The Golden House

XIV

Edith had made no appeal to Jack to come home. His going, therefore, had the merit in his eyes of being a voluntary response to the promptings of his better nature. Perhaps but for the accident at Mount Desert he might have felt that his summer pleasure was needlessly interfered with, but the little shock of that was a real, if still temporary, moral turning-point for him. For the moment his inclination seemed to run with his duty, and he had his reward in Edith's happiness at his coming, the loving hunger in her eyes, the sweet trust that animated her face, the delightful appropriation of him that could scarcely brook a moment's absence from her sight. There could not be a stronger appeal to his manhood and his fidelity.

“Yes, Jack dear, it was a little lonesome.” She was swinging in her hammock on the veranda in sight of the sea, and Jack sat by her with his cigar. “I don't mind telling you now that there were times when I longed for you dreadfully, but I was glad, all the same, that you were enjoying yourself, for it is tiresome down here for a man with nothing to do but to wait.”

“You dear thing!” said Jack, with his hand on her head, smoothing her glossy hair and pushing it back from her forehead, to make her look more intellectual—a thing which she hated. “Yes, dear, I was a brute to go off at all.”

“But you wanted to comeback?” And there was a wistful look in her eyes.

“Indeed I did,” he answered, fervently, as he leaned over the hammock to kiss the sweet eyes into content; and he was quite honest in the expression of a desire that was nearly forty-eight hours old, and by a singular mental reaction seemed to have been always present with him.

“It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the newspaper.”

“Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;” and he made light of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be capable of shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major's seafaring qualities, and Carmen's and Miss Tavish's chaff of the gallant old beau.

Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand was as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.

The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety and made grave by a new interest. It could not well be but that the prospect of the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should create a little uneasiness in Jack's mind as to his own career. Of this future they talked much, and in Jack's attitude towards her Edith saw, for the first time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it came naturally in the contemplation of their future life that she should encourage his discontent at having no occupation. Facing, in this waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, and that idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck of society women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimate ennui. To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune, who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personal satisfaction; but they did not seem to be of much account except in the little circle that they ornamented. Speaking of one of them one day, Father Damon had said that it seemed a pity a fellow of such family and capacity and fortune should go to the devil merely for the lack of an object in life. In this closer communion with Edith, whose ideas he began to comprehend, Jack dimly apprehended this view, and for the moment impulsively accepted it.

“I'm half sorry,” he said one day, “that I didn't go in for a profession. But it is late now. Law, medicine, engineering, architecture, would take years of study.”

“There was Armstrong,” Edith suggested, “who studied law after he was married.”

“But it looks sort of silly for a fellow who has a wife to go to school, unless,” said Jack, with a laugh, “he goes to school to his wife. Then there's politics. You wouldn't like to see me in that.”

“I rather think, Jack”—she spoke musingly—“if I were a man I should go into politics.”

“You would have nice company!”

“But it's the noblest career—government, legislation, trying to do something to make the world better. Jack, I don't see how the men of New York can stand it to be governed by the very worst elements.”

“My dear, you have no idea what practical politics is.”

“I've an idea what I'd make it. What is the good of young men of leisure if they don't do anything for the country? Too fine to do what Hamilton did and Jay did! I wish you could have heard my father talk about it. Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!”

“Or a yacht,” suggested Jack.

“Well, I don't see why a man cannot own a yacht and still care something about the decent management of his city.”

“There's Mavick in politics.”

“Not exactly. Mavick is in office for what he can make. No, I will not say that. No doubt he is a good civil servant, and we can't expect everybody to be unselfish. At any rate, he is intelligent. Do you remember what Mr. Morgan said last winter?” And Edith lifted herself up on her elbow, as if to add the weight of her attitude to her words, as Jack was still smiling at her earnestness.

“No; you said he was a delightful sort of pessimist.”

“Mr. Morgan said that the trouble with the governing and legislation now in the United States is that everybody is superficially educated, and that the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, and that we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories and crudities on the statute-book. And then educated people say that politics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to do with it.”

“And how far do you think we could get, my dear, in the crusade you propose?”

“I don't know that you would get anywhere. Yet I should think the young men of New York could organize its intelligence and do something. But you think I'm nothing but a woman.” And Edith sank back, as if abandoning the field.

“I had thought that; but it is hard to tell, these days. Never mind, when we go back to town I'll stir round; you'll see.”

This was an unusual sort of talk. Jack had never heard Edith break out in this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning to think of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties. Not many in his set, he was sure. If Edith had urged him to go into Neighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that. Women and ethical cranks were interested in that. And women were getting queerer every day, beginning, as Mavick said, to take notice. However, it was odd, when you thought over it, that the city should be ruled by the slums.

