XII.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS. The Cost | ||
12. XII.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS.
While Scarborough was serving his clerkship at Indianapolis, Dumont was engaging in ever larger and more daring speculations with New York as his base. Thus it came about that when Scarborough established himself at Saint X, Dumont and Pauline were living in New York, in a big house in East Sixty-first Street.
And Pauline had welcomed the change. In Saint X she was constantly on guard, always afraid her father and mother would see below that smiling surface of her domestic life which made them happy. In New York she was free from the crushing sense of peril and restraint, as their delusions about her were secure. There, after she and he found their living basis of “let alone,” they got on smoothly, rarely meeting except in the presence of servants or guests, never inquiring either into the other's life, carrying on all negotiations about money and other household matters through their secretaries. He thought her cold by nature—therefore absolutely to be trusted.
In one of those days of pause which come now and then in the busiest lives she chanced upon his letters from Europe in her winter at Battle Field. She took one of them from its envelope and began to read—carelessly, with a languid curiosity to measure thus exactly the change in herself. But soon she was absorbed, her mind groping through letter after letter for the clue to a mystery. The Dumont she now knew stood out so plainly in those letters that she could not understand how she, inexperienced and infatuated though she then was, had failed to see the perfect full-length portrait. How had she read romance and high-mindedness and intellect into the personality so frankly flaunting itself in all its narrow sordidness, in all its poverty of real thought and real feeling?
“And there was Hampden Scarborough to contrast
She tossed the letters back into the box from which they had reappeared after four long years. She seated herself on the white bear-skin before the open fire; and with hands clasped round her knees she rocked herself slowly to and fro like one trying to ease an intolerable pain.
Until custom dulled the edge of that pain, the days and the nights were the cruelest in her apprenticeship up to that time.
When her boy, Gardiner, was five years old, she got her father and mother to keep him at Saint X with them.
“New York's no place, I think, to bring up and educate a boy in the right way,” she explained.
Before Gardiner went to live with his grandparents she stayed in the East, making six or eight brief visits “home” each year. When he went she resolved to divide her year between her pleasure as a mother and her obligation to her son's father, to her parents' son-in-law—her devotions at the shrine of Appearances.
It was in the fall of the year she was twenty-five-eight years and a half after she left Battle Field—that Hampden Scarborough reappeared upon the surface of her life.
On a September afternoon in that year Olivia, descending from the train at Saint X, was almost as much embarrassed as pleased by her changed young cousin rushing at her with great energy— “Dear, dear Olivia! And hardly any different— how's the baby? No—not Fred, but Fred Junior, I mean. In some ways you positively look younger. You know, you were so serious at college!”
“But you—I don't quite understand how any
Pauline's dressmakers were bringing out the full value of her height and slender, graceful strength. Her eyes, full of the same old frankness and courage, now had experience in them, too. She was wearing her hair so that it fell from her brow in two sweeping curves reflecting the light in sparkles and flashes. Her manner was still simple and genuine—the simplicity and genuineness of knowledge now, not of innocence. Extremes meet—but they remain extremes. Her “plumage” was a fashionable dress of pale blue cloth, a big beplumed hat to match, a chiffon parasol like an azure cloud, at her throat a sapphire pendant, about her neck and swinging far below her waist a chain of sapphires.
“And the plumage just suits her,” thought Olivia. For it seemed to her that her cousin had more than ever the quality she most admired —the quality of individuality, of distinction. Even in her way of looking clean and fresh she was different, as if those prime feminine essentials were in her not matters of frequent reacquirement
Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying. She looked—an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hat in respectful appeal to her to let go. “Give Albert your checks, too,” said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort her down the platform. At the entrance, with a group of station loungers gaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-colored stuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid. “She's giving Saint X a good deal to talk about,” thought Olivia.
“Home, please, by the long road,” said Pauline to the groom, and he sprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapid motion. “That'll let us have twenty minutes more together,” she went on to Olivia. “There are several people stopping at the house.”
The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X. Olivia was astonished at the changes—the town of nine years before spread and remade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand.
“Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it,” said
“But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?” suggested Pauline.,
“Sooner or later—but not so soon,” replied Olivia.
