A Hazard of New Fortunes

by William Dean Howells

  “Oh, pshaw, dyun’, yes!” cried Mela, tasting the irony. “I guess I see them!”

  He asked if he might really introduce a friend of his to her, and she said, Well, yes, if he thought he could live to get to her; and March brought up a man whom he thought very young and Mela thought very old. He was a contributor to Every Other Week, and so March knew him; he believed himself a student of human nature in behalf of literature, and he now set about studying Mela. He tempted her to express her opinion on all points, and he laughed so amiably at the boldness and humorous vigor of her ideas that she was delighted with him. She asked him if he was a New Yorker by birth, and she told him she pitied him when he said he had never been west. She professed herself perfectly sick of New York and urged him to go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town. He wondered if it would do to put her into literature just as she was, with all her slang and brag, but he decided that he would have to subdue her a great deal; he did not see how he could reconcile the facts of her conversation with the facts of her appearance—her beauty, her splendor of dress, her apparent right to be where she was. These things perplexed him; he was afraid the great American novel, if true, must be incredible. Mela said he ought to hear her sister go on about New York when they first came, but she reckoned that Christine was getting so she could put up with it a little better now. She looked significantly across the room to the place where Christine was talking with Beaton; and the student of human nature asked, Was she here and would she introduce him? Mela said she would, the first chance she got; and she added, They would be much pleased to have him call. She felt herself to be having a beautiful time, and she got directly upon such intimate terms with the student of human nature that she laughed with him about some peculiarities of his, such as his going so far about to ask things he wanted to know from her; she said she never did believe in beating about the bush much. She had noticed the same thing in Miss Vance when she came to call that day; and when the young man owned that he came rather a good deal to Mrs. Horn’s house, she asked him, Well, what sort of a girl was Miss Vance anyway and where did he suppose she had met her brother? The student of human nature could not say as to this, and as to Miss Vance he judged it safest to treat of the non-society side of her character, her activity in charity, her special devotion to the work among the poor on the East Side, which she personally engaged in.

  “Oh, that’s where Conrad goes too!” Mela interrupted. “I’ll bet anything that’s where she met him. I wisht I could tell Christine! But I suppose she would want to kill me if I was to speak to her now.”

  The student of human nature said politely, “Oh, shall I take you to her?”

  Mela answered, “I guess you better not!” with a laugh so significant that he could not help his inferences concerning both Christine’s absorption in the person she was talking with and the habitual violence of her temper. He made note of how Mela helplessly spoke of all her family by their names, as if he were already intimate with them; he fancied that if he could get that in skillfully, it would be a valuable color in his study; the English lord whom she should astonish with it began to form himself out of the dramatic nebulosity in his mind and to whirl on a definite orbit in American society. But he was puzzled to decide whether Mela’s willingness to take him into her confidence on short notice was typical or personal: the trait of a daughter of the natural-gas millionaire or a foible of her own.

  Beaton talked with Christine the greater part of the evening that was left after the concert. He was very grave and took the tone of a fatherly friend; he spoke guardedly of the people present and moderated the severity of some of Christine’s judgments of their looks and costumes. He did this out of a sort of unreasoned allegiance to Margaret, whom he was in the mood of wishing to please by being very kind and good, as she always was. He had the sense also of atoning by this behavior for some reckless things he had said before that to Christine; he put on a sad, reproving air with her and gave her the feeling of being held in check.

  She chafed at it and said, glancing at Margaret in talk with her brother, “I don’t think Miss Vance is so very pretty, do you?”

  “I never think whether she’s pretty or not,” said Beaton, with dreamy affectation. “She is merely perfect. Does she know your brother?”

  “So she says. I didn’t suppose Conrad ever went anywhere, except to tenement houses.”

  “It might have been there,” Beaton suggested. “She goes among friendless people everywhere.”

  “Maybe that’s the reason she came to see us!” said Christine.

  Beaton looked at her with his smouldering eyes and felt the wish to say, “Yes, it was exactly that,” but he only allowed himself to deny the possibility of any such motive in that case. He added, “I am so glad you know her, Miss Dryfoos. I never met Miss Vance without feeling myself better and truer somehow, or the wish to be so.”

  “And you think we might be improved too?” Christine retorted. “Well, I must say you’re not very flattering, Mr. Beaton, anyway.”

  Beaton would have liked to answer her according to her cattishness, with a good clawing sarcasm that would leave its smart in her pride; but he was being good, and he could not change all at once. Besides, the girl’s attitude under the social honor done her interested him. He was sure she had never been in such good company before, but he could see that she was not in the least affected by the experience. He had told her who this person and that was, and he saw she had understood that the names were of consequence, but she seemed to feel her equality with them all. Her serenity was not obviously akin to the savage stoicism in which Beaton hid his own consciousness of social inferiority; but having won his way in the world so far by his talent, his personal quality, he did not conceive the simple fact in her case. Christine was self-possessed because she felt that a knowledge of her father’s fortune had got around, and she had the peace which money gives to ignorance; but Beaton attributed her poise to ignorance of social values. This, while he inwardly sneered at it, avenged him upon his own too keen sense of them, and together with his temporary allegiance to Margaret’s goodness, kept him from retaliating Christine’s vulgarity. He said, “I don’t see how that could be,” and left the question of flattery to settle itself.

