it to her--though he had found that she was a safe deposit of daring
schemes in general--on account of a feeling of loyalty to Margaret, to
whom he had never mentioned it in any of his daily letters. The scheme
made a great deal of noise, later on, when it came to the light of
consummation in legislatures and in courts, both civil and criminal; but
its magnitude and success added greatly to Henderson's reputation as
a bold and fortunate operator, and gave him that consideration which
always attaches to those who command millions of money, and have the
nerve to go undaunted through the most trying crises. I am anticipating
by saying that it absolutely ruined thousands of innocent people, caused
widespread strikes and practical business paralysis over a large region;
but those things were regarded as only incidental to a certain sort of
development, and did not impair the business standing, and rather helped
the social position, of the two or three men who counted their gains by
millions in the operation. It furnished occupation and gave good fees to
a multitude of lawyers, and was dignified by the anxious consultation of
many learned judges. A moralist, if he were poor and pessimistic,
might have put the case in a line, and taken that line from the Mosaic
decalogue (which was not intended for this new dispensation); but it was
involved in such a cloud of legal technicalities, and took on such an
aspect of enterprise and development of resources, and what not,
that the general public mind was completely befogged about it. I am
charitable enough to suppose that if the scheme had failed, the public
conscience is so tender that there would have been a question of
Henderson's honesty. But it did not fail.

Of this scheme, however, we knew nothing at the time in Brandon.
Henderson was never in better spirits, never more agreeable, and it did
not need inquiry to convince one that he was never so prosperous. He was
often with us, in flying visits, and I can well remember that his coming
and the expectation of it gave a kind of elation to the summer--that and
Margaret's supreme and sunny happiness. Even my wife admitted that it
was on both sides a love-match, and could urge nothing against it
except the woman's instinct that made her shrink from the point of ever
thinking of him as a husband for herself, which seemed to me a perfectly
reasonable feeling under all the circumstances.

The summer--or what we call summer in the North, which is usually
a preparation for warm weather, ending in a preparation for cold
weather--seemed to me very short--but I have noticed that each summer is
a little shorter than the preceding one. If Henderson had wanted to gain
the confidence of my wife he could not have done so more effectually
than he did in making us the confidants of a little plan he had in the
city, which was a profound secret to the party most concerned. This was
the purchase and furnishing of a house, and we made many clandestine
visits with him to town in the early autumn in furtherance of his plan.
He was intent on a little surprise, and when I once hinted to him that
women liked to have a hand in making the home they were to occupy, he
said he thought that my wife knew Margaret's taste--and besides, he
added, with a smile, “it will be only temporary; I should like her, if
she chooses, to build and furnish a house to suit herself.” In any one
else this would have seemed like assumption, but with Henderson it was
only the simple belief in his career.

We were still more surprised when we came to see the temporary home that
Henderson had selected, the place where the bride was to alight,
and look about her for such a home as would suit her growing idea of
expanding fortune and position. It was one of the old-fashioned
mansions on Washington Square, built at a time when people attached more
importance to room and comfort than to outside display--a house that
seemed to have traditions of hospitality and of serene family life. It
was being thoroughly renovated and furnished, with as little help from
the decorative artist and the splendid upholsterer as consisted with
some regard to public opinion; in fact the expenditure showed in solid
dignity and luxurious ease, and not in the construction of a museum in
which one could only move about with the constant fear of destroying
something. My wife was given almost carte blanche in the indulgence of
her taste, and she confessed her delight in being able for once to deal
with a house without the feeling that she was ruining me. Only in the
suite designed for Margaret did Henderson seriously interfere, and
insist upon a luxury that almost took my wife's breath away. She opposed
it on moral grounds. She said that no true woman could stand such
pampering of her senses without destruction of her moral fibre. But
Henderson had his way, as he always had it. What pleased her most in
the house was the conservatory, opening out from the drawing-room--a
spacious place with a fountain and cool vines and flowering plants, not
a tropical hothouse in a stifling atmosphere, in which nothing could
live except orchids and flowers born near the equator, but a garden with
a temperature adapted to human lungs, where one could sit and enjoy the
sunshine, and the odor of flowers, and the clear and not too incessant
notes of Mexican birds. But when it was all done, undoubtedly the most
agreeable room in the house was that to which least thought had been
given, the room to which any odds and ends could be sent, the room
to which everybody gravitated when rest and simple enjoyment without
restraint were the object Henderson's own library, with its big open
fire, and the books and belongings of his bachelor days. Man is usually
not credited with much taste or ability to take care of himself in the
matter of comfortable living, but it is frequently noticed that when
woman has made a dainty paradise of every other portion of the house,
the room she most enjoys, that from which it is difficult to keep out
the family, is the one that the man is permitted to call his own, in
which he retains some of the comforts and can indulge some of the habits
of his bachelor days. There is an important truth in this fact with
regard to the sexes, but I do not know what it is.

They were married in October, and went at once to their own house. I
suppose all other days were but a preparation for this golden autumn day
on which we went to church and returned to the wedding-breakfast. I am
sure everybody was happy. Miss Forsythe was so happy that tears were
in her eyes half the time, and she bustled about with an affectation of
cheerfulness that was almost contagious. Poor, dear, gentle lady! I can
imagine the sensations of a peach-tree, in an orchard of trees which
bud and bloom and by-and-by are weighty with yellow fruit, year after
year--a peach-tree that blooms, also, but never comes to fruition, only
wastes its delicate sweetness on the air, and finally blooms less and
less, but feels nevertheless in each returning spring the stir of the
sap and the longing for that fuller life, while all the orchard bursts
into flower, and the bees swarm about the pink promises, and the fruit
sets and slowly matures to lusciousness in the sun of July. I fancy the
wedding, which robbed us all, was hardest for her, for it was in one
sense a finality of her life. Whereas if Margaret had regrets--and deep
sorrow she had in wrenching herself from the little neighborhood, though
she never could have guessed the vacancy she caused by the withdrawal
of her loved presence--her own life was only just beginning, and she was
sustained by the longing which every human soul has for a new career, by
the curiosity and imagination which the traveler feels when he departs
for a land which he desires, and yet dreads to see lest his illusions
should vanish. Margaret was about to take that journey in the world
which Miss Forsythe had dreamed of in her youth, but had never set out
on. There are some who say that those are happiest who keep at home and
content themselves with reading about the lands of the imagination.
But happily the world does not believe this, and indeed would be very
unhappy if it could not try and prove all the possibilities of human
nature, to suffer as well as to enjoy.

I do not know how we fell into the feeling that this marriage was
somehow exceptional and important, since marriages take place every day,
and are so common and ordinarily so commonplace, when the first flutter
is over. Even Morgan said, in his wife's presence, that he thought there
had been weddings enough; at least he would interdict those that upset
things like this one. For one thing, it brought about the house-keeping
union of Mrs. Fletcher and Miss Forsythe in the tatter's cottage--a
sort of closing up of the ranks that happens on the field during a fatal
engagement. As we go on, it becomes more and more difficult to fill up
the gaps.

We were very unwilling to feel that Margaret had gone out of our life.
“But you cannot,” Morgan used to say, “be friends with the rich, and
that is what makes the position of the very rich so pitiful, for the
rich get so tired of each other.”

“But Margaret,” my wife urged, “will never be of that sort: money will
not change either her habits or her affections.”

“Perhaps. You can never trust to inherited poverty. I have no doubt that
she will resist the world, if anybody can, but my advice is that if you
want to keep along with Margaret, you'd better urge your husband to make
money. Experience seems to teach that while they cannot come to us, we
may sometimes go to them.”

My wife and Mrs. Fletcher were both indignant at this banter, and
accused Morgan of want of faith, and even lack of affection for
Margaret; in short, of worldly-mindedness himself.

“Perhaps I am rather shop-worn,” he confessed. “It's not distrust of
Margaret's intentions, but knowledge of the strength of the current on
which she has embarked. Henderson will not stop in his career short of
some overwhelming disaster or of death.”

“I thought you liked him? At any rate, Margaret will make a good use of
his money.”

“It isn't a question, my dear Mrs. Fairchild, of the use of money, but
of the use money makes of you. Yes, I do like Henderson, but I can't
give up my philosophy of life for the sake of one good fellow.”

“Philosophy of fudge!” exclaimed my wife. And there really was no answer
to this.

After six weeks had passed, my wife paid a visit to Margaret. Nothing
could exceed the affectionate cordiality of her welcome. Margaret was
overjoyed to see her, to show the house, to have her know her husband
better, to take her into her new life. She was hardly yet over the naive
surprises of her lovely surroundings. Or if it is too mach to say that
her surprise had lasted six weeks--for it is marvelous how soon women
adapt themselves to new conditions if they are agreeable--she was in
a glow of wonder at her husband's goodness, at his love, which had
procured all this happiness for her.

“You have no idea,” she said, “how thoughtful he is about
everything--and he makes so little of it all. I am to thank you, he
tells me always, for whatever pleases my taste in the house, and indeed
I think I should have known you had been here if he had not told me.
There are so many little touches that remind me of home. I am glad of
that, for it is the more likely to make you feel that it is your home
also.”

She clung to this idea in the whirl of the new life. In the first days
she dwelt much on this theme; indeed it was hardly second in her talk
to her worship--I can call it nothing less--of her husband. She liked
to talk of Brandon and the dear life there and the dearer friends--this
much talk about it showed that it was another life, already of the past,
and beginning to be distant in the mind. My wife had a feeling that
Margaret, thus early, was conscious of a drift, of a widening space, and
was making an effort to pull the two parts of her life together, that
there should be no break, as one carried away to sea by a resistless
tide grasps the straining rope that still maintains his slender
connection with the shore.

But it was all so different: the luxurious house, the carriage at
call, the box at the opera, the social duties inevitable with her own
acquaintances and the friends of her husband. She spoke of this in
moments of confidence, and when she was tired, with a consciousness that
it was a different life, but in no tone of regret, and I fancy that the
French blood in her veins, which had so long run decorously in Puritan
channels, leaped at its return into new gayety. Years ago Margaret had
thought that she might some time be a missionary, at least that she
should like to devote her life to useful labors among the poor and the
unfortunate. If conscience ever reminded her of this, conscience was
quieted by the suggestion that now she was in a position to be more
liberal than she ever expected to be; that is, to give everything except
the essential thing--herself. Henderson liked a gay house, brightness,
dinners, entertainment, and that his wife should be seen and admired.
Proof of his love she found in all this, and she entered into it
with spirit, and an enjoyment increased by the thought that she was
lightening the burden of his business, which she could see pressed
more and more. Not that Henderson made any account of his growing
occupations, or that any preoccupation was visible except to the eye
of love, which is quick to see all moods. These were indeed happy
days, full of the brightness of an expanding prosperity and unlimited
possibilities of the enjoyment of life. It was in obedience to
her natural instinct, and not yet a feeling of compensation and
propitiation, that enlisted Margaret in the city charities, connection
with which was a fashionable self-entertainment with some, and a means
of social promotion with others. My wife came home a little weary with
so much of the world, but, on the whole, impressed with Margaret's
good-fortune. Henderson in his own house was the soul of consideration
and hospitality, and Margaret was blooming in the beauty that shines in
satisfied desire.

