On the Stairs Part 6

These were the only American observations I heard from Raymond during that fortnight.

I wish he had been as successful on the night of our arrival in London when we encountered, in the court behind the big gilded grille of the Grand Metropole, the porter of that grandiose establishment. We had come together from Harwich and did not reach this hotel until half an hour before midnight. We had had our things put on the pavement and had dismissed the cab, and the porter, with an airy, tentative insolence, now reported the place full.

"_I_ don't know who ordered your luggage down, sir; _I_ didn't," he said with a smile that was an experiment in disrespect.

Raymond looked as if he were for immediately adjusting himself to this--though I could hardly imagine his ever having done the like in Paris or in Florence. He was quite willing to confess himself in the wrong: yes, he ought to have remembered that the "season" was beginning; he ought to have known that this particular season, though young, had set in with uncommon vigor; he ought to have known that all the hotels, even the largest, were likely to be crowded and have sent on a wire. The porter, emboldened by the departure of the cab, and by my companion's contrite silence, began to embroider the theme.

Now a single week in England had taught me that no two men in that country--the home of political but not of social democracy--are likely to talk long on even terms. One man must almost necessarily take the upper hand and leave to the other the lower, and the relation must be reached early. I resolved on the upper--cab or no cab. I glared--as well and as coldly as I could. The fellow was only a year or so older than I.

"You are too chatty," I said. "Fewer words and more action. If you are full, call somebody to take us and our baggage to some hotel near by that is not full."

The fellow sobered down and gave us his first look resembling respect.

"Very good, sir. I will, sir. Thank you, sir,"--though he had nothing to thank me for, and though he well knew there was to be nothing.

Raymond looked at me as one looks at a friend who surprises by the sudden disclosure of some unexpected talent or power.

"But you said 'baggage,'" he commented.

"Indeed I did," said I.

V

Our new hotel, we discovered next morning, was duplicated in name by another, four doors down the street. During the day we heard the reason for this. A domestic difficulty had overtaken husband and wife and the two had separated, each keeping an interest in the serviceable name and a frontage on the familiar street. We were in the husband's hotel, under the very discreet ministrations of the young woman who had caused the break. "Do you quite like this?" Raymond had asked me. But he became rea.s.sured on seeing in the guest-book the names of two or three well-known and sufficiently respected compatriots. By the next day he was able to cast on Miss Brough, as she flitted (still discreetly) through her functions, the eye of a qualified idealization. I am sure he would never have viewed indulgently any such situation at home. But the poor, patient, cautious girl helped him toward realizing the sophistications and corruptions of European society, and so he welcomed her. But I believe he avoided speaking to her. She may have been hurt, or she may have been amused; or neither. Yet, after all, this _contretemps_ was for him, I felt, but a prosaic subst.i.tute for something richer. A similar situation in Naples, say, taken at close range, might have quickened his interest considerably.

Next day there was something different for him to report. He had gone into a courtyard off Holborn, drawn by the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Four or five little girls were dancing, and some older women stood looking on. For a few moments he looked on too, probably with an effect of aloof and amused patronage. But patronage was not for that court.

Presently one of the younger women, who wore a hat full of messy plumes and carried a small fish in each hand by the tail, stepped up and invited him to trip a measure with her. "Trip a measure"--it has a fine Elizabethan or Jacobean sound, whether she used the precise expression or not. But Raymond demurred; at first politely; later, perhaps not so politely. But he was whisked into the dance and made to take several turns. He was so embarra.s.sed that he called it all an "adventure."

Possibly it was meant for a lesson in manners.

Thus Raymond in England. As he said, he liked the Continent better. I hope he showed to better advantage there, and I should have liked to see him there--to be with him there. For he rather put a brake on any measure of exuberance and momentum which I might have brought to England with me, and I could only trust that his strait-jacket was partly unlaced among the French and Italians. I think that likely, for with them he was, of course, an acknowledged and unmistakable foreigner.

But my fortnight with him was cramped and uncomfortable; and when we parted at the American Exchange--I for Liverpool and he for Calais--I confess I had a slight feeling of relief. I felt, too, that my conduct, however native and unstudied, had pleased the Island quite as well as his.

