Part 186

"Bless me, no, I didn't mean that; that is, you know"--Jack didn't exactly see his way out of the dilemma--"Edith is a little old-fashioned; but what's the harm in this, anyway?"

"I did not say there was any," she replied, with a smile at his embarrassment. "Only I think there are half a dozen women in the room who could do it better, with a little practice. It isn't as Oriental as I thought it would be."

"I cannot say as to that. I know Edith thinks I've gone into the depths of the Orient. But, on the whole, I'm glad--" Jack stopped on the verge of speaking out of his better nature.

"Now don't be rude again. I quite understand that she is not here."

The dialogue was cut short by a clapping of hands. The spectators took their places again, the lights were lowered, the illumination was turned on the white canvas, and the dancer, warmed with wine and adulation, took a bolder pose, and, as her limbs began to move, sang a wild Moorish melody in a shrill voice, action and words flowing together into the passion of the daughter of tents in a desert life. It was all vigorous, suggestive, more properly religious, Mavick would have said, and the applause was vociferous.

More wine went about. There was another dance, and then another, a slow languid movement, half melancholy and full of sorrow, if one might say that of a movement, for unrepented sin; a gypsy dance this, accompanied by the mournful song of Boabdil, "The Last Sigh of the Moor." And suddenly, when the feelings of the spectators were melted to tender regret, a flash out of all this into a joyous defiance, a wooing of pleasure with smiling lips and swift feet, with the clash of cymbals and the quickened throb of the drum. And so an end with the dawn of a new day.

It was not yet dawn, however, for the clocks were only striking three as the assembly, in winter coats and soft wraps, fluttered out to its carriages, chattering and laughing, with endless good-nights in the languages of France, Germany, and Spain.

The streets were as nearly deserted as they ever are; here and there a lumbering market-wagon from Jersey, an occasional street-car with its tinkling bell, rarer still the rush of a trembling train on the elevated, the voice of a belated reveler, a flitting female figure at a street corner, the roll of a livery hack over the ragged pavement. But mainly the noise of the town was hushed, and in the sharp air the stars, far off and uncontaminated, glowed with a pure lustre.

Farther up town it was quite still, and in one of the noble houses in the neighborhood of the Park sat Edith Delancy, married not quite a year, listening for the roll of wheels and the click of a night-key.

II

Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, for no one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate. The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and he sauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an elective course, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came in contact. And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merely easy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to him when he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies. The cowboys and the severe moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to get the drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother. It isn't a bad test of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who have few or none of the conventional virtues. These non-moral enforcers of justice--as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in the New York clubs liked him--and perhaps the moral standard of approval of the one was as good as the other.

Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of England he might have taken first-rate rank in athletics. But he had never taken first-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship. He had a great many expensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge, except in imagination. The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a library of scarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him. Those who account for failures in life by a man's circumstances, and not by a lack in the man himself, which is always the secret of failure, said that Jack was unfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty thousand a year. This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough to permit a man to expand in any direction. It is true that he was related to millions and moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these millions might never flow into his bank account. They were not in hand to use, and they also helped to paralyze effort--like black clouds of an impending shower that may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher indoors.

The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marry Edith Fletcher. The wedding, which took place some eight months before the advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the girl had even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his society entirely, was supposed to have ideals. Her family, indeed, was an old one on the island, and was prominent long before the building of the stone bridge on Canal Street over the outlet of Collect Pond. Those who knew Edith well detected in her that strain of moral earnestness which made the old Fletchers such stanch and trusty citizens. The wonder was not that Jack, with his easy susceptibility to refined beauty, should have been attracted to her, or have responded to a true instinct of what was best for him, but that Edith should have taken up with such a perfect type of the aimlessness of the society strata of modern life. The wonder, however, was based upon a shallow conception of the nature of woman. It would have been more wonderful if the qualities that endeared Jack to college friends and club men, to the mighty sportsmen who do not hesitate, in the clubs, to devastate Canada and the United States of big game, and to the border ruffians of Dakota, should not have gone straight to the tender heart of a woman of ideals. And when in all history was there a woman who did not believe, when her heart went with respect for certain manly traits, that she could inspire and lift a man into a noble life?