XIII

It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow! Every one knows
the renovation of feeling--often mistaken for a moral renewal--when the
worn dress of the day is exchanged for the fresh evening toilet. The
expansiveness of prosperity has a like effect, though the moralist is
always piping about the beneficent uses of adversity. The moralist is,
of course, right, time enough given; but what does the tree, putting out
its tender green leaves to the wooing of the south wind, care for the
moralist? How charming the world is when you go with it, and not against
it!

It was better than Margaret had thought. When she came to Washington in
the winter season the beautiful city seemed to welcome her and respond
to the gayety of her spirit. It was so open, cheerful, hospitable, in
the appearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks,
with the bronze statues which all looked noble--in the moonlight; it
was such a combination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately
elegance--negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, and
flower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth
and refinement. The very aspect of the street population was novel;
compared to New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and
the passers, who have the fashion of walking in the middle of the street
upon the asphalt as freely as upon the sidewalks, had a sort of busy
leisureliness, the natural air of thousands of officials hived in
offices for a few hours and then left in irresponsible idleness. But
what most distinguished the town, after all, in Margaret's first glimpse
of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it--the
slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and
mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain
eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing
strollers of both sexes--carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain
picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of
moral relaxation in a too strict and duty-ridden world.

In the morning, when Margaret looked from the windows of the hotel, the
sky was gray and yielding, and all the outlines of the looming buildings
were softened in the hazy air. The dome of the Capitol seemed to float
like a bubble, and to be as unsubstantial as the genii edifices in the
Arabian tale. The Monument, the slim white shaft as tall as the Great
Pyramid, was still more a dream creation, not really made of hard
marble, but of something as soft as vapor, almost melting into the
sky, and yet distinct, unwavering, its point piercing the upper air,
threatening every instant to dissolve, as if it were truly the baseless
fabric of a vision--light, unreal, ghost-like, spotless, pure as an
unsullied thought; it might vanish in a breath; and yet, no; it is
solid: in the mist of doubt, in the assault of storms, smitten by the
sun, beaten by the tempests, it stands there, springing, graceful,
immovable--emblem, let us say, of the purity and permanence of the
republic.

“You never half told me, Rodney, how beautiful it all is!” Margaret
exclaimed, in a glow of delight.

“Yes,” said Henderson, “the Monument is behaving very well this morning.
I never saw it before look so little like a factory chimney.”

“That is, you never looked at it with my eyes before, cynic. But it is
all so lovely, everywhere.”

“Of course it is, dear.” They were standing together at the window, and
his arm was where it should have been. “What did you expect? There are
concentrated here the taste and virtue of sixty millions of people.”

“But you always said the Washington hotels were so bad. These apartments
are charming.”

“Yes”--and he drew her closer to him--“there is no denying that. But
presently I shall have to explain to you an odd phenomenon. Virginia,
you know, used to be famous for its good living, and Maryland was simply
unapproachable for good cooking. It was expected when the District
was made out of these two that the result would be something quite
extraordinary in the places of public entertainment. But, by a process
which nobody can explain, in the union the art of cooking in hotels got
mislaid.”

“Well,” she said, with winning illogicality, “you've got me.”

“If you could only eat the breakfasts for me, as you can see the
Monument for me!”

“Dear, I could eat the Monument for you, if it would do you any good.”
 And neither of them was ashamed of this nonsense, for both knew that
married people indulge in it when they are happy.

Although Henderson came to Washington on business, this was Margaret's
wedding journey. There is no other city in the world where a wedding
journey can better be combined with such business as is transacted here,
for in both is a certain element of mystery. Washington is gracious to
a bride, if she is pretty and agreeable--devotion to governing, or
to legislation, or to diplomacy, does not render a man insensible to
feminine attractions; and if in addition to beauty a woman has the
reputation of wealth, she is as nearly irresistible here as anywhere. To
Margaret, who was able to return the hospitality she received, and
whose equipage was almost as much admired as her toilets, all doors were
open--a very natural thing, surely, in a good-natured, give-and-take
world. The colonel--Margaret had laughed till she cried when first
she heard her husband saluted by this title in Washington by his New
Hampshire acquaintances, but he explained to her that he had justly won
it years ago by undergoing the hardship of receptions as a member of the
Governor's staff--the colonel had brought on his horses and carriages,
not at all by way of ostentation, but simply out of regard to what
was due her as his wife, and because a carriage at call is a constant
necessity in this city, whose dignity is equal to the square of its
distances, and because there is something incongruous in sending a bride
about in a herdic. Margaret's unworldly simplicity had received a little
shock when she first saw her servants in livery, but she was not slow
to see the propriety and even necessity of it in a republican society,
since elegance cannot be a patchwork, but must be harmonious, and
there is no harmony between a stylish turnout--noble horses nobly
caparisoned--and a coachman and footman on the box dressed according to
their own vulgar taste. Given a certain position, one's sense of fitness
and taste mast be maintained. And there is so much kindliness and
consideration in human nature--Margaret's gorgeous coachman and footman
never by a look revealed their knowledge that she was new to the
situation, and I dare say that their respectful demeanor contributed
to raise her in her own esteem as one of the select and favored in this
prosperous world. The most self-poised and genuine are not insensible to
the tribute of this personal consideration. My lady giving orders to
her respectful servitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious
turnout, is not at all the same person in feeling that she would be if
dragged about in a dissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of
the stable. We take kindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is
only the vulgar in soul who become snobbish in it. Little by little,
under this genial consideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path
of worldliness; and we heard, by the newspapers and otherwise--indeed,
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were there for a couple of weeks in the winter--that
she was never more sweet and gracious and lovely than in this first
season at the capital. I don't know that the town was raving, as they
said, about her beauty and wit--there is nothing like the wit of a
handsome woman--and amiability and unostentatious little charities,
but she was a great favorite. We used to talk about it by the fire in
Brandon, where everything reminded us of the girl we loved, and rejoice
in her good-fortune and happiness, and get rather heavy-hearted in
thinking that she had gone away from us into such splendor.

“I wish you were here,” she wrote to my wife. “I am sure you would enjoy
it. There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people--though
the distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliant
distinguished--and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney is
such a favorite. We go everywhere, literally, and all the time. You must
not scold, but I haven't opened a book, except my prayerbook, in six
weeks--it is such a whirl. And it is so amusing. I didn't know there
were so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the
world. The other night, at the British Minister's, a French attache, who
complimented my awful French--I told him that I inherited all but the
vocabulary and the accent--said that if specimens of the different kinds
of women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washington
could be exhibited, nobody would doubt any more that America is an
interesting country. Wasn't it an impudent speech? I tried to tell him,
in French, how grateful American women are for any little attention
from foreigners who have centuries of politeness behind them. Ah me! I
sometimes long for one of the old-fashioned talks before your smoldering
logs! What we talk about here, Heaven only knows. I sometimes tell
Rodney at night--it is usually morning--that I feel like an extinct
piece of fireworks. But next day it is all delightful again; and, dear
friend, I don't know but that I like being fireworks.”

Among the men who came oftenest to see Henderson was Jerry Hollowell.
It seemed to Margaret an odd sort of companionship; it could not be
any similarity of tastes that drew them together, and she could not
understand the nature of the business transacted in their mysterious
conferences. Social life had few attractions for Hollowell, for his
family were in the West; he appeared to have no relations with any
branch of government; he wanted no office, though his influence was much
sought by those who did want it.

“You spend a good deal of time here, Mr. Hollowell,” Margaret said one
day when he called in Henderson's absence.

“Yes, ma'am, considerable. Things need a good deal of fixing up.
Washington is a curious place. It's a sort of exchange for the whole
country: you can see everybody here, and it is a good place to arrange
matters.”

“With Congress, do you mean?” Margaret had heard much of the corruption
of Congress.

“No, not Congress particularly. Congressmen are just about like other
people. It's all nonsense, this talk about buying Congressmen. You
cannot buy them any more than you can buy other people, but you can sort
of work together with some of them. We don't want anything of Congress,
except to be let alone. If we are doing something to develop the trade
in the Southwest, build it up, some member who thinks he is smart will
just as likely as not try to put in a block somewhere, or investigate,
or something, in order to show his independence, and then he has to
be seen, and shown that he is going against the interests of his
constituents. It is just as it is everywhere: men have to be shown what
their real interest is. No; most Congressmen are poor, and they stay
poor. It is a good deal easier to deal with those among them who are
rich and have some idea about the prosperity of the country. It is just
so in the departments. You've got to watch things, if you expect them
to go smooth. You've got to get acquainted with the men. Most men are
reasonable when you get well acquainted with them. I tell your husband
that people are about as reasonable in Washington as you'll find them
anywhere.”

“Washington is certainly very pleasant.”

“Yes, that's so; it is pleasant. Where most everybody wants something,
they are bound to be accommodating. That's my idea. I reckon you don't
find Jerry Hollowell trying to pull a cat by its tail,” he added,
dropping into his native manner.

“Well, I must go and hunt up the old man. Glad to have made your
acquaintance, Mrs. Henderson.” And then, with a sly look, “If I knew
you better, ma'am, I should take the liberty of congratulating you that
Henderson has come round so handsomely.”

“Come round?” asked Margaret, in amused wonder.

“Well, I took the liberty of giving him a hint that he wasn't
cut-out for a single man. I showed him that,” and he lugged out his
photograph-case from a mass of papers in his breast-pocket and handed it
to her.

“Ah, I see,” said Margaret, studying the photographs with a peculiar
smile.

“Oh, Henderson knows a good thing when he sees it,” said Hollowell,
complacently.

It was not easy to be offended with Hollowell's kind-hearted
boorishness, and after he had gone, Margaret sat a long time reflecting
upon this new specimen of man in her experience. She was getting many
new ideas in these days, the moral lines were not as clearly drawn as
she had thought; it was impossible to ticket men off into good and bad.
In Hollowell she had a glimpse of a world low-toned and vulgar; she had
heard that he was absolutely unscrupulous, and she had supposed that he
would appear to be a very wicked man. But he seemed to be good-hearted
and tolerant and friendly. How fond he was of his family, and how
charitable about Congress! And she wondered if the world was generally
on Hollowell's level. She met many men more cultivated than he,
gentlemen in manner and in the first social position, who took, after
all, about his tone in regard to the world, very agreeable people
usually, easy to get on with, not exacting, or professing much faith in
anybody, and mildly cynical--only bitterly cynical when they failed to
get what they wanted, and felt the good things of life slipping away
from them. It was to take her some time to learn that some of the most
agreeable people are those who have succeeded by the most questionable
means; and when she came to this knowledge, what would be her power of
judgment as to these means?