At the Exchange itself he never read American newspapers--least of all, one from his own town. I believe, too, he avoided them on the Continent.

Living a very special life, he meant to keep himself integral, uncontaminate. And behind us both was the other world, his own, all vital and astir.

Yes, I am aware that my prose is pedestrian, and that Europe--as it once was, to us--deserves a brighter and higher note. I will attempt, just here, a purple patch.

Europe, then,--the beacon, hope, and cynosure of our fresh, ingenuous youth--the glamorous realm afar which drew to itself from across the sea our eager artist-bands, pilgrims to the Old, the Stately, and the Fair; Europe, which reared above our dull horizon the towers of Oxford and of Notre Dame, sent up into our pale, empty sky the s.h.i.+mmering mirage of Venice, and cast across our workaday way the grave and n.o.ble shadow of Rome; Europe, which gave out through the varying voices of Correggio, Canova, Hugo, and Wagner the cry, so lofty and so piercing-sweet, of Art; Europe, which with t.i.tles and insignia and social grandeurs, once dazzled and bemused our inexperienced senses ... and so on.

Easy!

But worth while?

I shall not attempt to decide.

To-day Europe seems not all we once found it; and we, on the other hand, have come to be more than some of us at least once figured ourselves. We are beginning to have glamours and importances of our own.

VI

Raymond lingered on for a year or more in Italy, and came home, as I have implied, in time for my wedding. He found his native city more uncouth and unkempt than ever. Such it was, absolutely; and such it was, relatively, after his years under a more careful and self-respecting regime. The population was still advancing by leaps and bounds, and hopeful spirits had formed a One-Million Club. A few others, even more ardent, said that the population was already a million, or close upon it, and busied themselves to start a Two-Million Club. They had their eyes wide open to the advantage of numbers, and tightly closed to the palpable fact that the community was unable properly to house and administer the numbers it already had. The city seemed to cry: "I need a friendly monitor--one who will point me out the decencies and compel me to adopt them." The demagogue who had ruled and misruled before had been reelected once or twice, and the newspapers were still indulging their familiar strain of irresponsible and ineffective criticism. The dark world behind him had become more populous and bold, and the forces for good still seemed unable to organize and cooperate toward making betterment an actuality. But new people were always flocking in--people from the farms, villages and country-towns of the Middle region--and bringing with them the uncontaminated rustic ideals of rightness and decorum: a clean stream pouring into a turbid pool, and the time was to come when it would make itself felt. Meanwhile, the city remained--to Raymond--a gross, sharp village, one full of folk who, whether from the Middle West or from Middle Europe, had never come within ten leagues of gentility, and who, one and all, were absorbedly and unabashedly bent on the object which had suddenly a.s.sembled them at this one favored spot--the pus.h.i.+ng of their individual fortunes. A hauptstadt-to-be, perhaps; but, so far, an immensely inchoate and repellent miscellany.

Raymond's father gave him a sober welcome. His mother attempted a brief, spasmodic display of affection; but it was too much, and only a maid and her pillows saw her for the next few days. His father seemed older, much older; tired, careworn, worried. The trouble of settling old Jehiel's estate had been all that could have been expected, and more.

There were claims, complications, lawsuits, what not; and through all this maze James Prince had to put up with the inherited help of the dry, dismal old fellow whom I had seen in earlier days at the house. I had come, now, to a better professional knowledge of him. He was a man of probity, and of some ability, but a deliberate; impossible to hurry, and not easy, as it seemed, even to interest. Under him matters dragged dully through the courts, and others' nerves were worn to shreds. I remember how surprised I was one day on hearing that he had picked up enough resolution to die.

Raymond did not much concern himself about his father's burdens. He a.s.sumed, I suppose, that such taxes on a man's brain and general vitality were proper enough to middle age and to the business life of a large city. However, he was living--just as he had princ.i.p.ally lived abroad--on his father's bounty. His contributions to the press--whether a daily, or, of late, a monthly--brought in no significant sums; and a bequest of some size from his grandfather was slow in finding its way into his hands.

