CHAPTER IX.
“Men used to be divided into two classes, you know, Mr. Fenton,—those who belonged to our set, and those who did not.”
Gertrude Van Vleck and John Fenton had retired to a remote corner of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s drawing-room, and were keeping up as animated a conversation as the depressing influences of a musicale permit. In evening dress, Fenton was a man of a most impressive presence. He had come to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s musicale expecting to be bored. The expression on his strong, thoughtful face, as he gazed smilingly at the handsome, aristocratic-looking girl beside him, proved that she had followed in Richard Stoughton’s footsteps, and had performed a miracle.
“And what is the distinction that you yourself make, Miss Van Vleck?” asked Fenton.
She looked at him earnestly a moment.
“To me,” she answered, “there are two kinds of men,—those who interest me, and those who do not.”
“Perhaps,” said Fenton, taking advantage of an interlude in the music-room, “perhaps it is inconsiderate on my part to ask the question, but I acknowledge that I am curious to know what ratio exists between the men who interest you and the men who do not.”
“I don’t know that I ever put the problem on a mathematical basis,” answered Gertrude, an amused smile playing across her face. “I am inclined to think that the ratio changes from year to year.”
“To your advantage?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not. As time goes on I find that I meet more men who do not interest me and fewer who do. But there is compensation for this in the fact that women have grown more attractive to each other than they used to be.”
An enthusiastic soprano was at the moment striking certain high notes as though she had a grudge against them, and Fenton was obliged to pause a moment before he asked,—
“Won’t you explain that to me, Miss Van Vleck? It is, as you put it, a novel idea.”
“Why, don’t you see,” she said earnestly, “the very fact that women are joined together in a protest against ancient customs and prejudices has drawn them closer to each other; while, at the same time, it has tended to bring out the most characteristic qualities of each individual woman. In a word, we women interest each other more as rebels than we did as slaves.”
Again the soprano uttered her protest against peace and quiet, and Fenton had an opportunity to weigh Gertrude Van Vleck’s words. His vis-à-vis was a social product the like of which had not existed in the days when he had been a member of New York’s inner circle, and had expected from a young unmarried woman nothing in a conversational way that would challenge thought. Of course, in his journalistic occupation he had been obliged to follow in detail the progress of woman toward a broader, perhaps higher, plane of endeavor; but this was the first time that Fenton had come face to face with the new ideas incarnate. He was entertained, stimulated, inspired, by the experience. At first he had looked upon Gertrude Van Vleck simply as a finely developed specimen of the patrician type, whose dark hair, deep blue eyes, and finely rounded neck formed a combination very pleasing to the eye, and indicated a remote Spanish strain mingling with her Dutch blood. But after a few moments in her companionship, he had discovered that she not only satisfied his æsthetic nature, but piqued his intellectual make-up. She had given him the highest pleasure that one mind can bestow upon another, by opening up new vistas of thought to him.
John Fenton had reached that period of a life that had been filled with disappointments when feminine sympathy and appreciation are among the few things left in the world that are wholly satisfying. Perhaps it was this very fact that had led him to make a friend of Richard Stoughton, a youth whose quick intuitions and mental alertness had much in them that was feminine.
There was, furthermore, a note of defiance in Gertrude’s last remark that struck a sympathetic chord in Fenton’s nature. No man can accept the premises upon which the economic theories to which Fenton had subscribed are based without developing the rebellious tendencies that lie more or less dormant in all men. For the first time, the similarity impressed him that exists between woman’s revolt against the oppression of man, and man’s restlessness under the threatening inequalities of wealth.
“And as rebels women are much more attractive to men than they were as conformists,” remarked Fenton, seizing an opportunity to resume the conversation, after a self-satisfied tenor had proved to his own satisfaction that he had a divine right to be conceited about his voice. “To use a rather shop-worn quotation, ‘Blessings brighten as they take their flight.’”
“But that is not a fair illustration,” exclaimed Gertrude earnestly. “We are not trying to fly away from men, but to fly with them.”
“That may be true,” said Fenton, smiling thoughtfully; “but men are naturally startled at the suddenly displayed power of your wings, and are a little shy at first.”
“Why should they be? After all, I believe that the underlying ambition of the new woman—as she is rather vulgarly called—is to make herself intellectually attractive to the brightest men.”
“Then the progress of woman has not decreased the social importance of the clever man?” asked Fenton humbly.
“On the contrary, Mr. Fenton, it has enhanced it—by giving him a larger and more appreciative audience. The man of mental power would hold a higher place in a community containing many Mesdames de Staël than in a social circle possessing only one. Is it not so?”
“Do you know, Miss Van Vleck,” said Fenton, not answering her question directly, “that I begin to think that I shall owe you a great debt of gratitude?”
A slight tinge of red mounted to her face as her eyes met his. He impressed her as a man more fitted to bestow favors than to accept them.
“I don’t quite understand you,” she said softly.
“We owe much,” he continued, “to those who take us out of our mental grooves and give us a new standpoint from which to view the world. There may be a good deal of selfishness in occupying one’s mind entirely with man’s inhumanity to man, and blinding ourselves to man’s inhumanity to woman. I have to thank you for a new point of view.”