“Mr. Hollowell has been here,” she said, when Henderson returned.

“Old Jerry? He is a character.”

“Do you trust him?”

“It never occurred to me. Yes, I suppose so, as far as his interests go.
He isn't a bad sort of fellow--very long-headed.”

“Dear,” said Margaret, with hesitation, “I wish you didn't have anything
to do with such men.”

“Why, dearest?”

“Oh, I don't know. You needn't laugh. It rather lets one down; and it
isn't like you.”

Henderson laughed aloud now. “But you needn't associate with Hollowell.
We men cannot pick our companions in business and politics. It needs all
sorts to keep the world going.”

“Then I'd rather let it stop,” Margaret said.

“And sell out at auction?” he cried, with a look of amusement.

“But aren't Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fairchild business men?”

“Yes--of the old-fashioned sort. The fact--is, Margaret, you've got a
sort of preserve up in Brandon, and you fancy that the world is divided
into sheep and goats. It's a great mistake. There is no such division.
Every man almost is both a sheep and a goat.”

“I don't believe it, Rodney. You are neither.” She came close to him,
and taking the collar of his coat in each hand, gave him a little shake,
and looking up into his face with quizzical affection, asked, “What is
your business here?”

Henderson stooped down and kissed her forehead, and tenderly lifted
the locks of her brown hair. “You wouldn't understand, sweet, if I told
you.”

“You might try.”

“Well, there's a man here from Fort Worth who wants us to buy a piece of
railroad, and extend it, and join it with Hollowell's system, and open
up a lot of new country.”

“And isn't it a good piece of road?”

“Yes; that's the trouble. The owners want to keep it to themselves, and
prevent the general development. But we shall get it.”

“It isn't anything like wrecking, is it, dear?”

“Do you think we would want to wreck our own property?”

“But what has Congress to do with it?”

“Oh, there's a land grant. But some of the members who were not in the
Congress that voted it say that it is forfeited.”

In this fashion the explanation went on. Margaret loved to hear her
husband talk, and to watch the changing expression of his face, and
he explained about this business until she thought he was the sweetest
fellow in the world.

The Morgans had arrived at the same hotel, and Margaret went about with
them in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breath
of home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life,
gave a new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round of
entertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was very
interesting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Washington, and to see
the shifting panorama through his experience. He had been very much in
the city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because it
was less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost for
him a certain charm it once had.

“I am not sure,” he said, as they were driving one day, “that it is not
now the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way
to be that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets and
avenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many stately
vistas ending in objects refreshing to the eye--a bit of park, banks
of flowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in the
distance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups,
triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air of
distinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrated
itself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries
that are the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only just
begun--the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself to
all sorts of magnificence and beauty.”

“I declare,” said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, “I didn't know that he could
be so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress.”

“In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature as
it used to be. Washington is getting to have a character of its own;
it seems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet the
process is going on here that is so marked all over the country--the
divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years
ago, that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism
that a democracy cannot make society--there was no more agreeable
society in the world than that in Washington even ten years ago: society
selected itself somehow without any marked class distinction, and it was
delightfully simple and accessible.”

“And what has changed it?” Margaret asked.

“Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale has
altered. There is so much more display and expense. I remember when
a private carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of
money didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any
company was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the
ability to give a costly dinner or a big ball.”

“But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody
says,” said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.

“Yes, and they keep more to themselves--withdraw into their studies, or
hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality
and freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents
whether the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized
society, or stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It
is as easy here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner
party--all very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like
New York.”

“But we have been to delightful dinners,” Margaret insisted.

“No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and
good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but
when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.
An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly
when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets
stupid.”

“That's as clever,” Margaret retorted, “as the remark of an
under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one
thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you
slander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here.”

“Dear me!” said Morgan, “I've been praising Washington. I should like to
live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is going
to build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger than
the White House.”

“I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell.”

“But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy that
we are coming to.”

All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerful
city. “You like it as well as anybody,” she told him. And in truth he
and Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. “Of course I
do,” he said, “for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged
to follow it as a steady business. Washington is a good place to take a
plunge occasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon with
appreciation.”

Margaret had thought when she came to Washington that she should spend
a good deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of the
Senators and Representatives, and that she should study the collections
and the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which she
had such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon. But there
was little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties.
She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up and
down, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation was
ever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swinging
of doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, and
concluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, and
bargaining, and private interviewing. Morgan asked her if she expected
that the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done
with the order and decorum of a lyceum debating society. In one of the
committee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently an
indispensable part of the government machine. Her own husband, who had
accompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere. He
was sought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed and
stunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion. She
did not try it again, and very little strolling about the departments
satisfied her. The west end claimed her--the rolling equipages, the
drawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter
in a hundred shining houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of the
assemblies, the full flow of the tide of fashion and of enjoyment--what
is there so good in life? To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to be
loved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented--every Sunday
at morning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout,
whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hope
to be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thanked
Heaven for its gifts.

And it went well with Henderson meantime. Surely he was born under a
lucky star--if it is good-luck for a man to have absolute prosperity and
the gratification of all his desires. One reason why Hollowell sought
his cooperation was a belief in this luck, and besides Henderson was,
he knew, more presentable, and had social access in quarters where
influence was desirable, although Hollowell was discovering that with
most men delicacy in presenting anything that is for their interest is
thrown away. He found no difficulty in getting recruits for his little
dinners at Champolion's--dinners that were not always given in his name,
and where he appeared as a guest, though he footed the bills. Bungling
grossness has disappeared from all really able and large transactions,
and genius is mainly exercised in the supply of motives for a line
of conduct. The public good is one of the motives that looks best in
Washington.

Henderson and Hollowell got what they wanted in regard to the Southwest
consolidation, and got it in the most gentlemanly way. Nobody was
bought, no one was offered a bribe. There were, of course, fees paid
for opinions and for professional services, and some able men induced
to take a prospective interest in what was demonstrably for the public
good. But no vote was given for a consideration--at least this was the
report of an investigating committee later on. Nothing, of course, goes
through Congress of its own weight, except occasionally a resolution of
sympathy with the Coreans, and the calendar needs to be watched, and the
good offices of friends secured. Skillful wording of a clause, the right
moment, and opportune recognition do the business. The main thing is to
create a favorable atmosphere and avoid discussion. When the bill was
passed, Hollowell did give a dinner on his own invitation, a dinner that
was talked of for its refinement as well as its cost. The chief topic of
conversation was the development of the Southwest and the extension
of our trade relations with Mexico. The little scheme, hatched in
Henderson's New York office, in order to transfer certain already
created values to the pockets of himself and his friends, appeared to
have a national importance. When Henderson rose to propose the health
of Jerry Hollowell, neither he nor the man he eulogized as a creator of
industries whose republican patriotism was not bound by State lines
nor circumscribed by sections was without a sense of the humor of the
situation.

And yet in a certain way Mr. Hollowell was conscious that he merited
the eulogy. He had come to believe that the enterprises in which he
was engaged, that absolutely gave him, it was believed, an income of a
million a year, were for the public good. Such vast operations lent him
the importance of a public man. If he was a victim of the confusion of
mind which mistook his own prosperity for the general benefit, he only
shared a wide public opinion which regards the accumulation of enormous
fortunes in a few hands as an evidence of national wealth.

Margaret left Washington with regret. She had a desire to linger in
the opening of the charming spring there, for the little parks were
brilliant with flower beds-tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, violets--the
magnolias and redbuds in their prodigal splendor attracted the eye a
quarter of a mile away, and the slender twigs of the trees began to be
suffused with tender green. It was the sentimental time of the year.
But Congress had gone, and whatever might be the promise of the season,
Henderson had already gathered the fruits that had been forced in the
hothouse of the session. He was in high spirits.

“It has all been so delightful, dear!” said Margaret as they rode away
in the train, and caught their last sight of the dome. They were in
Hollowell's private car, which the good-natured old fellow had put
at their disposal. And Margaret had a sense of how delightful and
prosperous this world is as seen from a private car.

“Yes,” Henderson answered, thinking of various things; “it has been a
successful winter. The capital is really attractive. It occurred to
me the other day that America has invented a new kind of city, the
apotheosis of the village--Washington.”

They talked of the city, of the acquaintances of the winter, of
Hollowell's thoughtfulness in lending them his car, that their bridal
trip, as he had said, might have a good finish. Margaret's heart opened
to the world. She thought of the friends at Brandon, she thought of the
poor old ladies she was accustomed to look after in the city, of the
ragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was a
manager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and
she thought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so
many of the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and looking
across to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with a
wife's unblushing effrontery, “Dearest, how handsome you are!”

The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in Washington
Square. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature of
this prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If it
came, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that
used to be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of
money, after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell,
but on acquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to
her in the newspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's
business, but did it differ from that of other men she had known, except
that it was on a larger scale? And how much good could be done with
money!

On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to which
she had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed
to “My Wife,” and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a
card, on which was written, “For Margaret's Easter Charities.” Flushed
with pleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was
descending to breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears
in her eyes, cried, “Dearest, how good you are!”

It is such a good and prosperous generation.

XIV

Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May,
the time of the apple blossoms--just a year from the swift wooing of
Margaret--Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in a
mourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earl
of Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air of
profound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought
to his own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine
him more closely to England. It also contained congratulations--which
circumstances had delayed--upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simple
wish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been
for these purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit to
Brandon and the circle of friends there, and it was pervaded by a tone,
almost affectionate, towards Miss Forsythe, which touched her very
deeply. She said it was such a manly letter.

America, the earl said, interested him more and more. In all history,
he wrote, there never had been such an opportunity for studying
the formation of society, for watching the working out of political
problems; the elements meeting were so new, and the conditions so
original, that historical precedents were of little service as guides.
He acknowledged an almost irresistible impulse to come back, and he
announced his intention of another visit as soon as circumstances
permitted.

I had noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude
as the country is, and uninteresting according to certain established
standards, it seems to have a “drawing” quality, a certain unexplained
fascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality that
attracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares.
that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an American
wife, his curiosity about the country is sated. But this is generalizing
on narrow premises.

There was certainly in Lyon's letter a longing to see the country again,
but the impression it made upon me when I read it--due partly to its
tone towards Miss Forsythe, almost a family tone--was that the earldom
was an empty thing without the love of Margaret Debree. Life is so brief
at the best, and has so little in it when the one thing that the heart
desires is denied. That the earl should wish to come to America again
without hope or expectation was, however, quite human nature. If a man
has found a diamond and lost it, he is likely to go again and again and
wander about the field where he found it, not perhaps in any defined
hope of finding another, but because there is a melancholy satisfaction
in seeing the spot again. It was some such feeling that impelled
the earl to wish to see again Miss Forsythe, and perhaps to talk of
Margaret, but he certainly had no thought that there were two Margaret
Debrees in America.

