Chapter 4

"I'm a bit of a Puritan myself, although I understood Harry better than did the Deacon. The young people have been captured by the frankness of the Latin races. They call it emancipation. Travel and the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have been 'finished' abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places. There they lie entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa. Like the women in the sack of Ismail, they sit them down and watch for the adultery to begin.

"The imagination of the old world seems to have gone wild--Oscar Wilde! How the Oscars have thriven there since the first of them went to jail!--a degenerate dynasty!--hiding the stench of spiritual rot with the perfume of faultless rhetoric, speaking the unspeakable with the tongues of angels and of prophets! And mostly, my boy, they have thriven on the dollars of American women under the leadership of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the whole human brotherhood. We sons of the Puritans ought to get busy in the old cause. Noah had the good sense to keep the animals and the people apart, and that's what we've always stood for."

VIII

IN WHICH SOCRATES ATTACKS THE HELMET AND THE BATTLE-AX

"Marie came to see us at our home next morning and began to cry as soon as she had sat down in the library. The thing I had looked for had come to pass. Her grandfather had dropped Harry from his list, and warned him to keep off the rag-carpet. There was to be no more prancing around in the 'toot-coach' and the 'Harry-cart,' as he called them, for Marie. In his view it was the surest means of getting to perdition. Harry was an idler, and he had always found that an idle brain was the devil's workshop. Marie might be polite to the young man, but she must keep her side of the road and see that there was always plenty of room between them.

"'He's so hateful,' Marie said of her grandfather. 'He made such a fuss about our getting a crest that we've a perfect right to! Mama had to give it up.'

"'What! Do you mean to tell me that you have no crest!' I inquired, anxiously.

"'We have one, but we cannot use it; our hands are tied,' was her sorrowful answer.

"'I'm astonished. Why, everybody is going to have a crest in Pointview.

"'The other day I suggested to Bridget Maloney, our pretty chambermaid, that she ought to have the Maloney crest on her letter-heads.

"'"What's that?" says Bridget.

"'"What's that!" I said, with a look of pity.

"'Then I showed her a letter from Mrs. Van Alstyne, with a lion and a griffin cuffing each other black and blue at the top of the sheet.

"'"It's grand!" said she.

"'"It's the Van Alstyne crest," I said. "It's a proof of respectability. Aren't you as good as they are?"

"'"Every bit!" said she.

"'"That's what I thought. Don't you often feel as if you were better than a good many people you know?"

"'"Sure I do."

"'"Well, that's a sign that you're blue-blooded," said I. "Probably you've got a king in your family somewhere. A crest shows that you suspect your ancestors--nothing more than that. It isn't proof, so there's no reason why you shouldn't have it. You ought not to be going around without a crest, as if you were a common servant-girl. Why, every kitchen-maid will be thinking she's as good as you are. You want to be in style. You have money in the bank, and not half the people who have crests are as well able to afford 'em."

"'"How much do they cost?"

"'"Nothing--at least, yours'll cost nothing, Bridget. I shall be glad to buy one for you."

"'The simple girl thanked me, and I found the Maloney crest for her, and had the plate made and neatly engraved on a hundred sheets of paper.

"'Next week the Pointview _Advocate_ will print this item: "Miss Bridget Maloney, the genial chambermaid of Mrs. Socrates Potter, uses the Maloney crest on her letter-heads. She is said to be a lineal descendant of his Grace Bryan Maloney, one of the early dukes of Ireland."

"'Bridget is haughty, well-mannered, and a neat dresser. She's a pace-maker in her set. Even the high-headed servants of Warburton House imitate her hats and gowns.

"'Yesterday Katie O'Neil, one of Mrs. Warburton's maids, came to me for information as to the heraldry of her house. I found a crest for Katie; and then came Mary Maginness; and Bertha Schimpfelheim, the daughter of a real German count; and one August Bernheimer, a young barber of baronial blood; and Pietro Cantaveri, our prosperous bootblack, who was the grandson of an Italian countess; and so it goes, and soon all the high-born servers of Pointview will be supplied with armorial bearings.

"'These claims to distinction shall be soberly chronicled in the _Advocate_. Not one is to be overlooked or treated with any lack of respect. On the contrary, the whole thing will be exploited with a proper sense of awe.'

"Marie laughed.

"'Wait till I tell mama,' she said. 'It's lucky you told me. It's saved us. I guess grandfather was right about that.'

"'And he's right about Harry, too,' I said. 'But don't despair; I'm trying to put a new mainspring in the boy. If I succeed, your grandfather may have to change his mind.'

"She went away comforted, but not happy.

"Well, I went on with the crest campaign. Bertha, Pietro, and the others got their crests and saw their names in the paper.

