The Golden House

XVIII

The Roman poet Martial reckons among the elements of a happy life “an income left, not earned by toil,” and also “a wife discreet, yet blythe and bright.” Felicity in the possession of these, the epigrammatist might have added, depends upon content in the one and full appreciation of the other.

Jack Delancy returned from Washington more discontented than when he went. His speculation hung fire in a most tantalizing way; more than that, it had absorbed nearly all the “income not earned by toil,” which was at the hazard of operations he could neither control nor comprehend. And besides, this little fortune had come to seem contemptibly inadequate. In his associations of the past year his spendthrift habits had increased, and he had been humiliated by his inability to keep pace with the prodigality of those with whom he was most intimate. Miss Tavish was an heiress in her own right, who never seemed to give a thought to the cost of anything she desired; the Hendersons, for any whim, drew upon a reservoir of unknown capacity; and even Mavick began to talk as if he owned a flock of geese that laid golden eggs.

To be sure, it was pleasant coming home into an atmosphere of sincerity, of worship—was it not? It was very flattering to his self-esteem. The master had come! The house was in commotion. Edith flew to meet him, hugged him, shook him, criticised his appearance, rallied him for a recreant father. How well she looked-buoyant, full of vivacity, running over with joy, asking a dozen questions before he could answer one, testifying her delight, her affection, in a hundred ways. And the boy! He was so eager to see his papa. He could converse now—that is, in his way. And that prodigy, when Jack was dragged into his presence, and also fell down with Edith and worshiped him in his crib, did actually smile, and appear to know that this man belonged to him, was a part of his worldly possessions.

“Do you know,” said Edith, looking at the boy critically, “I think of making Fletcher a present, if you approve.”

“What's that?”

“He'll want some place to go to in the summer. I want to buy that old place where he was born and give it to him. Don't you think it would be a good investment?”

“Yes, permanent,” replied Jack, laughing at such a mite of a real-estate owner.

“I know he would like it. And you don't object?”

“Not in the least. It's next to an ancestral feeling to be the father of a land-owner.”

They were standing close to the crib, his arm resting lightly across her shoulders. He drew her closer to him, and kissed her tenderly. “The little chap has a golden-hearted mother. I don't know why he should not have a Golden House.”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears. She could not speak. But both arms were clasped round his neck now. She was too happy for words. And the baby, looking on with large eyes, seemed to find nothing unusual in the proceeding. He was used to a great deal of this sort of nonsense himself.

It was a happy evening. In truth, after the first surprise, Jack was pleased with this contemplated purchase. It was something removed beyond temptation. Edith's property was secure to her, and it was his honorable purpose never to draw it into his risks. But he knew her generosity, and he could not answer for himself if she should offer it, as he was sure she would do, to save him from ruin.

There was all the news to tell, the harmless gossip of daily life, which Edith had a rare faculty of making dramatically entertaining, with her insight and her feeling for comedy. There had been a musicale at the Blunts'—oh, strictly amateur—and Edith ran to the piano and imitated the singers and took off the players, until Jack declared that it beat the Conventional Club out of sight. And she had been to a parlor mind-cure lecture, and to a Theosophic conversation, and to a Reading Club for the Cultivation of a Feeling for Nature through Poetry. It was all immensely solemn and earnest. And Jack wondered that the managers did not get hold of these things and put them on the stage. Nothing could draw like them. Not burlesques, though, said Edith; not in the least. If only these circles would perform in public as they did in private, how they would draw!

And then Father Damon had been to consult her about his fund. He had been ill, and would not stay, and seemed more severe and ascetic than ever. She was sure something was wrong. For Dr. Leigh, whom she had sought out several times, was reserved, and did not voluntarily speak of Father Damon; she had heard that he was throwing himself with more than his usual fervor into his work. There was plenty to talk about. The purchase of the farm by the sea had better not be delayed; Jack might have to go down and see the owner. Yes, he would make it his first business in the morning. Perhaps it would be best to get some Long-Islander to buy it for them.

By the time it was ten o'clock, Jack said he thought he would step down to the Union a moment. Edith's countenance fell. There might be letters, he explained, and he had a little matter of business; he wouldn't be late.

It was very agreeable, home was, and Edith was charming. He could distinctly feel that she was charming. But Jack was restless. He felt the need of talking with somebody about what was on his mind. If only with Major Fairfax. He would not consult the Major, but the latter was in the way of picking up all sorts of gossip, both social and Street gossip.

And the Major was willing to unpack his budget. It was not very reassuring, what he had to tell; in fact, it was somewhat depressing, the general tightness and the panicky uncertainty, until, after a couple of glasses of Scotch, the financial world began to open a little and seem more hopeful.

“The Hendersons are going to build,” Jack said at length, after a remark of the Major's about that famous operator.

“Build? What for? They've got a palace.”

