Little Journey in the World

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> Little Journey in the World


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
accumulation 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 space 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 spacious
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 noble 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."




XXI

Live not unto yourselves! Can any one deny that this blessed sentiment is
extending in modern life? Do we build houses for ourselves or for others?
Do we make great entertainments for our own comfort? I do not know that
anybody regarded the erection of the Henderson palace as an altruistic
performance. The socialistic newspapers said that it was pure
ostentation. But had it not been all along in the minds of the builders
to ask all the world to see it, to share the delight of it? Is this a
selfish spirit? When I stroll in the Park am I not pleased with the
equipages, with the display of elegance upon which so much money has been
lavished for my enjoyment?

All the world was asked to the Henderson reception. The coming event was
the talk of the town. I have now cuttings from the great journals,
articles describing the house, more beautifully written than Gibbon's
stately periods about the luxury of later Rome. It makes one smile to
hear that the day of fine writing is over. Everybody was eager to go;
there was some plotting to obtain invitations by those who felt that they
could not afford to be omitted from the list that would be printed; by
those who did not know the Hendersons, and did not care to know them, but
who shared the general curiosity; and everybody vowed that he supposed he
must go, but he hated such a crush and jam as it was sure to be. Yet no
one would have cared to go if it had not promised to be a crush. I said
that all the world was asked, which is our way of saying that a thousand
or two had been carefully selected from the million within reach.

Invitations came to Brandon, of course, for old times' sake. The Morgans
said that they preferred a private view; Miss Forsythe declared that she
hadn't the heart to go; in short, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild alone went to
represent the worldly element.

I am sorry to say that the reader must go to the files of the city press
for an account of the night's festivity. The pen that has been used in
portraying Margaret's career is entirely inadequate to it. There is a
general impression that an American can do anything that he sets his hand
to, but it is not true; it is true only that he tries everything. The
reporter is born, as the poet is; it cannot be acquired--that
astonishing, irresponsible command of the English language; that warm,
lyrical tone; that color, and bewildering metaphorical brilliancy; that
picturesqueness; that use of words as the painter uses pigments, in
splashes and blotches which are so effective; that touch of raillery and
sarcasm and condescension; that gay enjoyment of reveling in the
illimitable; that air of superior knowledge and style; that dash of
sentiment; that calm and somewhat haughty judgment.

I am always impressed at such an entertainment with the good-humor of the
American people, no matter what may be the annoyance and discomfort.

In all the push and thrust and confusion, amid the rending of trains, the
tearing of lace, the general crushing of costumes, there was the merriest
persiflage, laughter, and chatter, and men and women entered into and
drew out of the fashionable wreck in the highest spirits. For even in
such a spacious mansion there were spots where currents met, and rooms
where there was a fight for mere breath. It would have been a tame affair
without this struggle. And what an epitome of life it all was! There were
those who gave themselves up to admiration, who gushed with enthusiasm;
there were those who had the weary air of surfeit with splendor of this
sort; there were the bustling and volatile, who made facetious remarks,
and treated the affair like a Fourth of July; and there were also groups
dark and haughty, like the Stotts, who held a little aloof, and coldly
admitted that it was most successful; it lacked je ne sais quoi, but it
was in much better taste than they had expected. Is there something in
the very nature of a crowd to bring out the inherent vulgarity of the
best-bred people, so that some have doubted whether the highest
civilization will tolerate these crushing and hilarious assemblies?

At any rate, one could enjoy the general effect. There might be vulgar
units, and one caught notes of talk that disenchanted, but there were so
many women of rare and stately beauty, of exquisite loveliness, of charm
in manner and figure--so many men of fine presence, with such an air of
power and manly prosperity and self-reliance--I doubt if any other
assembly in the world, undecorated by orders and uniforms, with no blazon
of rank, would have a greater air of distinction. Looking over it from a
landing in the great stairway that commanded vistas and ranges of the
lofty, brilliant apartments, vivified by the throng, which seemed
ennobled by the spacious splendor in which it moved, one would be
pardoned a feeling of national pride in the spectacle. I drew aside to
let a stately train of beauty and of fashion descend, and saw it sweep
through the hall, and enter the drawing-rooms, until it was lost in a sea
of shifting color. It was like a dream.

