real shock of her married life. And in her heart she prayed. For
Jack? Oh no. The dear girl prayed for herself, that suspicions might
not enter her heart. She could not endure that the world should talk
thus of him. That was all. And when she had thought it all over and
grown calm, she went to her desk and wrote a note to Carmen. It asked
Mrs. Henderson, as they were so soon to leave town, to do her the favor
to come round informally and lunch with her the next day, and afterwards
perhaps a little drive in the Park.