Chapter 171

"Yes," said Margaret, with warmth; "they are getting to demand things as their right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in that quarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do with such people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled, 'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying round here.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, Dick; the lady's got to have some pleasure. Don't yer see, she's a-slummin'?'"

"It's very hard, I know," said the earl; "perhaps we are all on the wrong track."

"Maybe. Mr. Henderson says that the world would get on better if everybody minded his own business."

"I wish it were possible," the earl remarked, with an air of finishing the topic. "I have just been up to Brandon, Mrs. Henderson. I fear that I have seen the dear place for the last time."

"You don't mean that you are tired of America?"

"Not that. I shall never, even in thought, tire of Brandon."

"Yes, they are dear, good people."

"I thought Miss Forsythe--what a sweet, brave woman she is!--was looking sad and weary."

"Oh, aunt won't do anything, or take an interest in anything. She just stays there. I've tried in vain to get her here. Do you know"--and she turned upon the earl a look of the old playfulness--"she doesn't quite approve of me."

"Oh," he replied, hesitating a little--"I think, Mrs. Henderson, that her heart is bound up in you. It isn't for me to say that you haven't a truer friend in the world."

"Yes, I know. If I'd only--" and she stopped, with a petulant look on her fair face--"well, it doesn't matter. She is a dear soul."

"I--suppose," said the earl, rising, "we shall see you again on the other side?"

"Perhaps," with a smile. Could anything be more commonplace than such a parting? Good-by, I shall see you tomorrow or next year, or in the next world. Hail and farewell! That is the common experience. But, oh, the bitterness of it to many a soul!

It is quite possible that when the Earl of Chisholm said good-by, with an air of finality, Margaret felt that another part of her life was closed. He was not in any way an extraordinary person, he was not a very rich peer, probably with his modesty and conscientiousness, and devotion to the ordinary duties of his station, he would never attain high rank in the government. Yet no one could be long with him without apprehending that his life was on a high plane. It was with a little irritation that Margaret recognized this, and remembered, with a twinge of conscience, that it was upon that plane that her life once traveled. The time had been when the more important thing to her was the world of ideas, of books, of intellectual life, of passionate sympathy with the fortunes of humanity, of deepest interest in all the new thoughts struck out by the leaders who studied the profound problems of life and destiny.

That peace of mind which is found only in the highest activity for the noblest ends she once had, though she thought it then unrest and striving--what Carmen, who was under no illusions about Henderson, or Uncle Jerry, or the world of fashion, and had an intuitive perception of cant that is sometimes denied to the children of light, called "taking pleasure in the things of the mind." To do Margaret justice, there entered into her reflections no thought of the title and position of the Earl of Chisholm. They had never been alluring to her. If one could take any satisfaction in this phase of her character, her worldiness was purely American.

"I hardly know which I should prefer," Carmen was saying when they were talking over the ball and the earl's departure, "to be an English countess or the wife of an American millionaire."

"It might depend upon the man," replied Margaret, with a smile.

"The American," continued Carmen, not heeding this suggestion, "has the greater opportunities, and is not hindered by traditions. If you were a countess you would have to act like a countess. If you are an American you can act--like anything--you can do what you please. That is nicer. Now, an earl must do what an earl has always done. What could you do with such a husband? Mind! Yes, I know, dear, about things of the mind. First, you know, he will be a gentleman socialist (in the magazines), and maybe a Christian socialist, or a Christian scientist, or something of that sort, interested in the Mind Cure."

"I should think that would suit you. Last I knew, you were deep in the Mind Cure."

"So I was. That was last week. Now I'm in the Faith Cure; I've found out about both. The difference is, in the Mind Cure you don't require any faith; in the Faith Cure you don't require any mind. The Faith Cure just suits me."

"So you put your faith in an American millionaire?"

"Yes, I think I should, until an American millionaire put faith in me. That might shake me. It is such a queer world. No, I'm in doubt. If you loved an earl he would stay an earl. If you loved an American millionaire, ten to one he would fail."

Margaret did not escape the responsibility of her success. Who does? My dear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you not already repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel this year, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did the public overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now your presumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne. This year it is, "that Miss Charmian who set herself up as a second Hawthorne." When the new house was opened, it might be said that socially Mrs. Henderson had "arrived." Had she? When one enters on the path of worldliness is there any resting-place? Is not eternal vigilance the price of position?

Henderson was apparently on good terms with the world. Many envied him, many paid him the sincerest flattery, that of imitation. He was a king in the street, great enterprises sought his aid, all the charities knocked at his door, his word could organize a syndicate or a trust, his nod could smash a "corner." There were fabulous stories about his wealth, about his luck. This also was Margaret's world. Her ambition expanded in it with his. The things he set his heart on she coveted. Alas! there is always another round to the ladder.

