Chapter 165

"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.