Part 181

It seems a great pity, in view of the scientific organization of society, that there are so many sensibilities unclassified and unprovided for in the otherwise perfect machinery. Why should the beggar to whom you toss a silver dollar from your carriage feel a little grudge against you? Perhaps he wouldn't like to earn the dollar, but if it had been accompanied by a word of sympathy, his sensibility might have been soothed by your recognition of human partnership in the goods of this world. People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of right; but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill to swallow until self-respect is a little broken down. Probably the resentment lies in the recognition of the truth that it is much easier to be charitable than to be just. If Margaret had seen the effect produced by her letter she might have thought of this; she might have gone further, and reflected upon what would have been her own state of mind two years earlier if she had received such a letter. Miss Forsythe read it with a very heavy heart. She hesitated about showing it to Mrs. Fletcher, and when she did, and gave her the check, it was with a sense of shame.

"The insolence of the thing!" cried Mrs. Fletcher, as soon as she comprehended it.

"Not insolence," pleaded Miss Forsythe, softly; "it is out of the kindness of her heart. She would be dreadfully wounded to know that you took it so."

"Well," said Mrs. Fletcher, hotly, "I like that kind of sensibility. Does she think I have no feeling? Does she think I would take from her as a charity what her husband knows is mine by right?"

"Perhaps her husband--"

"No," Mrs. Fletcher interrupted. "Why didn't he send it, then? why didn't the company send it? They owe it. I'm not a pauper. And all the other bondholders who need the money as much as I do! I'm not saying that if the company sent it I should refuse it because the others had been treated unjustly; but to take it as a favor, like a beggar!"

"Of course you cannot take it from Margaret," said Miss Forsythe sadly.

"How dreadful it is!"

Mrs. Fletcher would have shared her last crust with Miss Forsythe, and if her own fortune were absolutely lost, she would not hesitate to accept the shelter of her present home, using her energies to add to their limited income, serving and being served in all love and trust. But this is different from taking a bounty from the rich.

The check had to go back. Even my wife, who saw no insolence in Margaret's attempt, applauded Mrs. Fletcher's spirit. She told Miss Forsythe that if things did not mend they might get a few little pupils for Mrs. Fletcher from the neighborhood, and Miss Forsythe knew that she was thinking that her own boy might have been one of them if he had lived. Mr. Morgan was a little satirical, as usual. He thought it would be a pity to check Margaret's growing notion that there was no wrong that money could not heal a remark that my wife thought unjust to the girl. Mrs. Fletcher was for re-enclosing the check without a word of comment, but that Miss Forsythe would not do.

"My dearest Margaret," she wrote, "I know the kindness of heart that moved you to do this, and I love you more than ever, and am crying as I think of it. But you must see yourself, when you reflect, that Mrs. Fletcher could not take this from you. Her self-respect would not permit it. Somebody has done a great wrong, and only those who have done it can undo it. I don't know much about such things, my dear, and I don't believe all that the newspapers have been saying, but there would be no need for charity if there had not been dishonesty somewhere. I cannot help thinking that. We do not blame you. And you must not take it to heart that I am compelled to send this back. I understand why you sent it, and you must try to understand why it cannot be kept."

There was more of this sort in the letter. It was full of a kind of sorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret's love were slipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet it had in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinster could not conceal. Softened as it was by affectionate words, and all the loving messages of the season, it was like a slap in the face to Margaret. She read it in the first place with intense mortification, and then with indignation. This was the way her loving spirit was flung back upon her! They did not blame her! They blamed her husband, then. They condemned him. It was his generosity that was spurned.

Is there a particular moment when we choose our path in life, when we take the right or the left? At this instant, when Margaret arose with the crumpled letter in her hand, and marched towards her husband's library, did she choose, or had she been choosing for the two years past, and was this only a publication of her election? Why had she secretly been a little relieved from restraint when her Brandon visit ended in the spring? They were against her husband; they disapproved of him, that was clear. Was it not a wife's duty to stand by her husband? She was indignant with the Brandon scrupulousness; it chafed her.. Was this simply because she loved her husband, or was this indignation a little due also to her liking for the world which so fell in with her inclinations? The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossible wholly to condemn or wholly to approve. If Margaret's destiny had been united with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernment in such a case as this? It is such a pity that for most people there is only one chance in life.

She laid the letter and the check upon her husband's desk. He read it with a slight frown, which changed to a smile of amusement as he looked up and saw Margaret's excitement.

