Part 20

“Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot.”

“Nor can I,” said Carmen, with a sincere face. “They are too realistic for me.” She was at the moment running over in her mind a “situation” in a paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. “Mr. Henderson says that everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise the novels they don't read.”

“You know Mr. Henderson very well?”

“Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of.”

“Afraid of?”

“Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes your curiosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you a little uneasy.”

Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon the nature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slight expression of pain on Margaret's face.

“But there is your Mr. Lyon--”

Margaret laughed. “You do me too much honor. I think you discovered him first.”

“Well, our Mr. Lyon.” Carmen was still looking into the fire. “He is such a good young man!”

Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and she replied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, “We all have the highest regard for Mr. Lyon.”

“Yes, and he is quite gone on Brandon, I assure you. He intends to do a great deal of good in the world. I think he spends half his time in New York studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproaches me that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldly side. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be”--this with a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation--“but I haven't any call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what she means--dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?” she asked, after a moment, turning to Margaret?

Margaret explained that she was neither.

“Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical. There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religious belief.”

“I should think not,” said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. “It must be a matter of great anxiety to you here.”

Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed with merriment as she rose.

“What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deep things. You must not mind what I said about Mr.--(a little pause to read Margaret's face)--Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charming you are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not letting this life tell on one.” And she was gone in a shower of compliments and smiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out. Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.

The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did not raise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sort of woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man to whom such a woman would be attracted?

It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses--palaces--that begin to repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration the splendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we pay for the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich. This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich--and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the course must be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one can get beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republican simplicity.

Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row of servants in livery--shortclothes and stockings--in decorous vacuity--an array necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity of the entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self a part of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personal simplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult to attain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man to separate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the town that the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansion used to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyond remembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamented shovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani--it was his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in the music-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists had worked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite as an intaglio--indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with the costly facts.

The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background: the house swarmed with servants--retainers, one might say. Margaret, who was fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when a man's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and women in waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mere accumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and women do not cost so much originally as good pictures--that is, good men and women--everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them. Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a dance afterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.

The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Henderson had the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity--pure whiteness, the glow of yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was in keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitre d'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host and hostess--perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simple and elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but another generation will remove that.

If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite up to the level of the dinner and the house--what except that of a circle of wits, who would be out of place there, could be?--the presence of Mr. Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark across the table about a “corner” (it is impossible absolutely here, as well as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening of galleries--anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of the vivacity and persiflage.

“I saw you, Mr. Henderson”--it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice--“the other night in a box with a very pretty woman.”

“Yes--Miss Eschelle.”

“I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, various places; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be very entertaining--and enterprising.”

“Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other lady was her mother. And the man with us--that might interest you more, Mrs. Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm.”

“Ah! Then I suppose she has money?”