The silver clock in the breakfast-room was striking ten, and Edith was already seated at the coffee-urn, when Jack appeared. She was as fresh as a rose, and greeted him with a bright smile as he came behind her chair and bent over for the morning kiss--a ceremony of affection which, if omitted, would have left a cloud on the day for both of them, and which Jack always declared was simply a necessity, or the coffee would have no flavor. But when a man has picked a rose, it is always a sort of climax which is followed by an awkward moment, and Jack sat down with the air of a man who has another day to get through with.

"Were you amused with the dancing--this morning?"

"So, so," said Jack, sipping his coffee. "It was a stunning place for it, that studio; you'd have liked that. The Lamons and Mavick and a lot of people from the provinces were there. The company was more fun than the dance, especially to a fellow who has seen how good it can be and how bad in its home."

"You have a chance to see the Spanish dancer again, under proper auspices," said Edith, without looking up.

"How's that?"

"We are invited by Mrs. Brown--"

"The mother of the Bible class at St. Philip's?"

"Yes--to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance."

"Who? Mrs. Brown?"

Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. "They are to make an artificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning."

"They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religious in its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?"

"Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a small check."

"Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing--shirking my duty of personal service by a contribution?"

"Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night, did you?"

Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such a gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these months. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't break up my day so."

"As for instance?"

"Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse --Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and see a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds and other animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought were caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to see things in motion--flying birds and moving horses which we never caught till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step into the club a minute, and--"

"Be in at lunch? Bess is coming."

"Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do."

Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the outer door close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of notes at her plate, and thinking of many things--things that it began to dawn upon her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must be done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it had looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear the vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes. Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much easier to her before she had tried them.

As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch of English violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no better subject. Many people thought her eyes her best feature; they were large brown eyes, yet not always brown, green at times, liquid, but never uncertain, apt to have a smile in them, yet their chief appealing characteristic was trustfulness, a pure sort of steadfastness, that always conveyed the impression of a womanly personal interest in the person upon whom they were fixed. They were eyes that haunted one like a remembered strain of music. The lips were full, and the mouth was drawn in such exquisite lines that it needed the clear-cut and emphasized chin to give firmness to its beauty. The broad forehead, with arching eyebrows, gave an intellectual cast to a face the special stamp of which was purity. The nose, with thin open nostrils, a little too strong for beauty, together with the chin, gave the impression of firmness and courage; but the wonderful eyes, the inviting mouth, so modified this that the total impression was that of high spirit and great sweetness of character. It was the sort of face from which one might expect passionate love or unflinching martyrdom. Her voice had a quality the memory of which lingered longer even than the expression of her eyes; it was low, and, as one might say, a fruity voice, not quite clear, though sweet, as if veiled in femineity. This note of royal womanhood was also in her figure, a little more than medium in height, and full of natural grace. Somehow Edith, with all these good points, had not the reputation of a belle or a beauty--perhaps for want of some artificial splendor--but one could not be long in her company without feeling that she had great charm, without which beauty becomes insipid and even commonplace, and with which the plainest woman is attractive.

