Little Journey in the World

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


But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shock
her maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but which
did bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simply
the receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter--far enough
from that--but one in which there was a certain tone and intention that
the most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside from
the announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it was
significant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interested
in what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need have
been, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran on
con amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, was
the excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her a
business visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about his
daily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people in
which she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and there
were slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in the
Government; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and there
were little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no special
mystery about all this travel and hurrying from place to place, but it
gave Margaret a sense of varied and large occupations that she did not
understand. Through it all there was the personality that had been
recently so much in her thoughts. He was coming. That was a very solid
fact that she must meet. And she did not doubt that he was coming to see
her, and soon. That was a definite and very different idea from the dim
belief that he would come some time. He had signed himself hers
"faithfully."

It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for it
raised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make one
hesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to think
that she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; he
had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that. Therefore
she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have in
dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our
existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was
conscious of being judicially reflective.

But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman
of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her
mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what was
the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his
principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.
Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose
personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so
dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her
simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did not
go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking in
these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing that
he were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some one
solid occupation.

In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,
was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,
any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the
day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper
of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become
millionaires.

"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of the
thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."

"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."

"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Is
there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their
little property?"

"Yes; the law."

"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something
goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will
give you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,
or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"

"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you let
your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people who
want it. You can put it in the ground."

"But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground will
tax it till there is nothing left for me."

"That is equality."

"But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or lands,
while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be a public
official whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I cannot afford
to enforce when I am wronged?"

"The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or only
unfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if you
are wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that it
needs legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whom
the lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyer
costs money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modern
luxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will find
it economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out of
it, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about the
law, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It is
like any other commodity."

"You mean to say," I asked, "that the lawyer takes what the operator
leaves?"

"Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice against
lawyers. They must live. There is no nobler occupation than the
application of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble is
that public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and estimates
the lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the aid of a
lawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.

"Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees."

"It seems to me," said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallel
lines, "that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one man
can get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods by
which he gets it."

"That never yet could be set," Morgan replied. "It is impossible for any
number of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolute
freedom of acquisition, trusting to circumstances, misfortune, and death
to knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism."

"Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly come
by?"

"That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean a
process the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration for
others, I doubt. But property accumulates by itself almost. Many a man
who has got a start by an operation he would not like to have
investigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, and
has a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable,
using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd."

"Mr. Morgan," suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time an
uneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, "what is railroad
wrecking?"

"Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,' as
they are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, pays
dividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. They
contrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it,
either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus; they
let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even
pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to
accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then they
throw the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it with
some other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them in
stealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look round
for another road."

"And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most of
it?"

"Naturally, the little fish get swallowed."

"It is infamous," said Margaret--"infamous! And men go to work to do
this, to get other people's property, in cool blood?"

"I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business."

"What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank and
robbing it?" she asked, hot with indignation.

"Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement."

"It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a
wrecker should steal your money that way?"

"I was thinking of that."

I never saw Margaret more disturbed--out of all proportion, I thought, to
the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.

"Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like
that?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I said. "Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally
called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate
business. It is a common way of making a fortune."

"You see, Margaret," Morgan explained, "when people in trade buy
anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it."

"It seems to me," Margaret replied, more calmly, "that a great deal of
what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money,
and doesn't help anybody or produce anything."

"Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation."

"And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?"

"Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves
from stagnation."

"I cannot see any good in it," Margaret persisted. "No one seems to have
the things he buys or sells. I don't understand it."

"That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.
Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith and
credit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay the
difference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth."

"I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that betting."

"Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is really
paying for a difference of knowledge or opinion."

"Would you buy stocks that way?"

"What way?"

"Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it, not
really having any stock at all."

"I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if I
could make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle."

"Well," said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, "I don't
understand business morality."

"Nobody does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems to
be suspended by a more than two-thirds vote."