“Carmen says it's for an object-lesson. To show New York millionaires how to adorn their city.”

“It's like that little schemer. What does Henderson say?”

“He appears to be willing. I can't get the hang of Henderson. He doesn't seem to care what his wife does. He's a cynical cuss. The other night, at dinner, in Washington, when the thing was talked over, he said: 'My dear, I don't know why you shouldn't do that as well as anything. Let's build a house of gold, as Nero did; we are in the Roman age.' Carmen looked dubious for a moment, but she said, 'You know, Rodney, that you always used to say that some time you would show New York what a house ought to be in this climate.' 'Well, go on,' and he laughed. 'I suppose lightning will not strike that sooner than anything else.'” “Seems to me,” said the Major, reflectively, reaching out his hand for the brown mug, “the way he gives that woman her head, and doesn't care what she does, he must have a contempt for her.”

“I wish somebody had that sort of contempt for me,” said Jack, filling up his glass also.

“But, I tell you,” he continued, “Mrs. Henderson has caught on to the new notions. Her idea is the union of all the arts. She has already got the refusal of a square 'way up-town, on the rise opposite the Park, and has been consulting architects about it. It is to be surrounded with the building, with a garden in the interior, a tropical garden, under glass in the winter. The facades are to be gorgeous and monumental. Artists and sculptors are to decorate it, inside and out. Why shouldn't there be color on the exterior, gold and painting, like the Fugger palaces in Augsburg, only on a great scale? The artists don't see any reason why there should not. It will make the city brilliant, that sort of thing, in place of our monotonous stone lanes. And it's using her wealth for the public benefit-the architects and artists all say that. Gad, I don't know but the little woman is beginning to regard herself as a public benefactor.”

“She is that or nothing,” echoed the Major, warmly.

“And do you know,” continued Jack, confidentially, “I think she's got the right idea. If I have any luck—of course I sha'n't do that—but if I have any luck, I mean to build a house that's got some life in it—color, old boy—something unique and stunning.”

“So you will,” cried the Major, enthusiastically, and, raising his glass, “Here's to the house that Jack built!”

It was later than he thought it would be when he went home, but Jack was attended all the way by a vision of a Golden House—all gold wouldn't be too good, and he will build it, damme, for Edith and the boy. The next morning not even the foundations of this structure were visible. The master of the house came down to a late breakfast, out of sorts with life, almost surly. Not even Edith's bright face and fresh toilet and radiant welcome appealed to him. No one would have thought from her appearance that she had waited for him last night hour after hour, and had at last gone to bed with a heavy heart, and not to sleep-to toss, and listen, and suffer a thousand tortures of suspense. How many tragedies of this sort are there nightly in the metropolis, none the less tragic because they are subjects of jest in the comic papers and on the stage! What would be the condition of social life if women ceased to be anxious in this regard, and let loose the reins in an easy-going indifference? What, in fact, is the condition in those households where the wives do not care? One can even perceive a tender sort of loyalty to women in the ejaculation of that battered old veteran, the Major, “Thank God, there's nobody sitting up for me!”

Jack was not consciously rude. He even asked about the baby. And he sipped his coffee and glanced over the morning journal, and he referred to the conversation of the night before, and said that he would look after the purchase at once. If Edith had put on an aspect of injury, and had intimated that she had hoped that his first evening at home might have been devoted to her and the boy, there might have been a scene, for Jack needed only an occasion to vent his discontent. And for the chronicler of social life a scene is so much easier to deal with, an outburst of temper and sharp language, of accusation and recrimination, than the well-bred commonplace of an undefined estrangement.

And yet estrangement is almost too strong a word to use in Jack's case. He would have been the first to resent it. But the truth was that Edith, in the life he was leading, was a rebuke to him; her very purity and unworldliness were out of accord with his associations, with his ventures, with his dissipations in that smart and glittering circle where he was more welcome the more he lowered his moral standards. Could he help it if after the first hours of his return he felt the restraint of his home, and that the life seemed a little flat? Almost unconsciously to himself, his interests and his inclinations were elsewhere.

Edith, with the divination of a woman, felt this. Last night her love alone seemed strong enough to hold him, to bring him back to the purposes and the aspirations that only last summer had appeared to transform him. Now he was slipping away again. How pitiful it is, this contest of a woman who has only her own love, her own virtue, with the world and its allurements and seductions, for the possession of her husband's heart! How powerless she is against these subtle invitations, these unknown and all-encompassing temptations! At times the whole drift of life, of the easy morality of the time, is against her. The current is so strong that no wonder she is often swept away in it. And what could an impartial observer of things as they are say otherwise than that John Delancy was leading the common life of his kind and his time, and that Edith was only bringing trouble on herself by being out of sympathy with it?