Edith's theory of life, if one may so dignify the longings of a young girl, had been very simple, and not at all such as would be selected by the heroine of a romance. She had no mission, nor was she afflicted by that modern form of altruism which is a yearning for notoriety by conspicuous devotion to causes and reforms quite outside her normal sphere of activity. A very sincere person, with strong sympathy for humanity tempered by a keen perception of the humorous side of things, she had a purpose, perhaps not exactly formulated, of making the most out of her own life, not in any outward and shining career, but by a development of herself in the most helpful and harmonious relations to her world. And it seemed to her, though she had never philosophized it, that a marriage such as she believed she had made was the woman's way to the greatest happiness and usefulness. In this she followed the dictates of a clear mind and a warm heart. If she had reasoned about it, considering how brief life is, and how small can be any single contribution to a better social condition, she might have felt more strongly the struggle against nature, and the false position involved in the new idea that marriage is only a kind of occupation, instead of an ordinance decreed in the very constitution of the human race. With the mere instinct of femineity she saw the falseness of the assumption that the higher life for man or woman lies in separate and solitary paths through the wilderness of this world. To an intelligent angel, seated on the arch of the heavens, the spectacle of the latter-day pseudo-philosophic and economic dribble about the doubtful expediency of having a wife, and the failure of marriage, must seem as ludicrous as would a convention of birds or of flowers reasoning that the processes of nature had continued long enough. Edith was simply a natural woman, who felt rather than reasoned that in a marriage such as her heart approved she should make the most of her life.

But as she sat here this morning this did not seem to be so simple a matter as it had appeared. It began to be suspected that in order to make the most of one's self it was necessary to make the most of many other persons and things. The stream in its own channel flowed along not without vexations, friction and foaming and dashings from bank to bank; but it became quite another and a more difficult movement when it was joined to another stream, with its own currents and eddies and impetuosities and sluggishness, constantly liable to be deflected if not put altogether on another course. Edith was not putting it in this form as she turned over her notes of invitation and appointments and engagements, but simply wondering where the time for her life was to come in, and for Jack's life, which occupied a much larger space than it seemed to occupy in the days before it was joined to hers. Very curious this discovery of what another's life really is. Of course the society life must go on, that had always gone on, for what purpose no one could tell, only it was the accepted way of disposing of time; and now there were the dozen ways in which she was solicited to show her interest in those supposed to be less fortunate in life than herself-the alleviation of the miseries of her own city. And with society, and charity, and sympathy with the working classes, and her own reading, and a little drawing and painting, for which she had some talent, what became of that comradeship with Jack, that union of interests and affections, which was to make her life altogether so high and sweet?

This reverie, which did not last many minutes, and was interrupted by the abrupt moving away of Edith to the writing-desk in her own room, was caused by a moment's vivid realization of what Jack's interests in life were. Could she possibly make them her own? And if she did, what would become of her own ideals?

III

It was indeed a busy day for Jack. Great injustice would be done him if it were supposed that he did not take himself and his occupations seriously. His mind was not disturbed by trifles. He knew that he had on the right sort of four-in-hand necktie, with the appropriate pin of pear-shaped pearl, and that he carried the cane of the season. These things come by a sort of social instinct, are in the air, as it were, and do not much tax the mind. He had to hasten a little to keep his half-past-eleven o'clock appointment at Stalker's stables, and when he arrived several men of his set were already waiting, who were also busy men, and had made a little effort to come round early and assist Jack in making up his mind about the horse.

When Mr. Stalker brought out Storm, and led him around to show his

## action, the connoisseurs took on a critical attitude, an attitude of

judgment, exhibited not less in the poise of the head and the serious face than in the holding of the cane and the planting of legs wide apart. And the attitude had a refined nonchalance which professional horsemen scarcely ever attain. Storm could not have received more critical and serious attention if he had been a cooked terrapin. He could afford to stand this scrutiny, and he seemed to move about with the consciousness that he knew more about being a horse than his judges.

Storm was, in fact, a splendid animal, instinct with life from his thin flaring nostril to his small hoof; black as a raven, his highly groomed skin took the polish of ebony, and showed the play of his powerful muscles, and, one might say, almost the nervous currents that thrilled his fine texture. His large, bold eyes, though not wicked, flamed now and then with an energy and excitement that gave ample notice that he would obey no master who had not stronger will and nerve than his own. It was a tribute to Jack's manliness that, when he mounted him for a turn in the ring, Storm seemed to recognize the fine quality of both seat and hand, and appeared willing to take him on probation.