It was by such inquiries, leading to many talks of this sort, that
Margaret was groping in her mind for the solution of what might become to
her a personal question. Consciously she did not doubt Henderson's
integrity or his honor, but she was perplexed about the world of which
she had recently had a glimpse, and it was impossible to separate him
from it. Subjected to an absolutely new experience, stirred as her heart
had never been before by any man--a fact which at once irritated and
pleased her--she was following the law of her own nature, while she was
still her own mistress, to ponder these things and to bring her reason to
the guidance of her feeling. And it is probable that she did not at all
know the strength of her feeling, or have any conception of the real
power of love, and how little the head has to do with the great passion
of life, the intensity of which the poets have never in the least
exaggerated. If she thought of Mr. Lyon occasionally, of his white face
and pitiful look of suffering that day, she could not, after all, make it
real or permanently serious. Indeed, she was sure that no emotion could
so master her. And yet she looked forward to Henderson's coming with a
sort of nervous apprehension, amounting almost to dread.




XI

It was the susceptible time of the year for plants, for birds, for maids:
all innocent natural impulses respond to the subtle influence of spring.
One may well gauge his advance in selfishness, worldliness, and sin by
his loss of this annual susceptibility, by the failure of this sweet
appeal to touch his heart. One must be very far gone if some note of it
does not for a moment bring back the tenderest recollections of the days
of joyous innocence.

Even the city, with its mass of stone and brick, rectangles, straight
lines, dust, noise, and fever of activity, is penetrated by this divine
suggestion of the renewal of life. You can scarcely open a window without
letting in a breath of it; the south wind, the twitter of a sparrow, the
rustle of leaves in the squares, the smell of the earth and of some
struggling plant in the area, the note of a distant hand-organ softened
by distance, are begetting a longing for youth, for green fields, for
love. As Carmen walked down the avenue with Mr. Lyon on a spring morning
she almost made herself believe that an unworldly life with this
simple-hearted gentleman--when he should come into his title and
estate--would be more to her liking than the most brilliant success in
place and power with Henderson. Unfortunately the spring influence also
suggested the superior attractiveness of the only man who had ever taken
her shallow fancy. And unfortunately the same note of nature suggested to
Mr. Lyon the contrast of this artificial piece of loveliness with the
domestic life of which he dreamed.

As for Margaret, she opened her heart to the spring without reserve. It
was May. The soft maples had a purple tinge, the chestnuts showed color,
the apple-trees were in bloom (all the air was full of their perfume),
the blackbirds were chattering in convention in the tall oaks, the bright
leaves and the flowering shrubs were alive with the twittering and
singing of darting birds. The soft, fleecy clouds, hovering as over a
world just created, seemed to make near and participant in the scene the
delicate blue of the sky. Margaret--I remember the morning--was standing
on her piazza, as I passed through the neighborhood drive, with a spray
of apple-blossoms in her hand. For the moment she seemed to embody all
the maiden purity of the scene, all its promise. I said, laughing:

"We shall have to have you painted as spring."

"But spring isn't painted at all," she replied, holding up the apple
--blossoms, and coming down the piazza with a dancing step.

"And so it won't last. We want something permanent," I was beginning to
say, when a carriage passed, going to our house. "I think that must be
Henderson."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. Her sunny face clouded at once, and she turned to go
in as I hurried away.

It was Mr. Henderson, and there was at least pretense enough of business
to occupy us, with Mr. Morgan, the greater part of the day. It was not
till late in the afternoon that Henderson appeared to remember that
Margaret was in the neighborhood, and spoke of his intention of calling.
My wife pointed out the way to him across the grounds, and watched him
leisurely walking among the trees till he was out of sight.

"What an agreeable man Mr. Henderson is!" she said, turning to me; "most
companionable; and yet--and yet, my dear, I'm glad he is not my husband.
You suit me very well." There was an air of conviction about this remark,
as if it were the result of deep reflection and comparison, and it was
emphasized by the little possessory act of readjusting my necktie--one
of the most subtle of female flatteries.

"But who wanted him to be your husband?" I asked. "Married women have the
oddest habit of going about the world picking out the men they would not
like to have married. Do they need continually to justify themselves?"

