After that he never struck any of them; and from the sight of a blow dealt a horse he turned as if sick. It was a long time before he lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then the will of the man seemed to have been breached through his affections. He let the girls do as they pleased--the twins had been girls; he let them go away to school, and got them a piano. It was they who made him sell the farm. If Conrad had only had their spirit he could have made him keep it, he felt; and he resented the want of support he might have found in a less yielding spirit than his son"s.
His moral decay began with his perception of the opportunity of making money quickly and abundantly, which offered itself to him after he sold his farm. He awoke to it slowly, from a desolation in which he tasted the last bitter of homesickness, the utter misery of idleness and listlessness. When he broke down and cried for the hard-working, wholesome life he had lost, he was near the end of this season of despair, but he was also near the end of what was best in himself. He devolved upon a meaner ideal than that of conservative good citizenship, which had been his chief moral experience: the money he had already made without effort and without merit bred its unholy self-love in him; he began to honor money, especially money that had been won suddenly and in large sums; for money that had been earned painfully, slowly, and in little amounts, he had only pity and contempt. The poison of that ambition to go somewhere and be somebody which the local speculators had instilled into him began to work in the vanity which had succeeded his somewhat scornful self-respect; he rejected Europe as the proper field for his expansion; he rejected Washington; he preferred New York, whither the men who have made money and do not yet know that money has made them, all instinctively turn. He came where he could watch his money breed more money, and bring greater increase of its kind in an hour of luck than the toil of hundreds of men could earn in a year. He called it speculation, stocks, the Street; and his pride, his faith in himself, mounted with his luck. He expected, when he had sated his greed, to begin to spend, and he had formulated an intention to build a great house, to add another to the palaces of the country-bred millionaires who have come to adorn the great city. In the mean time he made little account of the things that occupied his children, except to fret at the ungrateful indifference of his son to the interests that could alone make a man of him. He did not know whether his daughters were in society or not; with people coming and going in the house he would have supposed they must be so, no matter who the people were; in some vague way he felt that he had hired society in Mrs. Mandel, at so much a year. He never met a superior himself except now and then a man of twenty or thirty millions to his one or two, and then he felt his soul creep within him, without a sense of social inferiority; it was a question of financial inferiority; and though Dryfoos"s soul bowed itself and crawled, it was with a gambler"s admiration of wonderful luck. Other men said these many-millioned millionaires were smart, and got their money by sharp practices to which lesser men could not attain; but Dryfoos believed that he could compa.s.s the same ends, by the same means, with the same chances; he respected their money, not them.
When he now heard Mrs. Mandel and his daughters talking of that person, whoever she was, that Mrs. Mandel seemed to think had honored his girls by coming to see them, his curiosity was p.r.i.c.ked as much as his pride was galled.
"Well, anyway," said Mela, "I don"t care whether Christine"s goon" or not; I am. And you got to go with me, Mrs. Mandel."
"Well, there"s a little difficulty," said Mrs. Mandel, with her unfailing dignity and politeness. "I haven"t been asked, you know."
"Then what are we goun" to do?" demanded Mela, almost crossly. She was physically too amiable, she felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite cross. "She might "a" knowed--well known--we couldn"t "a" come alone, in New York. I don"t see why, we couldn"t. I don"t call it much of an invitation."
"I suppose she thought you could come with your mother," Mrs. Mandel suggested.
"She didn"t say anything about mother: Did she, Christine? Or, yes, she did, too. And I told her she couldn"t git mother out. Don"t you remember?"
"I didn"t pay much attention," said Christine. "I wasn"t certain we wanted to go."
"I reckon you wasn"t goun" to let her see that we cared much," said Mela, half reproachful, half proud of this att.i.tude of Christine. "Well, I don"t see but what we got to stay at home." She laughed at this lame conclusion of the matter.
"Perhaps Mr. Conrad--you could very properly take him without an express invitation--" Mrs. Mandel began.
Conrad looked up in alarm and protest. "I--I don"t think I could go that evening--"
"What"s the reason?" his father broke in, harshly. "You"re not such a sheep that you"re afraid to go into company with your sisters? Or are you too good to go with them?"
"If it"s to be anything like that night when them hussies come out and danced that way," said Mrs. Dryfoos, "I don"t blame c.o.o.nrod for not wantun" to go. I never saw the beat of it."
Mela sent a yelling laugh across the table to her mother. "Well, I wish Miss Vance could "a" heard that! Why, mother, did you think it like the ballet?"
"Well, I didn"t know, Mely, child," said the old woman. "I didn"t know what it was like. I hain"t never been to one, and you can"t be too keerful where you go, in a place like New York."