"He's got good points," said Mr. Herbert Albert Flick, "but I'd like a straighter back."

"I'll be hanged, though, Jack," was Mr. Mowbray Russell's comment, "if I'd ride him in the Park before he's docked. Say what you like about

## action, a horse has got to have style."

"Moves easy, falls off a little too much to suit me in the quarter," suggested Mr. Pennington Docstater, sucking the head of his cane. "How about his staying quality, Stalker?"

"That's just where he is, Mr. Docstater; take him on the road, he's a stayer for all day. Goes like a bird. He'll take you along at the rate of nine miles in forty-five minutes as long as you want to sit there."

"Jump?" queried little Bobby Simerton, whose strong suit at the club was talking about meets and hunters.

"Never refused anything I put him at," replied Stalker; "takes every fence as if it was the regular thing."

Storm was in this way entirely taken to pieces, praised and disparaged, in a way to give Stalker, it might be inferred from his manner, a high opinion of the knowledge of these young gentlemen. "It takes a gentleman," in fact, Stalker said, "to judge a hoss, for a good hoss is a gentleman himself." It was much discussed whether Storm would do better for the Park or for the country, whether it would be better to put him in the field or keep him for a roadster. It might, indeed, be inferred that Jack had not made up his mind whether he should buy a horse for use in the Park or for country riding. Even more than this might be inferred from the long morning's work, and that was that while Jack's occupation was to buy a horse, if he should buy one his occupation would be gone. He was known at the club to be looking for the right sort of a horse, and that he knew what he wanted, and was not easily satisfied; and as long as he occupied this position he was an object of interest to sellers and to his companions.

Perhaps Mr. Stalker understood this, for when the buyers had gone he remarked to the stable-boy, "Mr. Delancy, he don't want to buy no hoss."

When the inspection of the horse was finished it was time for lunch, and the labors of the morning were felt to justify this indulgence, though each of the party had other engagements, and was too busy to waste the time. They went down to the Knickerbocker.

The lunch was slight, but its ordering took time and consideration, as it ought, for nothing is so destructive of health and mental tone as the snatching of a mid-day meal at a lunch counter from a bill of fare prepared by God knows whom. Mr. Russell said that if it took time to buy a horse, it ought to take at least equal time and care to select the fodder that was to make a human being wretched or happy. Indeed, a man who didn't give his mind to what he ate wouldn't have any mind by-and-by to give to anything. This sentiment had the assent of the table, and was illustrated by varied personal experience; and a deep feeling prevailed, a serious feeling, that in ordering and eating the right sort of lunch a chief duty of a useful day had been discharged.

It must not be imagined from this, however, that the conversation was about trifles. Business men and operators could have learned something about stocks and investments, and politicians about city politics. Mademoiselle Vivienne, the new skirt dancer, might have been surprised at the intimate tone in which she was alluded to, but she could have got some useful hints in effects, for her judges were cosmopolitans who had seen the most suggestive dancing in all parts of the world. It came out incidentally that every one at table had been "over" in the course of the season, not for any general purpose, not as a sightseer, but to look at somebody's stables, or to attend a wedding, or a sale of etchings, or to see his bootmaker, or for a little shooting in Scotland, just as one might run down to Bar Harbor or Tuxedo. It was only an incident in a busy season; and one of the fruits of it appeared to be as perfect a knowledge of the comparative merits of all the ocean racers and captains as of the English and American stables and the trainers. One not informed of the progress of American life might have been surprised to see that the fad is to be American, with a sort of patronage of things and ways foreign, especially of things British, a large continental kind of attitude, begotten of hearing much about Western roughing it, of Alaska, of horse-breeding and fruit-raising on the Pacific, of the Colorado River Canon. As for stuffs, well yes, London. As for style, you can't mistake a man who is dressed in New York.