To her aunt's letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon's loss,
Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence. The news had
already reached the Eschelles, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written
to the new earl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to
his change of fortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now
enlarged opportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans--a most
unworldly note. “I used to think,” she had said, when confiding what
she had done to Margaret, “that you would make a perfect missionary
countess, but you have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more
difficult work among us fashionable sinners. Do you know,” she went on,
“that I feel a great deal less worldly than I used to?”

Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that
Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as
she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all
agree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she
came back in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with
Carmen was one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be
more and more companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of
character made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact
remained that she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried
to astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child
of her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her
candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.

“Margaret,” she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of
confidence, “seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.
Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much in
love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is
in love with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him--any woman might be
that--but, do you know, she actually believes in him.”

“Why shouldn't she believe in him?” exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in
astonishment.

“Oh, of course, in a way,” the girl went on. “I like Mr. Henderson--I
like him very much--but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now to
believe in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get along
just as well--and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have any
deceptions?”

Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to her
that the bottom had fallen out of society.

“Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?” the girl persisted.

“If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in each
other, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from a
woman.”

“Oh, it isn't any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe,” Carmen continued,
sweetly. “Society is a great deal pleasanter when you are not anxious
and don't expect too much.”

Miss Forsythe told Margaret that she thought Miss Eschelle was a
dangerous woman. Margaret did not defend her, but she did not join,
either, in condemning her; she appeared to have accepted her as a part
of her world. And there were other things that Margaret seemed to
have accepted without that vigorous protest which she used to raise
at whatever crossed her conscience. To her aunt she was never more
affectionate, never more solicitous about her comfort and her pleasure,
and it was almost enough to see Margaret happy, radiant, expanding day
by day in the prosperity that was illimitable, only there was to her a
note of unreality in all the whirl and hurry of the busy life. She liked
to escape to her room with a book, and be out of it all, and the two
weeks away from her country life seemed long to her. She couldn't
reconcile Margaret's love of the world, her tolerance of Carmen,
and other men and women whose lives seemed to be based on Carmen's
philosophy, with her devotion to the church services, to the city
missions, and the dozens of charities that absorb so much of the time of
the leaders of society.

“You are too young, dear, to be so good and devout,” was Carmen's
comment on the situation.

To Miss Forsythe's wonder, Margaret did not resent this impertinence,
but only said that no accumulation of years was likely to bring Carmen
into either of these dangers. And the reply was no more satisfactory to
Miss Forsythe than the remark that provoked it.

That she had had a delightful visit, that Margaret was more lovely
than ever, that Henderson was a delightful host, was the report of Miss
Forsythe when she returned to us. In a confidential talk with my wife
she confessed, however, that she couldn't tell whither Margaret was
going.

One of the worries of modern life is the perplexity where to spend the
summer. The restless spirit of change affects those who dwell in the
country, as well as those who live in the city. No matter how charming
the residence is, one can stay in it only a part of the year. He
actually needs a house in town, a villa by the sea, and a cottage in the
hills. When these are secured--each one an establishment more luxurious
year by year--then the family is ready to travel about, and is in a
greater perplexity than before whether to spend the summer in Europe
or in America, the novelties of which are beginning to excite the
imagination. This nomadism, which is nothing less than society on
wheels, cannot be satirized as a whim of fashion; it has a serious
cause in--the discovery of the disease called nervous prostration, which
demands for its cure constant change of scene, without any occupation.
Henderson recognized it, but he said that personally he had no time to
indulge in it. His summer was to be a very busy one. It was impossible
to take Margaret with him on his sudden and tedious journeys from
one end of the country to the other, but she needed a change. It was
therefore arranged that after a visit to Brandon she should pass the
warm months with the Arbusers in their summer home at Lenox, with a
month--the right month--in the Eschelle villa at Newport; and he hoped
never to be long absent from one place or the other.

Margaret came to Brandon at the beginning of June, just at the season
when the region was at its loveliest, and just when its society was
making preparations to get away from it to the sea, or the mountains,
or to any place that was not home. I could never understand why a people
who have been grumbling about snow and frost for six months, and longing
for genial weather, should flee from it as soon as it comes. I had made
the discovery, quite by chance--and it was so novel that I might have
taken out a patent on it--that if one has a comfortable home in our
northern latitude, he cannot do better than to stay in it when the hum
of the mosquito is heard in the land, and the mercury is racing up and
down the scale between fifty and ninety. This opinion, however, did not
extend beyond our little neighborhood, and we may be said to have had
the summer to ourselves.

I fancied that the neighborhood had not changed, but the coming of
Margaret showed me that this was a delusion. No one can keep in the same
place in life simply by standing still, and the events of the past two
years had wrought a subtle change in our quiet. Nothing had been changed
to the eye, yet something had been taken away, or something had been
added, a door had been opened into the world. Margaret had come home,
yet I fancied it was not the home to her that she had been thinking
about. Had she changed?

She was more beautiful. She had the air--I should hesitate to call it
that of the fine lady--of assured position, something the manner of that
greater world in which the possession of wealth has supreme importance,
but it was scarcely a change of manner so much as of ideas about life
and of the things valuable in it gradually showing itself. Her delight
at being again with her old friends was perfectly genuine, and she
had never appeared more unselfish or more affectionate. If there was
a subtle difference, it might very well be in us, though I found it
impossible to conceive of her in her former role of teacher and simple
maiden, with her heart in the little concerns of our daily life. And why
should she be expected to go back to that stage? Must we not all live
our lives? Miss Forsythe's solicitude about Margaret was mingled with
a curious deference, as to one who had a larger experience of life
than her own. The girl of a year ago was now the married woman, and was
invested with something of the dignity that Miss Forsythe in her pure
imagination attached to that position. Without yielding any of her
opinions, this idea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little,
I thought, to the amusement of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to
whom marriage took on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from
a renewed sense of the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had
been, and enriched as it was by observation.

In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of the
country, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations of
trades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply called
attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent was
attributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury and
reckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said that
the strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious
to those who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railway
manipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but to
exact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this could
be shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet the
impression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong
in the way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of
individual rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into
account ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that
was discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small
invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the
trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities,
who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the
games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly
compensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and the
advantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefit
of half a dozen insolent men.

In discussing these things in our little parliament we were not
altogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing
of interests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger of
disappearing for the “public good,” Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune was
nearly all invested in that sound “rock-bed” railway in the Southwest
that Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. She
was assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sort
of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the
parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if
he would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a
splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this
sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on
the situation these personalities were not referred to, for although
Margaret was silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.

Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money
dishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.

“I had this question referred to me the other day,” he said. “A
gambler--not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendid
establishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for his
liberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics--offered
the president of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow a
professorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it was
made?”

“Wouldn't the money do good--as much good as any other hundred thousand
dollars?” asked Margaret.

“Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would be
the moral effect of that?”

“Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get it
without using the gambler's name?”

“I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on a
general principle.”

“But wouldn't it be a sneaking thing to take a man's money, and refuse
him the credit of his generosity?”

“But was it generosity? Was not his object, probably, to get a
reputation which his whole life belied, and to get it by obliterating
the distinction between right and wrong?”

“But isn't it a compromising distinction,” my wife asked, “to take
his money without his name? The president knows that it is money
fraudulently got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the
gambler would feel that if the president takes it, he cannot think very
disapprovingly of the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would
be more honest and straightforward to take his name with the money.”

“The public effect of connecting the gambler's name with the college
would be debasing,” said Morgan; “but, on the contrary, is every charity
or educational institution bound to scrutinize the source of every
benefaction? Isn't it better that money, however acquired, should be
used for a good purpose than a bad one?”

“That is a question,” I said, “that is a vital one in our present
situation, and the sophistry of it puzzles the public. What would you
say to this case? A man notoriously dishonest, but within the law, and
very rich, offered a princely endowment to a college very much in need
of it. The sum would have enabled it to do a great work in education.
But it was intimated that the man would expect, after a while, to be
made one of the trustees. His object, of course, was social position.”

“I suppose, of course,” Margaret replied, “that the college couldn't
afford that. It would look like bribery.”

“Wouldn't he be satisfied with an LL.D.?” Morgan asked.

“I don't see,” my wife said, “any difference between the two cases
stated and that of the stock gambler, whose unscrupulous operations have
ruined thousands of people, who founds a theological seminary with the
gains of his slippery transactions. By accepting his seminary the public
condones his conduct. Another man, with the same shaky reputation,
endows a college. Do you think that religion and education are benefited
in the long-run by this? It seems to me that the public is gradually
losing its power of discrimination between the value of honesty and
dishonesty. Real respect is gone when the public sees that a man is able
to buy it.”

This was a hot speech for my wife to make. For a moment Margaret flamed
up under it with her old-time indignation. I could see it in her eyes,
and then she turned red and confused, and at length said:

“But wouldn't you have rich men do good with their money?”

“Yes, dear, but I would not have them think they can blot out by their
liberality the condemnation of the means by which many of them make
money. That is what they are doing, and the public is getting used to
it.”

“Well,” said Margaret, with some warmth, “I don't know that they are any
worse than the stingy saints who have made their money by saving, and
act as if they expected to carry it with them.”

“Saints or sinners, it does not make much difference to me,” now put
in Mrs. Fletcher, who was evidently considering the question from a
practical point of view, “what a man professes, if he founds a hospital
for indigent women out of the dividends that I never received.”

Morgan laughed. “Don't you think, Mrs. Fletcher, that it is a good sign
of the times, that so many people who make money rapidly are disposed to
use it philanthropically?”

“It may be for them, but it does not console me much just now.”

“But you don't make allowance enough for the rich. Perhaps they are
under a necessity of doing something. I was reading this morning in the
diary of old John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon this sentence: 'It was a
saying of Navisson, a lawyer, that no man could be valiant unless he
hazarded his body, nor rich unless he hazarded his soul.'”

“Was Navisson a modern lawyer?” I asked.

“No; the diary is dated 1648-1679.”

“I thought so.”

There was a little laugh at this, and the talk drifted off into a
consideration of the kind of conscience that enables a professional man
to espouse a cause he knows to be wrong as zealously as one he knows to
be right; a talk that I should not have remembered at all, except for
Margaret's earnestness in insisting that she did not see how a lawyer
could take up the dishonest side.

Before Margaret went to Lenox, Henderson spent a few days with us.
He brought with him the abounding cheerfulness, and the air of a
prosperous, smiling world, that attended him in all circumstances. And
how happy Margaret was! They went over every foot of the ground on which
their brief courtship had taken place, and Heaven knows what joy there
was to her in reviving all the tenderness and all the fear of it! Busy
as Henderson was, pursued by hourly telegrams and letters, we could
not but be gratified that his attention to her was that of a lover. How
could it be otherwise, when all the promise of the girl was realized
in the bloom and the exquisite susceptibility of the woman? Among other
things, she dragged him down to her mission in the city, to which he
went in a laughing and bantering mood. When he had gone away, Margaret
ran over to my wife, bringing in her hand a slip of paper.