“No—a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes before it's noticed as it does in a forest.”
“And you've never seen him since Battle Field?” As Olivia put this question she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.
“But,” replied Pauline—and Olivia thought that both her face and her tone were a shade off the easy and the natural—“since he came I've been living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few days until this summer. And he's been in Europe since April. No,” she went on, “I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's been like a painting, finished and hanging on the
They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they had known—how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the man who was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novels Chamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that Grace Wharton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson—in the state senate and in a fair way to get to Congress the next year. Then Scarborough again— how he had distanced all the others; how he might have the largest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients most lawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite of the opposition of the professionals—strong because he had a genius for organization and also had the ear and the confidence of the people and the enthusiastic personal devotion of the young men throughout the state. Olivia, more of a politician than Fred even, knew the whole story; and Pauline listened appreciatively. Few indeed are the homes in strenuously political Indiana where politics is not the chief subject of conversation, and Pauline had known about parties and campaigns
“But you must have heard most of this,” said Olivia, “from people here in Saint X.”
“Some of it—from father and mother,” Pauline answered. “They're the only people I've seen really to talk to on my little visits. They know him very well indeed. I think mother admires him almost as much as you do. Here's our place,” she added, the warmth fading from her face as from a spring landscape when the shadow of the dusk begins to creep over it.
They were in the grounds of the Eyrie—the elder Dumont was just completing it when he died early in the previous spring. His widow went abroad to live with her daughter and her sister in Paris; so her son and his wife had taken it. It was a great rambling stone house that hung upon and in a lofty bluff. From its windows and verandas and balconies could be seen the panorama of Saint Christopher. To the left lay the town, its ugly part—its factories and railway yards—hidden by the jut of a hill. Beneath and beyond to the right, the shining river wound among fields brown where the harvests had been gathered, green and white where myriads of graceful
The rooms of the Eyrie and its well-screened verandas were in a cool twilight, though the September sun was hot.
“They're all out, or asleep,” said Pauline, as she and Olivia entered the wide reception hall. “Let's have tea on the east veranda. Its view isn't so good, but we'll be cooler. You'd like to go to your room first?”
Olivia said she was comfortable as she was and needed the tea. So they went on through the splendidly-furnished drawing-room and were going through the library when Olivia paused before a portrait—“Your husband, isn't it?”
“Yes,” replied Pauline, standing behind her cousin. “We each had one done in Paris.”
“What a masterful face!” said Olivia. “I've
never seen a better forehead.” And she thought,
“YOUR HUSBAND, ISN'T IT?”
[Description: Greyscale image scanned in black & white photo
at 250 dpi of Olivia and Pauline standing in front of a
portrait of Pauline's husband. Illustrated by Harrison
Fisher.]
“Do you notice a resemblance to any one you know?” asked Pauline.
“Ye-e-s,” replied Olivia, coloring. “I think—”
“Scarborough, isn't it?”
“Yes,” admitted Olivia.
After a pause Pauline said ambiguously: “The resemblance is stronger there than in life.”
Olivia glanced at her and was made vaguely uneasy by the look she was directing at the face of the portrait. But though Pauline must have seen that she was observed, she did not change expression. They went out upon the east veranda and Olivia stood at the railing. She hardly noted the view in the press of thoughts roused by the hints of what was behind the richly embroidered curtain of her cousin's life.
All along the bluff, some exposed, some half hid by dense foliage, were the pretentious houses of the thirty or forty families who had grown rich through the industries developed within the past ten years. Two foreign-looking servants in foreign-looking house-liveries were bringing a table on which was an enormous silver tray with a tea-service
“Who are coming?” asked Olivia. She wished she had gone to her room before tea. These people made her feel dowdy and mussy.
Pauline glanced round, smiled and nodded, turned back to her cousin.
“Mrs. Herron and Mr. Langdon. She's the wife of a New York lawyer, and she takes Mr. Langdon everywhere with her to amuse her, and he goes to amuse himself. He's a socialist, or something like that. He thinks up and says things to shock conservative, conventional people. He's rich and never has worked—couldn't if he would, probably. But he denounces leisure classes and large fortunes and advocates manual labor every day for everybody. He's clever in a queer, cynical way.”