And the centre of all this charming plutocratic graciousness and beauty
was Margaret--Margaret and her handsome husband. Where did the New
Hampshire boy learn this simple dignity of bearing, this good-humored
cordiality without condescension, this easy air of the man of the world?
Was this the railway wrecker, the insurance manipulator, the familiar of
Uncle Jerry, the king of the lobby, the pride and the bugaboo of Wall
Street? Margaret was regnant. And how charmingly she received her guests!
How well I knew that half-imperious toss of the head, and the glance of
those level, large gray eyes, softened instantly, on recognition, into
the sweetest smile of welcome playing about the dimple and the expressive
mouth! What woman would not feel a little thrill of triumph? The world
was at her feet. Why was it, I wonder, as I stood there watching the
throng which saluted this queenly woman of the world, in an hour of
supreme social triumph, while the notes of the distant orchestra came
softly on the air, and the overpowering perfume of banks of flowers and
tropical plants--why was it that I thought of a fair, simple girl,
stirred with noble ideals, eager for the intellectual life, tender,
sympathetic, courageous? It was Margaret Debree--how often I had seen her
thus!--sitting on her little veranda, swinging her chip hat by the
string, glowing from some errand in which her heart had played a much
more important part than her purse. I caught the odor of the honeysuckle
that climbed on the porch, and I heard the note of the robin that nested
there.

"You seem to be in a brown study," said Carmen, who came up, leaning on
the arm of the Earl of Chisholm.

"I'm lost in admiration. You must make allowance, Miss Eschelle, for a
person from the country."

"Oh, we are all from the country. That is the beauty of it. There is Mr.
Hollowell, used to drive a peddler's cart, or something of that sort, up
in Maine, talking with Mr. Stott, whose father came in on the towpath of
the Erie Canal. You don't dance? The earl has just been giving me a whirl
in the ballroom, and I've been trying to make him understand about
democracy."

"Yes," the earl rejoined; "Miss Eschelle has been interpreting to me
republican simplicity."

"And he cannot point out, Mr. Fairchild, why this is not as good as a
reception at St. James. I suppose it's his politeness."

"Indeed, it is all very charming. It must be a great thing to be the
architect of your own fortune."

"Yes; we are all self-made," Carmen confessed.

"I am, and I get dreadfully tired of it sometimes. I have to read over
the Declaration and look at the map of the Western country at such times.
A body has to have something to hold on to."

"Why, this seems pretty substantial," I said, wondering what the girl was
driving at.

"Oh, yes; I suppose the world looks solid from a balloon. I heard one man
say to another just now, 'How long do you suppose Henderson will last?'
Probably we shall all come down by the run together by-and-by."

"You seem to be on a high plane," I suggested.

"I guess it's the influence of the earl. But I am the most misunderstood
of women. What I really like is simplicity. Can you have that without the
social traditions," she appealed to the earl, "such as you have in
England?"

"I really cannot say," the earl replied, laughing. "I fancied there was
simplicity in Brandon; perhaps that was traditional."

"Oh, Brandon!" Carmen cried, "see what Brandon does when it gets a
chance. I assure your lordship that we used to be very simple people in
New York. Come, let us go and tell Mrs. Henderson how delightful it all
is. I'm so sorry for her."

As I moved about afterwards with my wife we heard not many comments, a
word here and there about Henderson's wonderful success, a remark about
Margaret's beauty, some sympathy for her in such a wearisome ordeal--the
world is full of kindness--the house duly admired, and the ordinary
compliments paid; the people assembled were, as usual, absorbed in their
own affairs. From all we could gather, all those present were used to
living in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a matter of
course. Was there no envy? Was there nothing said about the airs of a
country school-ma'am, the aplomb of an adventurer? Were there no
criticisms afterwards as the guests rolled home in their carriages,
surfeited and exhausted? What would you have? Do you expect the
millennium to begin in New York?

The newspapers said that it was the most brilliant affair the metropolis
had ever seen. I have no doubt it was. And I do not judge, either, by the
newspaper estimates of the expense. I take the simple words addressed by
the earl to Margaret, when he said good-night, at their full value. She
flushed with pleasure at his modest commendation. Perhaps it was to her
the seal of her night's triumph.

The house was opened. The world had seen it. The world had gone. If sleep
did not come that night to her tired head on the pillow, what wonder? She
had a position in the great world. In imagination it opened wider and
wider. Could not the infinite possibilities of it fill the hunger of any
soul?