“See that!” she cried, her eyes dancing with pleasure. It was a check
for a thousand dollars. “That will refurnish the mission from top to
bottom,” she said, “and run it for a year.”

“How generous he is!” cried my wife. Margaret did not reply, but she
looked at the check, and there were tears in her eyes.

XV

The Arbuser cottage at Lenox was really a magnificent villa. Richardson
had built it. At a distance it had the appearance of a mediaeval
structure, with its low doorways, picturesque gables, and steep roofs,
and in its situation on a gentle swell of green turf backed by native
forest-trees it imparted to the landscape an ancestral tone which is
much valued in these days. But near to, it was seen to be mediaevalism
adapted to the sunny hospitality of our summer climate, with generous
verandas and projecting balconies shaded by gay awnings, and within
spacious, open to the breezes, and from its broad windows offering
views of lawns and flower-beds and ornamental trees, of a great sweep
of pastures and forests and miniature lakes, with graceful and reposeful
hills on the horizon.

It was, in short, the modern idea of country simplicity. The passion for
country life, which has been in decadence for nearly half a century,
has again become the fashion. Nature, which, left to itself, is a
little ragged, not to say monotonous and tiresome, is discovered to be
a valuable ally for aid in passing the time when art is able to make
portions of it exclusive. What the Arbusers wanted was a simple home
in the country, and in obtaining it they were indulging a sentiment of
returning to the primitive life of their father, who had come to the
city from a hill farm, and had been too busy all his life to recur
to the tastes of his boyhood. At least that was the theory of his
daughters; but the old gentleman had a horror of his early life, and
could scarcely be dragged away from the city even in the summer. He
would no doubt have been astonished at the lofty and substantial stone
stables, the long range of greenhouses, and at a farm which produced
nothing except lawns and flower-beds, ornamental fields of clover,
avenues of trees, lawn-tennis grounds, and a few Alderneys tethered to
feed among the trees, where their beauty would heighten the rural and
domestic aspect of the scene. The Arbusers liked to come to this place
as early as possible to escape the society exactions of the city. That
was another theory of theirs. All their set in the city met there for
the same purpose.

Margaret was welcomed with open arms.

“We have been counting the days,” said the elder of the sisters. “Your
luggage has come, your rooms are all ready, and your coachman, who has
been here some days, says that the horses need exercise. Everybody is
here, and we need you for a hundred things.”

“You are very kind. It is so charming here. I knew it would be, but I
couldn't bear to shorten my visit in Brandon.”

“Your aunt must miss you very much. Is she well?”

“Perfectly.”

“Wouldn't she have come with you? I've a mind to telegraph.”

“I think not. She is wedded to quiet, and goes away from her little
neighborhood with reluctance.”

“So Brandon was a little dull?” said Miss Arbuser, with a shrewd guess
at the truth.

“Oh no,” quickly replied Margaret, shrinking a little from what was in
her own mind; “it was restful and delightful; but you know that we New
England people take life rather seriously, and inquire into the reason
of things, and want an object in life.”

“A very good thing to have,” answered this sweet woman of the world,
whose object was to go along pleasantly and enjoy it.

“But to have it all the time!” Margaret suggested, lightly, as she ran
up-stairs. But even in this suggestion she was conscious of a twinge
of disloyalty to her former self. Deep down in her heart, coming to
the atmosphere of Lenox was a relief from questionings that a little
disturbed her at her old home, and she was indignant at herself that it
should be so, and then indignant at the suggestions that put her out of
humor with herself. Was it a sin, she said, to be happy and prosperous?

On her dressing-table was a letter from her husband. He was detained in
the city by a matter of importance. He scratched only a line, to catch
the mail, during a business interview. It was really only a business
interview, and had no sort of relation to Lenox or the summer gayety
there.

Henderson was in his private office. The clerks in the outer offices,
in the neglige of summer costumes, winked to each other as they saw old
Jerry Hollowell enter and make his way to the inner room unannounced.
Something was in the wind.

“Well, old man,” said Uncle Jerry, in the cheeriest manner, coming in,
depositing his hat on the table, and taking a seat opposite Henderson,
“we seem to have stirred up the animals.”

“Only a little flurry,” replied Henderson, laying down his pen and
folding a note he had just finished; “they'll come to reason.”

“They've got to.” Mr. Hollowell drew out a big bandanna and mopped
his heated face. “I've just got a letter from Jorkins. There's the
certificates that make up the two-thirds-more than we need, anyway. No
flaw about that, is there?”

“No. I'll put these with the balance in the safe. It's all right, if
Jorkins has been discreet. It may make a newspaper scandal if they get
hold of his operations.”

“Oh, Jorkins is close. But he is a little overworked. I don't know but
it would do him good to have a little nervous prostration and go abroad
for a while.”

“I guess it would do Jorkins good to take a turn in Europe for a year or
so.”

“Well, you write to him. Give him a sort of commission to see the
English bondholders, and explain the situation. They will appreciate
that half a loaf is better than no bread. What bothers me is the way the
American bondholders take it. They kick.”

“Let 'em kick. The public don't care for a few soreheads and
impracticables in an operation that is going to open up the whole
Southwest. I've an appointment with one of them this morning. He ought
to be here now.”

At the moment Henderson's private secretary entered and laid on the
table the card of Mr. John Hopper, who was invited to come in at once.
Mr. Hopper was a man of fifty, with iron-gray hair, a heavy mustache,
and a smooth-shaven chin that showed resolution. In dress and manner his
appearance was that of the shrewd city capitalist--quiet and determined,
who is neither to be deceived nor bullied. With a courteous greeting to
both the men, whom he knew well, he took a seat and stated his business.

“I have called to see you, Mr. Henderson, about the bonds of the A. and
B., and I am glad to find Mr. Hollowell here also.”

“What amount do you represent, Mr. Hopper?” asked Henderson.

“With my own and my friends', altogether, rising a million. What do you
propose?”

“You got our circular?”

“Yes, and we don't accept the terms.”

“I'm sorry. It is the best that we could do.”

“That is, the best you would do!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Hopper, the best we could do under the circumstances. We
gave you your option, to scale down on a fair estimate of the earnings
of the short line (the A. and B.), or to surrender your local bonds and
take new ones covering the whole consolidation, or, as is of course in
your discretion, to hold on and take the chances.”

“Which your operations have practically destroyed.”

“Not at all, Mr. Hopper. We offer you a much better security on the
whole system instead of a local road.”

“And you mean to tell me, Mr. Henderson, that it is for our advantage
to exchange a seven per cent. bond on a road that has always paid its
interest promptly, for a four and a half on a system that is manipulated
nobody knows how? I tell you, gentlemen, that it looks to outsiders as
if there was crookedness somewhere.”

“That is a rather rough charge, Mr. Hopper,” said Henderson, with a
smile.

“But we are to understand that if we do not accept your terms, it's a
freeze-out?”

“You are to understand that we want to make the best arrangement
possible for all parties in interest.”

“How some of those interests were acquired may be a question for the
courts,” replied Mr. Hopper, resolutely. “When we put our money in good
seven per cent. bonds, we propose to inquire into the right of anybody
to demand that we shall exchange them for four and a half per cents. on
other security.”

“Perfectly right, Mr. Hopper,” said Henderson, with imperturbable
good-humor; “the transfer books are open to your inspection.”

“Well, we prefer to hold on to our bonds.”

“And wait for your interest,” interposed Hollowell.

Mr. Hopper turned to the speaker. “And while we are waiting we
propose to inquire what has become of the surplus of the A. and B. The
bondholders had the first claim on the entire property.”

“And we propose to protect it. See here, Mr. Hopper,” continued Uncle
Jerry, with a most benevolent expression, “I needn't tell you that
investments fluctuate--the Lord knows mine do! The A. and B. was a
good road. I know that. But it was going to be paralleled. We'd got to
parallel it to make our Southwest connections. If we had, you'd have
waited till the Gulf of Mexico freezes over before you got any coupons
paid. Instead of that, we took it into our system, and it's being put on
a permanent basis. It's a little inconvenient for holders, and they have
got to stand a little shrinkage, but in the long-run it will be better
for everybody. The little road couldn't stand alone, and the day of big
interest is about over.”

“That explanation may satisfy you, Mr. Hollowell, but it don't give
us our money, and I notify you that we shall carry the matter into the
courts. Good-morning.”

When Mr. Hopper had gone, the two developers looked at each other a
moment seriously.

“Hopper 'll fight,” Hollowell said at last.

“And we have got the surplus to fight him with,” replied Henderson.

“That's so,” and Uncle Jerry chuckled to himself. “The rats that are on
the inside of the crib are a good deal better off than the rats on the
outside.”

“The reporter of The Planet wants five minutes,” announced the
secretary, opening the door. Henderson told him to let him in.

The reporter was a spruce young gentleman, in a loud summer suit, with
a rose in his button-hole, and the air of assurance which befits the
commissioner of the public curiosity.

“I am sent by The Planet,” said the young man, “to show you this and ask
you if you have anything to say to it.”

“What is it?” asked Henderson.

“It's about the A. and B.”

“Very well. There is the president, Mr. Hollowell. Show it to him.”

The reporter produced a long printed slip and handed it to Uncle Jerry,
who took it and began to read. As his eye ran down the column he was
apparently more and more interested, and he let it be shown on his
face that he was surprised, and even a little astonished. When he had
finished, he said:

“Well, my young friend, how did you get hold of this?”

“Oh, we have a way,” said the reporter, twirling his straw hat by the
elastic, and looking more knowing than old Jerry himself.

“So I see,” replied Jerry, with an admiring smile; “there is nothing
that you newspaper folks don't find out. It beats the devil!”

“Is it true, sir?” said the young gentleman, elated with this
recognition of his own shrewdness.

“It is so true that there is no fun in it. I don't see how the devil you
got hold of it.”

“Have you any explanations?”

“No, I guess not,” said Uncle Jerry, musingly. “If it is to come out,
I'd rather The Planet would have it than any, other paper. It's got some
sense. No; print it. It'll be a big beat for your paper. While you are
about it--I s'pose you'll print it anyway?” (the reporter nodded)--“you
might as well have the whole story.”

“Certainly. We'd like to have it right. What is wrong about it?”

“Oh, nothing but some details. You have got it substantially. There's a
word or two and a date you are out on, naturally enough, and there
are two or three little things that would be exactly true if they were
differently stated.”

“Would you mind telling me what they are?”

“No,” said Jerry, with a little reluctance; “might as well have it all
out--eh, Henderson?”

And the old man took his pencil and changed some dates and a name
or two, and gave to some of the sentences a turn that seemed to the
reporter only another way of saying the same thing.

“There, that is all I know. Give my respects to Mr. Goss.”

When the commissioner had withdrawn, Uncle Jerry gave vent to a long
whistle. Then he rose suddenly and called to the secretary, “Tell that
reporter to come back.” The reporter reappeared.

