CHAPTER XV.

Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and

Cents.

Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away

watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get

water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of

Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away

our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins

and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.

"He's such a ninny," said Antonia.

"Aren't all people when in his forlorn condition?" asked Jim.

Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.

"But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of," said

she, "he could see."

"I don't know about that," said Jim lazily, looking over at the other

group; "a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty

completely."

"I don't know about that," echoed Antonia. "I wish I did; it would

simplify things."

"I believe," said I, "that it's a simple enough matter for you to solve

and manage as it is."

"But it's so absurd to bother with!" said she; "and what's the use?"

"Doesn't it seem that way?" said Jim. "And yet you know we brought him

here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can't make

good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the

proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants

to whoop 'em; but long screeds on 'The Sacred Right of Self-destruction'

hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out

optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the

thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will

not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough

matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of

our diplomacy."

"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social

occasion, and we'll try."

"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the

weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks

away. My house is practically done, you know."

"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats

enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."

"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are

the places where advances are made!"

"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."

"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military

conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before

he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the

jokes."

This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for

Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The

humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;

but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he

regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil

was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by

these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a

dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local

exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run

on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in

Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean

hope from the most sterile circumstances.

It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our

talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,

even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like

optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.

"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy

of Iago--"

"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"

"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."

"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that damned-fool philosophy

may have ruined my life, you know."

"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are

all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and

nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"

"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of

the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one,

Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very

kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is

for that old gag about the women hating each other!"

"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see

what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_

idea. But what has changed your view?"

"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up

a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal

plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"

"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you

to feel downcast."

"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,

"you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.

Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the

crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing

me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials

on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given

the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."

"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't

boomed Lattimore any."

"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see

here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all

right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one

final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may

be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and

miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow,

pray for me!"

This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing

sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its

aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the

young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and

resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.

"He has ability as a writer," said the Captain; "but in such a mattah

anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the

intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that,

in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!"

"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel

conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most

delicious grief."

The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's

house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are

spent on the details of a stairway, and a king's ransom for the

tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes

of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to

court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made

the need for an augmentative of the word "luxury"; and Jim's house was

noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and

columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a

picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands

through silken portieres; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of

royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out

in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose

names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.

Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty

things which, all his life, he had been accumulating; and in his library

were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon

the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than

the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of

speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.

It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of

the grounds and the fountain spouting on the lawn were like scenery in

the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in

summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light,

because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I

remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take

the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before

him.

His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an

exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguishing note of her

personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she

swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the

swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and

wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and

began plying him with the punch--from which Giddings seemed to draw

courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so

mysteriously dreaded.

"It's a pe'fect jewel-case of a house!" said the Captain, as he moved

with the trooping company through the mansion.

"Indeed, indeed it is," said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; "the jewel, whoever

it may be, is to be envied."

"I hope," said Jim to Josie, "that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?"

"Oh, yes," said Josie, "but you attach far too much importance to my

judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to

praise--everything--unreservedly."

"I won't know, for a while," said Jim, "whether it is to be my house

only, or home in the full sense of the word."

"One doesn't know about that, I fancy," said Cecil; "for a long time--"

"I mean to know soon," said Jim.

Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid

no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.

"What I mean, you know," said Cecil, "is that, no matter how well the

house may be built and furnished, it's the associations, the history of

the place, the things that are in the air, that makes 'Ome!"

There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it,

and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island

which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by

street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve),

always pays when he speaks of Home.

"Associations," said Jim, "may be historical or prophetic. In the former

case, we have to take them on trust; but as to those of the future, we

are sure of them."

"Yahs," said Cecil, using the locution which he always adopted when

something subtle was said to him, "I dare say! I dare say!"

"Well, then," Jim went on, "I have this matter of the atmosphere or

associations under my own control."

"Just so," said Cecil. "Clever conceit, Miss Trescott, isn't it, now?"

But Miss Trescott had apparently heard nothing of Jim's speech, and

begged pardon; and wouldn't they go and show her the bronzes in the

library?

