The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 176

"Famously. The lot is bought. Mr. Van Brunt was here all the morning.

It's going to be something Oriental, mediaeval, nineteenth-century, gorgeous, and domestic. Van Brunt says he wants it to represent me."

"How?" inquired Jack; "all the four facades different?"

"With an interior unity--all the styles brought to express an individual taste, don't you know. A different house from the four sides of approach, and inside, home--that's the idea."

"It appears to me," said Jack, still bantering, "that it will look like an apartment-house."

"That is just what it will not--that is, outside unity, and inside a menagerie. This won't look gregarious. It is to have not more than three stories, perhaps only two. And then exterior color, decoration, statuary."

"And gold?"

"Not too much--not to give it a cheap gilded look. Oh, I asked him about Nero's house. As I remember it, that was mostly caverns. Mr. Van Brunt laughed, and said they were not going to excavate this house. The Roman notion was barbarous grandeur. But in point of beauty and luxury, this would be as much superior to Nero's house as the electric light is to a Roman lamp."

"Not cla.s.sic, then?"

"Why, all that's good in cla.s.sic form, with the modern spirit. You ought to hear Mr. Van Brunt talk. This country has never yet expressed itself in domestic inhabitation."

"It's going to cost! What does Mr. Henderson say?"

"I think he rather likes it. He told Mr. Van Brunt to consult me and go ahead with his plans. But he talks queerly. He said he thought he would have money enough at least for the foundation. Do you think, Jack,"

asked Carmen, with a sudden change of manner, "that Mr. Henderson is really the richest man in the United States?"

"Some people say so. Really, I don't know how any one can tell. If he let go his hand from his affairs, I don't know what a panic would do."

Carmen looked thoughtful. "He said to me once that he wasn't afraid of the Street any more. I told him this morning that I didn't want to begin this if it was going to incommode him."

"What did he say?"

"He was just going out. He looked at me a moment with that speculative sort of look-no, it isn't cynical, as you say; I know it so well--and then said: 'Oh, go ahead. I guess it will be all right. If anything happens, you can turn it into a boardinghouse. It will be an excellent sanitarium.' That was all. Anyway, it's something to do. Come, let's go and see the place." And she started up and touched the bell for the carriage. It was more than something to do. In those days before her marriage, when her mother was living, and when they wandered about Europe, dangerously near to the reputation of adventuresses, the girl had her dream of chateaux and castles and splendor. Her chance did not come in Europe, but, as she would have said, Providence is good to those who wait.

The next day Jack went to Long Island, and the farm was bought, and the deed brought to Edith, who, with much formality, presented it to the boy, and that young gentleman showed his appreciation of it by trying to eat it. It would have seemed a pretty incident to Jack, if he had not been absorbed in more important things.

But he was very much absorbed, and apparently more idle than ever. As the days went on, and the weeks, he was less and less at home, and in a worse humor--that is, at home. Carmen did not find him ill-humored, nor was there any change towards the fellows at the Union, except that it was noticed that he had his cross days. There was nothing specially to distinguish him from a dozen others, who led the same life of vacuity, of mild dissipation, of enforced pleasure. A wager now and then on an "event"; a fict.i.tious interest in elections; lively partisans.h.i.+p in society scandals: Not much else. The theatres were stale, and only endurable on account of the little suppers afterwards; and really there wasn't much in life except the women who made it agreeable.

Major Fairfax was not a model; there had not much survived out of his checkered chances and experiences, except a certain instinct of being a gentleman, sir; the close of his life was not exactly a desirable goal; but even the Major shook his head over Jack.

XIX

The one fact in which men universally agree is that we come into the world alone and we go out of the world alone; and although we travel in company, make our pilgrimage to Canterbury or to Vanity Fair in a great show of fellows.h.i.+p, and of bearing one another's burdens, we carry our deepest troubles alone. When we think of it, it is an awful lonesomeness in this animated and moving crowd. Each one either must or will carry his own burden, which he commonly cannot, or by pride or shame will not, ask help in carrying.