“I was just thinking, and you can tell Mr. Goss, that now you have got
onto this thing, you might as well keep the lead on it. The public is
interested in what we are doing in the Southwest, and if you, or some
other bright fellow who has got eyes in his head, will go down there,
he will see something that will astonish him. I'm going tomorrow in my
private car, and if you could go along, I assure you a good time. I want
you to see for yourself, and I guess you would. Don't take my word. I
can't give you any passes, and I know you don't want any, but you can
just get into my private car and no expense to anybody, and see all
there is to be seen. Ask Goss, and let me know tonight.”

The young fellow went off feeling several inches higher than when
he came in. Such is the power of a good address, and such is the
omnipotence of the great organ. Mr. Jerry Hollowell sat down and began
to fan himself. It was very hot in the office.

“Seems to me it's lunch-time. Great Scott! what a lot of time I used to
waste fighting the newspapers! That thing would have played the devil as
it stood. It will be comparatively harmless now. It will make a little
talk, but there is nothing to get hold of. Queer, about the difference
of a word or two. Come, old man, I'm thirsty.”

“Uncle Jerry,” said Henderson, taking his arm as they went out, “you
ought to be President of the United States.”

“The salary is too small,” said Uncle Jerry.

Of all this there was nothing to write to Margaret, who was passing
her time agreeably in the Berkshire hills, a little impatient for her
husband's arrival, postponed from day to day, and full of sympathy for
him, condemned to the hot city and the harassment of a business the
magnitude of which gave him the obligations and the character of a
public man. Henderson sent her instead a column from The Planet devoted
to a description of his private library. Mr. Goss, the editor, who was
college bred, had been round to talk with Henderson about the Southwest
trip, and the conversation drifting into other matters, Henderson had
taken from his desk and shown him a rare old book which he had picked
up the day before in a second-hand shop. This led to further talk
about Henderson's hobby, and the editor had asked permission to send a
reporter down to make a note of Henderson's collection. It would make
a good midsummer item, “The Stock-Broker in Literature,” “The Private
Tastes of a Millionaire,” etc. The column got condensed into a portable
paragraph, and went the rounds of the press, and changed the opinions
of a good many people about the great operator--he wasn't altogether
devoted to vulgar moneymaking. Uncle Jerry himself read the column with
appreciation of its value. “It diverts the public mind,” he said. He
himself had recently diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell
to the Norembega Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph
announcing the fact conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was
a canny old customer, his heart was on the right side. “There are worse
men than Uncle Jerry who are not worth a cent,” was one of the humorous
paragraphs tacked on to the item.

Margaret was not alone in finding the social atmosphere of Lenox as
congenial as its natural beauties. Mrs. Laflamme declared that it was
the perfection of existence for a couple of months, one in early summer
and another in the golden autumn with its pathetic note of the falling
curtain dropping upon the dream of youth. Mrs. Laflamme was not a
sentimental person, but she was capable of drifting for a moment into
a poetic mood--a great charm in a woman of her vivacity and air of the
world. Margaret remembered her very distinctly, although she had only
exchanged a word with her at the memorable dinner in New York when
Henderson had revealed her feelings to herself. Mrs. Laflamme had the
immense advantage--it seemed so to her after five years of widowhood
of being a widow on the sunny side of thirty-five. If she had lost
some illusions she had gained a great deal of knowledge, and she had no
feverish anxiety about what life would bring her. Although she would not
put it in this way to herself, she could look about her deliberately,
enjoying the prospect, and please herself. Her position had two
advantages--experience and opportunity. A young woman unmarried, she
said, always has the uneasy sense of the possibility--well, it is
impossible to escape slang, and she said it with the merriest laugh--the
possibility of being left. A day or two after Margaret's arrival she had
driven around to call in her dog-cart, looking as fresh as a daisy
in her sunhat. She held the reins, but her seat was shared by Mr. Fox
McNaughton, the most useful man in the village, indispensable indeed; a
bachelor, with no intentions, no occupation, no ambition (except to lead
the german), who could mix a salad, brew a punch, organize a picnic, and
chaperon anything in petticoats with entire propriety, without regard
to age. And he had a position of social authority. This eminence Mr.
Fox McNaughton had attained by always doing the correct thing. The
obligation of society to such men is never enough acknowledged. While
they are trusted and used, and worked to death, one is apt to hear them
spoken of in a deprecatory tone.

“You hold the reins a moment, please. No, I don't want any help,” she
said, as she jumped down with an elastic spring, and introduced him
to Margaret. “I've got Mr. McNaughton in training, and am thinking of
bringing him out.”

She walked in with Margaret, chatting about the view and the house and
the divine weather.

“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 title. He is the Earl of Chisholm.”

“Dear me, how stupid in us not to have taken a sense of that! And the
Eschelles--do you know anything of the Eschelles?”

“Yes; they are at their house in Newport.”

“Do you think there was anything between Miss Eschelle and Mr. Lyon? I
saw her afterwards several times.”

“Not that I ever heard. Miss Eschelle 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 passing 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 classic 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 Bass 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. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very
exact in his pronunciation, 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. Bass, 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. Bass smiled. “That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want is
nature, color, passion--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. Bass 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 attitude and gesture, her color, her
movement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence of
passion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of
her shoe. The picture will be life.”

“But suppose, Mr. Bass, 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. Bass.”

“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. Bass, 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. Bass 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 unsurpassed loveliness of nature to the refined
fashion of the age.

Here, if anywhere, one could be above worry, above the passion 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 Eschelles 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 spacious
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.”

“And the other one?”

“I don't know her. She knows how to handle the ribbons, though.”

“I seen her at the Casino the other night, before you come, with that
tandem-driving count. I don't believe he's any more count than you are.”

“Oh, he's all right. He's one of the Spanish legation. This is just
the place for counts. I shouldn't wonder, Maria, if you'd like to be
a countess. We can afford it--the Countess Jeremiah, eh?” and Uncle
Jerry's eyes twinkled.

“Don't be a goose, Mr. Hollowell,” bringing her fat hands round in front
of her, so that she could see the sparkle of the diamond rings on them.
“She's as pretty as a picture, that girl, but I should think a good wind
would blow her away. I shouldn't want to have her drive me round.”

“Jorkins has sailed,” said Mr. Hollowell, looking up from his paper.
“The Planet reporter tried to interview him, but he played sick, said he
was just going over and right back for a change. I guess it will be long
enough before they get a chance at him again.”

“I'm glad he's gone. I hope the papers will mind their own business for
a spell.”

The house of the Eschelles was on the sea, looking over a vast sweep of
lawn to the cliff and the dimpling blue water of the first beach. It was
known as the Yellow Villa. Coming from the elegance of Lenox, Margaret
was surprised at the magnificence and luxury of this establishment,
the great drawing-rooms, the spacious chambers, the wide verandas, the
pictures, the flowers, the charming nooks and recessed windows,
with handy book-stands, and tables littered with the freshest and
most-talked-of issues from the press of Paris, Madrid, and London.
Carmen had taken a hint from Henderson's bachelor apartment, which she
had visited once with her mother, and though she had no literary taste,
further than to dip in here and there to what she found toothsome and
exciting in various languages, yet she knew the effect of the atmosphere
of books, and she had a standing order at a book-shop for whatever was
fresh and likely to come into notice.

And Carmen was a delightful hostess, both because her laziness gave an
air of repose to the place, and she had the tact never to appear to make
any demands upon her guests, and because she knew when to be piquant
and exhibit personal interest, and when to show even a little abandon of
vivacity. Society flowed through her house without any obstructions. It
was scarcely ever too early and never too late for visitors. Those who
were intimate used to lounge in and take up a book, or pass an hour on
the veranda, even when none of the family were at home. Men had a habit
of dropping in for a five o'clock cup of tea, and where the men went
the women needed little urging to follow. At first there had been some
reluctance about recognizing the Eschelles fully, and there were still
houses that exhibited a certain reserve towards them, but the example of
going to this house set by the legations, the members of which enjoyed
a chat with Miss Eschelle in the freedom of their own tongues and the
freedom of her tongue, went far to break down this barrier. They were
spoken of occasionally as “those Eschelles,” but almost everybody went
there, and perhaps enjoyed it all the more because there had been a
shade of doubt about it.

Margaret's coming was a good card for Carmen. The little legend
about her French ancestry in Newport, and the romantic marriage in
Rochambeau's time, had been elaborated in the local newspaper, and
when she appeared the ancestral flavor, coupled with the knowledge of
Henderson's accumulating millions, lent an interest and a certain charm
to whatever she said and did. The Eschelle house became more attractive
than ever before, so much so that Mrs. Eschelle declared that she longed
for the quiet of Paris. To her motherly apprehension there was no result
in this whirl of gayety, no serious intention discoverable in any of
the train that followed Carmen. “You act, child,” she said, “as if youth
would last forever.”

Margaret entered into this life as if she had been born to it. Perhaps
she was. Perhaps most people never find the career for which they are
fitted, and struggle along at cross-purposes with themselves. We
all thought that Margaret's natural bent was for some useful and
self-sacrificing work in the world, and never could have imagined that
under any circumstances she would develop into a woman of fashion.

“I intend to read a great deal this month,” she said to Carmen on her
arrival, as she glanced at the litter of books.

“That was my intention,” replied Carmen; “now we can read together. I'm
taking Spanish lessons of Count Crispo. I've learned two Spanish poems
and a Castilian dance.”

“Is he married?”

“Not now. He told me, when he was teaching me the steps, that his heart
was buried in Seville.”

“He seems to be full of sentiment.”

“Perhaps that is because his salary is so small. Mamma says, of all
things an impecunious count! But he is amusing.”

“But what do you care for money?” asked Margaret, by way of testing
Carmen's motives.

“Nothing, my dear. But deliver me from a husband who is poor; he would
certainly be a tyrant. Besides, if I ever marry, it will be with an
American.”

“But suppose you fall in love with a poor man?”

“That would be against my principles. Never fall below your ideals--that
is what I heard a speaker say at the Town and Country Club, and that is
my notion. There is no safety for you if you lose your principles.”

“That depends upon what they are,” said Margaret, in the same bantering
tone.

“That sounds like good Mr. Lyon. I suspect he thought I hadn't any.
Mamma said I tried to shock him; but he shocked me. Do you think you
could live with such a man twenty-four hours, even if he had his crown
on?”

“I can imagine a great deal worse husbands than the Earl of Chisholm.”

“Well, I haven't any imagination.”

There was no reading that day nor the next. In the morning there was a
drive with the ponies through town, in the afternoon in the carriage
by the sea, with a couple of receptions, the five o'clock tea, with
its chatter, and in the evening a dinner party for Margaret. One day
sufficed to launch her, and there-after Carmen had only admiration
for the unflagging spirit which Margaret displayed. “If you were only
unmarried,” she said, “what larks we could have!” Margaret looked grave
at this, but only for a moment, for she well knew that she could not
please her husband better than by enjoying the season to the full. He
never criticised her for taking the world as it is; and she confessed to
herself that life went very pleasantly in a house where there were
never any questions raised about duties. The really serious thought in
Carmen's mind was that perhaps after all a woman had no real freedom
until she was married. And she began to be interested in Margaret's
enjoyment of the world.

