Chapter 7

As the months went by, everything prospered with him on his drifting voyage. Of all voyages, that is the easiest to make which has no port in view, that depends upon the varying winds, if the winds happen to be soft and the chance harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to Henderson. He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in his idle habits, and with no more attention to business than formerly, money came to him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion that he was a favorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance in the financial world increased enormously, much to the amusement of Mavick, when he was occasionally in the city, to whom he talked somewhat largely of his operations, and who knew that he had no more comprehension of the sweep of Henderson's schemes than a baby has of the stock exchange when he claps his hands with delight at the click of the ticker.

His prosperity was visible. It showed in the increase of his accounts at the Union, in his indifference to limits in the game of poker, in a handsome pair of horses which he insisted on Edith's accepting for her own use, in an increased scale of living at home, in the hundred ways that a man of fashion can squander money in a luxurious city. If he did not haunt the second-hand book-shops or the stalls of dealers in engravings, or bring home as much bric-a-brac as he once had done, it was because his mind was otherwise engaged; his tailor's bills were longer, and there were more expensive lunches at the clubs, at which there was a great deal of sage talk about stocks and combinations, and much wisdom exhibited in regard to wines; and then there were the little suppers at Wherry's after the theatres, which a bird could have eaten and a fish have drunken, and only a spendthrift have paid for.

“It is absurd,” Edith had said one night after their return. “It makes us ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools.” And Jack had flared up about it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she had retorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack had attempted to pass it off lightly, at last, by saying, “Very well then, dear, if you won't back me, I shall have to rely upon my bankers.” At any rate, neither Carmen nor Miss Tavish took him to task. They complimented him on his taste, and Carmen made him feel that she appreciated his independence and his courage in living the life that suited him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, how much he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs, and venturing herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow of fashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwing him a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept away by that undertow.

It was remarked at the Union, and by the men in the Street who knew him, that Jack was getting rapid. But no one thought the less of him for his pace--that is, no one appeared to, for this sort of estimate of a man is only tested by his misfortunes, when the day comes that he must seek financial backing. In these days he was generally in an expansive mood, and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There were those who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack, and that he had recently come in for something handsome.

But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was to know to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was a sort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly how the Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no one had ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The name of Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis, and the Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursed little income--an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of the art of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man in his generation in those things about which it would be as well not to know anything.

Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, by the open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude of one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, he hailed Jack, who was just coming down-stairs from a protracted lunch.

“I say, Delancy, what's this I hear?”

“About what?” said Jack, sauntering along to a seat opposite the Major, and touching a bell on the little table as he sat down. Jack's face was flushed, but he talked with unusual slowness and distinctness. “What have you heard, Major?”

“That you have bought Benham's yacht.”

“No, I haven't; but I was turning the thing over in my mind,” Jack replied, with the air of a man declining an appointment in the Cabinet. “He offers it cheap.”

“My dear boy, there is no such thing as a cheap yacht, any more than there is a cheap elephant.”

“It's better to buy than build,” Jack insisted. “A man's got to have some recreation.”

“Recreation! Why don't you charter a Fifth Avenue stage and take your friends on a voyage to the Battery? That'll make 'em sick enough.” It was a misery of the Major's life that, in order to keep in with necessary friends, he had to accept invitations for cruises on yachts, and pretend he liked it. Though he had the gout, he vowed he would rather walk to Newport than go round Point Judith in one of those tipping tubs. He had tried it, and, as he said afterwards, “The devil of it was that Mrs. Henderson and Miss Tavish sympathized with me. Gad! it takes away a person's manhood, that sort of thing.”

The Major sipped his bitters, and then added: “Or I'll tell you what; if you must do something, start a newspaper--the drama, society, and letters, that sort of thing, with pictures. I heard Miss Tavish say she wished she had a newspaper.”

“But,” said Jack, with gravity, “I'm not buying a yacht for Miss Tavish.”

“I didn't suppose you were. Devilish fine girl, though. I don't care who you buy it for if you don't buy it for yourself. Why don't you buy it for Henderson? He can afford it.”

“I'd like to know what you mean, Major Fairfax!” cried Jack. “What business--”

“There!” exclaimed the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softened expression in his society beaten face. “It's no use of nonsense, Jack. I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop. But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; he used to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And your mother--that was a woman!--did me a kindness once when I was in a d---d tight place, and I never forgot it. See here, Jack, if I had money enough I'd buy a yacht and put Carmen and Miss Tavish on it, and send them off on the longest voyage there is.”