The echoes of the Henderson reception continued long in the country
press. Items multiplied as to the cost. It was said that the sum expended
in flowers alone, which withered in a night, would have endowed a ward in
a charity hospital. Some wag said that the price of the supper would have
changed the result of the Presidential election. Views of the mansion
were given in the illustrated papers, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs.
Henderson. In country villages, in remote farmhouses, this great social
event was talked of, Henderson's wealth was the subject of conjecture,
Margaret's toilet was an object of interest. It was a shining example of
success. Preachers, whose sensational sermons are as widely read as
descriptions of great crimes, moralized on Henderson's career and
Henderson's palace, and raised up everywhere an envied image of worldly
prosperity. When he first arrived in New York, with only fifty cents in
his pocket--so the story ran-and walked up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, he
had nearly been run over at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street by a
carriage, the occupants of which, a lady and gentleman, had stared
insolently at the country youth. Never mind, said the lad to himself, the
day will come when you will cringe to me. And the day did come when the
gentleman begged Henderson to spare him in Wall Street, and his wife
intrigued for an invitation to Mrs. Henderson's ball. The reader knows
there is not a word of truth in this. Alas! said the preacher, if he had
only devoted his great talents to the service of the Good and the True!
Behold how vain are all the triumphs of this world! see the result of the
worship of Mammon! My friends, the age is materialized, a spirit of
worldliness is abroad; be vigilant, lest the deceitfulness of riches send
your souls to perdition. And the plain country people thanked God for
such a warning, and the country girl dreamed of Margaret's career, and
the country boy studied the ways of Henderson's success, and resolved
that he, too, would seek his fortune in this bad metropolis.

The Hendersons were important people. It was impossible that a knowledge
of their importance should not have a reflex influence upon Margaret.
Could it be otherwise than that gradually the fineness of her
discrimination should be dulled by the almost universal public consent in
the methods by which Henderson had achieved his position, and that in
time she should come to regard adverse judgment as the result of envy?
Henderson himself was under less illusion; the world was about what he
had taken it for, only a little worse--more gullible, and with less
principle. Carmen had mocked at Margaret's belief in Henderson. It is
certainly a pitiful outcome that Margaret, with her naturally believing
nature, should in the end have had a less clear perception of what was
right and wrong than Henderson himself. Yet Henderson would not have
shrunk, any more than Carmen would, from any course necessary to his
ends, while Margaret would have shrunk from many things; but in absolute
worldliness, in devotion to it, the time had come when Henderson felt
that his Puritan wife was no restraint upon him. It was this that broke
gentle Miss Forsythe's heart when she came fully to realize it.

I said that the world was at Margaret's feet. Was it? How many worlds are
there, and does one ever, except by birth (in a republic), conquer them
all? Truth to say, there were penetralia in New York society concerning
which this successful woman was uneasy in her heart. There were people
who had accepted her invitations, to whose houses she had been, who had a
dozen ways of making her feel that she was not of them. These people--I
suppose that if two castaways landed naked on a desert island, one of
them would instantly be the ancien regime--had spoken of Mrs. Henderson
and her ambition to the Earl of Chisholm in a way that pained him. They
graciously assumed that he, as one of the elect, would understand them.
It was therefore with a heavy heart that he came to say good-by to
Margaret before his return.

I cannot imagine anything more uncomfortable for an old lover than a
meeting of this sort; but I suppose the honest fellow could not resist
the inclination to see Margaret once more. I dare say she had a little
flutter of pride in receiving him, in her consciousness of the change in
herself into a wider experience of the world. And she may have been a
little chagrined that he was not apparently more impressed by her
surroundings, nor noticed the change in herself, but met her upon the
ground of simple sincerity where they had once stood. What he tried to
see, what she felt he was trying to see, was not the beautiful woman
about whose charm and hospitality the town talked, but the girl he had
loved in the old days.

He talked a little, a very little, about himself and his work in England,
and a great deal about what had interested him here on his second visit,
the social drift, the politics, the organized charities; and as he
talked, Margaret was conscious how little the world in which she lived
seemed to interest him; how little importance he attached to it. And she
saw, as in a momentary vision of herself, that the things that once
absorbed her and stirred her sympathies were now measurably indifferent
to her. Book after book which he casually mentioned, as showing the drift
of the age, and profoundly affecting modern thought, she knew only by
name. "I guess," said Carmen, afterwards, when Margaret spoke of the
earl's conversation, "that he is one of those who are trying to live in
the spirit--what do they call it?--care for things of the mind."

"You are doing a noble work," he said, "in your Palace of Industry."

"Yes, it is very well managed," Margaret replied; "but it is uphill work,
the poor are so ungrateful for charity."

"Perhaps nobody, Mrs. Henderson, likes to be treated as an object of
charity."

"Well, work isn't what they want when we give it, and they'd rather live
in the dirt than in clean apartments."

"Many of them don't know any better, and a good many of our poor resent
condescension."

"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."