Henderson drew more and more apart from confidences, and was alone in building up the colossal structure of his wealth. Father Damon was carrying his renewed temptation alone, after all his brave confession and attempt at renunciation. Ruth Leigh plodded along alone, with her secret which was the joy and the despair of her life--the opening of a gate into the paradise which she could never enter. Jack Delancy, the confiding, open-hearted good fellow, had come to a stage in his journey where he also was alone. Not even to Carmen could he confess the extent of his embarra.s.sments, nor even in her company, nor in the distraction of his increasingly dissipated life, could he forget them. Not only had his investments been all transferred to his speculations, but his home had been mortgaged, and he did not dare tell Edith of the lowering cloud that hung over it; and that his sole dependence was the confidence of the Street, which any rumor might shatter, in that one of Henderson's schemes to which he had committed himself. Edith, the one person who could have comforted him, was the last person to whom he could have told this, for he had the most elementary, and the common conception of what marriage is.

But Edith's lot was the most pitiful of all. She was not only alone, but compelled to inaction. She saw the fair fabric of her life dissolving, and neither by cries nor tears, by appeals nor protest, by show of anger nor by show of suffering, could she hinder the dissolution. Strong in herself and full of courage, day by day and week by week she felt her powerlessness. Heaven knows what it cost her--what it costs all women in like circ.u.mstances--to be always cheerful, never to show distrust. If her love were not enough, if her attractions were not enough, there was no human help to which she could appeal.

And what, pray, was there to appeal? There was no visible neglect, no sufficient alienation for gossip to take hold of. If there was a little talk about Jack's intimacy elsewhere, was there anything uncommon in that? Affairs went on as usual. Was it reasonable to suppose that society should notice that one woman's heart was full of foreboding, heavy with a sense of loss and defeat, and with the ruin of two lives?

Could simple misery like this rise to the dignity of tragedy in a world that has its share of tragedies, shocking and violent, but is on the whole going on decorously and prosperously?

The season wore on. It was the latter part of May. Jack had taken Edith and the boy down to the Long Island house, and had returned to the city and was living at his club, feverishly waiting for some change in his affairs. It was a sufficient explanation of his anxiety that money was "tight," that failures were daily announced, and that there was a general fear of worse times. It was fortunate for Jack and other speculators that they could attribute their ill-luck to the general financial condition. There were reasons enough for this condition. Some attributed it to want of confidence, others to the tariff, others to the action of this or that political party, others to over-production, others to silver, others to the action of English capitalists in withdrawing.

their investments. It could all be accounted for without referring to the fact that most of the individual sufferers, like Jack, owed more than they could pay.

Henderson was much of the time absent--at the West and at the South.

His every move was watched, his least sayings were reported as significant, and the Street was hopeful or depressed as he seemed to be cheerful or unusually taciturn. Uncle Jerry was the calmest man in town, and his observation that Henderson knew what he was about was rea.s.suring.

His serenity was well founded. The fact was that he had been pulling in and lowering canvas for months. Or, as he put it, he hadn't much hay out. . . "It's never a good plan," said Uncle Jerry, "to put off raking up till the shower begins."

It seems absurd to speak of the East Side in connection with the financial situation. But that was where the pinch was felt, and felt first. Work was slack, and that meant actual hunger for many families.

The monetary solidarity of the town is remarkable. No one flies a kite in Wall Street that somebody in Rivington Street does not in consequence have to go without his dinner. As Dr. Leigh went her daily rounds she encountered painful evidence of the financial disturbance. Increased number of cases for the doctor followed want of sufficient food and the eating of cheap, unwholesome food. She was often obliged to draw upon the Margaret Fund, and to invoke the aid of Father Damon when the responsibility was too great for her. And Father Damon found that his ministry was daily diverted from the cure of souls to the care of bodies.

Among all those who came to the mission as a place of refuge and rest, and to whom the priest sought to offer the consolations of religion and of his personal sympathy, there were few who did not have a tale of suffering to tell that wrung his heart. Some of them were actually ill, or had at home a sick husband or a sick daughter. And such cases had to be reported to Dr. Leigh.

It became necessary, therefore, that these two, who had shunned each other for months, should meet as often as they had done formerly. This was very hard for both, for it meant only the renewal of heart-break, regret, and despair. And yet it had been almost worse when they did not see each other. They met; they talked of nothing but their work; they tried to forget themselves in their devotion to humanity. But the human heart will not be thus disposed of. It was impossible that some show of personal interest, some tenderness, should not appear. They were walking towards Fourth Avenue one evening--the priest could not resist the impulse to accompany her a little way towards her home--after a day of unusual labor and anxiety.

"You are working too hard," he said, gently; "you look fatigued."

"Oh no," she replied, looking up cheerfully; "I'm a regular machine.

I get run down, and then I wind up. I get tired, and then I get rested.