It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like another
scene in the same play. The actors, who came and went, were for the most
part the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers and
diners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city. In these days
Margaret was quite at home with the old set: the British Minister,
the Belgian, the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the German, and the
Italian, with their families and attaches--nothing was wanting, not even
the Chinese mandarin, who had rooms at the hotel, going about everywhere
in the conscientious discharge of his duties as ambassador to American
society, a great favorite on account of his silk apparel, which gave
him the appearance of a clumsy woman, and the everlasting,
three-thousand-year-old smile on his broad face, punctiliously leaving
in every house a big flaring red piece of paper which the ladies pinned
up for a decoration; a picture of helpless, childlike enjoyment, and
almost independent of the interpreter who followed him about, when he
had learned, upon being introduced to a lady, or taking a cup of tea, to
say “good-by” as distinctly as an articulating machine; a truly learned
man, setting an example of civility and perfect self-possession,
but keenly observant of the oddities of the social life to which his
missionary government had accredited him. One would like to have heard
the comments of the minister and his suite upon our manners; but perhaps
they were too polite to make any even in their seclusion. Certain it is
that no one ever heard any of the legation express any opinion but the
most suave and flattering.

And yet they must have been amazed at the activity of this season of
repose, the endurance of American women who rode to the fox meets, were
excited spectators of the polo, played lawn-tennis, were incessantly
dining and calling, and sat through long dinners served with the
formality and dullness and the swarms of liveried attendants of a royal
feast. And they could not but admire the young men, who did not care for
politics or any business beyond the chances of the stock exchange, but
who expended an immense amount of energy in the dangerous polo contests,
in riding at fences after the scent-bag, in driving tandems and
four-in-hands, and yet had time to dress in the cut and shade demanded
by every changing hour.

Formerly the annual chronicle of this summer pageant, in which the same
women appeared day after day, and the same things were done over and
over again, Margaret used to read with a contempt for the life; but that
she enjoyed it, now she was a part of it, shows that the chroniclers for
the press were unable to catch the spirit of it, the excitement of the
personal encounters that made it new every day. Looking at a ball is
quite another thing from dancing.

“Yes, it is lively enough,” said Mr. Ponsonby, one afternoon when they
had returned from the polo grounds and were seated on the veranda.
Mr. Ponsonby was a middle-aged Englishman, whose diplomatic labors at
various courts had worn a bald spot on his crown. Carmen had not yet
come, and they were waiting for a cup of tea. “And they ride well; but I
think I rather prefer the Wild West Show.”

“You Englishmen,” Margaret retorted, “seem to like the uncivilized. Are
you all tired of civilization?”

“Of some kinds. When we get through with the London season, you know,
Mrs. Henderson, we like to rough it, as you call it, for some months.
But, 'pon my word, I can't see much difference between Washington and
Newport.”

“We might get up a Wild West Show here, or a prize-fight, for you. Do
you know, Mr. Ponsonby, I think it will take full another century for
women to really civilize men.”

“How so?”

“Get the cruelty and love of brutal sports out of them.”

“Then you'd cease to like us. Nothing is so insipid, I fancy, to a woman
as a man made in her own image.”

“Well, what have you against Newport?”

“Against it? I'm sure nothing could be better than this.” And Mr.
Ponsonby allowed his adventurous eyes to rest for a moment upon
Margaret's trim figure, until he saw a flush in her face. “This
prospect,” he added, turning to the sea, where a few sails took the
slant rays of the sun.

“'Where every prospect pleases,”' quoted Margaret, “'and only man--'”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Henderson; men are not to be considered. The
women in Newport would make the place a paradise even if it were a
desert.”

“That is another thing I object to in men.”

“What's that?”

“Flattery. You don't say such things to each other at the club. What is
your objection to Newport?”

“I didn't say I had any. But if you compel me well, the whole thing
seems to be a kind of imitation.”

“How?”

“Oh, the way things go on--the steeple-chasing and fox-hunting, and the
carts, and the style of the swell entertainments. Is that ill-natured?”

“Not at all. I like candor, especially English candor. But there is Miss
Eschelle.”

Carmen drove up with Count Crispo, threw the reins to the groom, and
reached the ground with a touch on the shoulder of the count, who had
alighted to help her down.

“Carmen,” said Margaret, “Mr. Ponsonby says that all Newport is just an
imitation.”

“Of course it is. We are all imitations, except Count Crispo. I'll bet
a cup of tea against a pair of gloves,” said Carmen, who had facility in
picking up information, “that Mr. Ponsonby wasn't born in England.”

Mr. Ponsonby looked redder than usual, and then laughed, and said,
“Well, I was only three years old when I left Halifax.”

“I knew it!” cried Carmen, clapping her hands. “Now come in and have a
cup of English breakfast tea. That's imitation, too.”

“The mistake you made,” said Margaret, “was not being born in Spain.”

“Perhaps it's not irreparable,” the count interposed, with an air of
gallantry.

“No, no,” said Carmen, audaciously; “by this time I should be buried in
Seville. No, I should prefer Halifax, for it would have been a pleasure
to emigrate from Halifax. Was it not, Mr. Ponsonby?”

“I can't remember. But it is a pleasure to sojourn in any land with Miss
Eschelle.”

“Thank you. Now you shall have two cups. Come.”

The next morning, Mr. Jerry Hollowell, having inquired where Margaret
was staying, called to pay his respects, as he phrased it. Carmen,
who was with Margaret in the morning-room, received him with her most
distinguished manner. “We all know Mr. Hollowell,” she said.

“That's not always an advantage,” retorted Uncle Jerry, seating himself,
and depositing his hat beside his chair. “When do you expect your
husband, Mrs. Henderson?”

“Tomorrow. But I don't mean to tell him that you are here--not at
first.”

“No,” said Carmen; “we women want Mr. Henderson a little while to
ourselves.”

“Why, I'm the idlest man in America. I tell Henderson that he ought to
take more time for rest. It's no good to drive things. I like quiet.”

“And you get it in Newport?” Margaret asked.

“Well, my wife and children get what they call quiet. I guess a month of
it would use me up. She says if I had a place here I'd like it. Perhaps
so. You are very comfortably fixed, Miss Eschelle.”

“It does very well for us, but something more would be expected of Mr.
Hollowell. We are just camping-out here. What Newport needs is a real
palace, just to show those foreigners who come here and patronize us.
Why is it, Mr. Hollowell, that all you millionaires can't think of
anything better to do with your money than to put up a big hotel or a
great elevator or a business block?”

“I suppose,” said Uncle Jerry, blandly, “that is because they are
interested in the prosperity of the country, and have simple democratic
tastes for themselves. I'm afraid you are not democratic, Miss
Eschelle.”

“Oh, I'm anxious about the public also. I'm on your side, Mr. Hollowell;
but you don't go far enough. You just throw in a college now and then to
keep us quiet, but you owe it to the country to show the English that a
democrat can have as fine a house as anybody.”

“I call that real patriotism. When I get rich, Miss Eschelle, I'll bear
it in mind.”

“Oh, you never will be rich,” said Carmen, sweetly, bound to pursue her
whim. “You might come to me for a start to begin the house. I was very
lucky last spring in A. and B. bonds.”

“How was that? Are you interested in A. and B.?” asked Uncle Jerry,
turning around with a lively interest in this gentle little woman.

“Oh, no; we sold out. We sold when we heard what an interest there was
in the road. Mamma said it would never do for two capitalists to have
their eggs in the same basket.”

“What do you mean, Carmen?” asked Margaret, startled. “Why, that is the
road Mr. Henderson is in.”

“Yes, I know, dear. There were too many in it.”

“Isn't it safe?” said Margaret, turning to Hollowell.

“A great deal more solid than it was,” he replied. “It is part of a
through line. I suppose Miss Eschelle found a better investment.”

“One nearer home,” she admitted, in the most matter-of-fact way.

“Henderson must have given the girl points,” thought Hollowell. He began
to feel at home with her. If he had said the truth, it would have been
that she was more his kind than Mrs. Henderson, but that he respected
the latter more.

“I think we might go in partnership, Miss Eschelle, to mutual
advantage--but not in building. Your ideas are too large for me there.”

“I should be a very unreliable partner, Mr. Hollowell; but I could
enlarge your ideas, if I had time.”

Hollowell laughed, and said he hadn't a doubt of that. Margaret inquired
for Mrs. Hollowell and the children, and she and Carmen appointed an
hour for calling at the Ocean House. The talk went to other topics, and
after a half-hour ended in mutual good-feeling.

“What a delightful old party!” said Carmen, after he had gone. “I've a
mind to adopt him.”

In a week Hollowell and Carmen were the best of friends. She called him
“Uncle Jerry,” and buzzed about him, to his great delight. “The beauty
of it is,” he said, “you never can tell where she will light.”

Everybody knows what Newport is in August, and we need not dwell on it.
To Margaret, with its languidly moving pleasures, its well-bred scenery,
the luxury that lulled the senses into oblivion of the vulgar struggle
and anxiety which ordinarily attend life, it was little less than
paradise. To float along with Carmen, going deeper and deeper into the
shifting gayety which made the days fly without thought and with no care
for tomorrow, began to seem an admirable way of passing life. What could
one do fitter, after all, for a world hopelessly full of suffering
and poverty and discontent, than to set an example of cheerfulness
and enjoyment, and to contribute, as occasion offered, to the less
fortunate? Would it help matters to be personally anxious and miserable?
To put a large bill in the plate on Sunday, to open her purse wide
for the objects of charity and relief daily presented, was indeed a
privilege and a pleasure, and a satisfaction to the conscience which
occasionally tripped her in her rapid pace.

“I don't believe you have a bit of conscience,” said Margaret to Carmen
one Sunday, as they walked home from morning service, when Margaret had
responded “extravagantly,” as Carmen said, to an appeal for the mission
among the city pagans.

“I never said I had, dear. It must be the most troublesome thing you
can carry around with you. Of course I am interested in the heathen, but
charity--that is where I agree with Uncle Jerry--begins at home, and I
don't happen to know a greater heathen than I am.”

“If you were as bad as you make yourself out, I wouldn't walk with you
another step.”

“Well, you ask mother. She was in such a rage one day when I told Mr.
Lyon that he'd better look after Ireland than go pottering round among
the neglected children. Not that I care anything about the Irish,” added
this candid person.

“I suppose you wanted to make it pleasant for Mr. Lyon?”

“No; for mother. She can't get over the idea that she is still bringing
me up. And Mr. Lyon! Goodness! there was no living with him after his
visit to Brandon. Do you know, Margaret, that I think you are just a
little bit sly?”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Margaret, looking offended.