  The people began to go away, following each other up to take leave of Mrs. Horn. Christine watched them with indifference, and either because she would not be governed by the general movement or because she liked being with Beaton, gave no sign of going. Mela was still talking to the student of human nature, sending out her laugh in deep gurgles amidst the unimaginable confidences she was making him about herself, her family, the staff of Every Other Week, Mrs. Mandel, and the kind of life they had all led before she came to them. He was not a blind devotee of art for art’s sake, and though he felt that if one could portray Mela just as she was she would be the richest possible material, he was rather ashamed to know some of the things she told him; and he kept looking anxiously about for a chance of escape. The company had reduced itself to the Dryfoos groups and some friends of Mrs. Horn’s who had the right to linger, when Margaret crossed the room with Conrad to Christine and Beaton.

  “I’m so glad, Miss Dryfoos, to find that I was not quite a stranger to you all when I ventured to call the other day. Your brother and I are rather old acquaintances, though I never knew his name before. I don’t know just how to say we met where he is valued so much. I suppose I mustn’t try to say how much,” she added with a look of deep regard at him.

  Conrad blushed and stood folding his arms tight over his breast, while his sister received Margaret’s confession with the suspicion which was her first feeling in regard to any new thing. What she concluded was that this girl was trying to get in with them, for reasons of her own. She said: “Yes; it’s the first I ever heard of his knowing you. He’s so much taken up with his meetings, he didn’t want to come tonight.”

  Margaret drew in her lip before she answered, without apparent resentment of the awkwardness
or ungraciousness, whichever she found it, “I don’t wonder! You become so absorbed in such work that you think nothing else is worthwhile. But I’m glad Mr. Dryfoos could come with you; I’m so glad you could all come; I knew you would enjoy the music. Do sit down—”

  “No,” said Christine bluntly, “we must be going. Mela,” she called out, “come!”

  The last group about Mrs. Horn looked round, but Christine advanced upon them undismayed and took the hand Mrs. Horn promptly gave her. “Well, I must bid you good night.”

  “Oh, good night,” murmured the elder lady. “So very kind of you to come.”

  “I’ve had the best kind of a time,” said Mela cordially. “1 hain’t laughed so much, I don’t know when.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” said Mrs. Horn in the same polite murmur she had used with Christine, but she said nothing to either sister about any future meeting.

  They were apparently not troubled. Mela said over her shoulder to the student of human nature, “The next time I see you I’ll give it to you for what you said about Moffitt.”

  Margaret made some entreating paces after them, but she did not succeed in covering the retreat of the sisters against critical conjecture. She could only say to Conrad, as if recurring to the subject, “I hope we can get our friends to play for us some night. I know it isn’t any real help, but such things take the poor creatures out of themselves for the time being, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes,” he answered. “They’re good in that way.” He turned back hesitatingly to Mrs. Horn and said, with a blush, “I thank you for a happy evening.”

  “Oh, I am very glad,” she replied in her murmur.

  One of the old friends of the house arched her eyebrows in saying good night and offered the two young men remaining seats home in her carriage. Beaton gloomily refused, and she kept herself from asking the student of human nature, till she had got him into her carriage, “What is Moffitt, and what did you say about it?”

  “Now you see, Margaret,” said Mrs. Horn, with bated triumph, when the people were all gone.

  “Yes, I see,” the girl consented. “From one point of view, of course it’s been a failure. I don’t think we’ve given Miss Dryfoos a pleasure, but perhaps nobody could. And at least we’ve given her the opportunity of enjoying herself.”

  “Such people,” said Mrs. Horn philosophically, “people with their money, must of course be received sooner or later. You can’t keep them out. Only, I believe I would rather let someone else begin with them. The Leightons didn’t come?”

  “I sent them cards. I couldn’t call again.”

  Mrs. Horn sighed a little. “I suppose Mr. Dryfoos is one of your fellow philanthropists?”

  “He’s one of the workers,” said Margaret. “I met him several times at the Hall, but I only knew his first name. I think he’s a great friend of Father Benedict; he seems devoted to the work. Don’t you think he looks good?”

  “Very,” said Mrs. Horn, with a color of censure in her assent. “The younger girl seemed more amiable than her sister. But what manners!”

  “Dreadful!” said Margaret, with knit brows and a pursed mouth of humorous suffering. “But she appeared to feel very much at home.”

  “Oh, as to that, neither of them was much abashed. Do you suppose Mr. Beaton gave the other one some hints for that quaint dress of hers? I don’t imagine that black and lace is her own invention. She seems to have some sort of strange fascination for him.”

  “She’s very picturesque,” Margaret explained. “And artists see points in people that the rest of us don’t.”

  “Could it be her money?” Mrs. Horn insinuated. “He must be very poor.”

