Part 21 (1/2)
Henderson and Hollowell got what they wanted in regard to the Southwest consolidation, and got it in the most gentlemanly way. n.o.body was bought, no one was offered a bribe. There were, of course, fees paid for opinions and for professional services, and some able men induced to take a prospective interest in what was demonstrably for the public good. But no vote was given for a consideration--at least this was the report of an investigating committee later on. Nothing, of course, goes through Congress of its own weight, except occasionally a resolution of sympathy with the Coreans, and the calendar needs to be watched, and the good offices of friends secured. Skillful wording of a clause, the right moment, and opportune recognition do the business. The main thing is to create a favorable atmosphere and avoid discussion. When the bill was pa.s.sed, Hollowell did give a dinner on his own invitation, a dinner that was talked of for its refinement as well as its cost. The chief topic of conversation was the development of the Southwest and the extension of our trade relations with Mexico. The little scheme, hatched in Henderson's New York office, in order to transfer certain already created values to the pockets of himself and his friends, appeared to have a national importance. When Henderson rose to propose the health of Jerry Hollowell, neither he nor the man he eulogized as a creator of industries whose republican patriotism was not bound by State lines nor circ.u.mscribed by sections was without a sense of the humor of the situation.
And yet in a certain way Mr. Hollowell was conscious that he merited the eulogy. He had come to believe that the enterprises in which he was engaged, that absolutely gave him, it was believed, an income of a million a year, were for the public good. Such vast operations lent him the importance of a public man. If he was a victim of the confusion of mind which mistook his own prosperity for the general benefit, he only shared a wide public opinion which regards the acc.u.mulation of enormous fortunes in a few hands as an evidence of national wealth.
Margaret left Was.h.i.+ngton with regret. She had a desire to linger in the opening of the charming spring there, for the little parks were brilliant with flower beds-tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, violets--the magnolias and redbuds in their prodigal splendor attracted the eye a quarter of a mile away, and the slender twigs of the trees began to be suffused with tender green. It was the sentimental time of the year.
But Congress had gone, and whatever might be the promise of the season, Henderson had already gathered the fruits that had been forced in the hothouse of the session. He was in high spirits.
”It has all been so delightful, dear!” said Margaret as they rode away in the train, and caught their last sight of the dome. They were in Hollowell's private car, which the good-natured old fellow had put at their disposal. And Margaret had a sense of how delightful and prosperous this world is as seen from a private car.
”Yes,” Henderson answered, thinking of various things; ”it has been a successful winter. The capital is really attractive. It occurred to me the other day that America has invented a new kind of city, the apotheosis of the village--Was.h.i.+ngton.”
They talked of the city, of the acquaintances of the winter, of Hollowell's thoughtfulness in lending them his car, that their bridal trip, as he had said, might have a good finish. Margaret's heart opened to the world. She thought of the friends at Brandon, she thought of the poor old ladies she was accustomed to look after in the city, of the ragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was a manager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and she thought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so many of the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and looking across to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with a wife's unblus.h.i.+ng effrontery, ”Dearest, how handsome you are!”
The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in Was.h.i.+ngton Square. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature of this prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If it came, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that used to be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of money, after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell, but on acquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to her in the newspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's business, but did it differ from that of other men she had known, except that it was on a larger scale? And how much good could be done with money!
On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to which she had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed to ”My Wife,” and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a card, on which was written, ”For Margaret's Easter Charities.” Flushed with pleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was descending to breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears in her eyes, cried, ”Dearest, how good you are!”
It is such a good and prosperous generation.
XIV
Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May, the time of the apple blossoms--just a year from the swift wooing of Margaret--Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in a mourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earl of Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air of profound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought to his own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine him more closely to England. It also contained congratulations--which circ.u.mstances had delayed--upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simple wish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been for these purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit to Brandon and the circle of friends there, and it was pervaded by a tone, almost affectionate, towards Miss Forsythe, which touched her very deeply. She said it was such a manly letter.
America, the earl said, interested him more and more. In all history, he wrote, there never had been such an opportunity for studying the formation of society, for watching the working out of political problems; the elements meeting were so new, and the conditions so original, that historical precedents were of little service as guides.
He acknowledged an almost irresistible impulse to come back, and he announced his intention of another visit as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted.
I had noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude as the country is, and uninteresting according to certain established standards, it seems to have a ”drawing” quality, a certain unexplained fascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality that attracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares.
that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an American wife, his curiosity about the country is sated. But this is generalizing on narrow premises.
There was certainly in Lyon's letter a longing to see the country again, but the impression it made upon me when I read it--due partly to its tone towards Miss Forsythe, almost a family tone--was that the earldom was an empty thing without the love of Margaret Debree. Life is so brief at the best, and has so little in it when the one thing that the heart desires is denied. That the earl should wish to come to America again without hope or expectation was, however, quite human nature. If a man has found a diamond and lost it, he is likely to go again and again and wander about the field where he found it, not perhaps in any defined hope of finding another, but because there is a melancholy satisfaction in seeing the spot again. It was some such feeling that impelled the earl to wish to see again Miss Forsythe, and perhaps to talk of Margaret, but he certainly had no thought that there were two Margaret Debrees in America.
To her aunt's letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon's loss, Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence. The news had already reached the Esch.e.l.les, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written to the new earl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to his change of fortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now enlarged opportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans--a most unworldly note. ”I used to think,” she had said, when confiding what she had done to Margaret, ”that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but you have done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work among us fas.h.i.+onable sinners. Do you know,” she went on, ”that I feel a great deal less worldly than I used to?”
Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added that Carmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded as she pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at all agree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she came back in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with Carmen was one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be more and more companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of character made her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact remained that she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried to astonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child of her day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but her candid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.
”Margaret,” she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts of confidence, ”seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.
Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much in love as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is in love with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him--any woman might be that--but, do you know, she actually believes in him.”
”Why shouldn't she believe in him?” exclaimed Miss Forsythe, in astonishment.
”Oh, of course, in a way,” the girl went on. ”I like Mr. Henderson--I like him very much--but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now to believe in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get along just as well--and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have any deceptions?”
Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to her that the bottom had fallen out of society.
”Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?” the girl persisted.
”If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in each other, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from a woman.”