A Mrs. Fanshaw, also of New York, came from the library in a tea-gown of chiffon and real lace. All were made acquainted and Pauline poured the
“They're in earnest about trifles,” she said to herself, “and trifle about earnest things.” Yet it irritated her to feel that, though they would care not at all for her low opinion of them, she did care a great deal because they would fail to appreciate her.
“They ought to be jailed,” Langdon was drawling with considerable emphasis.
“Who, Mr. Langdon?” inquired Mrs. Fanshaw —she had been as abstracted as Olivia. “You've been filling the jails rapidly to-day, and hanging not a few.”
Mrs. Herron laughed. “He says your husband and Mrs. Dumont's and mine should be locked up as conspirators.”
“Precisely,” said Langdon, tranquilly. “They'll sign a few papers, and when they're done, what'll have happened? Not one more sheep'll be raised. Not one more pound of wool will be shorn. Not one more laborer'll be employed. Not a single improvement in any process of manufacture. But,
“Dreadful! Dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs. Fanshaw, in mock horror. “You must go at once, Mowbray, and lead the police in a raid on Jack's office.”
“Thanks—it's more comfortable here.” Langdon took a piece of a curious-looking kind of hot bread. “Extraordinary good stuff this is,” he interjected; then went on: “And I've done my duty when I've stated the facts. Also, I'm taking a little stock in the new trust. But I don't pose as a `captain of industry' or `promoter of civilization.' I admit I'm a robber. My point is the rotten hypocrisy of my fellow bandits—no, pickpockets, by gad!”
Olivia looked at him with disapproving interest. It was the first time she had been present at a game of battledore and shuttlecock with what she
“I hope so,” replied Pauline. “I'm sure we all ought to be shocked—and should be, if it weren't you who are trying to do the shocking. She'll soon get used to you.”
“Then it was a jest?” said Olivia to Langdon.
“A jest?” He looked serious. “Not at all, my dear Mrs. Pierson. Every word I said was true, and worse. They—”
“Stop your nonsense, Mowbray,” interrupted Mrs. Herron, who appreciated that Olivia was an “outsider.” “Certainly he was jesting, Mrs. Pierson. Mr. Langdon pretends to have eccentric ideas—one of them is that everybody with brains should be put under the feet of the numskulls; another is that anybody who has anything should be locked up and his property given to those who have nothing.”
“Splendid!” exclaimed Langdon. And he took out a gold cigarette case and lighted a large, expensive-looking cigarette with a match from a gold safe. “Go on, dear lady! Herron should get you to write our prospectus when we're ready
“All right,” said Mrs. Herron, rising.
“And I, too,” said Mrs. Fanshaw.
“Give me one of your cigarettes, Mowbray,” said Mrs. Herron. “I left my case in my room.”
Pauline, answering Olivia's expression, said as soon as the three had disappeared:
“Why not? Is it any worse for a woman than for a man?”
“I don't know why not,” replied Olivia. “There must be another reason than because I don't do it, and didn't think ladies did. But that's the only reason I can give just now.”
“What do you think of Langdon?” asked Pauline.
“I guess my sense of humor's defective. I don't like the sort of jest he seems to excel in.”
“I fancy it wasn't altogether a jest,” said Pauline. “I don't inquire into those matters any more. I used to, but—the more I saw, the worse it was. Tricks and traps and squeezes and—oh, business is all vulgar and low. It's necessary, I suppose, but it's repulsive to me.” She paused,
Olivia wished to protest against Pauline's view of business. But—how could she without seeming to attack, indeed, without attacking, her cousin's husband?
Dumont brought Fanshaw up in his automobile, Herron remaining at the offices for half an hour to give the newspapers a carefully considered account of the much-discussed “merger” of the manufacturers of low-grade woolens. Herron had objected to any statement. “It's our private business,” he said. “Let them howl. The fewer facts they have, the sooner they'll stop howling.” But Dumont held firm for publicity. “There's no such thing as a private business nowadays,” he replied. “Besides, don't we want the public to take part of our stock? What's the use of acting shady—you've avoided the legal obstacles, haven't you? Let's tell the public frankly all we want it to know, and it'll think it knows all there is to know.”