Seeing the means by which he gained his ends, and the public condonation of them, would not his cynicism harden into utter unbelief in general virtue and goodness? I don't know that Henderson changed much, accented as his grasping selfishness was on occasion; prosperity had not impaired that indifferent good-fellowship and toleration which had early gained him popularity. His presence was nowhere a rebuke to whatever was going on. He was always accessible, often jocular. The younger members in the club said Henderson was a devilish good fellow, whatever people said. The President of the United States used to send for him and consult him, because he wanted no office; he knew men, and it was a relief to talk with a liberal rich man of so much bonhomie who wanted nothing.

And Margaret, what view of the world did all this give her? Did she come in contact with any one who had not his price, who was not going or wanting to go in the general current? Was it not natural that she should take Henderson's view? Dear me, I am not preaching about her. We did not see much of her in those days, and for one or two years of what I suppose was her greatest enjoyment of her social triumphs. So far as we heard, she was liked, admired, followed, envied. It could not be otherwise, for she did not lose her beauty nor her charm, and she tried to please. Once when I saw her in the city and we fell into talk--and the talk was gay enough and unconstrained--I was struck with a certain hardness of tone, a little bitterness quite unlike her old self. It is a very hard thing to say, and I did not say it even to my wife, but I had a painful impression that she was valuing people by the money they had, by the social position they had attained.

Was she content in that great world in which she moved? I had heard stories of slights, of stabs, of rebuffs, of spiteful remarks. Had she not come to know how success even in social life is sometimes attained --the meannesses, the jealousies, the cringing? Even with all her money at command, did she not know that her position was at the price of incessant effort? Because she had taken a bold step today, she must take a bolder one tomorrow--more display, more servants, some new invention of luxury and extravagance. And seeing, as I say, the inside of this life and what it required, and how triumphs and notoriety were gained, was it a wonder that she gradually became in her gayety cynical, in her judgments bitter?

I am not criticising her. What are we, who have had no opportunities, to sit in judgment on her! I believe that it is true that it was at her solicitation that Henderson at last did endow a university in the Southwest. I know that her name was on all the leading charities of the city. I know that of all the patronesses of the charity ball her costume was the most exquisite, and her liberality was most spoken of. I know that in the most fashionable house of worship (the newspapers call it that) she was a constant attendant; that in her modest garb she never missed a Lenten service; and we heard that she performed a novena during this penitential season.

Why protract the story of how Margaret was lost to us? Could this interest any but us--we who felt the loss because we still loved her? And why should we presume to set up our standard of what is valuable in life, of what is a successful career? She had not become what we hoped, and little by little all the pleasure of intercourse on both sides, I dare say, disappeared. Could we say that life, after all, had not given her what she most desired? Rather than write on in this strain about her, I would like to read her story as it appeared to the companions whose pleasures were her pleasures, whose successes were her successes--her story written by one who appreciated her worldly advantages, and saw all the delight there was in this attractive worldliness.

What comfort there was in it we had in knowing that she was a favorite in the society of which we read such glowing descriptions, and that no one else bore its honors more winningly. It was not an easy life, with all its exactions and incessant movement. It demanded more physical strength than most women possess, and we were not surprised to hear from time to time that she was delicate, and that she went through her season with feverish excitement. But she chose it; it had become necessary to her. Can women stop in such a career, even if they wish to stop?

Yes, she chose it. I, for one, never begrudged her any pleasure she had in life, and I do not know but she was as happy as it is possible for human being to be in a full experiment of worldliness. Who is the judge? But we, I say, who loved her, and knew so well the noble possibilities of her royal nature under circumstances favorable to its development, felt more and more her departure from her own ideals. Her life in its spreading prosperity seemed more and more shallow. I do not say she was heartless, I do not say she was uncharitable, I do not say that in all the externals of worldly and religious observance she was wanting; I do not say that the more she was assimilated to the serenely worldly nature of her husband she did not love him, or that she was unlovely in the worldliness that ingulfed her and bore her onward. I do not know that there is anything singular in her history. But the pain of it to us was in the certainty--and it seemed so near--that in the decay of her higher life, in the hardening process of a material existence, in the transfer of all her interests to the trivial and sensuous gratifications--time, mind, heart, ambition, all fixed on them--we should never regain our Margaret. What I saw in a vision of her future was a dead soul--a beautiful woman in all the success of envied prosperity, with a dead soul.

