Part 8

"Idiomatic is very good--excellent, in fact," replied Miss Cragge, with a pleasantry that barely missed being morose. "I suppose you mean that I am slangy. You're always trying to snub me, Kindelon, but I don't mind you. You can't snub me--nobody can. I'm too thick-skinned." Here the strangely self-poised lady laughed again, if the grim little sound that left her mirthless lips could really be called a laugh. "I know the Poughkeepsies by sight," she continued, re-addressing Pauline, "because it's my business as a newspaper correspondent to get all the fashionable items that I can collect, and whenever I'm at any public place of amusement where there's a chance of meeting those upper-ten people, I always keep my eyes and ears open as wide as possible. I'm correspondent for eight weekly papers outside of New York, besides doing work for two of the city dailies. I never saw anything like the craze for society gossip nowadays. One good story from high life, with a moderate spice of scandal in it, will pay me six times as well as anything else. They say I'm always hunting about for material, and no wonder that I am. The thing is bread and butter to me--and not much butter, either. You see, the rich classes here are getting to represent so large a body; so many people are trying to push themselves into society. And when they can't elbow their way into the swell balls and parties, why, the next best thing is to read about who were there, and what they had on, and who led the German, and what they ate and drank, and how the house was decorated. It seemed a queer enough business for me, at first; I started with grand ideas, but I've had to come down a good many pegs; I've had to pull in my horns. And now I don't mind it a bit; I suppose Kindelon would say that I enjoyed it ... eh, Kindelon? Why, Mrs. Varick, I used to write book-reviews for the New York 'Daily Criterion,' and my pay kept growing less and less. One day I wrote a very careful review of a book that I admired greatly--it was George Eliot's 'Middlemarch,' in fact. The editor-in-chief sent for me. He named the article, and then said, 'I hear that you wrote it. It's a very fine piece of work.' 'Thank you, sir,' I replied, with a tingle of gratification. 'Yes, a very fine piece of work, indeed,' continued the editor; 'I read it with much pleasure. But don't do that sort of thing again, Miss Cragge--we've no use for it on the 'Criterion.' After that I became less ambitious and more mercenary. There's no use pounding against stone walls. The reading public will have what it wants, and if I don't give it to them, somebody else will be only too glad to take my place.... By the way, Mrs. Varick, do you think that Miss Poughkeepsie is going to marry that Scotch earl--Lord Glenartney?"

"I can't tell you, really," said Pauline. She had made up her mind to dislike Miss Cragge very much indeed. At the same time she felt a certain pity for her.

Kindelon began to press quietly forward, and Pauline, who still had his arm, by no means resisted this measure.

"I've been very candid," called Miss Cragge, while the two were slipping away from her. She spoke with even more than her usual blunt, curt manner. "It was because I knew Kindelon would be apt to say hard things of me, and I wanted to spike a few of his guns. But I hope I haven't shocked you, Mrs. Varick."

"Oh, not at all," said Pauline, as blandly as her feelings would permit....

"You were a good deal disgusted, no doubt," said Kindelon, when they were beyond Miss Cragge's hearing.

"She isn't the most charming person I have ever met," replied Pauline. "I will grant you that."

"How amiably you denounce her! But I forget," he added. "Such a little time ago you were prepared to be exhilarated and ... what was the other word?... to fraternize with most of the company here."

She chose not to heed the last stroke of light irony.

"Are you and Miss Cragge enemies?" she asked.

