Was this an ideal married life? Henderson"s selfishness was fully developed, and I could see that he was growing more and more hard. Would Margaret not have felt it, if she also had not been growing hard, and accustomed to regard the world in his unbelieving way? No, there was sharpness occasionally between them, tiffs and disagreements. He was a great deal away from home, and she plunged into a life of her own, which had all the external signs of enjoyment. I doubt if he was ever very selfish where she was concerned, and love can forgive almost any conduct where there is personal indulgence. I had a glimpse of the real state of things in a roundabout way. Henderson loved his wife and was proud of her, and he was not unkind, but he might have been a brute and tied her up to the bedpost, and she never would have shown by the least sign to the world that she was not the most happy of wives.
When the Earl of Chisholm was in this country it was four years after Margaret"s marriage--we naturally saw a great deal of him. The young fellow whom we liked so much had become a man, with a graver demeanor, and I thought a trace of permanent sadness in his face; perhaps it was only the responsibility of his position, or, as Morgan said, the modern weight that must press upon an earl who is conscientious. He was still unmarried. The friendship between him and Miss Forsythe, which had been kept alive by occasional correspondence, became more cordial and confidential. In New York he had seen much of Margaret, not at all to his peace of mind in many ways, though the generous fellow would have been less hurt if he had not estimated at its real value the life she was leading. It did not need Margaret"s introduction for the earl to be sought for by the novelty and pleasure loving society of the city; but he got, as he confessed, small satisfaction out of the whirl of it, although we knew that he met Mrs. Henderson everywhere, and in a manner a.s.sisted in her social triumphs. But he renewed his acquaintance with Miss Esch.e.l.le, and it was the prattle of this ingenuous creature that made him more heavy-hearted than anything else.
"How nice it is of you, Mr. Lyon--may I call you so, to bring back the old relations?--to come here and revive the memory of the dear old days when we were all innocent and happy! Dear me, I used to think I could patronize that little country girl from Brandon! I was so worldly--don"t you remember?--and she was so good. And now she is such a splendid woman, it is difficult for the rest of us to keep pace with her. The nerve she has, and the things she will do! I just envy her. I sometimes think she will drive me into a convent. And don"t you think she is more beautiful than ever? Of course her face is a little careworn, but n.o.body makes up as she does; she was just ravishing the other night. Do you know, I think she takes her husband too seriously."
"I trust she is happy," the earl had said.
"Why shouldn"t she be?" Carmen asked in return. "She has everything she wants. They both have a little temper; life would be flat without that; she is a little irritable sometimes; she didn"t use to be; and when they don"t agree they let each other alone for a little. I think she is as happy as anybody can be who is married. Now you are shocked! Well, I don"t know any one who is more in love than she is, and that may be happiness. She is becoming exactly like Mr. Henderson. You couldn"t ask anything more than that."
If Margaret were really happy, the earl told Miss Forsythe, he was glad, but it was scarcely the career he would have thought would have suited her.
Meantime, the great house was approaching completion. Henderson"s palace, in the upper part of the city, had long been a topic for the correspondents of the country press. It occupied half a square. Many critics were discontented with it because it did not occupy the whole square. Everybody was interested in having it the finest residence on the continent. Why didn"t Henderson take the whole block of ground, build his palace on three sides, with the offices and stables on the fourth, throw a gla.s.s roof over the vast interior court, plant it with tropical trees and plants, adorn it with flower-beds and fountains, and make a veritable winter-garden, giving the inhabitants a temperate climate all the cold months? He might easily have summer in the centre of the city from November to April. These rich people never know what to do with their money. Such a place would give distinction to the city, and compel foreigners to recognize the high civilization of America. A great deal of fault was found with Henderson privately for his parsimony in such a splendid opportunity.
Nevertheless it was already one of the sights of the town. Strangers were taken to see it, as it rose in its simple grandeur. Local reporters made articles on the progress of the interior whenever they could get an entrance. It was not ornate enough to please, generally, but those who admired the old Louvre liked the simplicity of its lines and the dignity of the elevations. They discovered the domestic note in its quiet character, and said that the architect had avoided the look of an "inst.i.tution" in such a great ma.s.s. He was not afraid of dignified wall s.p.a.ce, and there was no nervous anxiety manifested, which would have belittled it with trivial ornamentation.