He might not be in at luncheon, he said, when he was prepared to go down-town. He seldom was. He called at his broker's. Still suspense. He wrote to the Long Island farmer. At the Union he found a scented note from Carmen. They had all returned from the capital. How rejoiced she was to be at home! And she was dying to see him; no, not dying, but very much living; and it was very important. She should expect him at the usual hour. And could he guess what gown she would wear?

And Jack went. What hold had this woman on him? Undoubtedly she had fascinations, but he knew—knew well enough by this time—that her friendship was based wholly on calculation. And yet what a sympathetic comrade she could be! How freely he could talk with her; there was no subject she did not adapt herself to. No doubt it was this adaptability that made her such a favorite. She did not demand too much virtue or require too much conventionality. The hours he was with her he was wholly at his ease. She made him satisfied with himself, and she didn't disturb his conscience.

“I think,” said Jack—he was holding both her hands with a swinging motion—when she came forward to greet him, and looking at her critically—“I think I like you better in New York than in Washington.”

“That is because you see more of me here.”

“Oh, I saw you enough in Washington.”

“But that was my public manner. I have to live up to Mr. Henderson's reputation.”

“And here you only have to live up to mine?”

“I can live for my friends,” she replied, with an air of candor, giving a very perceptible pressure with her little hands. “Isn't that enough?”

Jack kissed each little hand before he let it drop, and looked as if he believed.

“And how does the house get on?”

“Famously. The lot is bought. Mr. Van Brunt was here all the morning. It's going to be something Oriental, mediaeval, nineteenth-century, gorgeous, and domestic. Van Brunt says he wants it to represent me.”

“How?” inquired Jack; “all the four facades different?”

“With an interior unity—all the styles brought to express an individual taste, don't you know. A different house from the four sides of approach, and inside, home—that's the idea.”

“It appears to me,” said Jack, still bantering, “that it will look like an apartment-house.”

“That is just what it will not—that is, outside unity, and inside a menagerie. This won't look gregarious. It is to have not more than three stories, perhaps only two. And then exterior color, decoration, statuary.”

“And gold?”

“Not too much—not to give it a cheap gilded look. Oh, I asked him about Nero's house. As I remember it, that was mostly caverns. Mr. Van Brunt laughed, and said they were not going to excavate this house. The Roman notion was barbarous grandeur. But in point of beauty and luxury, this would be as much superior to Nero's house as the electric light is to a Roman lamp.”

“Not classic, then?”

“Why, all that's good in classic form, with the modern spirit. You ought to hear Mr. Van Brunt talk. This country has never yet expressed itself in domestic inhabitation.”

“It's going to cost! What does Mr. Henderson say?”

“I think he rather likes it. He told Mr. Van Brunt to consult me and go ahead with his plans. But he talks queerly. He said he thought he would have money enough at least for the foundation. Do you think, Jack,” asked Carmen, with a sudden change of manner, “that Mr. Henderson is really the richest man in the United States?”

“Some people say so. Really, I don't know how any one can tell. If he let go his hand from his affairs, I don't know what a panic would do.”

Carmen looked thoughtful. “He said to me once that he wasn't afraid of the Street any more. I told him this morning that I didn't want to begin this if it was going to incommode him.”

“What did he say?”

“He was just going out. He looked at me a moment with that speculative sort of look-no, it isn't cynical, as you say; I know it so well—and then said: 'Oh, go ahead. I guess it will be all right. If anything happens, you can turn it into a boardinghouse. It will be an excellent sanitarium.' That was all. Anyway, it's something to do. Come, let's go and see the place.” And she started up and touched the bell for the carriage. It was more than something to do. In those days before her marriage, when her mother was living, and when they wandered about Europe, dangerously near to the reputation of adventuresses, the girl had her dream of chateaux and castles and splendor. Her chance did not come in Europe, but, as she would have said, Providence is good to those who wait.

The next day Jack went to Long Island, and the farm was bought, and the deed brought to Edith, who, with much formality, presented it to the boy, and that young gentleman showed his appreciation of it by trying to eat it. It would have seemed a pretty incident to Jack, if he had not been absorbed in more important things.

But he was very much absorbed, and apparently more idle than ever. As the days went on, and the weeks, he was less and less at home, and in a worse humor—that is, at home. Carmen did not find him ill-humored, nor was there any change towards the fellows at the Union, except that it was noticed that he had his cross days. There was nothing specially to distinguish him from a dozen others, who led the same life of vacuity, of mild dissipation, of enforced pleasure. A wager now and then on an “event”; a fictitious interest in elections; lively partisanship in society scandals: Not much else. The theatres were stale, and only endurable on account of the little suppers afterwards; and really there wasn't much in life except the women who made it agreeable.

Major Fairfax was not a model; there had not much survived out of his checkered chances and experiences, except a certain instinct of being a gentleman, sir; the close of his life was not exactly a desirable goal; but even the Major shook his head over Jack.