"No; they congratulate themselves. You never can understand."

"I confess I cannot. My first thought about an attractive woman whose
acquaintance I make is not that I am glad I did not marry her."

"I dare say not. You are all inconsistent, you men. But you are the least
so of any man in the world, I do believe."

It would be difficult to say whether the spring morning seemed more or
less glorious to Margaret when she went indoors, but its serenity was
gone.

It was like the premonition in nature of a change. She put the apple
blossoms in water and placed the jug on the table, turning it about half
a dozen times, moving her head from side to side to get the effect. When
it was exactly right, she said to her aunt, who sat sewing in the
bay-window, in a perfectly indifferent tone, "Mr. Fairchild just passed
here, and said that Mr. Henderson had come."

"Ah!" Her aunt did not lift her eyes from her work, or appear to attach
the least importance to this tremendous piece of news. Margaret was
annoyed at what seemed to her an assumed indifference. Her nerves were
quivering with the knowledge that he had arrived, that he was in the next
house, that he might be here any moment--the man who had entered into her
whole life--and the announcement was no more to her aunt than if she had
said it rained. She was provoked at herself that she should be so
disturbed, yes, annoyed, at his proximity. She wished he had not come
--not today, at any rate. She looked about for something to do, and began
to rearrange this and that trifle in the sitting-room, which she had
perfectly arranged once before in the morning, moving about here and
there in a rather purposeless manner, until her aunt looked up and for a
moment followed her movements till Margaret left the room. In her own
chamber she sat by the window and tried to think, but there was no
orderly mental process; in vain she tried to run over in her mind the
past month and all her reflections and wise resolves. She heard the call
of the birds, she inhaled the odor of the new year, she was conscious of
all that was gracious and inviting in the fresh scene, but in her
sub-consciousness there was only one thought--he was there, he was
coming. She took up her sewing, but the needle paused in the stitch, and
she found herself looking away across the lawn to the hills; she took up
a book, but the words had no meaning, read and reread them as she would.
He is there, he is coming. And what of it? Why should she be so
disturbed? She was uncommitted, she was mistress of her own actions. Had
she not been coolly judging his conduct? She despised herself for being
so nervous and unsettled. If he was coming, why did he not come? Why was
he waiting so long? She arose impatiently and went down-stairs. There was
a necessity of doing something.

"Is there anything that you want from town, auntie?"

"Nothing that I know of. Are you going in?"

"No, unless you have an errand. It is such a fine day that it seems a
pity to stay indoors."

"Well, I would walk if I were you." But she did not go; she went instead
to her room. He might come any moment. She ought not to run away; and yet
she wished she were away. He said he was coming on business. Was it not,
then, a pretense? She felt humiliated in the idea of waiting for him if
the business were not a pretense.

How insensible men are! What a mere subordinate thing to them in life is
the love of a woman! Yes, evidently business was more important to him
than anything else. He must know that she was waiting; and she blushed to
herself at the very possibility that he should think such a thing. She
was not waiting. It was lunch-time. She excused herself. In the next
moment she was angry that she had not gone down as usual. It was time for
him to come. He would certainly come immediately after lunch. She would
not see him. She hoped never to see him. She rose in haste, put on her
hat, put it on carefully, turning and returning before the glass,
selected fresh gloves, and ran down-stairs.

"I'm going, auntie, for a walk to town."

The walk was a long one. She came back tired. It was late in the
afternoon. Her aunt was quietly reading. She needed to ask her nothing:
Mr. Henderson had not been there. Why had he written to her?

"Oh, the Fairchilds want us to come over to dinner," said Miss Forsythe,
without looking up.

"I hope you will go, auntie. I sha'n't mind being alone."

"Why? It's perfectly informal. Mr. Henderson happens to be there."

"I'm too stupid. But you must go. Mr. Henderson, in New York, expressed
the greatest desire to make your acquaintance."

Miss Forsythe smiled. "I suppose he has come up on purpose. But, dear,
you must go to chaperon me. It would hardly be civil not to go, when you
knew Mr. Henderson in New York, and the Fairchilds want to make it
agreeable for him."