"What"s the reason you can"t go?" Dryfoos ignored the pa.s.sage between his wife and daughter in making this demand of his son, with a sour face.
"I have an engagement that night--it"s one of our meetings."
"I reckon you can let your meeting go for one night," said Dryfoos. "It can"t be so important as all that, that you must disappoint your sisters."
"I don"t like to disappoint those poor creatures. They depend so much upon the meetings--"
"I reckon they can stand it for one night," said the old man. He added, "The poor ye have with you always."
"That"s so, c.o.o.nrod," said his mother. "It"s the Saviour"s own words."
"Yes, mother. But they"re not meant just as father used them."
"How do you know how they were meant? Or how I used them?" cried the father. "Now you just make your plans to go with the girls, Tuesday night. They can"t go alone, and Mrs. Mandel can"t go with them."
"Pshaw!" said Mela. "We don"t want to take Conrad away from his meetun", do we, Chris?"
"I don"t know," said Christine, in her high, fine voice. "They could get along without him for one night, as father says."
"Well, I"m not a-goun" to take him," said Mela. "Now, Mrs. Mandel, just think out some other way. Say! What"s the reason we couldn"t get somebody else to take us just as well? Ain"t that rulable?"
"It would be allowable--"
"Allowable, I mean," Mela corrected herself.
"But it might look a little significant, unless it was some old family friend."
"Well, let"s get Mr. Fulkerson to take us. He"s the oldest family friend we got."
"I won"t go with Mr. Fulkerson," said Christine, serenely.
"Why, I"m sure, Christine," her mother pleaded, "Mr. Fulkerson is a very good young man, and very nice appearun"."
Mela shouted, "He"s ten times as pleasant as that old Mr. Beaton of Christine"s!"
Christine made no effort to break the constraint that fell upon the table at this sally, but her father said: "Christine is right, Mela. It wouldn"t do for you to go with any other young man. Conrad will go with you."
"I"m not certain I want to go, yet," said Christine.
"Well, settle that among yourselves. But if you want to go, your brother will go with you."
"Of course, c.o.o.nrod "ll go, if his sisters wants him to," the old woman pleaded. "I reckon it ain"t agoun" to be anything very bad; and if it is, c.o.o.nrod, why you can just git right up and come out."
"It will be all right, mother. And I will go, of course."
"There, now, I knowed you would, c.o.o.nrod. Now, fawther!" This appeal was to make the old man say something in recognition of Conrad"s sacrifice.
"You"ll always find," he said, "that it"s those of your own household that have the first claim on you."
"That"s so, c.o.o.nrod," urged his mother. "It"s Bible truth. Your fawther ain"t a perfesser, but he always did read his Bible. Search the Scriptures. That"s what it means."
"Laws!" cried Mely, "a body can see, easy enough from mother, where Conrad"s wantun" to be a preacher comes from. I should "a" thought she"d "a" wanted to been one herself."
"Let your women keep silence in the churches," said the old woman, solemnly.
"There you go again, mother! I guess if you was to say that to some of the lady ministers nowadays, you"d git yourself into trouble." Mela looked round for approval, and gurgled out a hoa.r.s.e laugh.
IX.
The Dryfooses went late to Mrs. Horn"s musicale, in spite of Mrs.
Mandel"s advice. Christine made the delay, both because she wished to show Miss Vance that she was (not) anxious, and because she had some vague notion of the distinction of arriving late at any sort of entertainment. Mrs. Mandel insisted upon the difference between this musicale and an ordinary reception; but Christine rather fancied disturbing a company that had got seated, and perhaps making people rise and stand, while she found her way to her place, as she had seen them do for a tardy comer at the theatre.
Mela, whom she did not admit to her reasons or feelings always, followed her with the servile admiration she had for all that Christine did; and she took on trust as somehow successful the result of Christine"s obstinacy, when they were allowed to stand against the wall at the back of the room through the whole of the long piece begun just before they came in. There had been no one to receive them; a few people, in the rear rows of chairs near them, turned their heads to glance at them, and then looked away again. Mela had her misgivings; but at the end of the piece Miss Vance came up to them at once, and then Mela knew that she had her eyes on them all the time, and that Christine must have been right.
Christine said nothing about their coming late, and so Mela did not make any excuse, and Miss Vance seemed to expect none. She glanced with a sort of surprise at Conrad, when Christine introduced him; Mela did not know whether she liked their bringing him, till she shook hands with him, and said: "Oh, I am very glad indeed! Mr. Dryfoos and I have met before."