“Who's been talking?” exclaimed Jack, touched a little, but very much offended.

“The town, Jack. Don't mind the talk. People always talk. I suppose people talk about me: At your age I should have been angry too at a hint even from an old friend. But I've learned. It doesn't pay. I don't get angry any more. Now there's Henderson--”

“What have you got against Henderson?”

“Nothing. He is a very good fellow, for that sort of man. But, Lord! Henderson is a big machine. You might as well try to stand in with a combination of gang-saws, or to make friends with the Department of the Interior. Look at the men who have gone in with Henderson from time to time. The ground is strewn with them. He's got no more feeling in business than a reaper-and-binder.”

“I don't know what Henderson's got to do with my having a yacht.”

“I beg your pardon, Jack; it's none of my business. Only I do not put my investments”--Jack smiled faintly, as if the conversation were taking a humorous turn--“at the mercy of Henderson's schemes. If I did, I wouldn't try to run a yacht at the same time. I should be afraid that some day when I got to sea I should find myself out of coal. You know, my boy, that the good book says you cannot serve two masters.”

“Nobody ever accused you of that, Major,” retorted Jack, with a laugh. “But what two have you in mind?”

“Oh, I don't mean anything personal. I just use names as typical. Say Henderson and Carmen.” And the Major leaned back and tapped his fingers together, as if he were putting a general proposition.

Jack flushed, and then thought a moment--it would be ridiculous to get angry with old Fairfax--and then said: “Major, if I were you, I wouldn't have anything to do with either of them. You'll spoil your digestion.”

“Umph!” the Major grunted, as he rose from his chair. “This is an age of impudence. There's no more respect for gray hair than if it were dyed. I cannot waste any more time on you. I've got an early dinner. Devilish uphill work trying to encourage people who dine at seven. But, my boy, think on these things, as the saint says.”

And the old fellow limped away. There was one good thing about the Major. He stood up in church every Sunday and read his prayers, like a faithful old sinner as he was.

Jack, sobered by the talk, walked home in a very irritated mood, blaming everybody except himself. For old Fairfax's opinion he didn't care, but evidently the old fellow represented a lot of gossip. He wished people would mind their own business. His irritation was a little appeased by Edith's gay and loving greeting; but she, who knew every shade of his face, saw it.

“Have you had a worrying day?”

“No; not specially. I've had an hour of old Fairfax, who hasn't any business of his own to attend to.”

“Oh, nobody minds the Major,” Edith said, as she gave him a shake and another kiss; but a sharp pang went through her heart, for she guessed what had happened, since she had had a visit that afternoon from another plain-speaking person.

They were staying late in town. Edith, who did not care to travel far, was going presently to a little cottage by the sea, and Mrs. Schuyler Blunt had looked in for a moment to say good-by before she went up to her Lenox house.

“It's only an old farmhouse made over,” Mrs. Blunt was saying; “hardly smart enough to ask anybody to, but we hope to have you and Jack there some time.”

“That would be very nice. I hear Lenox is more beautiful than ever.”

“Yes, it is, and about as difficult to get into as the kingdom of heaven. It's being spoiled for moderate people. The Hendersons and the Van Dams and that sort are in a race to see who shall build houses with the biggest rooms, and give the most expensive entertainments. It's all show. The old flavor has gone.”

“But they cannot spoil the scenery.”.

“My child, they are the scenery. You can't see anything else. It doesn't bother me, but some of my old neighbors are just ruining themselves trying to keep the pace. I do think the Americans are the biggest fools on earth.”

“Father Damon says the trouble is we haven't any middle class for a balance.”

“Yes, that's the English of it. But it's a pity that fashion has got hold of the country, and is turning our summers into a worry and a burden. I thought years ago when we went to Lenox that it was a good thing the country was getting to be the fashion; but now it's fashionable, and before we know it every desirable spot will be what they call syndicated. Miss Tavish says she is coming to visit the Hendersons there.”

“I thought she went to Bar Harbor.”

“But she is coming down for part of the season. These people don't stay anywhere. Just long enough in one place to upset everything with their extravagance. That's the reason I didn't ask you and Jack up this summer.”