The whole party met in the drawing-room at a quarter-past eight, Langdon the last to come down—Olivia was uncertain whether or not she
He looked cynically at Dumont. “Well, fellow pirate: how go our plans for a merry winter for the poor?”
“Ass!” muttered Herron to Olivia, who happened to, be nearest him. “He fancies impudence is wit. He's devoid of moral sense or even of decency. He's a traitor to his class and shouldn't be tolerated in it.”
Dumont was laughingly answering Langdon in his own vein.
“Splendidly,” he replied, “thanks to our worthy chaplain, Herron, who secures us the blessing and protection of the law.”
“That gives me an appetite!” exclaimed Langdon. “I feared something might miscarry in these last hours of our months of plotting. Heaven be praised, the people won't have so much to waste hereafter. I'm proud to be in one of the many noble bands that are struggling to save them from themselves.”
But Dumont had turned away from him; so he dropped into Mrs. Herron's discussion with Mrs. Fanshaw on their proposed trip to the Mediterranean
Langdon talked with her until Mrs. Herron, impatient at his neglect, caught his eye and compelled his attention. Dumont, seeing that Olivia was free, drew her into his conversation with Mrs. Fanshaw; and then Mrs. Fanshaw began to talk with Mr. Herron, who was eating furiously because he had just overheard Langdon say: “That was a great day for pirates when they thought of taking aboard the lawyers as chaplains.”
All the men were in high spirits; Dumont was boyish in his exuberance. When he left home that morning he was four times a millionaire; now he was at least twelve times a millionaire, through the magic of the “merger.” True, eight of the twelve millions were on paper; but it was paper that would certainly pay dividends, paper that would presently sell at or near its face value. And
Olivia tried him on several subjects, but the conversation dragged. Of Pauline he would not talk; of Europe, he was interested only in the comfort of hotels and railway trains, in the comparative merits of the cooking and the wines in London and Paris. But his face—alert, shrewd, aggressive—and his mode of expression made her feel that he was uninteresting because he was thinking of something which he did not care to expose to her and could not take his mind from. And this was the truth. It was not until she adventured upon his business that he became talkative. And soon she had him telling her about his “combine”—frankly, boastfully, his face more and more flushed, for as he talked he drank.
“But,” he said presently, “this little matter to-day is only a fair beginning. It seemed big until it was about accomplished. Then I saw it was only a suggestion for a scheme that'd be really
Olivia was ambitious herself, usually was delighted by ambition in others. But his exhibit of imagination and energy repelled her, even while it fascinated. Partly through youth, more through that contempt for concealment which characterizes the courageous type of large man, he showed himself to her just as he was. And she saw him not as an ambition but as an appetite, or rather a bundle of appetites.
“He has no ideals,” she thought. “He's like a man who wants food merely for itself, not for the strength and the intellect it will build up. And he likes or dislikes human beings only as one likes or dislikes different things to eat.”
“It'll take you years and years,” she said to him, because she must say something.
“Not at all.” He waved his hand—Olivia thought it looked as much like a claw as like a hand. “It's a sky-scraper, but we build sky-scrapers overnight. Time and space used to be the big elements. We practically disregard them.” He followed this with a self-satisfied laugh and an emptying of his champagne glass at a gulp.
The women were rising to withdraw. After half an hour Langdon and Herron joined them. Dumont and Fanshaw did not come until eleven o'clock. Then Dumont was so abrupt and surly that every one was grateful to Mrs. Fanshaw for taking him away to the west veranda. At midnight all went to their rooms, Pauline going with Olivia, “to make sure you haven't been neglected.”
She lingered until after one, and when they kissed each the other good night, she said: “It's done me a world of good to see you, 'Livia—more even than I hoped. I knew you'd be sympathetic with me where you understood. Now, I feel that you're sympathetic where you don't understand, too. And it's there that one really needs sympathy.”
“That's what friendship means—and—love,” said Olivia.
XII.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS. The Cost | ||