It was easy to talk about these things; in fact, Jack talked a great deal about them in the clubs, and occasionally with a knot of men after dinner in a knowing, pessimistic sort of way. Sometimes the discussions were very animated and even noisy between these young citizens. It seemed, sometimes, about midnight, that something might be done; but the resolution vanished next morning when another day, to be lived through, confronted them. They illustrated the great philosophic observation that it is practically impossible for an idle man who has nothing to do to begin anything today.

To do Jack justice, this enforced detention in the country he did not find dull exactly. To be sure it was vacation-time, and his whole life was a vacation, and summer was rather more difficult to dispose of than winter, for one had to make more of an effort to amuse himself. But Edith was never more charming than in this new dependence, and all his love and loyalty were evoked in caring for her. This was occupation enough, even if he had been the busiest man in the world-to watch over her, to read to her, to anticipate her fancies, to live with her in that dream of the future which made life seem almost ideal. There came a time when he looked back upon this month at the Golden House as the happiest in his life.

The talk about an occupation was not again referred to. Edith seemed entirely happy to have Jack with her, more entirely her own than he had ever been, and to have him just as he was. And yet he knew, by a sure instinct, that she saw him as she thought he would be, with some aim and purpose in life. And he made many good resolutions.

That which was nearest him attracted him most, and very feeble now were the allurements of the life and the company he had just left. Not that he would break with it exactly; it was not necessary to do that; but he would find something to do, something worth a man's doing, or, at any rate, some occupation that should tax his time and his energies. That, he knew, would make Edith happy, and to make her happy seemed now very much like a worthy object in life. She was so magnanimous, so unsuspicious, so full of all nobility. He knew she would stand by him whatever happened. Down here her attitude to life was no longer a rebuke to him nor a restraint upon him. Everything seemed natural and wholesome. Perhaps his vanity was touched, for there must be something in, him if such a woman could love him. And probably there was, though he himself had never yet had a chance to find it out. Brought up in the expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of “good-for-nothings” in our modern life? If there had been war, he had spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or the highlands of Central Asia. Something uncommon he might do if opportunity offered.

About his operations with Henderson he had never told Edith, and he did not tell her now. Perhaps she divined it, and he rather wondered that she had never asked him about his increased expenditures, his yacht, and all that. He used to look at her steadily at times, as if he were trying to read the secrets of her heart.

“What are you looking at, Jack?”

“To see if I can find out how much you know, you look so wise.”

“Do I? I was just thinking about you. I suppose that made me look so.”

“No; about life and the world generally.”

“Mighty little, Jack, except—well, I study you.”

“Do you? Then you'll presently lose your mind:”

Jack and most men have little idea that they are windows through which their wives see the world; and how much more of the world they know in that way than men usually suspect or wives ever tell!

He did not tell her about Henderson, but he almost resolved that when his present venture was over he would let stocks alone as speculations, and go into something that he could talk about to his wife as he talked about stocks to Carmen.

From the stranded mariners at Bar Harbor Captain Jack had many and facetious letters. They wanted to know if his idea was that they should stick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if he expected them to walk home. He had already given orders to the skipper to patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised his correspondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in the larder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on any vessel that would take able-bodied seamen. He must be excused from commanding, because he had been assigned to shore duty. Carmen and Miss Tavish wrote that it was unfair to leave them to sustain all the popularity and notoriety of the shipwreck, and that he owed it to the public to publish a statement, in reply to the insinuations of the newspapers, in regard to the sea-worthiness of the yacht and the object of this voyage. Jack replied that the only object of the voyage was to relieve the tedium of Bar Harbor, and, having accomplished this, he would present the vessel to Miss Tavish if she would navigate it back to the city.

The golden autumn days by the sea were little disturbed by these echoes of another life, which seemed at the moment to be a very shallow one. Yet the time was not without its undertone of anxieties, of grave perils that seemed to sanctify it and heighten its pleasures of hope. Jack saw and comprehended for the first time in his life the real nature of a pure woman, the depths of tenderness and self-abnegation, the heroism and calm trust and the nobility of an unworldly life. No wonder that he stood a little in awe of it, and days when he wandered down on the beach, with only the waves for company, or sat smoking in the arbor, with an unread book in his hand, his own career seemed petty and empty. Such moods, however, are not uncommon in any life, and are not of necessity fruitful. It need not be supposed that Jack took it too seriously, on the one hand, or, on the other, that a vision of such a woman's soul is ever without influence.

By the end of October they returned to town, Jack, and Edith with a new and delicate attractiveness, and young Fletcher Delancy the most wonderful and important personage probably who came to town that season. It seemed to Edith that his advent would be universally remarked, and Jack felt relieved when the boy was safely housed out of the public gaze. Yes, to Edith's inexpressible joy it was a boy, and while Jack gallantly said that a girl would have suited him just as well, he was conscious of an increased pride when he announced the sex to his friends. This undervaluation of women at the start is one of the mysteries of life. And until women themselves change their point of view, it is to be feared that legislation will not accomplish all that many of them wish.

