"Wouldn"t the torpedo station make up for it?" Henderson asked.
"Hardly. But it shows the change of a hundred years. Only, isn"t it odd, this personal dropping back into an old situation? I wonder what she was like?"
"The accounts say she was the belle of Newport. I suppose Newport has a belle once in a hundred years. The time has come round. But I confess I don"t miss the French fleet," replied Henderson, with a look of love that thrilled Margaret through and through.
"But you would have been an officer on the fleet, and I should have fallen in love with you. Ah, well, it is better as it is."
And it was better. The days went by without a cloud. Even after Henderson had gone, the prosperity of life filled her heart more and more.
"She might have been like me," Carmen said to herself, "if she had only started right; but it is so hard to get rid of a New England conscience."
When Margaret stayed in her room, one morning, to write a long-postponed letter to her aunt, she discovered that she had very little to write, at least that she wanted to write, to her aunt. She began, however, resolutely with a little account of her life. But it seemed another thing on paper, addressed to the loving eyes at Brandon. There were too much luxury and idleness and triviality in it, too much Carmen and Count Crispo and flirtation and dissipation in it.
She tore it up, and went to the window and looked out upon the sea. She was indignant with the Brandon people that they should care so little about this charming life. She was indignant at herself that she had torn up the letter. What had she done that anybody should criticise her?
Why shouldn"t she live her life, and not be hampered everlastingly by comparisons?
She sat down again, and took up her pen. Was she changing--was she changed? Why was it that she had felt a little relief when her last Brandon visit was at an end, a certain freedom in Lenox and a greater freedom in Newport? The old a.s.sociations became strong again in her mind, the life in the little neighborhood, the simplicity of it, the high ideals of it, the daily love and tenderness. Her aunt was no doubt wondering now that she did not write, and perhaps grieving that Margaret no more felt at home in Brandon. It was too much. She loved them, she loved them all dearly. She would write that, and speak only generally of her frivolous, happy summer. And she began, but somehow the letter seemed stiff and to lack the old confiding tone.
But why should they disapprove of her? She thought of her husband.
If circ.u.mstances had altered, was she to blame? Could she always be thinking of what they would think at Brandon? It was an intolerable bondage. They had no right to set themselves up over her. Suppose her aunt didn"t like Carmen. She was not responsible for Carmen. What would they have her do? Be unhappy because Henderson was prosperous, and she could indulge her tastes and not have to drudge in school? Suppose she did look at some things differently from what she used to. She knew more of the world. Must you shut yourself up because you found you couldn"t trust everybody? What was Mr. Morgan always. .h.i.tting at? Had he any better opinion of men and women than her husband had? Was he any more charitable than Uncle Jerry? She smiled as she thought of Uncle Jerry and his remark--"It"s a very decent world if you don"t huff it." No; she did like this life, and she was not going to pretend that she didn"t. It would be dreadful to lose the love and esteem of her dear old friends, and she cried a little as this possibility came over her. And then she hardened her heart a little at the thought that she could not help it if they chose to misunderstand her and change.
Carmen was calling from the stairs that it was time to dress for the drive. She dashed off a note. It contained messages of love for everybody, but it was the first one in her life written to her aunt not from her heart.
XVII
Shall we never have done with this carping at people who succeed? Are those who start and don"t arrive any better than those who do arrive?
Did not men always make all the money they had an opportunity to make?
Must we always have the old slow-coach merchants and planters thrown up to us? Talk of George Washington and the men of this day! Were things any better because they were on a small scale? Wasn"t the thrifty George Washington always adding to his plantations, and squeezing all he could out of his land and his slaves? What are the negro traditions about it? Were they all patriots in the Revolutionary War? Were there no contractors who ama.s.sed fortunes then? And how was it in the late war?
The public has a great spasm of virtue all of a sudden. But we have got past the day of stage-coaches.
Something like this Henderson was flinging out to Carmen as he paced back and forth in her parlor. It was very unlike him, this outburst, and Carmen knew that he would indulge in it to no one else, not even to Uncle Jerry. She was coiled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes sparkling with admiration of his indignation and force. I confess that he had been irritated by the comments of the newspapers, and by the prodding of the lawyers in the suit then on trial over the Southwestern consolidation.
"Why, there was old Mansfield saying in his argument that he had had some little experience in life, but he never had known a man to get rich rapidly, barring some piece of luck, except by means that it would make him writhe to have made public. I don"t know but that Uncle Jerry was right, that we made a mistake in not retaining him for the corporation."
"Not if you win," said Carmen, softly. "The public won"t care for the remark unless you fail."