"This mansion, General," said the Captain, "takes one back, suh, to the

halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the

plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the

heart of an enchanted empire!"

"A very interesting period, Captain," said the General. "It is a pity

that the industrial basis was one which could not endure!"

"In the midst of fo'ests, suh," went on the Captain, "we had ouah

mansions, not inferio' to this--each a little kingdom with its complete

wo'ld of amusements, its cote, and its happy populace, goin' singin' to

the wo'k which supported the estate!"

"Yes," said the General, "I thought, when we were striking down that

state of things, that we were doing a great thing for that populace. But

I now see that I was only helping the black into a new slavery, the

fruits of which we see here, around us, to-night."

"I hahdly get youah meaning, suh--"

"Well," said the General, looking about at the little audience. (It was

in the smoking-room, and those present were smokers only.) "Well, now,

take my case. I have some pretty valuable grounds down there where I

live. When I got them, they were worthless. I could build as good a

mansion as this or any of your ante-bellum Alabama houses for what I can

get out of that little tract. What is that value? Merely the expression

in terms of money of the power of excluding the rest of mankind from

that little piece of ground. I make people give me the fruits of their

labor, myself doing nothing. That's what builds this house and all these

great houses, and breeds the luxury we are beginning to see around us;

and the consciousness that this slavery exists, and is increasing, and

bids fair to grow greatly, is what is making men crazy over these little

spots of ground out here in the West! It is this slavery--"

"Suh," exclaimed the Captain, rising and grasping the General's hand,

"you have done me the favo' of making me wisah! I nevah saw so cleahly

the divine decree which has fo'eo'dained us to this opulence. Nothing so

satisfactory, suh, as a basis and reason foh investment, has been

advanced in my hearing since I have been in the real-estate business!

Let us wo'k this out a little mo' in detail, if you please, suh--"

"Let us escape while there is yet time!" said Cornish; and we fled.

After supper there was a cotillion. The spacious ballroom, with its roof

so high that the lights up there were as stars, was a sight which could

scarcely be reconciled with the village community which he had found and

changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room;

the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery

which--on the surface--marks the final conquest of civilization over

barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white

shoulders and arms of the ladies--all these made me wonder if I had not

been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so

decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be. The young people,

carrying on their courtships in these unfamiliar halls, their

disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the

assembly--all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some

romance.

I told Alice about this as we walked home--it was only across the

street--to our own new house.

"Don't tell any one about this feeling of yours," said she. "It betrays

your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your

life, perfectly at home. 'Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of

Clifford calls,' you know."

"Mine didn't hear the call," said I; "I'm probably the first of my race

to wear this--But I enjoyed it."

"Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the

matter," said she, as we sat down at home. "I am perplexed. You know

about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don't you?"

She startled me, for I had never told her a word.

"Know about them!" I cried, a little dramatically. "What do you mean?

No, I don't!"

"Why, what's the matter, Albert?" she queried. "I haven't charged them

with midnight assassination, or anything like that! Only, it seems that

he has been making love to her, for some time, in his cool and

self-contained way. I've known it, and she's been perfectly conscious,

that I knew; but never said anything to me of it, and seemed unwilling

even to approach the subject. But to-night Cecil and I found her out in

the canopied seat by the fountain, and I knew something was the matter,

and sent Cecil away. Something told me that Mr. Cornish was concerned

in it, and I asked her at once where he went.

"'He is gone!' said she. 'I don't know where he is, and I don't care! I

wish I might never see him any more!'

"You may imagine my surprise. When a young woman uses such language

about a man, it is a certainty that she isn't voicing her true feelings,

or that it isn't a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he

had made her an offer."

"'Well,' said I, 'if, as I infer from your conversation, you have

refused him, there's an end of the matter; and you need not worry about

seeing him any more.'

"'But,' said she, 'Alice, I haven't refused him!'

"That took me aback a little," went on Alice, "for I had other plans for

her; so I said: 'You haven't accepted the fellow, have you?'