“Thank you, we couldn't go, you know,” said Edith, simply, and then, with curiosity in her eyes, asked; “but I don't quite understand what's the reason.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Blunt, as if nerving herself up to say what must be said, “I thought perhaps you wouldn't like to be where they are.”

“I don't know why I should or why I should not,” Edith replied.

“Nor have Jack with them,” continued Mrs. Blunt, stoutly.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Blunt?” cried Edith, her brown eyes flaming.

“Don't turn on me, Edith dear. I oughtn't to have said anything. But I thought it was my duty. Of course it is only talk.”

“Well?”

“That Jack is always with one or the other of those women.”

“It is false!” cried Edith, starting up, with tears now in her eyes; “it's a cruel lie if it means anything wrong in Jack. So am I with those women; so are you. It's a shame. If you hear any one say such things, you can tell them for me that I despise them.”

“I said it was a shame, all such talk. I said it was nonsense. But, dear, as a friend, oughtn't I to tell you?” And the kind-hearted gossip put her arm round Edith, and kept saying that she perfectly understood it, and that nobody really meant anything. But Edith was crying now, with a heart both hurt and indignant.

“It's a most hateful world, I know,” Mrs. Blunt answered; “but it's the best we have, and it's no use to fret about it.”

When the visitor had gone, Edith sat a long time in misery. It was the first real shock of her married life. And in her heart she prayed. For Jack? Oh no. The dear girl prayed for herself, that suspicions might not enter her heart. She could not endure that the world should talk thus of him. That was all. And when she had thought it all over and grown calm, she went to her desk and wrote a note to Carmen. It asked Mrs. Henderson, as they were so soon to leave town, to do her the favor to come round informally and lunch with her the next day, and afterwards perhaps a little drive in the Park.

X

Jack was grateful for Edith's intervention. He comprehended that she had stepped forward as a shield to him in the gossip about Carmen. He showed his appreciation in certain lover-like attentions and in a gayety of manner, but it was not in his nature to feel the sacrifice she had made or its full magnanimity; he was relieved, and in a manner absolved. Another sort of woman might have made him very uncomfortable. Instead of being rebuked he had a new sense of freedom.

“Not one woman in a thousand would have done it,” was the comment of Major Fairfax when he heard of the drive in the Park. “Gad! most of 'em would have cut Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there would have been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such a woman as Jack's mother. If there were not one of them now and then society would deliquesce.” And the Major knew, for his principal experience had been with a deliquescent society.

Whether Carmen admired Mrs. Delancy or thought her weak it is impossible to say, but she understood the advances made and responded to them, for they fell in perfectly with her social plans. She even had the face to eulogize Mrs. Delancy to Jack, her breadth of view, her lack of prejudice, and she had even dared to say, “My dear friend, she is too good for us,” and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had accepted the implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he did not see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about his wife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment was that the comradeship of Miss Tavish and Carmen was agreeable to him. They were no restraint upon him. So long as they remained in town the exchange of civilities was kept up. Carmen and Miss Tavish were often at his house, and there was something reassuring to Jack in the openness with which affairs went on.

Early in June Edith went down to their rented cottage on the south Long Island shore. In her delicate health the doctor had recommended the seaside, and this locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from the whirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm, namely, of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in from the far tropical South with its message of romance to the barren Northern shore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of tempests and wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not an impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like a tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with barns and outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden--a place with a salty air friendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage. If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and the low-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination to fancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled in the sand, that it had been remodeled and roofed over, and its sides pierced with casement windows, over which roses had climbed in order to bind the wanderer to the soil. It had been painted by the sun and the wind and the salt air, so that its color depended upon the day, and it was sometimes dull and almost black, or blue-black, under a lowering sky, and again a golden brown, especially at sunset, and Edith, feeling its character rather than its appearance to ordinary eyes, had named it the Golden House. Nature is such a beautiful painter of wood.

With Edith went one of her Baltimore cousins, a young kindergarten teacher of fine intelligence and sympathetic manner, who brought to her work a long tradition of gentle breeding and gayety and simplicity--qualities which all children are sure to recognize. What a hopeful thing it is, by-the-way, in the world, that all conditions of people know a lady at sight! Jack found the place delightful. He liked its quaintness, the primitiveness of the farmer-fisherman neighbors, he liked the sea. And then he could run up to the city any morning and back at night. He spent the summer with Edith at the Golden House. This was his theory. When he went to town in the morning he expected to return at night. But often he telegraphed in the afternoon that he was detained by business; he had to see Henderson, or Mavick was over from Washington. Occasionally, but not often, he missed the train. He had too keen a sense of the ridiculous to miss the train often. When he was detained over for two or three days, or the better part of the week, he wrote Edith dashing, hurried letters, speaking of ever so many places he had been to and ever so many people he had seen--yes, Carmen and Miss Tavish and everybody who was in town, and he did not say too much about the hot city and its discomforts.