"Well, I abominate her, and she knows it. I rarely abominate anybody, and I think she knows that also. To my mind she is a conscienceless, hybrid creature. She is a result of a terrible modern license--the license of the Press. There is a frank confession, for a newspaper man like myself. But, between ourselves, I don't know where modern journalism, in some of its ferocious phases, is going to stop, unless it stops at a legislative veto. Miss Cragge would sacrifice her best friend (if she had any friends--which she hasn't) to the requirements of what she calls 'an item.' She thinks no more of assailing a reputation, in her quest for so-termed 'material,' than a rat would think of carrying off a lump of cheese. She knows very well that I will never forgive her for having printed a lot of libellous folly about a certain friend of mine. He had written a rather harmless and weak novel of New York society, New York manners. Miss Cragge had some old grudge against him; I think it was on account of an adverse criticism which she believed him to have written regarding some dreary, amateurish poems for whose author she had conceived a liking. This was quite enough for Miss Cragge. She filled a column of the Rochester "Rocket," or the Topeka "Trumpet," or some such sheet, with irate fictions about poor Charley Erskine. He had no redress, poor fellow; she declared that he had slandered a pure, high-minded lady in society here by caricaturing her in his novel. She parodied some of poor Charley's rather fragile verses; she accused him of habitually talking fatuous stuff at a certain Bohemian sort of beer-garden which he had visited scarcely five times within that same year. Oh, well, the whole thing was so atrocious that I offered my friend the New York "Asteroid" in which to hurl back any epistolary thunderbolt he should care to manufacture. But Charley wouldn't; he might have written a bad novel and worse poems, but he had sense enough to know that his best scorn lay in severe silence. Still, apart from all this, I have excellent reasons for shunning Miss Cragge, and I have told you some of them. She is the most aggravated form of the American newspaper correspondent, prowling about and seeking whom she may devour. I consider her a dangerous person, and I advise you not to allow her within your _salon_."

"Oh, I shan't," quickly answered Pauline. "You need not have counselled me on that point. It was quite unnecessary. I intend to pick and choose." She gave a long, worried sigh, now, which Kindelon just heard above the conversational hum surrounding them. "I am afraid it all comes to picking and choosing, everywhere," she went on. "Aunt Cynthia Poughkeepsie is perpetually doing it in _her_ world, and I begin to think that there is none other where it must not be done."

Kindelon leaned his handsome crisp-curled head nearer to her own; he fixed his light-blue eyes, in which lay so warm and liquid a sparkle, intently upon the lifted gaze of Pauline.

"You are right," he said. "You will learn that, among other lessons, before you are much older. There is no such thing as not picking and choosing. Whatever the grade of life, it is always done by those who have any sort of social impulse. I believe it is done in Eighth Avenue and Avenue A, when they give parties in little rooms of tenement houses and hire a fiddler to speed the dance. There is always some Michael or Fritz who has been ostracized. The O'Haras and the Schneiders follow the universal law. Wherever three are gathered together, the third is pretty sure to be of questionable welcome. This isn't an ideal planet, my dear lady, and 'liberty' and 'fraternity' are good enough watchwords, but 'equality' never yet was one;--if I didn't remember my Buckle, my Spencer, my Huxley, and my dear old Whig Macaulay, I should add that it never _would_ be one."

Just at this point Kindelon and Pauline found themselves face to face with two gentlemen who were both in a seemingly excited frame of mind. Pauline remembered that they had both been presented to her not long ago. She recollected their names, too; her memory had been nerved to meet all retentive exigencies. The large, florid man, with the bush of sorrel beard, was Mr. Bedlowe, and the smaller, smooth-shaven man, with the consumptive stoop and the professorial blue spectacles, was Mr. Howe.

Mr. Howe and Mr. Bedlowe were two novelists of very opposite repute. Kindelon had already caught a few words from the latter, querulously spoken.

"Ah, so you think modern novel-writing a sham, my dear Howe?" he said, pausing with his companion, while either gentleman bowed recognition to Pauline. "Isn't that rank heresy from the author of a book that has just been storming the town?"

"My book didn't storm the town, Kindelon," retorted Mr. Howe, lifting a hand of scholarly slimness and pallor toward his opaque goggles. "I wish it had," he proceeded, somewhat wearily. "No; Bedlowe and I were having one of our old quarrels. I say that we novelists of the Anglo-Saxon tongue are altogether too limited. That is what I mean by declaring that modern novel-writing is a sham."

"He means a great deal more, I'm sorry to say," here cried Mr. Bedlowe, who had a habit of grasping his sorrel beard in one hand and thrusting its end toward his hirsute lips as though they were about to be allured by some edible mouthful.

"He means, Kindelon, that because we haven't the shocking immoral latitude of the French race, we can't properly express ourselves in fiction. And he goes still further--Howe is always going still further every fresh time that I meet him. He says that if the modern novelist dared to express himself on religious subjects, he would be an agnostic."