Perhaps it was not an American structure, although one could find in it all the rare woods and stones of the continent. Great numbers of foreign workmen were employed in its finishing and decoration. One could wander in it from Pompeii to j.a.pan, from India to Versailles, from Greece to the England of the Tudors, from the Alhambra to colonial Salem. It was so cosmopolitan that a representative of almost any nationality, ancient or modern, could have been suited in it with an apartment to his taste, and if the interior lacked unity it did not lack a display of variety that appealed to the imagination. From time to time paragraphs appeared in English, French, and Italian journals, regarding the work of this and that famous artist who was designing a set of furniture or furnishing the drawings of a room, or carving the paneling and statuary, or painting the ceiling of an apartment in the great Palazzo Henderson in New York--Washington. The United American Workers (who were half foreigners by birth) pa.s.sed resolutions denouncing Henderson for employing foreign pauper labor, and organized more than one strike while the house was building. It was very unpatriotic and un-American to have anything done that could not be done by a member of the Union. There was a firm of excellent stone-cutters which offered to make all the statuary needed in the house, and set it up in good shape, and when the offer was declined, it memorialized Congress for protection.
Although Henderson gave what time he could spare to the design and erection of the building, it pleased him to call it Margaret"s house, and to see the eagerness with which she entered into its embellishment.
There was something humorous in the enlargement of her ideas since the days when she had wondered at the magnificence of the Washington Square home, and modestly protested against its luxury. Her own boudoir was a cheap affair compared with that in the new house.
"Don"t you think, dear," she said, puzzling over the drawings, "that it would better be all sandalwood? I hate mosaics. It looks so cheap to have little bits of precious woods stuck about."
"I should think so. But what do you do with the ebony?"
"Oh, the ebony and gold? That is the adjoining sitting-room--such a pretty contrast."
"And the teak?"
"It has such a beautiful polish. That is another room. Carmen says that will be our sober room, where we go when we want to repent of things."
"Well, if you have any sandal-wood left over, you can work it into your Boys" Lodging-house, you know."
"Don"t be foolish! And then the ballroom, ninety feet long--it looks small on the paper. And do you think we"d better have those life-size figures all round, mediaeval statues, with the incandescents? Carmen says she would prefer a row of monks--something piquant about that in a ballroom. I don"t know that I like the figures, after all; they are too crushing and heavy."
"It would make a good room for the Common Council," Henderson suggested.
"Wouldn"t it be prettier hung with silken arras figured with a chain of dancing-girls? Dear me, I don"t know what to do. Rodney, you must put your mind on it."
"Might line it with gold plate. I"ll make arrangements so that you can draw on the Bank of England."
Margaret looked hurt. "But you told me, dear, not to spare anything--that we would have the finest house in the city. I"m sure I sha"n"t enjoy it unless you want it."
"Oh, I want it," resumed Henderson, good-humoredly. "Go ahead, little wife. We shall pull through."
"Women beat me," Henderson confessed to Uncle Jerry next day. "They are the most economical of beings and the most extravagant. I"ve got to look round for an extra million somewhere today."
"Yes, there is this good thing about women," Uncle Jerry responded, with a twinkle in his eyes, "they share your riches just as cheerfully as they do your poverty. I tell Maria that if I had the capacity for making money that she has for spending it I could a.s.sume the national debt."
To have the finest house in the city, or rather, in the American newspaper phrase, in the Western world, was a comprehensible ambition for Henderson, for it was a visible expression of his wealth and his cultivated taste. But why Margaret should wish to exchange her dainty and luxurious home in Washington Square for the care of a vast establishment big enough for a royal court, my wife could not comprehend. But why not? To be the visible leader in her world, to be able to dispense a hospitality which should surpa.s.s anything heretofore seen, to be the mistress and autocrat of an army of servants, with ample room for their evolution, in a palace whose dimensions and splendor should awaken envy and astonishment--would this not be an attraction to a woman of imagination and spirit?
Besides, they had outgrown the old house. There was no longer room for the display, scarcely for the storage, of the works of art, the pictures, the curiosities, the books, that unlimited money and the opportunity of foreign travel had collected in all these years. "We must either build or send our things to a warehouse," Henderson had long ago said. Among the obligations of wealth is the obligation of display.
People of small means do not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with the acc.u.mulation of property. It was only natural that Margaret, who might have been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a country clergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed a world too large for the country girl.
"I don"t see how you could do with less room," Carmen said, with an air of profound conviction. They were looking about the house on its last uninhabited day, directing the final disposition of its contents. For Carmen, as well as for Margaret, the decoration and the furnishing of the house had been an occupation. The girl had the whim of playing the part of restrainer and economizer in everything; but Henderson used to say, when Margaret told him of Carmen"s suggestions, that a little more of her economy would ruin him.
"Yes," Margaret admitted, "there does not seem to be anything that is not necessary."
"Not a thing. When you think of it, two people require as much s.p.a.ce as a dozen; when you go beyond one room, you must go on. Of course you couldn"t get on without a reception-room, drawing-rooms, a conservatory, a music-room, a library, a morning-room, a breakfast-room, a small dining-room and a state dining-room, Mr. Henderson"s snuggery, with his own library, a billiard-room, a picture-gallery--it is full already; you"ll have to extend it or sell some pictures--your own suite and Mr.