It isn't the work," she added, after a moment, "if only I could see any good of it. It seems so hopeless."

"From your point of view, my dear doctor," he answered, but without any shade of reproof in his tone. "But no good deed is lost. There is nothing else in the world--nothing for me." The close of the sentence seemed wholly accidental, and he stopped speaking as if he could not trust himself to go on.

Ruth Leigh looked up quickly. "But, Father Damon, it is you who ought to be rebuked for overwork. You are undertaking too much. You ought to go off for a vacation, and go at once."

The father looked paler and thinner than usual, but his mouth was set in firm lines, and he said: "It cannot be. My duty is here. And"--he turned, and looked her full in the face--"I cannot go."

No need to explain that simple word. No need to interpret the swift glance that their eyes exchanged--the eager, the pitiful glance. They both knew. It was not the work. It was not the suffering of the world.

It was the pain in their own hearts, and the awful chasm that his holy vows had put between them. They stood so only an instant. He was trembling in the extort to master himself, and in a second she felt the hot blood rising to her face. Her woman's wit was the first to break the hopeless situation. She turned, and hailed a pa.s.sing car. "I cannot walk any farther. Good-night." And she was gone.

The priest stood as if a sudden blow had struck him, following the retreating car till it was out of sight, and then turned homeward, dazed, and with feeble steps. What was this that had come to him to so shake his life? What devil was tempting him to break his vows and forsake his faith? Should he fly from the city and from his work, or should he face what seemed to him, in the light of his consecration, a monstrous temptation, and try to conquer himself? He began to doubt his power to do this. He had always believed that it was easy to conquer nature.

And now a little brown woman had taught him that he reckons ill who leaves out the strongest human pa.s.sion. And yet suppose he should break his solemn vows and throw away his ideal, and marry Ruth Leigh, would he ever be happy? Here was a mediaeval survival confronted by a nineteenth-century skepticism. The situation was plainly insoluble. It was as plainly so to the clear mind of the unselfish little woman without faith as it was to him. Perhaps she could not have respected him if he had yielded. Strangely enough, the attraction of the priest for her and for other women who called themselves servants of humanity was in his consecration, in his att.i.tude of separation from the vanities and pa.s.sions of this world. They believed in him, though they did not share his faith. To Ruth Leigh this experience of love was as unexpected as it was to the priest. Perhaps because her life was lived on a less exalted plane she could bear it with more equanimity. But who knows? The habit of her life was endurance, the st.u.r.dy meeting of the duty of every day, with at least only a calm regard of the future. And she would go on. But who can measure the inner change in her life? She must certainly be changed by this deep experience, and, terrible as it was, perhaps enn.o.bled by it.

Is there not something supernatural in such a love itself? It has a wonderful transforming power. It is certain that a new light, a tender light, was cast upon her world. And who can say that some time, in the waiting and working future, this new light might not change life altogether for this faithful soul?

There was one person upon whom the tragedy of life thus far sat lightly.

Even her enemies, if she had any, would not deny that Carmen had an admirable temperament. If she had been a Moslem, it might be predicted that she would walk the wire 'El Serat' without a tremor. In these days she was busy with the plans of her new house. The project suited her ambition and her taste. The structure grew in her mind into barbaric splendor, but a barbaric splendor refined, which reveled in the exquisite adornment of the Alhambra itself. She was in daily conferences with her architect and her artists, she constantly consulted Jack about it, and Mavick whenever he was in town, and occasionally she awakened the interest of Henderson himself, who put no check upon her proceedings, although his mind was concerned with a vaster structure of his own.

She talked of little else, until in her small world there grew up a vast expectation of magnificence, of which hints appeared from time to time in the newspapers, mysterious allusions to Roman luxury, to Nero and his Golden House. Henderson read these paragraphs, as he read the paragraphs about his own fortune, with a grim smile.

"Your house is getting a lot of free advertising," he said to Carmen one evening after dinner in the library, throwing the newspaper on the table as he spoke.

"They all seem to like the idea," replied Carmen. "Did you see what one of the papers said about the use of wealth in adorning the city? That's my notion."

"I suppose," said Henderson, with a smile, "that you put that notion into the reporter's head."

"But he thought he suggested it to me."

"Let's look over the last drawing." Henderson half rose from his chair to pull the sheet towards him, but instantly sank back, and put his hand to his heart. Carmen saw that he was very pale, and ran round to his chair.

"What is it?"