"Precisely!" cried Mr. Howe, with the pale hand wavering downward from the eerie glasses. "But he doesn't dare! If he did, his publisher wouldn't publish him!"

"My publisher publishes _me_!" frowned Mr. Bedlowe.

"Oh, you're a pietist," was the excited answer. "At least, you go in for that when you write your novels. It pays, and you do it. I don't say that you do it _because_ it pays, but ..."

"You infer it," grumbled Mr. Bedlowe, "and that's almost the same as saying it." He visibly bristled here. "I've got a wholesome faith," he proceeded, with hostility. "That's why I wrote 'The Christian Knight in Armor' and 'The Doubtful Soul Satisfied.' Each of them sold seventy thousand copies apiece. There's a proof that the public wanted them--that they filled a need."

"So does the 'Weekly Wake-Me-Up,'" said Mr. Howe, with mild disdain. "My dear Bedlowe, you have two qualities as a modern novel-writer which are simply atrocious--I mean, plot and piety. The natural result of these is popularity. But your popularity means nothing. You utterly neglect analysis"--

"I despise analysis!"

"You entirely ignore style"--

"I express my thoughts without affectation."

"Your characters are wholly devoid of subtlety"--

"I abhor subtlety!"

"You preach sermons"--

"Which thousands listen to!"

"You fail completely to represent your time"--

"My readers, who represent my time, don't agree with you."

"You end your books with marriages and christenings in the most absurdly old-fashioned way"--

"I end a story as every story _should_ end. Sensible people have a sensible curiosity to know what becomes of hero and heroine."

"Curiosity is the vice of the vulgar novel-reader. Psychological interest is the one sole interest that should concern the more cultured mind. And though you may sell your seventy thousand copies, I beg to assure you that ..."

"Had we not heard quite enough of that hot squabble?" said Kindelon to Pauline, after he had pressed with her into other conversational regions, beyond the assault and defence of these two inimical novelists.

"I rather enjoyed it," said Pauline.

"They would have presently dragged us into their argument," returned Kindelon. "It was just as well that we retired without committing ourselves by an opinion. I should have sided with Howe, though I think him an extremist."

"I know some of Mr. Bedlowe's novels," said Pauline. "They are very popular in England. I thought them simply dire."

"And Howe is a real artist. He has a sort of cult here, though not a large one. What he says is true enough, in the main. The modern novelist dares not express his religious views, unless they be of the most conventional and tame sort. And how few fine minds are there to-day which are not rationalistic, unorthodox? A man like Bedlowe coins money from his milk-and-water platitudes, while Howe must content himself with the recognition of a small though devout circle.... Did you meet the great American dramatist, by the way? I mean Mr. Osgood Paiseley. He is standing over yonder near the mantel ... that slender little man with the abnormally massive head."

"Yes, I met him," returned Pauline. "He is coming this way."

"Have you any new dramatic work in preparation, Paiseley?" asked Kindelon, as the gentleman who had just been mentioned now drew near himself and Pauline.

"Yes," was Mr. Paiseley's reply. He spoke with a nasal tone and without much grammatical punctilio. "I've got a piece on hand that I'm doing for Mattie Molloy. Do you know her at all? She does the song-and-dance business with comedy variations. I think the piece'll be a go; it'll just suit her, I guess."

"Your last melodrama, 'The Brand of Cain,' was very successful, was it not?" pursued Kindelon.

"Well," said Mr. Paiseley, as he threw back an errant lock or two from his great width of swollen-looking forehead, "I'm afraid it isn't going to catch on so very well, after all. The piece is all right, but the company can't play it. Cooke guys his part because he don't like it, and doesn't get a hand on some of the strongest lines that have been put into any actor's mouth for the past twenty years--fact! as sure as you're born! Moore makes up horribly, and Kitty Vane is so over-weighted that Miss Cowes, in a straight little part of only a few lengths, gets away with her for two scenes; and Sanders is awfully preachy. If I could have had my own say about casting the piece, we'd have turned away money for six weeks and made it a sure thing for the road. I mean for the big towns, not the one-night places; it's got too many utility-people to make it pay there. But I shan't offer anything more to the stock-theatres; after this, I'm going to fit stars."