“Dear, I don't blame you,” said the impulsive creature, wheeling short
round and coming close to Margaret. “I'd kiss you this minute if we were
not in the public road.”

When Henderson came, Margaret's world was full; no desire was
ungratified. He experienced a little relief when she did not bother him
about his business nor inquire into his operations with Hollowell, and
he fancied that she was getting to accept the world as Carmen accepted
it. There had been moments since his marriage when he feared that
Margaret's scruples would interfere with his career, but never a moment
when he had doubted that her love for him would be superior to any
solicitations from others. Carmen, who knew him like a book, would have
said that the model wife for Henderson would be a woman devoted to him
and to his interests, and not too scrupulous. A wife is a torment, if
you can't feel at ease with her.

“If there were only a French fleet in the harbor, dear,” said Margaret
one day, “I should feel that I had quite taken up the life of my
great-great-grandmother.”

They were sailing in Hollowell's yacht, in which Uncle Jerry had brought
his family round from New York. He hated the water, but Mrs. Hollowell
and the children doted on the sea, he said.

“Wouldn't the torpedo station make up for it?” Henderson asked.

“Hardly. But it shows the change of a hundred years. Only, isn't it odd,
this personal dropping back into an old situation? I wonder what she was
like?”

“The accounts say she was the belle of Newport. I suppose Newport has a
belle once in a hundred years. The time has come round. But I confess
I don't miss the French fleet,” replied Henderson, with a look of love
that thrilled Margaret through and through.

“But you would have been an officer on the fleet, and I should have
fallen in love with you. Ah, well, it is better as it is.”

And it was better. The days went by without a cloud. Even after
Henderson had gone, the prosperity of life filled her heart more and
more.

“She might have been like me,” Carmen said to herself, “if she had
only started right; but it is so hard to get rid of a New England
conscience.”

When Margaret stayed in her room, one morning, to write a long-postponed
letter to her aunt, she discovered that she had very little to write,
at least that she wanted to write, to her aunt. She began, however,
resolutely with a little account of her life. But it seemed another
thing on paper, addressed to the loving eyes at Brandon. There were too
much luxury and idleness and triviality in it, too much Carmen and Count
Crispo and flirtation and dissipation in it.

She tore it up, and went to the window and looked out upon the sea. She
was indignant with the Brandon people that they should care so little
about this charming life. She was indignant at herself that she had torn
up the letter. What had she done that anybody should criticise her?
Why shouldn't she live her life, and not be hampered everlastingly by
comparisons?

She sat down again, and took up her pen. Was she changing--was she
changed? Why was it that she had felt a little relief when her last
Brandon visit was at an end, a certain freedom in Lenox and a greater
freedom in Newport? The old associations became strong again in her
mind, the life in the little neighborhood, the simplicity of it, the
high ideals of it, the daily love and tenderness. Her aunt was no doubt
wondering now that she did not write, and perhaps grieving that Margaret
no more felt at home in Brandon. It was too much. She loved them, she
loved them all dearly. She would write that, and speak only generally
of her frivolous, happy summer. And she began, but somehow the letter
seemed stiff and to lack the old confiding tone.

But why should they disapprove of her? She thought of her husband.
If circumstances had altered, was she to blame? Could she always be
thinking of what they would think at Brandon? It was an intolerable
bondage. They had no right to set themselves up over her. Suppose her
aunt didn't like Carmen. She was not responsible for Carmen. What would
they have her do? Be unhappy because Henderson was prosperous, and she
could indulge her tastes and not have to drudge in school? Suppose she
did look at some things differently from what she used to. She knew more
of the world. Must you shut yourself up because you found you couldn't
trust everybody? What was Mr. Morgan always hitting at? Had he any
better opinion of men and women than her husband had? Was he any more
charitable than Uncle Jerry? She smiled as she thought of Uncle Jerry
and his remark--“It's a very decent world if you don't huff it.” No; she
did like this life, and she was not going to pretend that she didn't. It
would be dreadful to lose the love and esteem of her dear old friends,
and she cried a little as this possibility came over her. And then she
hardened her heart a little at the thought that she could not help it if
they chose to misunderstand her and change.

Carmen was calling from the stairs that it was time to dress for
the drive. She dashed off a note. It contained messages of love for
everybody, but it was the first one in her life written to her aunt not
from her heart.

XVII

Shall we never have done with this carping at people who succeed? Are
those who start and don't arrive any better than those who do arrive?
Did not men always make all the money they had an opportunity to make?
Must we always have the old slow-coach merchants and planters thrown up
to us? Talk of George Washington and the men of this day! Were things
any better because they were on a small scale? Wasn't the thrifty George
Washington always adding to his plantations, and squeezing all he could
out of his land and his slaves? What are the negro traditions about
it? Were they all patriots in the Revolutionary War? Were there no
contractors who amassed fortunes then? And how was it in the late war?
The public has a great spasm of virtue all of a sudden. But we have got
past the day of stage-coaches.

Something like this Henderson was flinging out to Carmen as he paced
back and forth in her parlor. It was very unlike him, this outburst,
and Carmen knew that he would indulge in it to no one else, not even
to Uncle Jerry. She was coiled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes
sparkling with admiration of his indignation and force. I confess that
he had been irritated by the comments of the newspapers, and by the
prodding of the lawyers in the suit then on trial over the Southwestern
consolidation.

“Why, there was old Mansfield saying in his argument that he had had
some little experience in life, but he never had known a man to get rich
rapidly, barring some piece of luck, except by means that it would make
him writhe to have made public. I don't know but that Uncle Jerry was
right, that we made a mistake in not retaining him for the corporation.”

“Not if you win,” said Carmen, softly. “The public won't care for the
remark unless you fail.”

“And he tried to prejudice the Court by quoting the remark attributed to
Uncle Jerry, 'The public be d----d' as if, said Mansfield, the public has
no rights as--against the railroad wreckers. Uncle Jerry laughed, and
interrupted: 'That's nonsense, reporters' nonsense. What I said was that
if the public thought I was fool enough to make it our enemy, the public
might be d---d (begging your honor's pardon).' Then everybody laughed.
'It's the bond holders, who want big dividends, that stand in the way of
the development of the country, that's what it is,' said he, as he sat
down, to those around him, but loud enough to be heard all over
the room. Mansfield asked the protection of the Court against these
clap-trap interruptions. The judge said it was altogether irregular,
and Uncle Jerry begged pardon. The reporters made this incident the one
prominent thing in the case that day.”

“What a delightful Uncle Jerry it is!” said Carmen. “You'd better keep
an eye on him, Rodney; he'll be giving your money to that theological
seminary in Alabama.”

“That reminds me,” Henderson said, cooling down, “of a paragraph in
The Planet, the other day, about the amount of my gifts unknown to the
public. I showed it to Uncle Jerry, and he said, 'Yes, I mentioned it to
the editor; such things don't do any harm.'”

“I saw it, and wondered who started it,” Carmen replied, wrinkling her
brows as if she had been a good deal perplexed about it.

“I thought,” said Henderson, with a smile, “that it ought to be
explained to you.”

“No,” she said, reflectively; “you are liberal enough, goodness
knows--too liberal--but you are not a flat.”

Henderson was in the habit of dropping in at the Eschelles'
occasionally, when he wanted to talk freely. He had no need to wear a
mask with Carmen. Her moral sense was tolerant and elastic, and feminine
sympathy of this sort is a grateful cushion. She admired Henderson,
without thinking any too well of the world in general, and she admired
him for the qualities that were most conformable to his inclination. It
was no case of hero-worship, to be sure, nor for tragedy; but then what
a satisfaction it must be to sweet Lady Macbeth, coiled up on her sofa,
to feel that the thane of Cawdor has some nerve!

The Hendersons had come back to Washington Square late in the autumn. It
is a merciful provision that one has an orderly and well-appointed home
to return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate,
was a little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, and
experienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold and
entered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut
the door there even against the solicitations of nature and against
the weariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late
autumn days, and yet not lifeless by any means! Indeed, it seemed all
the more a haven because the roar of the great city environed it, and
one could feel, without being disturbed by, the active pulsation of
human life. And then, if one has sentiment, is there anywhere that it is
more ministered to than in the city at the close of the year? The trees
in the little park grow red and yellow and brown, the leaves fall and
swirl and drift in windrows by the paths, the flower-beds flame forth in
the last dying splendor of their color; the children, chasing each
other with hoop and ball about the walks, are more subdued than in the
spring-time; the old men, seeking now the benches where the sunshine
falls, sit in dreamy reminiscence of the days that are gone; the
wandering minstrel of Italy turns the crank of his wailing machine, O!
bella, bella, as in the spring, but the notes seem to come from far off
and to be full of memory rather than of promise; and at early morning,
or when the shadows lengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the
trees has a salt smell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the
fading foliage. But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all
this note of melancholy! Life is to begin again.

But the social season opened languidly. It takes some time to recover
from the invigoration of the summer gayety--to pick up again the threads
and weave them into that brilliant pattern, which scarcely shows all its
loveliness of combination and color before the weavers begin to work in
the subdued tints of Lent. How delightful it is to see this knitting and
unraveling of the social fabric year after year! and how untiring are
the senders of the shuttles, the dyers, the hatchelers, the spinners,
the ever-busy makers and destroyers of the intricate web we call
society! After one campaign, must there not be time given to organize
for another? Who has fallen out, who are the new recruits, who are
engaged, who will marry, who have separated, who has lost his money?
Before we can safely reorganize we must not only examine the hearts
but the stock-list. No matter how many brilliant alliances have been
arranged, no matter how many husbands and wives have drifted apart in
the local whirlpools of the summer's current, the season will be dull
if Wall Street is torpid and discouraged. We cannot any of us, you see,
live to ourselves alone. Does not the preacher say that? And do we not
all look about us in the pews, when he thus moralizes, to see who has
prospered? The B's have taken a back seat, the C's have moved up nearer
the pulpit. There is a reason for these things, my friends.

I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to the
little church where she said her prayers; for however restful her life
might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was
involved in the most serious struggle of his life--a shameful kind of
conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his
annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with
injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and
Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation
had been ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern
operations. Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there,
and Henderson, with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the
courts. The affair made a tremendous stir. Some of the bondholders of
the A. and B. happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise
about their injury. As several millions were involved in this one branch
of the case--the suit of the bondholders--the newspapers treated it
with the consideration and dignity it deserved. It was a vast financial
operation, some said, scathingly, a “deal,” but the magnitude of it
prevented it from falling into the reports of petty swindling that
appear in the police-court column. It was a public affair, and not to
be judged by one's private standard. I know that there were remarks made
about Henderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them,
but I never heard that he lost standing in the street. Still, in justice
to the street it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be
proven, and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more
lenient judgment in the street than elsewhere.

In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all the
private sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fight
with the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances. It needed all his
courage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through. That he went
through was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it was
proof also that he was a good fellow. If there were people who thought
otherwise, I never heard that they turned their backs on him, or failed