"The supply of crests was soon perfectly adequate, and among our best people the demand for them began to diminish, and suddenly ceased. The beast rampant and couchant, the helmet and the battle-ax, associated only with mixed tenses and misplaced capitals according to their ancient habit. This chambermaid grammar was referred to by my friend, Dr. Guph, as the 'battle-ax brand'--a designation of some merit. Expensive stationery fell into the fireplaces of Pointview, and armorial plates were found in the garbage. The family trees of the village were deserted. Not a bird twittered in their branches. The subject of genealogy was buried in deep silence, save when the irreverent referred to some late addition to our new aristocracy.

"Now I want to make it clear that we have no disrespect for the customs of any foreign land. If I were living in a foreign land and needed evidence of my respectability, I'd have a crest, if it was likely to prove my case. But America was founded by the sons of the yeomen, and the yeomen established their respectability with other evidence. Their brains were so often touched by the battle-ax that some of us have an hereditary shyness about the head, and we dodge at every baronial relic."

IX

IN WHICH SOCRATES INCREASES THE SUPPLY OF SPLENDOR

"In due time the Society of Useful Women met at our house, and I was invited to make a few remarks, and said in effect:

"'We are trying to correct the evil of extravagant display in America, and first I ask you to consider the cause of it. We find it in the ancient law of supply and demand. The reason that women love to array themselves in silk and laces and jewels and picture-hats and plumes of culture and sunbursts of genealogy lies in the fact that the supply of these things has generally been limited. Their cost is so high, therefore, that few can afford them, and those who wear them are distinguished from the common herd. This matter of buying distinction is the cause of our trouble. Now I propose that we increase the supply of jewels, silks, laces, picture-hats, and ancestors in Pointview--that we bring them within the reach of all, and aim a death-blow at the distinction to be obtained by displaying them. There isn't a servant-girl in this community who doesn't pant for luxuries. Why shouldn't she? I move that we have a committee to consider this inadequate supply of luxuries, with the power to increase the same at its own expense.'

"I was appointed chairman of that committee, and went to work, with Betsey and Mrs. Warburton as coadjutors.

"We stocked a store with clever imitations of silks, satins, and old lace, and the best assortment of Brummagem jewelry that could be raked together. We had a great show-case full of glittering paste--bracelets, tiaras, coronets, sunbursts, dog-collars, rings, necklaces--all extremely modish and so handsome that they would have deceived any but trained eyes. Our pearls and sapphires were especially attractive. We hired a skilled dressmaker, familiar with the latest modes, and a milliner who could imitate the most stunning hats on Fifth Avenue at reasonable prices. Every servant in good standing in our community was permitted to come and see and buy and say 'Charge it.'

"Mrs. Warburton's ball for the servants of Pointview, to be given in the Town Hall, was coming near. It happened that the committee of arrangements included Marie and the young Reverend Robert Knowles. Their intimacy began in the work of that committee. For days they rode about in the minister's motor-car getting ready for the ball and for the greater intimacy that followed it.

"Our ball sent its radiance over land and sea. Sunbursts shone like stars in the Milky Way. A fine orchestra furnished music. Reporters from New York and other cities were present.

"The nurses, cooks, kitchen-girls, laundresses, and chambermaids of Pointview were radiant in silk, lace, diamonds, pearls, and rubies. The costumes were brilliant, but all in good taste. Alabaster? Why, my dear boy, they would have made the swell set resemble a convention of beanpoles. For the matter of busts, they busted the record!

"The only mishap occurred when Bertha Schimpfelheim--some call her Big Bertha--slipped and fell in a waltz, injuring the knee of her companion. To my surprise the brainiest of these working-folk saw the satire in which they were taking part, and entered into it with all the more spirit because they knew.

"The presence of Mr. Warburton, Mr. and Mrs. Delance, Marie, and the Reverend Robert Knowles on the floor insured proper decorum and lent an air of seriousness to the event. It proved an effective background for Marie. She shone like a pigeon-blood ruby among garnets. She wore no jewels, and was distinguished only by her beauty and the simplicity of her costume and the unmistakable evidence of good breeding in her face and manners.

"Harry sat with me in the gallery.

"'She's wonderful!' he exclaimed. 'All this rococo ware simply emphasizes her charm. Only a girl of brains could carry it off as she does. She's among them and yet apart. An old duke once told me that if you want to know the rank of a lady, observe how she treats an inferior. It's quite true. By Jove! I'm in love with Marie, and I'm going to make her my wife if possible.'

"'That's one really substantial result of the ball,' I said.

"'Do you think that she cares for Knowles--that minister chap?'"

"'I'm inclined to think that she likes you better,' I said.

"'Is your inclination encouraged by evidence?'

"'That query I must decline to answer,' said I.

"'Well, you know, I'm not going to be long in doubt,' the boy declared, as he left me.