"Well, it was a miss-go. Those folks up there are too good for this world. You'd better send it to the hospital."

"But you see that they say they do not blame me," Margaret said, with warmth.

"Oh, I can stand it. People usually don't try to hurt my feelings that way. Don't mind it, child. They will come to their senses, and see what nonsense it all is."

Yes, it was nonsense. And how generous and kind at heart her husband was! In his skillful making little of it she was very much comforted, and at the same time drawn into more perfect sympathy with him. She was glad she was not going to Brandon for Christmas; she would not submit herself to its censorship. The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her aunt was short and almost formal. She was very sorry they looked at the matter in that way. She thought she was doing right, and they might blame her or not, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any distinction to be set up between her and her husband, etc.

Was this little note a severance of her present from her old life? I do not suppose she regarded it so. If she had fully realized that it was a step in that direction, would she have penned it with so little regret as she felt? Or did she think that circumstances and not her own choice were responsible for her state of feeling? She was mortified, as has been said, but she wrote with more indignation than pain.

A year ago Carmen would have been the last person to whom Margaret would have spoken about a family affair of this kind. Nor would she have done so now, notwithstanding the intimacy established at Newport, if Carmen had not happened in that day, when Margaret was still hurt and excited, and skillfully and most sympathetically extracted from her the cause of the mood she found her in. But even with all these allowances, that Margaret should confide such a matter to Carmen was the most startling sign of the change that had taken place in her.

"Well," said this wise person, after she had wormed out the whole story, and expressed her profound sympathy, and then fallen into an attitude of deep reflection--"well, I wish I could cast my bread upon the waters in that way. What are you going to do with the money?"

"I've sent it to the hospital."

"What extravagance! And did you tell your aunt that?"

"Of course not."

"Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making her feel bad."

"But I don't want to make her feel bad."

"Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldly this way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that."

"You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike," cried Margaret, laughing in spite of herself--"both of you as bad as you can be."

"But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?" asked Carmen, innocently.

To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise, though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with Miss Forsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone filled her with alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did not dare to face.

There was a passage in the letter which she did not show; not that it was unfeeling, she told my wife afterwards, but that it exhibited a worldly-mindedness that she could not have conceived of in Margaret. She could bear separation from the girl on whom she had bestowed her tenderest affection, that she had schooled herself to expect upon her marriage--that, indeed, was only a part of her life of willing self-sacrifice--their paths must lie apart, and she could hope to see little of her. But what she could not bear was the separation in spirit, the wrenching apart of sympathy, the loss of her heart, and the thought of her going farther and farther away into that world whose cynical and materialistic view of life made her shudder. I think there are few tragedies in life comparable to this to a sensitive, trusting soul--not death itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos. Family quarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrong and even indignation to keep up the spirits. There was no family quarrel here, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss. In one sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended, she had lived so in this girl--ever since she came to her a child, in long curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous, affectionate thing. These two then never had had any secrets, never any pleasure, never any griefs they did not share. She had seen the child's mind unfold, the girl's grace and intelligence, the woman's character. Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!

Margaret's little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her, much in the condition she had left it. She might come back at any time, and be a girl again. Here were many of the things which she had cherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of her maidenhood. It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness the morning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslin curtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills. She must be here; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the little Margaret came back to her. Ah, and when she turned, would she hear the quick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangled hair and lift her up and kiss her? There in that closet still hung articles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she became a woman--kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift. How each one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the inner closet was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it was that led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge her grief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little bonnet, a spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she took her first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbons were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almost as fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's delight in the nodding roses!

When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. God help her!

XIX

The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse than a broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which the patient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from the vulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture in domestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel would be less lamentable than the withering away of friendship while appearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than the gradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other--a severance produced by change of views and of principle, and the substitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is certain to take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to habituate one to a lower view of human nature.