Henderson's affairs kept him in town, Miss Tavish still postponed Bar Harbor, and Carmen willingly remained. She knew the comfort of a big New York house when the season is over, when no social duties are required, and one is at leisure to lounge about in cool costumes, to read or dream, to open the windows at night for the salt breeze from the bay, to take little excursions by boat or rail, to dine al fresco in the garden of some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer theatres, where no one expected anything, and no one was disappointed, the general air of enjoyment, and the suggestion of intrigue. Sometimes, when Mavick was over, a party was made up for the East Side, to see the foreign costumes, the picturesque street markets, the dime museums, and the serious, tragical theatres of the people. The East Side was left pretty much to itself, now that the winter philanthropists had gone away, and was enjoying its summer nights and its irresponsible poverty.

They even looked in at Father Damon's chapel, the dimly lighted fragrant refuge from the world and from sin. Why not? They were interested in the morals of the region. Had not Miss Tavish danced for one of the guilds; and had not Carmen given Father Damon a handsome check in support of his mission? It was so satisfactory to go into such a place and see the penitents kneeling here and there, the little group of very plainly dressed sinners attracted by Father Damon's spiritual face and unselfish enthusiasm. Carmen said she felt like kneeling at one of the little boxes and confessing--the sins of her neighbors. And then the four--Carmen, Miss Tavish, Mavick, and Jack--had a little supper at Wherry's, which they enjoyed all the more for the good action of visiting the East Side--a little supper which lasted very late, and was more and more enjoyed as it went on, and was, in fact, so gay that when the ladies were set down at their houses, Jack insisted on dragging Mavick off to the Beefsteak Club and having something manly to drink; and while they drank he analyzed the comparative attractions of Carmen and Miss Tavish; he liked that kind of women, no nonsense in them; and presently he wandered a little and lost the cue of his analysis, and, seizing Mavick by the arm, and regarding him earnestly, in a burst of confidence declared that, notwithstanding all appearances, Edith was the dearest girl in the world.

It was at this supper that the famous society was formed, which the newspapers ridiculed, and which deceived so many excellent people in New York because it seemed to be in harmony with the philanthropic endeavor of the time, but which was only an expression of the Mephistophelian spirit of Carmen--the Society for Supplying Two Suspenders to Those who have only One.

By the end of June there was no more doubt about the heat of the town than about its odors. The fashionable residence part was dismantled and deserted. At least miles and miles of houses seemed to be closed. Few carriages were seen in this quarter, the throngs of fashion had disappeared, comparatively few women were about, and those that appeared in the Sunday promenade were evidently sight-seers and idlers from other quarters; the throng of devotees was gone from the churches, and indeed in many of them services were suspended till a more convenient season. The hotels, to be sure, were full of travelers, and the club-houses had more habitues than usual, and were more needed by the members whose families had gone into the country.

Notwithstanding the silence and vacation aspect of up-town, the public conveyances were still thronged, and a census would have shown no such diminution of population as seemed. Indeed, while nobody was in town, except accidentally, the greater portion of it presented a more animated appearance than usual, especially at night, on account of the open windows, the groups on door-steps and curb-stones, and the restless throng in the streets-buyers and sellers and idlers. To most this outdoor life was a great enjoyment, and to them the unclean streets with the odors and exhalations of decay were homelike and congenial. Nor did they seem surprised that a new country should so completely reproduce the evil smells and nastiness of the old civilization. It was all familiar and picturesque. Work still went on in the crowded tenement-houses, and sickness simply changed its character, death showing an increased friendliness to young children. Some impression was of course made by the agents of various charities, the guilds and settlements bravely strove at their posts, some of the churches kept their flags flying on the borders of the industrial districts, the Good Samaritans of the Fresh-air Fund were active, the public dispensaries did a thriving business, and the little band of self-sacrificing doctors, most of them women, went their rounds among the poor, the sick, and the friendless.