"The event was an epoch-maker. Long reports of it appeared in the daily press and traveled far in a surge of thoughtful merriment. For instance: 'Miss Mary Maginness, the accomplished lady-in-waiting of Mrs. William Warburton, of Warburton House, wore a coronet and a dog-collar of diamonds above a costume of white brocaded satin, trimmed with old duchesse lace and gold ornaments. Miss Maginness is a lineal descendant of Lord Rawdon Maginness, of Cork, who early in the seventeenth century commanded an army that drove the Italians out of Ireland.'

"And so it went, with column after column of glittering detail. Since then the servants have enjoyed a monopoly in splendor--it's been a kind of Standard Jewel Company, and certain rich men have boasted in my presence that they haven't a jewel in their houses; and one added with quite unneeded emphasis: 'Not a measly jewel. My wife says that they suggest dish-water and aprons.'

"'It is too funny!' said Mrs. Warburton. 'You know those jewels at the ball were quite as real as many that are worn by ladies of fashion. Most rich women who want to save themselves worry keep their jewels in the strong-box and wear replicas of paste and composition.'

"The instalment jeweler has gone out of business, and half a dozen servant-girls have refused to make further payments on their solitaires and returned them.

"One singular thing happened. Nearly all those servants paid their bills to our store, and we closed out with an unexpected profit, while a number of stores who charged their goods to the noble band of employers have stopped for need of money."

X

IN WHICH SOCRATES BREAKS THE DRAG AND TANDEM MONOPOLY IN POINTVIEW

"Harry's father came often for a smoke and talk with me after dinner, and his favorite subject was Harry. As a subject of conversation, Harry was more successful than the average crime. In this respect he resembled a divorce or a murder. That's how it happened that Harry got on my mind. He is one of the most skilful riders of the human mind that I know of. He was wearing us out, and we were all bucking to get him off. Well, his father was thinking about him while I was thinking about the rest of Pointview. It was another case of Rome and Cæsar. Harry's last achievement was to accuse his father of being the fossiliferous remnant of an ancient time.

"'The truth is, Harry hasn't enough competition in his line,' I suggested, one evening. 'The other boys are doing well, but they don't keep up with him.

"'You know after I left college, in my youth, I spent a couple of years in Wyoming. Well, Mary Ann Crowder was the only single lady within a hundred miles, and she was the most obstreperous damn critter that I ever saw. She had a monopoly an' knew it, an' wasn't decently polite. Put on more style than a nigger at a cakewalk. Though she had red hair an' only one eye, some of the boys used to ride sixty miles for a visit with her. Then they had to swim the Snake River and maybe wrestle with a tame bear that was loose in the dooryard. By and by a man with two unmarried daughters moved on to a ranch near us, and then Mary Ann began to be polite. She suddenly became a human being, an' killed the bear, an' moved across the river an' married the first man that proposed, and lived happily ever after.

"'What we need here is another drag and tandem.'

"'Get what you need, and I'll pay the bills,' said Harry's father.

"So I went to a sale in New York, bought my drag and tandem-cart, and had them shipped to Pointview. Our local sign-painter put a crest or, rather, a kind of royal hatchment, on the panels of both. Then I sold them for next to nothing to a local livery on conditions. Its new owner agreed to use the drag for chowder-parties, and to break the worst-looking nags in his stable to drive tandem on the cart.

"Tommy Ruggles, a smart-looking knight of the currycomb, whose first name was a kitchen word in Pointview, sprang to my assistance. He had curly hair, and a good deal of natural cuteness, and was, moreover, 'a divvle with the girls.' He contracted with me to take a selected list of female servants for an airing in the tandem-cart. He was to get a royalty of five dollars a head on every servant that was properly aired, with a small premium on red ones.

"He began with Big Bertha, our worthy German countess. Tommy had a playful humor, and cracked his long whip over the rough-harnessed nags and merrily tooted his horn as the rig lumbered along through the main streets of our village. Many laughed and many wondered, while an army of noisy kids followed and hung on behind.

"Tommy got his second girl, who was hit on the head with a ripe tomato, and then it was all over. The girls wouldn't stand for it. The sport had become too exciting. Tommy told me how he had invited Bridget Maloney, and she had said: 'Na-a-ah! Do yez take me for an idiot? Sure every rotten egg in the town would be jumpin' at me.'

"It suggested an idea. As the imitation idiots had given out, we would try the real thing. So I 'phoned the manager of our thriving idiot asylum on the Post Road and arranged to have Tommy take one of his patients every day for a drive in the cart. Why shouldn't all the idiots enjoy themselves? Fresh air would be good for them. It would turn the cart into a charity which would cover a part of my sins. I asked for the better class of idiots--the quiet ones, who had sense enough to appreciate a good thing. The parade began and continued day after day.

"Harry had retired his tandem after Tom, with a stiff-backed idiot by his side, had clattered after him through the village behind the two spavined nags to the amusement of many people. He had kept up with Harry.