"And he tried to prejudice the Court by quoting the remark attributed to Uncle Jerry, "The public be d----d" as if, said Mansfield, the public has no rights as--against the railroad wreckers. Uncle Jerry laughed, and interrupted: "That"s nonsense, reporters" nonsense. What I said was that if the public thought I was fool enough to make it our enemy, the public might be d---d (begging your honor"s pardon)." Then everybody laughed.
"It"s the bond holders, who want big dividends, that stand in the way of the development of the country, that"s what it is," said he, as he sat down, to those around him, but loud enough to be heard all over the room. Mansfield asked the protection of the Court against these clap-trap interruptions. The judge said it was altogether irregular, and Uncle Jerry begged pardon. The reporters made this incident the one prominent thing in the case that day."
"What a delightful Uncle Jerry it is!" said Carmen. "You"d better keep an eye on him, Rodney; he"ll be giving your money to that theological seminary in Alabama."
"That reminds me," Henderson said, cooling down, "of a paragraph in The Planet, the other day, about the amount of my gifts unknown to the public. I showed it to Uncle Jerry, and he said, "Yes, I mentioned it to the editor; such things don"t do any harm.""
"I saw it, and wondered who started it," Carmen replied, wrinkling her brows as if she had been a good deal perplexed about it.
"I thought," said Henderson, with a smile, "that it ought to be explained to you."
"No," she said, reflectively; "you are liberal enough, goodness knows--too liberal--but you are not a flat."
Henderson was in the habit of dropping in at the Esch.e.l.les"
occasionally, when he wanted to talk freely. He had no need to wear a mask with Carmen. Her moral sense was tolerant and elastic, and feminine sympathy of this sort is a grateful cushion. She admired Henderson, without thinking any too well of the world in general, and she admired him for the qualities that were most conformable to his inclination. It was no case of hero-worship, to be sure, nor for tragedy; but then what a satisfaction it must be to sweet Lady Macbeth, coiled up on her sofa, to feel that the thane of Cawdor has some nerve!
The Hendersons had come back to Washington Square late in the autumn. It is a merciful provision that one has an orderly and well-appointed home to return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate, was a little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, and experienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold and entered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut the door there even against the solicitations of nature and against the weariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late autumn days, and yet not lifeless by any means! Indeed, it seemed all the more a haven because the roar of the great city environed it, and one could feel, without being disturbed by, the active pulsation of human life. And then, if one has sentiment, is there anywhere that it is more ministered to than in the city at the close of the year? The trees in the little park grow red and yellow and brown, the leaves fall and swirl and drift in windrows by the paths, the flower-beds flame forth in the last dying splendor of their color; the children, chasing each other with hoop and ball about the walks, are more subdued than in the spring-time; the old men, seeking now the benches where the sunshine falls, sit in dreamy reminiscence of the days that are gone; the wandering minstrel of Italy turns the crank of his wailing machine, O!
bella, bella, as in the spring, but the notes seem to come from far off and to be full of memory rather than of promise; and at early morning, or when the shadows lengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the trees has a salt smell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the fading foliage. But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all this note of melancholy! Life is to begin again.
But the social season opened languidly. It takes some time to recover from the invigoration of the summer gayety--to pick up again the threads and weave them into that brilliant pattern, which scarcely shows all its loveliness of combination and color before the weavers begin to work in the subdued tints of Lent. How delightful it is to see this knitting and unraveling of the social fabric year after year! and how untiring are the senders of the shuttles, the dyers, the hatchelers, the spinners, the ever-busy makers and destroyers of the intricate web we call society! After one campaign, must there not be time given to organize for another? Who has fallen out, who are the new recruits, who are engaged, who will marry, who have separated, who has lost his money?
Before we can safely reorganize we must not only examine the hearts but the stock-list. No matter how many brilliant alliances have been arranged, no matter how many husbands and wives have drifted apart in the local whirlpools of the summer"s current, the season will be dull if Wall Street is torpid and discouraged. We cannot any of us, you see, live to ourselves alone. Does not the preacher say that? And do we not all look about us in the pews, when he thus moralizes, to see who has prospered? The B"s have taken a back seat, the C"s have moved up nearer the pulpit. There is a reason for these things, my friends.
I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to the little church where she said her prayers; for however restful her life might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was involved in the most serious struggle of his life--a shameful kind of conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations. Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and Henderson, with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the courts. The affair made a tremendous stir. Some of the bondholders of the A. and B. happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise about their injury. As several millions were involved in this one branch of the case--the suit of the bondholders--the newspapers treated it with the consideration and dignity it deserved. It was a vast financial operation, some said, scathingly, a "deal," but the magnitude of it prevented it from falling into the reports of petty swindling that appear in the police-court column. It was a public affair, and not to be judged by one"s private standard. I know that there were remarks made about Henderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them, but I never heard that he lost standing in the street. Still, in justice to the street it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be proven, and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more lenient judgment in the street than elsewhere.