There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, but there was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. There was with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to the growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life. Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to be endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the harder to bear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted it, and had moments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great compensation for such loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career that is more and more agreeable. And I had to confess, when occasionally I saw Margaret during that winter, that she did not need us. Why should she? Did not the city offer her everything that she desired? And where in the world are beauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a magnificent establishment better appreciated? I do not know what criterion newspaper notoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney Henderson's movements were as faithfully chronicled as if she had been a visiting princess or an actress of eccentric proclivities. Her name appeared as patroness of all the charities, the balls, the soirees, musical and literary, and if it did not appear in a list of the persons at any entertainment, one might suspect that the affair lacked the cachet of the best society. I suppose the final test of one's importance is to have all the details of one's wardrobe spread before the public. Judged by this, Margaret's career in New York was phenomenal. Even our interested household could not follow her in all the changing splendor of her raiment. In time even Miss Forsythe ceased to read all these details, but she cut them out, deposited them with other relics in a sort of mortuary box of the child and the maiden. I used to wonder if, in the Brandon attitude of mind at this period, there were not just a little envy of such unclouded prosperity. It is so much easier to forgive a failure than a success.

In the spring the Hendersons went abroad. The resolution to go may have been sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to run up and say good-by. The newspapers said that the trip was taken on account of Mrs. Henderson's health; that it was because Henderson needed rest from overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time, pending the settlement of certain complications. There were ugly stories afloat, but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many different sorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every word Henderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression of his far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immensely raised. Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humored deference of the world to this sort of success. It is said that the attraction of gravitation lessens according to the distance from the earth, and there seems to be a region of aerial freedom, if one can attain it, where the moral forces cease to be operative.

They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interim made two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it was made public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection with names of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity. Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of her experiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went they commanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune. What most impressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so little interested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressed such a lively desire to see. If she saw them at all, it was from a different point of view than that she formerly had. She did indeed express her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours in London, to whom I had written to call on her--people in very moderate circumstances, I am ashamed to say--but she had not time to see much of them. She and her husband had spent a couple of days at Chisholm --delightful days. Of the earl she had literally nothing to say, except that he was very kind, and that his family received them with the most engaging and simple cordiality. "It makes me laugh," she wrote from Chisholm, "when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport. I've got some ideas for our new house." A note came from "John Lyon" to Miss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in so poor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon. I did not see it, but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.

In Paris Margaret was ill--very ill; and this misfortune caused for a time a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with a disappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of their natures. She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all our apprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession of gayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies. They returned in June. Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and there would be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with us on her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life were more and more divergent.

How could it be otherwise? There were so many topics of conversation that we had to avoid. Even light remarks on current news, comments that we used to make freely on the conduct of conspicuous persons, now carried condemnation that took a personal color. The doubtful means of making money, the pace of fashionable life, the wasteful prodigality of the time, we instinctively shrank from speaking of before Margaret. Perhaps we did her injustice. She was never more gracious, never more anxious to please. I fancied that there was at times something pathetic in her wistful desire for our affection and esteem. She was always a generous girl, and I have no doubt she felt repelled at the quiet rejection of her well-meant efforts to play the Lady Bountiful. There were moments during her brief visit when her face was very sad, but no doubt her predominant feeling escaped her in regard to the criticism quoted from somebody on Jerry Hollowell's methods and motives. "People are becoming very self-righteous," she said.

My wife said to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation of Carmen Eschelle, "The people I cannot stand are those who pretend they are not wicked." If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism has usually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up as Margaret had been could not very well come to her present view of life without a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so lovely --perhaps there is no moral quality in a good temper--that change of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very attractiveness of the worldly sort, I fancied, that pained her aunt, and marked the separateness of their sympathies.

How could it be otherwise than that our interests should diverge? It was a very busy summer with the Hendersons. They were planning the New York house, which had been one of the objects of Henderson's early ambition. The sea-air had been prescribed for Margaret, and Henderson had built a steam-yacht, the equipment and furnishing of which had been a prolific newspaper topic. It was greatly admired by yachtsmen for the beauty of its lines and its speed, and pages were written about its sumptuous and comfortable interior. I never saw it, having little faith in the comfort of any structure that is not immovably reposeful, but from the descriptions it was a boudoir afloat. In it short voyages were made during the summer all along the coast from New York to Maine, and the arrival and departure of the Henderson yacht was one of the telegraphic items we always looked for. Carmen Eschelle was usually of the party on board, sometimes the Misses Arbuser; it was always a gay company, and in whatever harbor it dropped anchor there was a new impetus given to the somewhat languid pleasure of the summer season. We read of the dinners and lunches on board, the entertainments where there were wine and dancing and moonlight, and all that. I always thought of it as a fairy sort of ship, sailing on summer seas, freighted with youth and beauty, and carrying pleasure and good-fortune wherever it went. What more pleasing spectacle than this in a world that has such a bad name for want and misery?