Pauline turned a covertly puzzled look upon her companion. She seemed to be hearing a new language. And yet, although the words were all familiar enough, their collocation mystified her.

"You think there is more profit, then, in fitting stars," said Kindelon, "if there is less fame?"

Mr. Paiseley laughed, with not a little bitterness. "Oh, fame," he said, "is the infirmity of the young American dramatist. I've outgrown it. I used to have it. But what's the use of fighting against France and England in the stock-theatres? Give me a fair show there, and I can draw bigger money than Dennery or Sardou--don't you make any mistake! But those foreign fellows are always crowding us natives out of New York. The managers hem and smirk over our pieces, and say they're good enough, but they've got something that's running well at the Porte Sang Martang or the Odeun in Paris. The best we can do is to have our plays done by a scratch company at some second-rate house, or, if it's a first-class house, they give us bad time. No, I fit travelling stars at so much cash down, and so much royalty afterward--that is, when I can't get a percentage on the gross. I don't work any more for fame; I want my dinner...."

"Your friend takes a rather commercial view of the American stage," said Pauline to Kindelon, after they had again moved onward.

"I am sorry to say that it is almost the only view taken by any of our dramatists. Paiseley is thoroughly representative of his class. They would all like to write a fine play, but they nearly all make the getting of money their primary object. Now, I do not believe that the lust of gain has ever been a foremost incentive in the production of any great mental achievement. Our novels and poems are to-day better than our plays, I think, because they are written with a more artistic and a less monetary stimulus. The rewards of the successful playwright may mean a fortune to him; he always remembers that when he begins, and he usually begins for the reason that he does remember it...."

Pauline had glimpses of not a few more individualities, that evening, before she at length took her leave.

"Well, how have you enjoyed it?" asked Kindelon, as they were being driven home together.

"I have not entirely enjoyed it," was the slow answer.

"You have been disappointed?"

"Yes."

"But your purpose of the _salon_ still remains good?"

"Indeed it does!" she exclaimed with eagerness. "I shall begin my work--I shall issue my invitations in a few days. Mrs. Dares will no doubt supply me with a full list of names and addresses."

"And you will invite everybody?"

"Oh, by no means. I shall pick and choose."

"Beware of calamity!" said Kindelon. And his voice was so odd a blending of the jocose and serious that she could ill guess whether he were in earnest or not.

VIII.

Pauline now began in excellent earnest the preparations for embarking upon her somewhat quaint enterprise. During the next three or four days she saw a good deal of Kindelon. They visited together the little editorial sanctum in Spruce Street, where Mrs. Dares sat dictating some of her inexhaustible "copy" to a pale and rather jaded-looking female amanuensis. The lady received her visitors with a most courteous hospitality. Pauline had a sense of shocking idleness as she looked at the great cumbrous writing-desk covered with ink-stains, files or clippings of newspapers, and long ribbon-like rolls of "proof." Her own fine garments seemed to crackle ostentatiously beside the noiseless folds of Mrs. Dares's work-day cashmere.

"We shall not take up much of your valuable time," she said to the large-eyed, serious little lady. "We have called principally to ask a favor of you, and I hope you will not think it a presumptuous request."

"I hope it is presumptuous," said Mrs. Dares, "for that, provided I can grant it at all, will make it so much pleasanter to grant."

"You may be sure," cried Kindelon gayly to Pauline, "that you have made a complete conquest of Mrs. Dares. She is usually quite miserly with her compliments. She puts me on the wretched allowance of one a year."

"Perhaps you don't deserve a more liberal income," said Pauline. Then she re-addressed Mrs. Dares. "I want to ask you," she proceeded, with a shy kind of venture in her tone, "if you will kindly loan me your visiting-book for a little while."

"My visiting-book?" murmured Mrs. Dares. Then she slowly shook her head, while the pale girl at the desk knitted her brows perplexedly, as though she had encountered some tantalizing foreign word. "I would gladly lend it if I had one," Mrs. Dares went on; "but I possess no such article."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Pauline, with an involuntary surprise that instantly afterward she regretted as uncivil. "You _have_ none!"

