Part 52

“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.