XXII

It is difficult not to convey a false impression of Margaret at this time. Habits, manners, outward conduct--nay, the superficial kindliness in human intercourse, the exterior graceful qualities, may all remain when the character has subtly changed, when the real aims have changed, when the ideals are lowered. The fair exterior may be only a shell. I can imagine the heart retaining much tenderness and sympathy with suffering when the soul itself has ceased to struggle for the higher life, when the mind has lost, in regard to life, the final discrimination of what is right and wrong.

Perhaps it is fairer to Margaret to consider the general opinion of the world regarding her. No doubt, if we had now known her for the first time, we should have admired her exceedingly, and probably have accounted her thrice happy in filling so well her brilliant position. That her loss of interest in things intellectual, in a wide range of topics of human welfare, which is in the individual soul a sign of warmth and growth, made her less companionable to some is true, but her very absorption in the life of her world made her much more attractive to others. I well remember a dinner one day at the Hendersons', when Mr. Morgan and I happened to be in town, and the gay chat and persiflage of the society people there assembled. Margaret shone in it. The light and daring touch of her raillery Carmen herself might have envied, and the spirit in which she handled the trifles and personal gossip tossed to the surface, like the bubbles on the champagne.

It was such a pretty picture--the noble diningroom, the table sparkling with glass and silver and glowing with masses of choicest flowers from the conservatory, the animated convives, and Margaret presiding, radiant in a costume of white and gold.

"After all," Morgan was saying, apropos of the position of women, "men get mighty little out of it in the modern arrangement."

"I've always said, Mr. Morgan," Margaret retorted, "that you came into the world a couple of centuries too late; you ought to have been here in the squaw age."

"Well, men were of some account then. I appeal to Henderson," Morgan persisted, "if he gets more than his board and clothes."

"Oh, my husband has to make his way; he's no time for idling and philosophizing round."

"I should think not. Come, Henderson, speak up; what do you get out of it?"

"Oh," said Henderson, glancing at his wife with an amused expression, "I'm doing very well. I'm very well taken care of, but I often wonder what the fellows did when polygamy was the fashion."

"Polygamy, indeed!" cried Margaret. "So men only dropped the a pluribus unum method on account of the expense?"

"Not at all," replied Henderson. "Women are so much better now than formerly that one wife is quite enough."

"You have got him well in hand, Mrs. Henderson, but--" Morgan began.

"But," continued Margaret for him, "you think as things are going that polyandry will have to come in fashion--a woman will need more than one husband to support her?"

"And I was born too soon," murmured Carmen.

"Yes, dear, you'll have to be born again. But, Mr. Morgan, you don't seem to understand what civilization is."

"I'm beginning to. I've been thinking--this is entirely impersonal--that it costs more to keep one fine lady going than it does a college. Just reckon it up." (Margaret was watching him with sparkling eyes.) "The palace in town is for her, the house in the mountains, the house by the sea, are for her, the army of servants is for her, the horses and carriages for all weathers are for her, the opera box is for her, and then the wardrobe--why, half Paris lives on what women wear. I say nothing of what would become of the medical profession but for her."

"Have you done?" asked Margaret.

"No, but I'm taking breath."

"Well, why shouldn't we support the working-people of Paris and elsewhere? Do you want us to make our own clothes and starve the sewing-women? Suppose there weren't any balls and fine dresses and what you call luxury. What would the poor do without the rich? Isn't it the highest charity to give them work? Even with it they are ungrateful enough."

"That is too deep for me," said Morgan, evasively. "I suppose they ought to be contented to see us enjoying ourselves. It's all in the way of civilization, I dare say."

"It's just as I thought," said Margaret, more lightly. "You haven't an inkling of what civilization is. See that flower before you. It is the most exquisite thing in this room. See the refinement of its color and form. That was cultivated. The plant came from South Africa. I don't know what expense the gardener has been to about it, what material and care have been necessary to bring it to perfection. You may take it to Mrs. Morgan as an object-lesson. It is a thing of beauty. You cannot put any of your mercantile value on it. Well, that is woman, the consummate flower of civilization. That is what civilization is for."

"I'm sorry for you, old fellow," said Henderson.

"I'm sorry for myself," Carmen said, demurely.

"I admit all that," Morgan replied. "Take Mr. Henderson as a gardener, then."

"Suppose you take somebody else, and let my husband eat his dinner."

"Oh, I don't mind preaching; I've got used to being made to point a moral."

"But he will go on next about the luxury of the age, and the extravagance of women, and goodness knows what," said Margaret.

"No, I'm talking about men," Morgan continued. "Consider Henderson--it's entirely impersonal--as a gardener. What does he get out of his occupation? He can look at the flower. Perhaps that is enough. He gets a good dinner when he has time for it, an hour at his club now and then, occasionally an evening or half a day off at home, a decent wardrobe--"

"Fifty-two suits," interposed Margaret.