But Mrs. Dares did not seem to detect the least incivility in Pauline's amazement.

"No, my dear Mrs. Varick, I have no need of a visiting-book, for I have no time to visit."

"But you surely have some sort of list, have you not?" now inquired Kindelon.

Mrs. Dares lightly touched her forehead. "Only here in my memory," she said, "and that is decidedly an imperfect list. My guests understand that to be invited to one of my evenings is to be invited to all. I suppose that in the fashionable world," she proceeded, fixing her great dark eyes on Pauline, "it is wholly different. There, matters of this sort are managed with much ceremony, no doubt."

"With much trivial ceremony," said Pauline. "A little scrap of pasteboard there represents an individuality--and in just as efficient manner as if it were truly the person represented. To be in society, as it is called, is to receive a perpetual shower of cards. I strongly doubt if many people ever care to meet in a truly social way those whose company they pretend to solicit. There are few more perfect mockeries in that most false and mocking life, than the ordinary visit of etiquette." Pauline here gave a little meaning smile as she briefly paused. "But I suppose you will understand, Mrs. Dares," she continued, "that I regret your having no regular list. I wanted to borrow it--and with what purpose I am sure you can readily imagine."

"Yes," was the reply. "My daughter Cora shall prepare you one, however. She has an admirable memory. If she fails in the matter of addresses, there is the directory as a help, you know. And so your idea about the _salon_ is unchanged?"

"It is unalterable," said Pauline, with a laugh. "But I hate so to trouble your daughter."

"She will not think it any trouble," said Kindelon quickly.

Pauline looked at him with a slight elevation of the brows. "You speak confidently for Miss Cora," she said.

Kindelon lifted one hand, and waved it a trifle embarrassedly. "Oh, I have always found her so accommodating," he answered.

"Yes, Cora is always glad to please those whom she likes," said Mrs. Dares....

A little later Pauline and Kindelon took leave of their hostess. They had been driven to Spruce Street in the carriage of the former, and as they quitted the huge building in which Mrs. Dares's tiny sanctum was situated, Kindelon said to his companion: "You shall return home at once?"

Pauline gave a careless laugh. She looked about her at all the commercial hurry and bustle of the placarded, vehicle-thronged street. "I have nowhere else to go just at present," she said. "Not that I should not like to stay down town, as you call it, a little longer. The noise and activity please me.... Oh, by the way," she added, "did you not say that you must repair to your office?"

"The 'Asteroid' imperatively claims me," said Kindelon, taking out his watch. "Only twelve o'clock," he proceeded; "I thought it later. Well, I have at least an hour at your service still. Have you any commands?"

"Where on earth could we pass your hour of leisure?" said Pauline. "It would probably not be proper if I accompanied you into the office of the 'Asteroid.'"

"It would be sadly dull."

"Then I will drive up town after I have left you there."

"Why not remain _down_ town, since the change pleases you?"

"Driving aimlessly about for a whole hour?"

"By no means. I have an idea of what we might do. I think you might not find the idea at all disagreeable. If you will permit, I will give your footman an order, and plan for you a little surprise."

"Do so, by all means," said Pauline lightsomely, entering the carriage. "I throw myself upon your mercy and your protection."

Kindelon soon afterward seated himself at her side, and the carriage was immediately borne into the clamorous region of what we term lower Broadway.

"I hope I shall like your surprise," said Pauline, as she leaned back against the cushions, not knowing how pretty she looked in her patrician elegance of garb and person. "But we will not talk of it; I might guess what it is if we did, and that would spoil all. My faith in you shall be blind and unquestioning, and I shall expect a proportionately rich reward.... What gulfs of difference lie between that interesting little Mrs. Dares and most of the women whom I have met! People tell us that we must travel to see life. I begin to think that one great city like New York can give us the most majestic experience, if only we know how to receive it. Take my Aunt Cynthia Poughkeepsie, for example, and compare her with Mrs. Dares! A whole continent seems to lie between them, and yet they are continually living at scarcely a stone's-throw apart."

Kindelon gave a brisk, acquiescent nod.