"Soon that kind of a rig was known as the Idiot Wagon. Then Tommy resigned; it was more than he could stand. He said he was willing to do any honest work for money, but not that. He said that the idiots imagined themselves rich, and put on so much style that it made the whole thing ridiculous.

"'Never mind--it's the habit of idiots,' I said.

"'One of 'em thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte, an' calls me his man, and wears a plug hat and sits as straight as a ramrod, and bows to the people when they laugh at him,' said Tommy. 'Some of 'em get stuck on the cart, and it's a fight to get 'em out of it. I tell ye, I'm sick o' the job. The sight o' that cart makes me feel nutty.'

"'Never mind, Tom,' I said; 'you've been a public benefactor, and you and the cart are entitled to an honorable discharge.'

"Every bright day the drag was tooling over the road with picnic-parties on their way to one of the popular beaches. Our local lodges and political clubs, and now and then a load of Italians, were able to enjoy the luxury which had been the exclusive delight of Harry and the fluffy maidens of Pointview.

"Drags an' tandems are all right if you don't go too far with 'em. We were just in time to prevent them from becoming tools of degeneration in our village."

XI

IN WHICH SUNDRY PEOPLE MAKE GREAT DISCOVERIES

"There were many private panics in Pointview. It was my privilege to observe, under calm exteriors, a raging fever of excitement--characters going bankrupt, collectors wandering in a fruitless quest. One little rill that flowed into the swift river of national trouble issued from the bosom of my clerk, Mr. 'Cub' Sayles. It had been one of the most placid bosoms in Pointview. Now it was in the midst of what I have since referred to as the 'Violet and Supper Panic of 1907.'

"Cub was a quiet, hard-working, serious-minded boy whose mother moved in the higher circles of Boston. He had a low, pleasant voice, a touch of Harry's dialect, and a sad face. He had asked for a higher salary, and I had asked for information.

"'You see every time I go to call on my girl I have to take a bunch of violets or a two-pound box of candy,' he said. 'Then if we go to the theater her chaperon has to be with us--don't you know? She's a stout lady who complains of faintness before the play ends, and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have to pawn my diamond ring.'

"'All that isn't honest,' I said. 'You're getting her favor under false pretenses. You're trying to make her believe that you are a sort of aristocrat with lots of money. Why don't you tell her the truth--that you can't afford violets, that the two-pound box is a burden that is breaking your back, and that every theater-supper sends you to the pawnbroker's?'

"'I can't--she would throw me over,' he explained. 'The girls expect those things. They like to show and talk about them--don't you know? It's the fashion. Our best young men do it, sir.'

"'Well, if you are willing to give up your honor for a lady's smile you won't do for me,' I said. 'You must not only tell the truth, but live it. You must be just what you are--a poor boy working for twenty dollars a week. If the girl doesn't like it she's unfit to associate with honest men. If you don't like it I don't like you.'

"Perspiration had begun to dampen the brow of Cub.

"'I--I hadn't seen it in that light, sir,' he said. 'But what am I to do, sir? I am heavily indebted to my tailor.'

"'What! Haven't you paid for those lovely garments?'

"'I had them charged, sir,' Cub sadly answered. 'My mother sent me a hundred dollars to pay for them, but I loaned it to Roger Daniels. I should be much obliged, sir, if you would collect it for me.'

"I went to Roger and made him pay the debt. He paid it in a curious way--by going to his tailor and buying a hundred dollars' worth of clothes for Cub and having them charged. It was compounding a felony, but my client was satisfied and Roger was grateful. He began to have some regard for me. Not every lawyer had been able to make him pay. Within a day or so he came to consult me about a mortgage on his patrimony.

"Roger had married and settled down immediately after his remarkable cruise. He had kept his party in ignorance of his financial troubles and returned with his reputation as an aristocrat firmly established. The gay young Bessie Runnymede had accepted him at once. He had become junior partner in a firm of brokers and had rented a handsome residence in Pointview.

"So they began their little play with ladies, lords, and gentlemen in the cast, and with a country-house, a tandem, a crested limousine, and a racing launch for scenery. But Roger had what is known as a bad season. Well, you know, the moving-picture shows had got such a hold on the public.

"At first we concluded that he must have made another lucky play in the market. Then, after six months or so, bills against Roger began to arrive for collection from sundry department stores in the city. He was a good fellow and had plausible excuses, and I declined to press payment and returned the bills.

"One day, some eight months after the wedding, an urgent telegram from Roger brought me to New York. I found the young man in his office, with his wife at his side. They were both in tears. I sat down with them, and he told me this story:

"'The fact is, I'm a thief,' he began. 'I have confessed the truth to my partners. Since my marriage I have taken about twenty thousand dollars--needed every cent of it to keep going. The fact is, I expected to make a killing in the market and return the money--had inside information--but everything went wrong. Yesterday I was cleaned out.