"'Oh, no, no!' said she, in a sort of quivery way, 'but what right have

you to speak of him in that way?' And that is all I could get out of

her. She was so unreasonable and disconnected in her talk, and the

others came out, and I tell you what, Albert Barslow, that man Cornish

will do evil yet, among us! I have always thought so!"

"I don't see any ground for any such prediction," said I, "in anything

you have told me. Her inability to make up her mind--"

"Means that there's something wrong," said my wife dogmatically. "It

means that he has some sinister influence over her, as he has over

almost everybody, with those coal-black eyes of his and his satanic

ways. And worse than all else, it means that he'll finally get her, in

spite of herself!"

"Pshaw!" said I.

"Go away, Albert!" said she, "or we shall quarrel. Go back and find my

fan--I left it on the mantel in the library. The house is lighted yet;

and I was going to send you back anyhow. Kiss me, and go, please."

I felt that if Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at

Auriccio's, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in

spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that

she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim's hopes.

I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must

usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or

woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason

that Giddings's distraught condition was only a matter of laughter to

all of us. And as something like this passed through my mind, Giddings

himself collared me as I crossed the street.

"Old man!" said he, "congratulate me! It's all right, Barslow, it's all

right."

"Up on the battlements, are you?" said I. "Well, I congratulate you,

Giddings; and don't make such an ass of yourself, please, any more. I

never noticed until this evening what a fine girl Laura is. You're

really a very fortunate fellow indeed!"

"You never noticed it!" said he with utter scorn. "Well, if--"

"It's late," said I. "Come and see me in the morning! Good-night."

I went in at the front door of the house. It stood wide open, as if the

current of guests passing out had removed its tendency to swing shut. It

seemed lonely now, inside, with all the decorations of the assembly

still in place in the empty hall. I passed into the library, and found

Jim sitting idly in a great leather chair. He seemed not to see me; or

if he did, he paid no attention. I went to the mantel, picked up Alice's

fan, and turned to Jim.

"Sit down," said he.

"Having a sort of 'oft in the stilly night' experience, Jim, or a case

of William the Conqueror on the Field of Hastings?"

"Yes," said he. "Something like that."

"Well, your house-warming has been a success, Jim," said I, "though a

fellow wouldn't think so to look at you. And the house is faultless. I

envy you the house, but the ability to plan and furnish it still more. I

didn't think it was in you, old man! Where did you learn it all?"

"You may have the house, if you want it, Al," said he. "I don't think

it's going to be of any use to me."

"Why, Jim," said I, seeing that it was something more than a mere mood

with him, "what is it? Has anything gone wrong?"

"Nothing that I've any right to complain of," said he. "Of course, no

man puts as much of his life into such a thing as I have into

this--without thinking of more than living in it--alone. I've never had

what you can really call a home--not since I was a little chap, when it

was home wherever there were trees and mother. I've filled this--with

those associations I spoke to Barr-Smith about--to-night--a little more

than I seem to have had any warrant to do. I tried to make sure about

the jewel for the jewel-case to-night, and it went wrong, Al; and that's

all there is of it. I don't think I shall need the house, and if you

like it you can have it."

"Do you mean that Josie has refused you?" said I.

"She didn't put it that way," said he, "but it amounts to that."

"Nothing that isn't a refusal," said I, "ought to be accepted as such.

What did she say?"

"Nothing definite," he answered wearily, "only that it couldn't be

'yes,' and when I urged her to make it 'yes' or 'no,' she refused to say

either; and asked me to forget that I had ever said anything to her

about the matter. There have been some things which--led me to hope--for

a different answer; and I'm a good deal taken down, Al ... I wouldn't

like to talk this way--with any one else."

There seemed to be no reason for abandonment of hope, I urged upon him,

and after a cigar or so I left him, evidently impressed with this view

of the case, but nevertheless bitterly disappointed. It meant delay and

danger to his hopes; and Jim was not a man to brook delay, or suffer

danger to go unchallenged. I dared not tell him of Cornish's offer, and

of its fate, so similar to his.

"I wonder if it is coquetry on her part," thought I, as I went back with

the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business

affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to

make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence

theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is picking

up!"