Henderson"s suite, and the guest-rooms, and I forgot the theatre in the attic. I don"t see but you have scrimped to the last degree."
"And yet there is room to move about," Margaret acknowledged, with a gratified smile, as they wandered around. "Dear me, I used to think the Stotts" house was a palace."
It was the height of the season before Lent. There had been one delay and another, but at last all the workmen had been expelled, and Margaret was mistress of her house. Cards for the house-warming had been out for two weeks, and the event was near. She was in her own apartments this pale, wintry afternoon, putting the finishing touches to her toilet.
Nothing seemed to suit. The maid found her in a very bad humor.
"Remember," she had said to her husband, when he ordered his brougham after breakfast, "sharp seven, we are to dine alone the first time." It lacked two hours yet of dinner-time, but she was dressing for want of other occupation.
Was this then the summit of her ambition? She had indeed looked forward to some such moment as this as one of exultation in the satisfaction of all her wishes. She took up a book of apothegms that lay on the table, and opened by chance to this, "Unhappy are they whose desires are all ratified." It was like a sting. Why should she think at this moment of her girlhood; of the ideals indulged in during that quiet time; of her aunt"s cheerful, tender, lonely life; of her rejection of Mr. Lyon?
She did not love Mr. Lyon; she was not satisfied then. How narrow that little life in Brandon had been! She threw the book from her. She hated all that restraint and censoriousness. If her aunt could see her in all this splendor, she would probably be sadder than ever. What right had she to sit there and mourn--as she knew her aunt did--and sigh over her career? What right had they to sit in judgment on her?
She went out from her room, down the great stairway, into the s.p.a.cious house, pausing in the great hall to see opening vista after vista in the magnificent apartments. It was the first time that she had alone really taken the full meaning of it--had possessed it with the eye. It was hers. Wherever she went, all hers. No, she had desires yet. It should be filled with life--it should be the most brilliant house in the world.
Society should see, should acknowledge the leadership. Yes--as she glanced at herself in a drawing-room mirror--they should see that Henderson"s wife was capable of a success equal to his own, and she would stop the hateful gossip about him. She set her foot firmly as she thought about it; she would crush those people who had sneered at them as parvenu. She strayed into the n.o.ble gallery. Some face there touched her, some landscape soothed her. No, she said to herself, I will win them, I do not want hateful strife.
Who knows what is in a woman? how many moods in a quarter of an hour, and which is the characteristic one? Was this the Margaret who had walked with Lyon that Sunday afternoon of the baptism, and had a heart full of pain for the pitiful suffering of the world?
As she sat there she grew calmer. Her thoughts went away in a vision of all the social possibilities of this wonderful house. From vaguely admiring what she looked at, she began to be critical; this and that could be changed to advantage; this shade of hanging was not harmonious; this light did not fall right. She smiled to think that her husband thought it all done. How he would laugh to find that she was already planning to rearrange it! Hadn"t she been satisfied for almost twenty-four hours? That was a long time for a woman. Then she thought of the reception; of the guests; of what some of them would wear; how they would look about; what they would say. She was already in that world which was so shining and shifting and attractive. She did not hear Henderson come in until his arm was around her.
"Well, sweet, keeping house alone? I"ve had a jolly day; lucky as old Mr. Luck."
"Have you?" she cried, springing up. "I"m so glad. Come, see the house."
"You look a little pale," he said, as they strolled out to the conservatory together.
"Just a little tired," she admitted. "Do you know, Rodney, I hated this house at five o"clock--positively hated it?"
"Why?"
"Oh, I don"t know; I was thinking. But I liked it at half-past six. I love it now. I"ve got used to it, as if I had always lived here. Isn"t it beautiful everywhere? But I"m going to make some changes."
"A hanging garden on the roof?" Henderson asked, with meekness.
"That would be nice. No, not now. But to make over and take off the new look. Everything looks so new."
"Well, we will try to live that down."
And so they wandered on, admiring, bantering, planning. Could Etienne Debree have seen his descendant at this moment he would have been more than ever proud of his share in establishing the great republic, and of his appreciation of the promise of its beauty. What satisfies a woman"s heart is luxury, thought Henderson, in an admiring cynical moment.
They had come into his own den and library, and he stood looking at the rows of his favorite collection shining in their new home. For all its newness it had a familiar look. He thought for a moment that he might be in his old bachelor quarters. Suddenly Margaret made a rush at him. She shook the great fellow. She feasted her eyes on him.
"What"s got into you to look so splendid? Do you hear, go this instant and dress, and make yourself ten times as fascinating."