"Why, auntie, it is just a business visit. I'm too tired to make the
effort. It must be this spring weather."

Perhaps it was. It is so unfortunate that the spring, which begets so
many desires, brings the languor that defeats their execution. But there
is a limit to the responsibility even of spring for a woman's moods. Just
as Margaret spoke she saw, through the open window, Henderson coming
across the lawn, walking briskly, but evidently not inattentive to the
charm of the landscape. It was his springy step, his athletic figure,
and, as he came nearer, the joyous anticipation in his face. And it was
so sudden, so unexpected--the vision so long looked for! There was no
time for flight, had she wanted to avoid him; he was on the piazza; he
was at the open door. Her hand went quickly to her heart to still the
rapid flutter, which might be from pain and might be from joy--she could
not tell. She had imagined their possible meeting so many times, and it
was not at all like this. She ought to receive him coldly, she ought to
receive him kindly, she ought to receive him indifferently. But how real
he was, how handsome he was! If she could have obeyed the impulse of the
moment I am not sure but she would have fled, and cast herself face
downward somewhere, and cried a little and thanked God for him. He was in
the room. In his manner there was no hesitation, in his expression no
uncertainty. His face beamed with pleasure, and there was so much open
admiration in his eyes that Margaret, conscious of it to her heart's
core, feared that her aunt would notice it. And she met him calmly
enough, frankly enough. The quickness with which a woman can pull herself
together under such circumstances is testimony to her superior fibre.

"I've been looking across here ever since morning," he said, as soon as
the hand-shaking and introduction were over, "and I've only this minute
been released." There was no air of apology in this, but a delicate
intimation of impatience at the delay. And still, what an unconscious
brute a man is!

"I thought perhaps you had returned," said Margaret, "until my aunt was
just telling me we were asked to dine with you."

Henderson gave her a quick glance. Was it possible she thought he could
go away without seeing her?

"Yes, and I was commissioned to bring you over when you are ready." "I
will not keep you waiting long, Mr. Henderson," interposed Miss Forsythe,
out of the goodness of her heart. "My niece has been taking a long walk,
and this debilitating spring weather--"

"Oh, since the sun has gone away, I think I'm quite up to the exertion,
since you wish it, auntie," a speech that made Henderson stare again,
wholly unable to comprehend the reason of an indirection which he could
feel--he who had been all day impatient for this moment. There was a
little talk about the country and the city at this season, mainly
sustained by Miss Forsythe and Henderson, and then he was left alone. "Of
course you should go, Margaret," said her aunt, as they went upstairs;
"it would not be at all the thing for me to leave you here. And what a
fine, manly, engaging fellow Mr. Henderson is!"

"Yes, he acts very much like a man;" and Margaret was gone into her room.

Go? There was not force enough in the commonwealth, without calling out
the militia, to keep Margaret from going to the dinner. She stopped a
moment in the middle of her chamber to think. She had almost forgotten
how he looked--his eyes, his smile. Dear me! how the birds were singing
outside, and how fresh the world was! And she would not hurry. He could
wait. No doubt he would wait now any length of time for her. He was in
the house, in the room below, perhaps looking out of the window, perhaps
reading, perhaps spying about at her knick-knacks--she would like to look
in at the door a moment to see what he was doing. Of course he was here
to see her, and all the business was a pretext. As she sat a moment upon
the edge of her bed reflecting what to put on, she had a little pang that
she had been doing him injustice in her thought. But it was only for an
instant. He was here. She was not in the least flurried. Indeed, her
mental processes were never clearer than when she settled upon her simple
toilet, made as it was in every detail with the sure instinct of a woman
who dresses for her lover. Heavens! what a miserable day it had been,
what a rebellious day! He ought to be punished for it somehow. Perhaps
the rose she put in her hair was part of the punishment. But he should
not see how happy she was; she would be civil, and just a little
reserved; it was so like a man to make a woman wait all day and then
think he could smooth it all over simply by appearing.