“But,” protested Gertrude, “I have said nothing that we do not read in print every day.”
“Even if that is so,” said Fenton, “truths that would make no impression on me if I read them on an editorial page come to me with startling force when you present them. I repeat, that I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
At that moment Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s voice, a rich, highly-cultivated contralto, was heard, giving passionate expression to Heine’s mournful little story of the pine that dreamt of love. Richard Stoughton stood at the entrance to the music-room, forgetful of the crowd around him. There was something in her voice that seemed to be meant for him alone, something that told him she was thinking of the night when she had first sung the song to him. “I must be growing wofully egotistic,” he thought; but at that instant their eyes met, and his self-deprecation vanished.
She came to him after the applause had died away, and called his attention to an unoccupied corner of the drawing-room.
“I want to talk to you,” she said simply. “Come!”
“Do you know,” she began playfully, after they were seated, “I have begun to feel a good deal awed in your presence. A man who can perform miracles, you know”—
“Well?” exclaimed Richard, as she hesitated a moment.
“A man who can perform miracles is to be avoided. Just think of poor Trilby and Svengali.”
Richard laughed outright.
“That is a most complimentary remark! If I follow you, you mean that I hypnotized John Fenton. I certainly feel flattered. But, do you know, I begin to suspect that your friend, Miss Van Vleck, will prove a much more successful medium than I?”
They both glanced at Gertrude and John Fenton, who were deep in conversation in the opposite corner of the drawing-room.
“I am very glad that all responsibility for the man’s future has been taken off of my hands,” said Richard. “The fact is, I feel that I have all that I can do to take care of myself.”
He looked into her eyes with an expression in his own that was hardly allowable—even at a musicale.
“How selfish a man is,” Mrs. Percy-Bartlett murmured musingly. “It is almost impossible for him to be a consistent friend to another man. How much less is he able to be a true friend to a woman.”
“The basis of all friendship is affection,” argued Richard, lowering his voice as the music of a ’cello crept softly through the room. “And affection is a very hard thing to hold in check.”
She looked up at him with a smile on her lips, but an expression of sadness in her eloquent brown eyes.
“It is, indeed!” she almost whispered. Then, as if regretting the admission, she leaned back in her chair, and seemed to listen to the soft, throbbing harmonies that the piano and the ’cello begot as their tones met and mingled, as though they caressed each other.
Richard bent forward, and their eyes met again.
“Do you reject my—my friendship?” he whispered.
Suddenly he felt her hand in his; and she smiled as he pressed it, while her eyes brightened, and her cheeks flushed. Withdrawing her hand, she said, her voice hardly audible even as he bent his face close to hers:—
“Remember that there is another foundation-stone to friendship: it is unselfishness.”
The words, and the pleading tone in which they were uttered, combined to make her remark sound more like a prayer to his generosity than a statement founded on a time-worn truth.
“I will try,” whispered Richard earnestly, “I will try to be an ideal friend to you. I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world.”
She smiled up at him gratefully, as though he had made a great sacrifice for her happiness. They say that Love is blind. Perhaps that is the reason that the little rascal is such a consummate liar. How can one expect a sightless imp, whose domain is youth, and whose throne is the heart, to wield his sceptre with absolute respectability? If he could see further, Cupid might behave better as a monarch; but the chances are, in that case, that he would be compelled to abdicate.
The hour was waxing late.
“I must resume my duties,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett reluctantly; “and abandon my friend for the sake of my guests. Will you come to see me soon? Let me see—a week from to-night I have no engagement. Will you come and talk to me of friendship?”
“Very gladly,” murmured Richard, touching her willing hand again. “Until then I shall not live, but dream!”
Richard and Fenton strolled together down the avenue, silent and self-absorbed. Finally the former asked,—
“Did you have a pleasant evening, John?”
“Very,” answered Fenton gruffly.
They walked for half a block before they spoke again.
“The music was well done,” ventured Richard.
“Yes,” assented Fenton. Neither of the two again opened their lips until they reached the cross-street at which they were to part.
“Good-night, John,” said Richard, holding out his hand.
“Good-night, boy! See you to-morrow,” exclaimed Fenton hurriedly. Then he walked onward alone.
“I went there,” he was saying to himself, “to get a line on the youngster’s affair. But the cold, hard fact is that I forgot all about him.”...
At that same moment Percy-Bartlett and Buchanan Budd were smoking their good-night cigars together at the club.
“It is really too bad,” Budd was saying, “that the newspapers have been able to print so much scandal about our set. But I suppose there is no way to prevent it.”
“But there is a way,” returned Percy-Bartlett almost sternly. “What we need in the inner circle is more heroism and less heroics. If noblesse oblige means anything at all in these days, it demands of those who live up to its behests that they be self-contained, not hysterical. There is no necessity for a domestic tragedy getting into print if the man or woman who is wronged is fundamentally worthy of a place in the most select coterie on earth.”
“You would rather wink at crime than have the public gossip about you, then?” asked Budd.
“I would—a thousand times!” answered Percy-Bartlett, throwing away his cigar and saying “good-night” cheerily.