“So it is a boy. I congratulate you,” was the exclamation of Major Fairfax the first time Jack went down to the Union.

“I'm glad, Major, to have your approval.”

“Oh, it's what is expected, that's all. For my part, I prefer girls. The announcement of boys is more expensive.”

Jack understood, and it turned out in all the clubs that he had hit upon the most expensive sex in the view of responding to congratulations.

“It used to seem to me,” said the Major, “that I must have a male heir to my estates. But, somehow, as the years go on, I feel more like being an heir myself. If I had married and had a boy, he would have crowded me out by this time; whereas, if it had been a girl, I should no doubt have been staying at her place in Lenox this summer instead of being shipwrecked on that desert island. There is nothing, my dear boy, like a girl well invested.”

“You speak with the feelings of a father.”

“I speak, sir, from observation. I look at society as it is, not as it would be if we had primogeniture and a landed aristocracy. A daughter under our arrangements is more likely to be a comfort to her parent in his declining years than a son.”

“But you seem, Major, to have preferred a single life?”

“Circumstances—thank you, just a drop more—we are the creatures of circumstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation and misunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property was encumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I have reason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-blooded in those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. She was, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I have never seen her equal.”

This was more than the Major had ever revealed about his private life before. He had created an illusion about himself which society accepted, and in which he lived in apparent enjoyment of metropolitan existence. This was due to a sanguine temperament and a large imagination. And he had one quality that made him a favorite—a hearty enjoyment of the prosperity of others. With regard to himself, his imagination was creative, and Jack could not now tell whether this “most beautiful woman of Virginia” was not evoked by the third glass, about which the Major remarked, as he emptied it, that only this extraordinary occasion could justify such an indulgence at this time of day.

The courtly old gentleman had inquired about madam—indeed, the second glass had been dedicated to “mother and child”—and he exhibited a friendly and almost paternal interest, as he always did, in Jack.

“By-the-way,” he said, after a silence, “is Henderson in town?”

“I haven't heard. Why?”

“There's been a good deal of uneasiness in the Street as to what he is doing. I hope you haven't got anything depending on him.”

“I've got something in his stocks, if that is what you mean; but I don't mind telling you I have made something.”

“Well, it's none of my business, only the Henderson stocks have gone off a little, as you know.”

Jack knew, and he asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy, for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the club he wrote to Mavick.

He carried home with him a certain disquiet, to which he had been for months a stranger. Even the sight of Edith, who met him with a happy face, and dragged him away at once to see how lovely the baby looked asleep, could not remove this. It seemed strange that such a little thing should make a change, introduce an alien element into this domestic peace. Jack was like some other men who lose heart not when they are doing a doubtful thing, but when they have to face the consequences—cases of misplaced conscience. The peace and content that he had left in the house in the morning seemed to have gone out of it when he returned at night.

Next day came a reassuring letter from Mavick.

Henderson was going on as usual. It was only a little bear movement, which wouldn't amount to anything. Still, day after day, the bears kept clawing down, and Jack watched the stock-list with increasing eagerness. He couldn't decide to sacrifice anything as long as he had a margin of profit.

In this state of mind it was impossible to consider any of the plans he had talked over with Edith before the baby was born. Inquiries he did make about some sort of position or regular occupation, and these he reported to Edith; but his heart was not in it.

As the days went by there was a little improvement in his stocks, and his spirits rose. But this mood was no more favorable than the other for beginning a new life, nor did there seem to be, as he went along, any need of it. He had an appearance of being busy every day; he rose late and went late to bed. It was the old life. Stocks down, there was a necessity of bracing up with whomever he met at any of the three or four clubs in which he lounged in the afternoon; and stocks up, there was reason for celebrating that fact in the same way.

It was odd how soon he became accustomed to consider himself and to be regarded as the father of a family. That, also, like his marriage, seemed something done, and in a manner behind him. There was a commonplaceness about the situation. To Edith it was a great event. To Jack it was a milestone in life. He was proud of the boy; he was proud of Edith. “I tell you, fellows,” he would say at the club, “it's a great thing,” and so on, in a burst of confidence, and he was quite sincere in this. But he preferred to be at the club and say these things rather than pass the same hours with his adorable family. He liked to think what he would do for that family—what luxuries he could procure for them, how they should travel and see the world. There wasn't a better father anywhere than Jack at this period. And why shouldn't a man of family amuse himself? Because he was happy in his family he needn't change all the habits of his life.

Presently he intended to look about him for something to do that would satisfy Edith and fill up his time; but meantime he drifted on, alternately anxious and elated, until the season opened. The Blunts and the Van Dams and the Chesneys and the Tavishes and Mrs. Henderson had called, invitations had poured in, subscriptions were asked, studies and gayeties were projected, and the real business of life was under way.