As I have said, Raymond might have taken an advantageous position in home society. He made no effort, and I sometimes caught myself wondering if his att.i.tude might be that there was "n.o.body here." He might have joined his father's club; but the older men princ.i.p.ally played billiards and talked their business affairs between. However, he did not care for billiards, nor had their affairs any affinity with his. A younger set--noisy and a.s.sertive out of proportion to its numbers--gave him no consolation, still less anything like edification. They were _au premier plan_; they possessed no background; they were without atmosphere--without envelopment, as Johnny McComas might have amended it (though no such lack would have been noted or resented by Johnny himself). _Bref_, he knew what they all were without going to see. And as for "society," it rustled flimsily, like tissue-paper; bright, in a way, but still thin and crackling.

I wonder how he found such society as attended my wedding. I shall not describe it; I did not describe Johnny's--probably the more important event of the two for the purposes of this calm narrative. Yet, if you will permit me, I shall touch on two points.

I wish, first, to say that, in my ears and to my eyes, the name "Elsie"

is just as dear and charming as it ever was. Perhaps, at one period of my courts.h.i.+p, I wondered if the name would wear. No name more delightful and suitable for a gay, arch, sweet young girl of twenty; but how, I asked myself, will the name sit on a woman of forty, or on one of sixty?

Well, I will confess that, at forty, a certain strain of incongruity appeared; but it marvelously vanished during the following score of years, and the name now seems utterly right for the dainty figure and gentle face of my lifelong companion. And though our eldest daughter is unmarried and thirty-five, we have never regretted pa.s.sing on this beautiful name to her.

My second point must deal with Raymond's att.i.tude toward me on my wedding-day and on the days preceding it. He was stiff, constrained, dissatisfied--merely courteous toward my Elsie, and not at all cordial to me. I wondered whether he blamed me for thus bringing him back home; but the real reason, as I came to understand later, was quite different.

He regarded the marriage of a friend as a personal deprivation, and the bride as the chief figure in the conspiracy. After my defection, or misappropriation, he solaced himself by trying to make one or two other friends.h.i.+ps. When these friends married in turn, like process produced like results. These men, however, he threw overboard completely; in my case, he showed, after a while, some relenting, and ultimately even forgiveness. By the time he came to marry on his own account, the last of his very few bachelor friends had "gone off"; so there was no chance of inflicting on anybody that displeasure which others had several times inflicted on him.

He sent Elsie a suitable present, and stood beside me through the ceremony as graciously as he was able.

"I wish you both great joy," he said firmly, at the end; and it was six weeks before we saw him in our little home.

PART IV

I

Johnny McComas was still carrying on his business life and his home life in the suburb where he had married, when I came, finally, to make my first call on the domestic group of which he was the nub. Still in the future was the day when he was to move into town, and to have also a summer home on the North Sh.o.r.e, and to make some of his father-in-law's spare funds yield profitable results, and to arouse among wistful clerks and unsuccessful "operators" an admiring wonder as the youngest bank-president in the "Loop."

I looked in on him one evening in late November. I found a house too emphatically furnished and a wife too concerned about making an impression. I did not consider myself a young man of prime consequence and did not relish the expenditure of so much effort: after all, Johnny's standing, Johnny's wife, Johnny's domestic _entourage_ were not before a judgment-bar. It was plain to see that for Mrs. John W.

McComas complete social comfort had not yet been reached, and I wondered if the next move might not show it as farther away than ever.

Johnny himself was bluff and direct, and took things as a matter of course. Much had been done, but more remained to be done; meanwhile all was well and good. After a little, his wife was content to leave us alone together, and we drifted to Johnny's "den"--a word new at that time, and descriptive of the only feature of his home on which he laid the slightest self-conscious emphasis.

I had heard that there were twins--boys; and soon, as the evening was still young, I heard the twins themselves. They had reached the age of ten months, and consequently had developed wants, but no articulate means for making those wants known. Therefore they howled, and they began howling in unison now. Perhaps it was for them that a foresighted mother had left us alone together.

"Great little hollerers!" said Johnny placidly, pulling at his pipe.

I was still a bachelor. "Might shut the door?" I proposed.

"If you like," said Johnny, without enthusiasm. "They wake me every morning at five," he added.

Yes, I was still a bachelor--and probably a tactless, even a brutal, one.