"His own brougham--"

"And a four-in-hand," added Margaret.

"A pass on the elevated road--"

"And a steam-yacht."

"Which he never gets time to sail in; practically all the time on the road, or besieged by a throng in his office, hustled about from morning till night, begged of, interviewed, a telegraphic despatch every five minutes, and--"

"And me!" cried Margaret, rising. The guests all clapped their hands.

The Hendersons liked to have their house full, something going on --dinners, musicales, readings, little comedies in the theatre; there was continual coming and going, calling, dropping in for a cup of tea, late suppers after the opera; the young fellows of town found no place so agreeable for a half-hour after business as Mrs. Henderson's reception-room. I fancied that life would be dull and hang heavily, especially for Margaret, without this perpetual movement and excitement. Henderson, who certainly had excitement enough without seeking it at home, was pleased that his wife should be a leader in society, as he was in the great enterprises in which his fortune waxed to enormous proportions. About what we call the home life I do not know. Necessarily, as heretofore, Henderson was often absent, and whether Margaret accompanied him or not, a certain pace of life had to be kept up.

I suppose there is no delusion more general than that of retiring upon a fortune--as if, when gained, a fortune would let a person retire, or, still more improbable, as if it ever were really attained. It is not at all probable that Henderson had set any limit to that he desired; the wildest speculations about its amount would no doubt fall short of satisfying the love of power which he expected to gratify in immeasurably increasing it. Does not history teach us that to be a great general, or poet, or philanthropist, is not more certain to preserve one's name than to be the richest man, the Croesus, in his age? I could imagine Margaret having a certain growing pride in this distinction, and a glowing ambition to be socially what her husband was financially.

Heaven often plans more mercifully for us than we plan for ourselves. Had not the Hebrew prophets a vision of the punishment by prosperity? Perhaps it applied to an old age, gratified to the end by possession of everything that selfishness covets, and hardened into absolute worldliness. I knew once an old lady whose position and wealth had always made her envied, and presumably happy, who was absolutely to be pitied for a soul empty of all noble feeling.

The sun still shone on Margaret, and life yielded to her its specious sweets. She was still young. If in her great house, in her dazzling career, in the whirl of resplendent prosperity, she had hours of unsatisfied yearning for something unattainable in this direction, the world would not have guessed it. Whenever we heard of her she was the centre and star of whatever for the moment excited the world of fashion. It was indeed, at last, in the zenith of her gay existence that I, became aware of a certain feminine anxiety about her in our neighborhood. She had been, years before, very ill in Paris, and the apprehensions for her safety now were based upon the recollection of her peril then. The days came when the tender-hearted Miss Forsythe went about the house restless, impatient, tearful, waiting for a summons that was sure to come when she was needed. She thought only of her child, as she called her, and all the tenderness of her nature was stirred-these years of cloud and separation and pain were as they had not been. Little Margaret had promised to send for her. She would not obtrude before she was wanted, but Margaret was certain to send. And she was ready for departure the instant the despatch came from Henderson--"Margaret wants you to come at once." I went with her.

In calamity, trouble, sorrow, it is wonderful how the ties of blood assert themselves. In this hour I am sure that Margaret longed for no one more than her dear aunt, in whose arms, as a child, she had so often forgotten her griefs. She had been able to live without her--nay, for a long time her presence had been something of a restraint and a rebuke, and her feelings had hardened towards her. Why is it that the heart hardens in prosperity?

When we arrived Margaret was very ill. The house itself had a serious air: it was no longer the palace of festivity and gayety, precautions had been taken to secure quiet, the pavement was littered, and within the hushed movements and the sombre looks spoke of apprehension and the absence of the spirit that had been the life and light of the house. Our arrival seemed to be a relief to Henderson. Little was said. I had never before seen him nervous, never before so restless and anxious, probably never before in all his career had he been unnerved with a sense of his own helplessness.

"She has been asking for you this moment," he said, as he accompanied Miss Forsythe to Margaret's apartment.

"Dear, dear aunt, I knew you would come--I love you so;" she had tried to raise herself a little in her bed, and was sobbing like a child in her aunt's arms.

"You must have courage, Margaret; it will all be well."

"Yes, but I'm so discouraged; I'm so tired."

The vigil began. The nurses were in waiting. The family physician would not leave the house. He was a man of great repute in his profession. Dr. Seftel's name was well known to me, but I had never met him before; a man past middle life, smooth shaven, thin iron-gray hair, grave, usually taciturn, deliberate in all his movements, as if every gesture were important and significant, but with a kindly face. Knowing that every moment of his waking life was golden, I could not but be impressed with the power that could command his exclusive service for an indefinite time. When he came down, we talked together in Henderson's room.