  “But he isn’t base,” retorted the girl, with a generous indignation that made her aunt smile.

  “Oh, no; but if he fancies her so picturesque, it doesn’t follow that he would object to her being rich.”

  “It would with a man like Mr. Beaton!”

  “You are an idealist, Margaret. I suppose your Mr. March has some disinterested motive in paying court to Miss Mela—Pamela, I suppose is her name. He talked to her longer than her literature would have lasted.”

  “He seems a very kind person,” said Margaret.

  “And Mr. Dryfoos pays his salary?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But that wouldn’t make any difference with him.”

  Mrs. Horn laughed out at this security; but she was not displeased by the nobleness which it came from. She liked Margaret to be high-minded, and was really not distressed by any good that was in her.

  The Marches walked home, both because it was not far and because they must spare in carriage hire at any rate. As soon as they were out of the house, she applied a point of conscience to him.

  “I don’t see how you could talk to that girl so long, Basil, and make her laugh so.”

  “Why, there seemed no one else to do it, till I thought of Kendricks.”

  “Yes, but I kept thinking, ‘Now he’s pleasant to her because he thinks it’s to his interest. If she had no relation to Every Other Week, he wouldn’t waste his time on her.’ ”

  “Isabel,” March complained, “I wish you wouldn’t think of me in he, him, and his; I never personalize you in my thoughts; you remain always a vague unindividualized essence, not quite without form and void, but nounless and pronounless. I call that a much more beautiful mental attitude toward the object of one’s affections. But if you must he and him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you’d have more kindly thoughts of me.”

  “Do you deny that it’s true, Basil?”

  “Do you believe that it’s true, Isabel?”

  “No matter. But could you excuse it if it were?”

  “Ah, I see you’d have been capable of it in my place, and you’re ashamed.”

  “Yes,” sighed the wife, “I’m afraid that I should. But tell me that you wouldn’t, Basil!”

  “I can tell you that I wasn’t. But I suppose that in a real exigency, I could truckle to the proprietary Dryfooses as well as you.”

  “Oh, no; you mustn’t, dear! I’m a woman, and I’m dreadfully afraid. But you must always be a man, especially with that horrid old Mr. Dryfoos. Promise me that you’ll never yield the least point to him in a matter of right and wrong!”

  “Not if he’s right and I’m wrong?”

  “Don’t trifle, dear! You know what I mean. Will you promise?”

  “I’ll promise to submit the point to you and let you do the yielding. As for me I shall be adamant. Nothing I like better.”

  “They’re dreadful, even that poor, good young fellow who’s so different from all the rest; he’s awful too because you feel that he’s a martyr to them.”

  “And I never did like martyrs a great deal,” March interposed.

  “I wonder how they came to be there,” Mrs. March pursued, unmindful of his joke.

  “That is exactly what seemed to be puzzling Miss Mela about us. She asked, and I explained as well as I could; and then she told me that Miss Vance had come to call on them and invited them; and first they didn’t know how they could come till they thought of making Conrad bring them. But she didn’t say why Miss Vance called on them. Mr. Dryfoos doesn’t employ her on Every Other Week. But I suppose she has her own vile little motive.”

  “It can’t be their money; it can’t be!” sighed Mrs. March.

  “Well, I don’t know. We all respect money.”

  “Yes, but Miss Vance’s position is so secure. She needn’t pay court to those stupid, vulgar people.”

  “Well, let’s console ourselves with the belief that she would, if she needed. Such people as the Dryfooses are the raw material of good society. It isn’t made up of refined or meritorious people—professors and littérateurs, ministers and musicians, and their families. All the fashionable people there tonight were like the Dryfooses a generation or two ago. I daresay the material works up faster now, and in a season or two you won’t know the Dryfooses from
the other plutocrats. They will—a little better than they do now; they’ll see a difference, but nothing radical, nothing painful. People who get up in the world by service to others—through letters, or art, or science—may have their modest little misgivings as to their social value, but people that rise by money—especially if their gains are sudden—never have. And that’s the kind of people that form our nobility; there’s no use pretending that we haven’t a nobility; we might as well pretend we haven’t first-class cars in the presence of a vestibuled Pullman. Those girls had no more doubt of their right to be there than if they had been duchesses; we thought it was very nice of Miss Vance to come and ask us, but they didn’t; they weren’t afraid or the least embarrassed ; they were perfectly natural—like born aristocrats. And you may be sure that if the plutocracy that now owns the country ever sees fit to take on the outward signs of an aristocracy—titles, and arms, and ancestors—it won’t falter from any inherent question of its worth. Money prizes and honors itself, and if there is anything it hasn’t got, it believes it can buy it.”

  “Well, Basil,” said his wife, “I hope you won’t get infected with Lindau’s ideals of rich people. Some of them are very good and kind.”

  “Who denies that? Not even Lindau himself. It’s all right. And the great thing is that the evening’s enjoyment is over. I’ve got my society smile off, and I’m radiantly happy. Go on with your little pessimistic diatribes, Isabel; you can’t spoil my pleasure.”