In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all the private sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fight with the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances. It needed all his courage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through. That he went through was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it was proof also that he was a good fellow. If there were people who thought otherwise, I never heard that they turned their backs on him, or failed in that civility which he never laid aside in his intercourse with others.
If a man present a smiling front to the world under extreme trial, is not that all that can be expected of him? Shall he not be excused for showing a little irritation at home when things go badly? Henderson was as good-humored a man as I ever knew, and he loved Margaret, he was proud of her, he trusted her. Since when did the truest love prevent a man from being petulant, even to the extent of wounding those he best loves, especially if the loved one shows scruples when sympathy is needed? The reader knows that the present writer has no great confidence in the principle of Carmen; but if she had been married, and her husband had wrecked an insurance company and appropriated all the surplus belonging to the policy-holders, I don"t believe she would have nagged him about it.
And yet Margaret loved Henderson with her whole soul. And in this stage of her progress in the world she showed that she did, though not in the way Carmen would have showed her love, if she had loved, and if she had a soul capable of love.
It may have been inferred from Henderson"s exhibition of temper that his case had gone against him. It is true; an injunction had been granted in the lower court, and public opinion went with the decree, and was in a great measure satisfied by it. But this fight had really only just begun; it would go on in the higher courts, with new resources and infinite devices, which the public would be unable to fathom or follow, until by-and-by it would come out that a compromise had been made, and the easy public would not understand that this compromise gave the looters of the railway substantially all they ever expected to get. The morning after the granting of the injunction Henderson had been silent and very much absorbed at breakfast, hardly polite, Margaret thought, and so inattentive to her remarks that she asked him twice whether they should accept the Brandon invitation to Christmas. "Christmas! I don"t know. I"ve got other things to think of than Christmas," he said, scarcely looking at her, and rising abruptly and going away to his library.
When the postman brought Margaret"s mail there was a letter in it from her aunt, which she opened leisurely after the other notes had been glanced through, on the principle that a family letter can wait, or from the fancy that some have of keeping the letter likely to be most interesting till the last. But almost the first line enchained her attention, and as she read, her heart beat faster, and her face became scarlet. It was very short, and I am able to print it, because all Margaret"s correspondence ultimately came into possession of her aunt:
"BRANDON, December 17th.
"DEAREST MARGARET,--You do not say whether you will come for Christmas, but we infer from your silence that you will. You know how pained we shall all be if you do not. Yet I fear the day will not be as pleasant as we could wish. In fact, we are in a good deal of trouble. You know, dear, that poor Mrs. Fletcher had nearly every dollar of her little fortune invested in the A. and B. bonds, and for ten months she has not had a cent of income, and no prospect of any. Indeed, Morgan says that she will be lucky if she ultimately saves half her princ.i.p.al. We try to cheer her up, but she is so cast down and mortified to have to live, as she says, on charity. And it does make rather close house-keeping, though I"m sure I couldn"t live alone without her. It does not make so much difference with Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Morgan, for they have plenty of other resources. Mr. Fairchild tells her that she is in very good company, for lots of the bonds are held in Brandon, and she is not the only widow who suffers; but this is poor consolation. We had great hopes, the other day, of the trial, but Morgan says it may be years before any final settlement. I don"t believe Mr. Henderson knows. But there, dearest, I won"t find fault. We are all well, and eager to see you. Do come.
"Your affectionate aunt,
"GEORGIAN A."
Margaret"s hand that held the letter trembled, and the eyes that read these words were hot with indignation; but she controlled herself into an appearance of calmness as she marched away with it straight to the library.
As she entered, Henderson was seated at his desk, with bowed head and perplexed brows, sorting a pile of papers before him, and making notes.
He did not look up until she came close to him and stood at the end of his desk. Then, turning his eyes for a moment, and putting out his left hand to her, he said, "Well, what is it, dear?"
"Will you read that?" said Margaret, in a voice that sounded strange in her own ears.
"What?"
"A letter from Aunt Forsythe."
"Family matter. Can"t it wait?" said Henderson, going on with his figuring.
"If it can, I cannot," Margaret answered, in a tone that caused him to turn abruptly and look at her. He was so impatient and occupied that even yet he did not comprehend the new expression in her face.
"Don"t you see I am busy, child? I have an engagement in twenty minutes in my office."
"You can read it in a moment," said Margaret, still calm.